This week, we share an episode from the TriDoc Podcast. Host Jeff Sankoff is joined by dietitian Alex Larson and coach Juliet Hochman to explore the complex relationship between body composition, fueling, and performance—plus how coaches can support athletes without crossing the line.
Episode Transcript
Trevor Connor 00:00
Jeff, welcome to another episode of fast talk. We’re doing something special today. We’ve decided to do a swap with Jeff sankoff. He has the tridoc podcast. He is going to be putting up an episode of our show and his podcast this week, and we’re going to share with you one of his recent episodes from the Tri dog podcast. In this episode, Jeff talks with Juliet Hochman and Alex Larsen, tackling the intricate relationships between body composition, nutrition and athletic performance. The episode serves as a platform to discuss how athletes can navigate the often treacherous waters of body image and performance expectations, drawing for personal antidotes and professional insights, Alex highlights the significant risks associated with under fueling and the surprising lack of risk tied to over fueling. This revelation is vital for athletes who may succumb to pressure for an ideal physique, often leading to detrimental health outcomes such as red ass, which can severely impact performance and well being. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the tridoc podcast. Please go to his feed to hear everything about triathlon from Jess sankoff And now here’s his show.
maya watson 01:11
What I would have told probably my younger self is, less is not more. More is probably just enough. Honestly, there’s so many risks to under fueling, but essentially no risks to over fueling as an athlete, and I also think just to be very mindful, not like intuitive eating, but while also being mindful of what your body actually needs.
Jeff Sankoff 01:42
Hello, and welcome to the tridoc podcast. I’m your host. Jeff sankoff, the tridoc an emergency physician, triathlon coach and multiple Ironman finisher, coming to you as always, from beautiful, sunny Denver, Colorado, the voice you heard at the top of the program was that of my guest, Maya Watson. Maya is an up and coming age group triathlete and soon to be a professional. She had a stellar 2024 season as part of the TTL development team, and recorded her first overall wins at the 70.3 Victoria and 70.3 Oregon races. She talks to me about what it’s been like finding that success and where she goes from here, and that’s going to be coming up in just a little while before that, my friend and colleague and always partner for the medical mailbag, Juliet Hochman, joins me to answer a listener question about body composition and performance. Now this is a pretty delicate subject, but one that comes up frequently. So we invited our friend and frequent contributor, Alex Larson from Alex Larson nutrition, to join us and help us tease out the important points that athletes can take away from the evidence that’s been published on this topic, and that coaches like myself and Juliet can use to handle conversations with their athletes when this comes up, and it frequently does. So it’s a busy show with lots of endurance sports subject matter to cover, so let’s not waste any time and get right to it. It’s time again for the medical mailbag, that section of the program when I’m joined by my friend and colleague, Juliet Hockman. Juliet, how are you doing this morning? I am doing well, I can’t say it’s beautiful. The leaves have changed. It’s gorgeous. This is a beautiful time of year. It just always gets me a little sad, because I know what’s coming.
Juliet Hochman 03:23
I am great. Just fresh in from a little run myself. Great way to start the morning. Thanks. Beautiful fall morning here in Oregon. How aboutyou?
Jeff Sankoff 03:23
I know it’s dark. It’s dark out there right now. It’s not as bad, however, for both of us as it’s going to be for our guest who’s joining us on the medical mailbag today, who is living in a much more dire winter, as Alex Larson, Alex, a friend of the podcast, who’s been a guest of ours several times, is joining us because we have a very a question. It’s very pertinent to her. Alex, welcome back to the tridarc podcast.
Alex Larson 04:07
Thanks for having me back,
Jeff Sankoff 04:09
Alex, before we get started, I understand you’re launching your own podcast in the near future. Take a moment to just tell us about that. Yeah,
Alex Larson 04:16
it’s called endurance eats. So it’s all on endurance nutrition topics, and it launches in january 2025, so working on recording some episodes, getting that ready to go, it’ll be in season so I’ll have a season one, like 1215, episodes at first season I’ll take a little break, because you guys know, I got three young kids at home, so I can’t, like, guarantee I’m always going to have content all year round. And then we’ll have a season two come out later on in 2025
Juliet Hochman 04:43
ooh, I am writing this down right now. Jeff knows I’m not very good with podcasts, but endurance eats. I got it January 2025
Alex Larson 04:50
Yes, the trailer is already out, so you can already subscribe and follow. So when it launches, you’ll be able to catch the episodes. Awesome.
Jeff Sankoff 04:57
All right, I’ll put a I’ll put a link to that. The show notes, and that we will, of course, announce that when Alex goes live with it in the new year. But for now, we have a listener question to answer. Juliet, what are we tackling today? Why is Alex joining us?
Juliet Hochman 05:12
I know it’s gonna be an interesting topic. So this question comes from one of our listen listeners, Justin Raphael, thank you so much, Justin, it’s always better when we get questions from our listeners rather than trying to make them up ourselves. And he asks, is there an ideal body composition for athletes to consider striving for in order to optimize their performance? And then he goes on to ask, what is the accuracy of the different modalities by which body fat percentage is measured? So this is a topic that I know Jeff and I speak about a lot offline as coaches and how to help athletes with this question when it comes to us. So I’m excited about this discussion today. So where are we going to start? Jeff?
Jeff Sankoff 05:51
Yeah, it’s a tough one, and that’s why I wanted Alex here, because it is a tough one. It’s so fraught. And I want to take a moment to thank my intern, Nina Takeshima, who did the research for this, we had a really interesting conversation when she came back to me with what she found. And we have to be really careful. We have to tread carefully. We know that nutrition in athletes is a fraught conversation. That’s why I wanted Alex here to help us out with it. And we also know that there is this really fine line. If you watched much of the Olympics this year, you spent any time watching track athletes, you no doubt saw that there was a very common body type, and that body type among the sprinters tended to be very ripped, very muscular men and women. And amongst the middle to long distance athletes, it tended to be incredibly lean people not much muscle, and certainly not much body fat. And that was the common theme across any sport, of any elite athlete, was the absence of any kind of defining body fat. And there is evidence that kind of supports this notion that reducing body fat does result in improvements in performance across different kinds of sports. There is a paper that came out in 2023 and it was developed by a subset of our subgroup of the IOC consensus panel that works on relative energy deficiency in sport. So interesting. This is a group that actually worked to define reds, and continues to do work on nutrition in sport, and continues to come up with recommendations. And they reviewed the literature and actually showed that it’s true, if you gain in lean mass, you will show an improvement in your ability to perform in just about all sports you will show and this is in measurable metrics such as Peak average power output and cycling sprint performance, work economy, improved jump skills and Even performance across team sports, and there is a negative association with performance variables such as race time and average speed with increasing body fat percentage. So these things are definitely linked. Unfortunately, there is an abundance of literature that shows that amongst athletes who strive to work for these kinds of body composition goals, they get into trouble. Hang on. They get into trouble if they go too far. But there is a ceiling. Let’s put it that way, running and body fat walking the tightrope of optimum performance. Is another paper that we found. And in this paper, basically in measuring body fat levels across different kinds of runners, it was found that men and women were running levels of body fat that are not seen in normal human beings, basically levels less than 10% in men, less than 15% in women, and this was almost universally associated with significant calorie deficits. And these calorie deficits were seen during the preparatory and competition phases, which is pretty amazing, and we’re going to bring Alex in here in just a short bit, but Alex has spoken with us on this podcast numerous times about the importance of fueling for performance, and I was just shocked that these elite athletes were running huge calorie deficits. Trying to make up for their calorie deficits by eating low carbohydrates, low proteins and high fat content. And despite this, running as much as 20% calorie 20 to 30% calorie deficits in order to keep their lean body mass up and their body fat percentage down. And what are the consequences of this? We know about reds and the female athlete triad, which are both significant health issues, but there is another health issue that was brought up and. Was the issue of immune function, because it has been seen that when men are running at a body fat level of less than 10% and women less than 15% their immune function is adversely affected, and they put themselves at risk for having issues related to recurrent illnesses related to either viral, bacterial illusion, fungal infections. So these are all important things that need to be taken into consideration. And there was also a ceiling in terms of if you dropped your body fat percentage too far, you actually had adverse performance. And there was one group of athletes who seemed to do particularly well with normal levels of body fat, normal being for women, as much as 30% that was the ultra runners, people who were running really long distance we see. And if you look at an ultra runner, you look at some of the women who are performing really well. They look like normal women. A lot of the men look like normal men. And that’s not surprising when you are performing those long kinds of distance events, are you generally performing at a level, zone one, zone two, where you’re actually metabolizing fat as opposed to carbohydrate. So it’s not that unusual that they would run more normal levels of body fat. We’re gonna talk about one athlete who’s gone through this journey and had some success, someone I know quite well. But before we do that, Alex, I know that you face this kind of conversation frequently, and it’s I know that you get inundated because of your popularity on social media. A lot of women see your a lot of women see the Olympics. They see what these athletes look like, and then they see your feed. And let me
Alex Larson 11:44
challenge that, though I do feel like at this Olympics, we were embracing women of all types of bodies. There was a lot of coverage on like the power lifters or the shot putters or just kiss throwers, and the variety of body types and how these are all elite athletes, and they all come in different shapes and sizes. So I do feel like I saw, for me, I saw a little bit different story on the Olympics, just from that aspect. But yes, like these are elite athletes. They have mastered their craft. They are very strong men and women, and I feel like there is definitely, if you look at the marathoners, they’re going to be a much more longer, leaner body type, versus, like the sprinters, that are going to have a more powerful, stockier stature. Same thing with swimmers. You look at your sprinters versus your more longer distance, you might see some varying levels there. You’re going to have, like, different ideal body types, and that’s okay. And like, also keep in mind that no matter if you take everyone in the world and we all ate exactly the same and we all trained exactly the same, we’re still all gonna look different. We’re all gonna have genetically different body types, and that’s okay. So I think that’s also a really good approach to looking at body composition as well. It’s not just about the body fat percentage. I think we also have to look at the genetic makeup of people as well, and what we’re going to see in performance too. There’s a lot of factors other than just body comp,
Juliet Hochman 13:13
yeah. And I’d like to also point out that when you’re looking at something like the Olympics, those athletes, there’s a huge genetic component. Those athletes, like the power lifters, could not have been rowers. The rowers could not have been gymnastics. Genetics plays a lot into what you gravitate towards from an early age. Is going to find success as an athlete. I mean, Simone
Alex Larson 13:33
Biles is what, four foot 11, right, tiny, but just absolutely so incredibly powerful in what she’s able to do.
Juliet Hochman 13:40
And I’m glad you brought gymnastics up as an example. I remember as a kid watching gymnastics, and there are these little, tiny, Pixie, 14 and 15 year olds who hadn’t even seen puberty yet, and now
Alex Larson 13:52
curvier this year. Oh, they’re amazing. They love this change in just what we’re seeing in, I know, we are no longer looking at Nadia COVID, nice, right? We’re looking at Seymour files, who is in her 20s, actually late 20s now, and all of those athletes appear to be in their 20s, older, stronger, just oh so much better than it was. And I think that’s a lot to do with increased, you know, nutrition and less sort of premium put on how they looked watching these little girls show themselves around the gym. So I was really encouraged by that, too. Yeah, okay, I think we totally diverted there. Jeff, I don’t remember.
Jeff Sankoff 14:26
I mean, I’m happy to, I’m happy to, I’m not going to disagree. I think that if we look across the track and field sports, you’re right. There’s if we look across weightlifting, we look across different sports. But if we bring it back to middle distance, if we bring it back to high jump, pole vault, the men and women look the same. They’re very lean, they’re very small. And there’s literature to show that there’s a reason for that. So I bring it back to the question, which is athletes who see that, who then look at themselves in the mirror and think, Oh, I. I need to look like that to be to do better. How do you most get that question all the time? I do
Alex Larson 15:08
yeah. A good chunk of our athletes do yes. So formerly, I used to be like, let’s just focus on fueling you better, fueling you for performance, and see if it’s like just a byproduct that where I originally was in my mindset around it, but over the past year and a half, I have had a shift, and in part because I get it as a mom of three kids, now I’m on my own little body composition journey. I’m no longer planning on ever getting pregnant again in my life, thank God. And I’m like, Okay, now I’m like, in this whole new phase where I’m like, I’m not gonna have this pregnancy break. I’m gonna have to take I want to get it back into a level of fitness. I have some like, athletic goals for myself, like, I want to return back to that. And so I’m on this body composition goal, and I can do that. Like, I want to honor that for other people as well who have that interest. However, if they come to me and they say, Hey, Alex, I want to lose some weight, I am going to ask some questions and make sure that we can one do this in the healthiest way possible. Understanding, okay, when you say you want to lose some weight or you want to get leaner, do you have some numbers in mind? Where are you at right now? What’s your weight history been over your lifetime? Do you have a history of eating disorders? What’s your current relationship with food? What’s your current relationship with your body? What’s your training like right now? What are what do you have coming up for a race schedule? I’m going to ask a lot of questions so that I understand. Okay, is this weight goal realistic for this person? Is our timeline realistic? Are they prepared to do this the right and healthy way in slow and steady body composition changes over time, so that we can prevent low energy availability. We can prevent reds. We can prevent immune function being compromised. Because I find it’s not necessarily just body fat percentage influence. I find low energy availability also can impact immune health. I want to keep people like being able to still function as a normal human being, go for their long run on Saturday and still have energy the rest of the day. I want them to prevent being injured. I want to do everything that I can for them to succeed, and, most importantly, create an eating pattern for them that is sustainable, like it’s this is not like a quick fix restrictive diet kind of thing. This is something that we can create them to just eat better, feel better, and as just an like part of the process, they’re seeing their body composition improve.
Jeff Sankoff 17:50
Yeah, I think the sustainability part is huge. I it should never be about losing weight for an event, or just about losing weight so that you can perform for something, I think it needs to be more of a long term process, like when you say a timeline, what kind of timeline do you look at and for a healthy weight loss?
Juliet Hochman 18:15
Yeah, so I’ve had some athletes that like will come to me in May, and they’ve gotten Ironman Chattanooga at the end of September, and they’re like, I want to lose 15 pounds by the time Chattanooga comes. I’m like, I don’t know if I can get you there. That sounds like some pretty rapid weight loss. I can’t guarantee you those types of results. It’s like, but we can maybe shoot for half of that, and then after your race, you can work in the off season on the rest of that. And that’s what ended up happening with that particular athlete. Or other times, we have athletes who really do well in the program, and they see 20 pounds weight loss in four or five months. We’ve got a couple that are graduating right now. We have a cyclist that he’s down 2022, pounds in five months with Mary and great like, we’re so excited for them, and very seamless process with them. No issues with low energy availability, like potential for reds, we have those situations where we see really great success, but on average, like one to two pounds is the typical recommended based off of research, safe weight loss. Sometimes we’ll see per month, per week, per week would be the fastest that we would want to see weight come down. Sometimes we’ll see a half a pound a week. Or, like with women, this is what I find, even with myself, is based off my cycle. Like, in that luteal phase, the weight loss will, like, plateau, and then as soon as I get into my follicular phase, the weight will drop down two pounds, like, within a couple days and water thing? Yeah, it’s just a water fluctuation thing. And so you have to work with that too, with female athletes in their cycle as well. Does
Jeff Sankoff 19:50
it matter if the athlete is coming to significantly more overweight, if an athlete has a higher body fat percentage is more overweight? Can you tolerate a large. Her weight loss early, what
Juliet Hochman 20:01
we might expect to see is maybe initially they see the weight come down a little bit quicker, and then it’ll steady out a little bit more consistently. I had one athlete who lost about 2223 pounds, and she wasn’t even really weighing herself. She just knew that she was losing weight because her clothes was clothes were fitting differently, and she was having to go down sizes and clothing, and then eventually she went to the doctor and actually got weighed in. She was like, Oh, wow, I’ve actually lost, you know, 22 pounds. And for her, it was pretty steady, but she really revamped her diet within a couple months and built some nice consistency with that. That’s the thing you got to put in the work in order to see those results too. Like, you have to be in that mindset of, okay, yeah, I’m ready to make some changes with my nutrition. I’m ready to put in like, that commitment to myself, and like we do tend to see, like, a really nice transformation for them.
Alex Larson 20:53
Yeah, eating healthy definitely takes a lot of work and a lot of preparation and a lot of logistics. It is especially initially.
Juliet Hochman 21:00
The change initially can be very difficult, but what I is when they practice it over and over over time, it gets easier 100% and then it doesn’t feel like as much work, but you have to go through that zone of suck initially. Yeah, a lot of planning, it feels like you’re putting a lot more thought and planning and work into it, but once it starts to feel routine, that’s when the magic really happens. Yeah, 100%
Alex Larson 21:27
do you require that your athletes who have stated weight loss goals come to you with certain testing like body fat percentage, which you’re working with up front, so you can track the data as you
Juliet Hochman 21:39
move along. Some of them do come with that. Some of them do not. I’m very open to what works for them, because sometimes I feel like we get too focused on the numbers, and it can be really harmful to their mental health. Like I have athletes who are there, like, weighing themselves, like, multiple times a day. I’m like, Okay, this is not healthy. You are basing your mood on what the number says, and that’s not fair to you. So we’ll be like some good food behaviors, and you just feeling good and and celebrating that before we actually focus on any numbers. So sometimes we’ll have athletes that will have had a DEXA scan or an in body test, or they have a Garmin scale with that says all the stats of the body fat percentage. And so a we see a wide variety, and I don’t have a set rule of what we expect from them.
Jeff Sankoff 22:27
I want to get to those ways of measuring body fat, but I just have one more question, and that was, If the athlete is smart about how they’re doing this, about how they’re changing their body composition, does it always the way the literature suggests, does it always translate into performance improvements in your experience?
Juliet Hochman 22:47
I, I don’t know if I’d say always, because there’s a lot of factors that go into performance, but general, yes, most will see improvements in just the how, like, how much easier the workout feels, because they don’t have to. And we try very hard to make sure that we preserve the muscle and strength. Because when athletes come to me and they say, I want to lose weight, I’m like, Okay, what you really mean is, you want to lose the excess body fat, and you want to maintain the muscle and strength. We don’t want to see their power drop on watts on the bike or something like that. So typically, yes, we will see performance improvements, but it also depends on, okay, how are they training? Sometimes their coaches are over training them, and we have to talk with them about, hey, we need you to take some rest days and recoveries. Every situation we see is unique. So I can’t say always, but I would say most of the time we see performance improvements, which you have, I know he was right,
Jeff Sankoff 23:41
so I’m gonna bring my n of one. I mentioned the athlete, and that was me. I decided that I felt like I was racing against people who look different than I did. And it’s not like I was overweight by any stretch, but in a discussion with my coach, the point came up of one of the ways that I could potentially improve performance was to change my body composition, and so I made the decision to work with Alex. Actually, one of I like to call her Alex’s minion,
Alex Larson 24:13
yes. So I have a team, and I have Hannah and Mary on my team, and because Jeff you and I have a friendship, I felt it would be best for you to work with Mary on my team, right that way, it just it felt better for you to work with her. Great.
Jeff Sankoff 24:26
I got to me now. So now I know Mary as well. So it’s been a very successful relationship in that I lost 10 pounds of pretty much body fat, and my performance is definitely it’s not like I’m significantly faster, but like you say, Everything’s easier. And as I told my wife, was like, Well, I don’t get it, like, why? And I said, just imagine you have a backpack of books you’re carrying that’s 10 pounds, and then you put that backpack down, you know how much easier it is to go upstairs. That’s how I feel. I feel like my running is that much easier because I’m carrying around 10. Pounds less pills, obviously, would
Alex Larson 25:02
you say, Do you have a pace difference that you’ve noticed over the past few months, since, like August? I will
Jeff Sankoff 25:08
say that I raced, I raced Tri Cities, which was 10 pounds lighter than I raised a 70.3 I raised that 110 pounds lighter than Oregon. I guess the half marathon there was pretty similar. They’re
Alex Larson 25:23
very similar, yeah. So that, so for people who don’t that’s about a two month difference between 70.3 Oregon and 70.3 Washington. And the run courses are, I would say, identical. They’re
Jeff Sankoff 25:32
flat and fast, yeah. So I run the same, but the bike course was significantly harder in Tri Cities. So I would consider that, having run better because the Oregon bike course was not as difficult as the Tri Cities bike course, and I had similar bike splits. I think I was a little bit faster in Oregon, not much, and then I ran about the same time at both races. And so I feel like my overall performance was better at Tri Cities because it was a much harder bike course, and I did so I was able to hit those hills at Tri Cities much easily because I weighed less, and then I was able to run quite efficiently and quite effectively. So overall, I feel like my performance did improve with a different body composition, and I’m looking forward to see how it goes in worlds in December, which was really my target race for doing this in the first place. So that’s and then after that, of course, it’s the holiday season, and we’ll see how sustainable
Alex Larson 26:30
people always had this sort of periodicity, annual periodicity, of your weight, right? And at Christmas time, you find that extra challenge of the wine and the cheese and the crackers.
Jeff Sankoff 26:39
And so I’ve already started those conversations with Mary. That’s like,
Alex Larson 26:45
shift gears and I both love candy corn. I know that’s like a love it or hate it, like I know we love, like, carb loading our athletes with candy corn.
Jeff Sankoff 26:53
I want to make sure we cover something important in the remaining time that we have, but just before we do that, I want to touch very quickly on the accuracy of the different ways of measuring body composition, because that was the second part of Justin’s question. So there are a variety of ways of doing this, and we found evidence in the literature that touched on all of these. The oldest way of doing this was just measuring skin folds with calipers. That is, I don’t even know if that’s done anymore. It probably is done in some places. It’s very low tech. They basically measure the thickness of the skin folds, I think, in six or seven different places on the body, and they have these calculations that help determine what body fight is. Essentially, it’s completely unreliable. It was the only way that they used to have to do it traumatizing
Juliet Hochman 27:39
for the Olympics. It was just like, oh god,
Jeff Sankoff 27:42
yeah, it’s not it’s not great anyways, don’t do it. It’s not worth it. It’s dramatizing and it’s not very accurate. So don’t do it
Juliet Hochman 27:50
7% or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Another
Jeff Sankoff 27:53
way of doing it is something called a body pod, which I’m not familiar with, but basically it’s, it uses like air displacement and hydrostat. I don’t even it’s a proper I’ve done it private technology. Oh, sod.
Alex Larson 28:06
It’s funny, you step into this spaceship looking like thing, and they do all of this stuff with air and water, and, dang, you come out with a number anyway. It was interesting.
Jeff Sankoff 28:15
It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s very nice that there are some downsides to it. It’s not particularly accurate. It doesn’t it can be claustrophobic for some people, and it doesn’t give you much in the way of regional body composition. It just gives you a total number. So it’s not bad in terms of its accuracy. It’s just it’s not great, and it does have some downsides. The scales you mentioned Alex a little earlier, the garment scale. I have one of them as well. I have the withing scale. They use bio impedance. Basically, you put your feet on either side of the scale. There’s a very small current that’s passed through your body, and then a calculation is made to determine the resistance of to that current in order to determine how much water how much fat. And the problem is those scales depending on how much lean mass you have, they can be wildly inaccurate. Now, some of the scales have a way to change the calculation. If you are an athlete. They don’t determine what that they don’t define what that is. But basically, supposedly, if your lean mass is higher than a certain amount, you should make sure that your scale is calculating you as an athlete. But the problem is, how do you know what your lean mass is? If you’re using the scale to determine that? So the long and the short of it is, I was using my withing scale, and it was calculating these wild body fat percentages, and then I turned it on to the athlete mode when I found out it had it, and suddenly I was getting numbers that made a lot more sense. So they can be they’re still not crazy accurate, but they’re useful for tracking, because the inaccuracy tends to be the same, overconfident, yeah, consistently inaccurate. So if you want to track, the scales are useful for tracking, but the actual number you’re getting is probably limited value. And then finally. The DEXA scan is the most accurate way. It is something like 98 99% accurate. So it is a very accurate means that the downside is it uses radiation, low power x rays, in order to determine what’s going on. It is also less accurate if you have very low body fat percentage, because it has a harder time discriminating the body fat from lean mass, but for most people, anywhere between 10 to 10% and up, or I think it’s 12% and up body fat, then you will get very accurate numbers from a DEXA scan. It’s probably not something you want to be doing repeatedly, because they cost a lot and because there is still even though it’s low, it’s there is still radiation. The DEXA scan was something that used to be done for used to be done for bone mineralization. Yeah, yeah. It was a bone density thing. And now, as always happens in a capitalistic healthcare system, they figured out another thing to make money off of it. And so it’s, it’s being used for body fat. It’s marketed pretty aggressively for that. And I would tell people, there’s unless this is something you’re like, like Alex says weighing yourself twice a day, right? Do you really need to have a DEXA scan every five weeks or so? Probably not. Okay. I do want to move. I wanted to spend the rest of the time we have available to answer to really important question for coaches. Juliet and I both work with a lot of athletes, and we have athletes who come to us, not infrequently, and ask the question, should I lose weight? That is a fraught conversation to have as a coach, especially if you’re not trained like you are. Alex, as a nutritionist, I feel like as a physician, I actually have some knowledge in this area and some expertise that I can help my athletes with, but I have been very wary of engaging in this conversation with my female athletes. I’m much more open to discussing it with my male athletes, and I wonder if that’s not the correct approach, because I’ve had some female athletes come to me who I know they the answer to the question is yes, not just for performance, but also for health reasons. It would be beneficial to lose some weight, and I could probably help you to a certain degree, but I’m wary to have the conversation. So what’s your advice to coaches, both men like me, women like Juliet, who have athletes who come to them with that conversation so that they can best help their athletes and avoid the pitfalls that you have alluded to already. Yeah, right.
Alex Larson 32:30
I’ve had some athletes come to us and they say, Hey, my coach really wants me on race day to be X number of pounds. That’s what they really want me to be on on race day. And I’m like, where did that number even come from? It’s they literally just pulled it out of their butt. I’m like, that just makes me really frustrated that they’re doing that, especially because we had to explain to them, in order for you to be that number on race day, we would have to have you be like, five, six pounds below that, because when we carb load you, you’re going to see some water retention. And so I think the
Jeff Sankoff 33:03
three of us will agree that it is wholly inappropriate. So inappropriate athlete. So then, if you’re an athlete listening to this, and you have a coach who’s stipulating a race weight, you need to reevaluate that. You need to have a conversation with your coach.
Alex Larson 33:21
And this is across. This is from high school right up through age grouping. No coach. So yeah, no coach should be telling giving you a number that is not professional. Yeah. I want to
Jeff Sankoff 33:32
also say in my experience with my coach, when we talked about weight, the conversation was couched as you Jeff, are a 57 year old man. I’m pretty comfortable having this conversation with you, because I know you’re not going to have an eating disorder. Kind of response to my having this conversation with you, and the conversation was, I don’t need you to lose weight. The conversation was, have you ever considered changing the way you eat in order to change your body composition, which I think is a reasonable way for a coach to approach that conversation with an athlete. But my my interest in the in this specific in asking you this, Alex is, what do we as coaches do when an athlete comes to us? Yeah,
Juliet Hochman 34:14
I would say, Do you are you? Do you want to lose some weight? What are your thoughts on it, I would put it back on them and see where they’re at, because if it’s on their mind, if it’s something they’re interested in, then I would refer them to a sports dietitian to work on that. There are some sports dietitians that aren’t even really touching body composition, and I think that’s unfortunate, because I feel like it’s our job to help these athletes navigate this while they’re training, to do it in the healthiest way possible.
Alex Larson 34:51
No, I appreciate that response, because I certainly, I’ve seen sports dieticians certainly who don’t touch the body composition piece and are. Are, are focused completely on fueling performance, and that’s great. But as Jeff says, there are some athletes out there who could probably perform better if they shed a little bit of weight. And also, I don’t work with athletes that have eating disorders, like if they have an active eating disorder, I refer them out to a sports dietitian that is experienced in that area. I don’t. Also I don’t work with youth athletes. So now part of my application, I ask, Are you 18 years or older? Because if they check No, then I’m like, you’re getting sent off to a dietitian that does work with youth. I have a very specific type of athlete that we like to work with, and if you’re not the right fit for me, then it’s just like this gut feeling. It doesn’t feel like something that we can be like the best fit for so I will usually refer out to other dietitians. But if you’re an adult, you’re looking to improve performance, you’re struggling with things, maybe energy levels, or maybe you’re training more than ever, and you’re feeling like you’re eating well, but you’re seeing the scale go up. That’s the time to come and have us help you navigate that and create an eating pattern that’s very sustainable for you, that’s personalized to your unique lifestyle, so that you can feel your best train Well, stay healthy and feel strong and lean. I think I’ve had
Juliet Hochman 36:20
a lot of I’ve had so many different experiences with this. As a coach, I have athletes come to me and part of their triathlon journey, or their endurance journey, is about losing the weight. Like, that’s why they got into it. Yeah, that’s where they got into it. They started to run, or then now they’re riding on biking and swimming and and I respect that. I mean, good for them, like they’re really trying to do something about this and make themselves healthier adults. And then I also have had athletes on absolutely the other end of the spectrum, where I’ve been the one to identify through just watching and listening and all that disordered eating. And had to have that conversation with them about we need to talk about this, right? We need to really, yeah, I’m not a I can’t help you with this, but you need to go and talk to somebody about this, right? And then the third bucket is people who come to me who have been working through disordered eating for a long time, for years, and just managing that in an open conversation with them in terms of training and fueling, etc. And I do feel like sometimes I’m, oh, I could use a little help here. Yes, I can. And I think the other piece, which I’m so happy you referred to, is as coaches, we can’t see what they’re eating morning, noon, at night, right? And so we can give general advice or general thoughts, but to have someone who like like you, or people similar to you who are really helping them track everything and creating healthy habits as much more than we can do. And so while it is an added expense, and some athletes can’t always manage that all the way through their triathlon journey, I do feel, and I know that Jeff feels the same way, it’s a great learning experience as an athlete, to retain a dietitian for a block of time to learn how to do this to because a lot of times, I think even very smart, educated, bright adults are like, Oh, if it’s different to fuel yourself as an athlete than it is just like everyday person like you do have heightened needs. You do have to navigate timing of things to really optimize for performance, prevent GI issues. There’s lots of like, different things that we have to navigate. And for us, I think of us as an investment, a short term investment with like, long term gains, right? Like you’re in this program for 468, months, somewhere in there. But our goal is always to get you to the point where you can do this on your own beyond our program. It’s not a like lifelong thing that you’re in, like working with us if you’re still with us in two years, like we suck at our job. Honestly, we don’t want to work with you for that long like we love you guys, but our goal is to provide you with the skills and tools and clarity and how to fuel for your lifestyle so you can have that with you for however long you want to do triathlon.
Jeff Sankoff 39:13
Yeah, that’s awesome. When you think about what people spend on tech and on gears, this is like an investment in yourself and some one
Alex Larson 39:21
instead of buying a new bike, let’s first get your nutrition underway so then you can really just be an absolute beast on that beast. That’s right, yeah. Well,
Jeff Sankoff 39:29
I want to thank you both for a very interesting conversation on a fraught topic, and I want to take a moment to thank Justin again for submitting the question. And if you have a question that you’d like for us to answer on the podcast. I hope that you’ll send it in. You can reach me by email at Tri underscore, D, O, c@icloud.com, or you could submit your question as many have as I believe. Justin submitted this one on the tridoc podcast private Facebook group, which you can find on that platform by searching for tridoc podcast answers the three easy questions if you’re not all. Already a member will grant you admittance, and you can join the conversation there. Submit your questions. If you have any comments about this particular segment, I hope that you will submit your comments there so that Alex Juliet and I can answer them and see them and open up a conversation there about your thoughts on these diets.
Alex Larson 40:19
Alex, are you in the Facebook group. I was like, No, I’m not. So now I am.
Jeff Sankoff 40:24
Thank you both for being here and Juliet, I will see you again in a couple weeks for the next medical mailbag, Alex, I will have the link to Alex Larson nutrition as well as to the trailer to her podcast in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here again, Alex, it’s always a pleasure. Thank
Juliet Hochman 40:38
you. Thank you.
Jeff Sankoff 40:47
My guest on the podcast today is Maya Watson. Maya is an aspiring professional triathlete who lives in Victoria, British Columbia. She has burst onto the scene of the 70.3 circuit with overall wins at Victoria and Oregon this year, and she’s looking to make her professional debut at a race in the near future, although she first needs to deal with some injury issues. Currently, she is working for Vin fast, the one of the major sponsors of Iron Man, and she does so as an executive assistant to the corporate national sales team. And in her former life, she ran cross country and track at McGill University, my very own alma mater that is found in Montreal, Quebec. But for now, she is joining me from Victoria. Maya, welcome to the tridoc podcast.
maya watson 41:30
Hi. Thank you for having me. It’s
Jeff Sankoff 41:34
a pleasure. Maya, you really have come on to the triathlon scene with aplomb. I got a chance to race against you last October, where I want all the listeners to know I beat her by two seconds, and it’ll never happen again, but I’m going to forever keep that on my Palmares that I beat maya by two seconds. It’s a very exciting moment for me. But Maya, you weren’t always a triathlete. This is a very kind of recent thing for you. How did you get to multi sport?
maya watson 42:10
I dabbled at it when I was about five, six years old, because I came from a family of multi sport. I remember doing the kids triathlons just here in Victoria, BC. And growing up, I tried all the different sports, but I kept doing Swim Club on the side, and I always loved to run. I was super competitive in all the local cross country meets by just starting it from a young age. I think I always had the skills in my back pocket. But I actually stopped triathlon probably when I was 13, because I didn’t want to do swim club anymore, and just continued to play soccer through high school and did a little bit of track and field, and then I went to McGill University, and I decided to walk on to the cross country team, or try to walk on, I should say, and just made the cut, honestly, but I’m really grateful they did. And I had an amazing four years running for the McGill track and cross country team and just focusing on single sport, but where the triathlon comes into play is it’s most young run runners experience they get injuries. So I would text my dad, who’s a coach, and say, What do I do now? And he would write me a spin bike program, or he would tell me to go swim in the pool for one kilometer, and essentially the and then every summer, I would go home from University, and he would put me on a triathlon program to get me all healthy, to go to school again in the fall, and race cross country, where I would just get it injured again.
Jeff Sankoff 43:34
It’s really it’s a common theme. I had a chance to talk to Tamara Jewett, who ran track at University of Toronto, and was very successful, except that she continuously was getting injured. Now for her, a big part of her injuries were related to just nutrition. And this seems to be a problem for a lot of female athletes. They are pressured, either by coaches or just internal forces, to think that they need to lose weight to be faster, that they don’t eat well and it leads to a lot of injuries. Did you have that as part of the issue? You think that led to injury? Or was it just running as injury prone?
maya watson 44:13
Yeah, I my very first year of school, I had a big jump in volume from high school, and that in conjunction with honestly being a first year student and not knowing how to manage my schedule, I was probably going out to party a little too much and not sleeping enough. But in conjunction we also didn’t really have any awareness of nutrition when I came into university and there was no one telling me what red s is in sports, so I actually ended up in reds in my second year of university, pretty much just from lack of awareness of how to properly fuel my body. And so that was a pretty tough awakening. I remember burning out near the end of my the end of the year of my second track season. Sorry, but a word jumble there, and just not really knowing what was going on by. At least, in all honesty, I did struggle with some body image issues, if I gained some weight from the res food, and so I think there was a bit of a storm going on. I probably started to think a little bit more about what I was eating, and then there was a bit of a lack of education on what it is. So I probably did fall into the trap of less is more, the less is more mindset, whether that related to my injuries, I don’t know, probably a bit. I was in reds for only a short period of time before I had a bit of a awakening call one of the UVic coaches. So I came home during COVID to run, and I ran. I trained with the UVic team. That’s University of Victoria, and the head coach there, she interviewed me essentially. And was like, What is your BMI? Like, very straightforward. And she was like, You were underweight. I think you’re in reds. Like, here’s nutritionists. Let’s get you healthy. And from there on, I just went up maybe a bit of a different story to Tamara Jewett. I maybe just made a lot of I just was dumb about it all. But also, there was a lack of education around it. Yeah,
Jeff Sankoff 46:00
that’s really interesting. So the move to UVic, so the coach at McGill, man or woman? Man, yeah. And I think it’s just all too common that male coaches are not attuned enough to helping their female athletes avoid this problem. I think there’s so much and that’s not necessarily to disparage your coach, but rather just to say that male coaches, especially working with female athletes, are under so much scrutiny and under so much there’s so many lines that can be so easily crossed and get them into trouble. And so I think that male coaches have become really scared of getting too invested with their female athletes and asking questions that could be construed as the wrong way, and then you have a female coach who isn’t burdened by any of that and feels immediately, hey, I’m just going to get cut right through the cut to the chase as a coach myself, but as a physician, I don’t feel encumbered, because in my regular job, I have to ask these questions all the time, And so it’s easier. I’m more comfortable asking those kinds of questions of my female athletes. I don’t work with any young female athletes like yourself, but if I did, I would always make menstrual history a huge component of training with them and making sure that we’re getting adequate nutrition to keep a good menstrual calendar and things like that. So I think it’s really interesting that you point out that moving temporarily from a male coach to a female coach, she immediately saw the problem, immediately helped you fix it, and may and raised awareness. What would be sorry
maya watson 47:34
I was gonna say I was also willing. I was ready. I wanted to be healthy. I just didn’t really know what was going on? Oh, yeah,
Jeff Sankoff 47:41
yeah. No, that’s huge, right? Between people, yeah, yeah. And Tamara has been very honest about the fact that she had eating disorder, and she, I think she started with disordered eating, and it went into a full fledged eating disorder. And if you have an eating disorder, then the kind of approach your coach employed is not going to work. But with you, obviously you were the right person for it to work with. So what would be your advice to other women who are in endurance sport, young women and you, what would you say to someone like that that you want to be sure they don’t run into these problems?
maya watson 48:19
Oh, that’s a good question. What I would have told probably my younger self, is less is not more. More is probably just enough. Honestly, there’s so many risks to under fueling, but essentially no risks to over fueling as an athlete, and I also think just to be very mindful, not like intuitive eating, but while also being mindful of what your body actually needs. And that’s the approach I take, like, I listen to my cravings and what, yeah, like, what I feel like. But I’m also, if I just finished a four hour bike session and I’m not hungry, I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna make myself eat something that’s easy to eat. So it’s a balanced approach. And I think when you find that balanced approach you find a lot of peace with fueling.
Jeff Sankoff 49:04
I like that. I like that sort of thought process. What would you advise coaches, especially male coaches, who are working with female athletes? How? What sort of kernel of advice would you give them to either look out for or to help them feel more comfortable approaching their women athletes and be able to guide them.
maya watson 49:22
I think being able to have conversations with the female athletes, but in a safe space, you never want to expose a single female athlete in front of other female athletes. So I think if you have that conversation in a safe space, the woman might be able to be a little bit more vulnerable through what with what they’re feeling or experiencing. Yeah, it’s so fraught. That’s how I would have reacted,
Jeff Sankoff 49:44
right? Yeah, it’s so fraught, right? It’s such a fraught conversation, because there are so many things to think about and how to approach it in a way that everybody’s going to take it the right way and have it be a positive sort of conversation. It’s an ongoing challenge, I’m sure, for women in. Sport and for coaches all around. Yeah,
maya watson 50:03
there’s a lot more awareness now coming out. We’re not where we need to be. But what I’ve seen a lot of shift in just the last five years. You
Jeff Sankoff 50:11
mentioned a little bit earlier, your dad. I think I want to spend a little bit of time just getting a sense of his impact on your early sporting success and your current success. So for anybody who hasn’t made the connection, Maya’s dad is Lance Watson. Lance Watson is, of course, the Olympic coach of Matt sharp and Simon Whitfield, the gold medalist, the twice medalist, actually from the Canadian Olympic team. And he is also the owner and my boss at life Sport Coaching. But how amazing is that to grow up with such an accomplished individual as your dad? How did he inform your progress through endurance sport, and how is he informing your progress through triathlon?
maya watson 50:58
So growing up, my dad just wanted me to try all the different sports, and I really respect that he never told me from a young age that I need to be a triathlete. Of course, he hinted that I would be a really good triathlete. But so I tried it. I dabbled in it, like I said earlier, but my dad didn’t really start playing a key part in my triathlete development until university, like I mentioned, when the I feel like the tables turned a little bit. Instead of him putting me in sport, I was saying, Hey, Dad, can you please help me out with my training plan, with my injuries. I just want to get healthy, and then eventually, when I want to do my first sprint triathlon in I think it was like, 2021 or something. I was like, Can you please write my training plan for that? And he helped me. He’ll get me there. And it was, it was really special. And he even came out and watched it was in Montreal. It was the sprint World Champs. I think that was 2021 but yeah, he Yeah, he came out and he supported me, and it was just amazing. And that’s when I really made the switch into multi sport, and that’s when he really started actually being my coach. And a lot of people always ask me, it’s probably the most commonly received question is, What’s it like having your dad as your coach? And on my case, it’s awesome. He knows me like better than anyone else, to be honest, and he’s seen been around me since I was literally born. You see me at my lows, you see me at my highs and but why I think it really works is he really takes a holistic approach to coaching, or at least to my coaching. And the way he schedules my year is very much so I can have balance in my year. He encourages me to go on vacations, so you’re just me to have some fun. But he also is my biggest supporter when it comes to training and racing, and I always get really excited to text him after I nail a training session, because he’s the one who wrote it right. Yeah, it’s awesome. That’s
Jeff Sankoff 52:50
cool. I had a conversation recently with Mark Cullen, who you said you had met previously, and one of the things I asked him was what it was like coaching his wife and whether or not that engenders any kind of conflict around the dinner table. And are there ever times when Coach Lance needs to call athlete Maya and say, Hey, Maya, you slacked off in that workout. I need you to pick it up a little bit. And how does athlete Maya respond to coach Lance in those situations? Coach science, who happens to be dad? Coach
maya watson 53:22
Dad, that’s what I call him. I’ll say, Hey, Coach dad. I actually cannot remember the last time we had conflict around training, maybe when I was 14 years old and didn’t want to go to swim club. Yeah, it’s really changed. If anything, he is reeling me in a little bit. I want to do more. And he’s no, don’t do that extra kilometer. Don’t do that. You don’t need another swim this week. That’s the extent of it. Yeah,
Jeff Sankoff 53:46
that’s great. That’s the kind of coaching relationship I think we should all aspire to. I don’t feel really lucky at this point in your career. What do you consider your strengths and what do you consider your
maya watson 53:58
weaknesses? My strengths as of recently, has been biking. I’ve put it I’ve done a lot of work in the bike last year, in part because of issues with injuries and running, I’ve seen a really big jump in on my power output across races. I think when it comes to like, just sports positives and weaknesses, like, my swim needs a lot of work still to get to the professional level. I’m chipping away at it, and I’m able to jump in with local swim groups here. It’s been helping a ton. Also, a weakness is definitely, yeah, like, my body hasn’t adjusted to the volume training required to be a successful 70.3 athletes. So I’ve been dealing with a lot of probably like biomechanical issues and little injuries here and there, and I’m actually down with Eban syndrome right now, so it’s been pretty frustrating. But, yeah, I’m lucky to have good people in my corner to help me stay positive, like my dad and my friends. Yeah,
Jeff Sankoff 54:56
what have been some of the kind of big. Stepping stones that have helped you get to where you are. Everybody needs. Obviously, your dad’s been a huge one. Has there been anything else that’s given you the push that helped you find the success?
maya watson 55:12
Yeah, first of all, success in running that started up at McGill. I had a great coach named Luke Moran. He’s actually also a triathlon coach, but he wasn’t doing my triathlon coaching, and he was an awesome mentor of first years of school. Kyla Rowlandson, coach in Quebec, in Montreal, has been an amazing female coach supporter for me, I was sad to leave her when I left Montreal, and then recently, I was put onto the that triathlon life development team, and that has opened up a whole community of people for me that have been super supportive, and Paul and Eric have been great mentors. That’s great
Jeff Sankoff 55:47
and what are your aspirations for the future? I know that you’re champing at the bit to turn pro. What are your kind of hopes and dreams for the short and medium term?
maya watson 56:00
So short term hopes and dreams are to be able to just be healthy again and train. It’s been pretty tough right now not being able to get on my bike at all or anything. Medium Term, definitely to switch professional racing. I feel excited and I feel ready to do that now. I feel like I proved to myself and my Oregon performance that I’m ready to compete against those women. So that’s a really exciting prospect for me to train towards.
Jeff Sankoff 56:24
And do you think 70.3 is your sweet spot? Is there any aspirations to race shorter or even longer?
maya watson 56:31
I love shorter races. I actually think I’m pretty talented at the standard distance. Probably draft illegal, not draft legal. Can’t swim well enough for that, but there’s just less opportunities for that. But I think it’d be fun to do St Anthony’s is it next year? Also, I my body recovers better from that distance, at least at this age.
Jeff Sankoff 56:50
So no, no aspirations for the Olympics. No,
maya watson 56:54
I gotta be realistic here.
Jeff Sankoff 56:58
Okay? And then longer Would you ever consider an Ironman
maya watson 57:02
like it’s a it’s a seed that’s been planted in my brain. And I’m super inspired by those athletes who can do an Ironman. And I would absolutely love to do one one day my body needs to be able to handle even just 70.3 training at this point. So yeah, maybe ask me again in five years.
Jeff Sankoff 57:17
Yeah, yeah. Do you have any you mentioned Paula. But are there any other people in the pro ranks? Obviously, through your dad, you’ve probably got access to people. Is there anybody that you have been speaking to or reaching out to as someone to, I don’t know, plan your entry into the pro ranks. I’m just when I think about turning pro it’s obviously something that I have would never in a million years have been able to do, and it’s not something that’s in my future, but I just imagine it’s daunting going from a top age grouper to now it’s a whole new world. Have you reached out to anybody? Are you talking to anyone who’s trying to help you to navigate this?
maya watson 57:59
Yeah. I mean, I’ve spoken a bit to Brent McMahon, who my dad coached literally Brent’s entire career, and he’s been super reassuring and helpful. I’ve talked to Matt sharp a little bit too, just super positive guy. A few of the athletes on the TTL development team are lovely, but a few of them actually, one woman just started her first year pro this year, so I’ve been picking I picked her brain a little bit on it. Yeah, it’s daunting, but I’m excited, and I’m okay with getting my ass kicked. I think it’s all part of the process.
Jeff Sankoff 58:31
Do you see this as a a lot of people go pro knowing that they’re just gonna spend their career getting their ass kicked, but I don’t see that in you. I see you as somebody who aspires to be at the top. So what do you see this as you as at least a kind of short to moderate term, like career? Is this something you’re gonna invest in full time at some point? Or do you think this will just be, as long as it’s fun, I’m gonna keep doing it?
maya watson 58:59
I think I’m with both of those mindsets. I’m not going to do triathlon unless it’s fun, like that actually is probably my number one goal. I’m like, this needs to be fun, but I also am. Yeah, I’m a pretty competitive, driven person, and I want to see where I can take it. So I think the more success I have, which I hopefully will have, the more maybe life decisions I’ll make to support the triathlon lifestyle. Yeah, so I’m just seeing where it goes one step at a time right now.
Jeff Sankoff 59:27
And we’ve talked a lot about your dad, but I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the fact that your mom is also she was an elite runner. Am I right in saying she ran for Canada in international competitions?
maya watson 59:40
Yeah, she was the top runner in Canada for a decade, probably
Jeff Sankoff 59:43
only a decade, and somehow, I didn’t know this. So I don’t have her genetics. You’ve got, you’re coming from, some pretty good genetics. What’s up? And like, how has she informed your training? How has she informed your career? Oh my
maya watson 59:56
gosh, my mom is, like, the most chill, easy going woman ever. Which maybe is counterintuitive to what you hear about a lot of professional female runners. But from from a young age, she’s always just been ridiculously supportive of whatever I want to do. I was a musical theater kid all through high school, and she was like, This is amazing. Keep doing this. She’s been amazing pivoting back to triathlon. She’s amazing with the psychological help with my injury right now, just being able to talk to her, she is so supportive and just she can completely empathize, right? Because she’s been through it all herself, so she’s, yeah, she’s an amazing on the mental side. My dad probably does. He has more of the coaching, the training structure, but my mom is like my built in therapist. Honestly,
Jeff Sankoff 1:00:39
that’s great. That’s good to have that so accessible, I think most of us would be thrilled to have to be most of us pay for that kind of stuff, and you just got it right in the house. So that’s pretty nice. I’m
maya watson 1:00:50
so grateful for it, though, like I do not take it for granted. Yeah, I feel really lucky. So
Jeff Sankoff 1:00:55
if all goes according to plan, St Anthony’s would be on your calendar potentially. Do you have anything else planned, or are you just gonna tell you see how it goes?
maya watson 1:01:03
If I do get another race in this year, it’ll probably be at Indian Wells, if I’m healthy, like the plan right now is just to get healthy and then choose a race in my back my mind, like Indian. Well, that’s a few months away. Still have time, and it’s might be a good race to do my pro debut at as well. 2025, I have no idea yet, except for st Andy’s
Jeff Sankoff 1:01:24
awesome, but you got time. You’re all of 24 years old, so we can look forward to watching you for quite a while. Maya, I can’t thank you enough for being here. It’s been a lovely conversation. I am very excited to see you in person. I don’t know when that will be, but hopefully sooner rather than later. Maya Watson is an aspiring professional triathlete. She has age group overall, women’s age group, wins at Victoria and Oregon this year, and we are all looking forward to seeing her back on course. Maya, thanks again for being here on the tri dog podcast.
maya watson 1:01:53
Thanks for having me. It was so much fun. I wanna
Stephanie Van Bever 1:02:04
My name is Stephanie van Bever, and I am a proud Patreon supporter of the tridoc podcast. The tridoc podcast is produced and edited by Jeff sankoff, along with his amazing interns, Cosette Rhodes and Nina Takeshima. You can find the show notes for everything discussed on the show today, as well as archives of previous episodes at WWW dot try doc podcast.com. Do you have questions about any of the issues discussed on this episode? Or do you have a question for consideration to be answered on a future episode? Send Jeff an email at try_dot@icloud.com if you’re interested in coaching services, you really should please visit tri.coaching.com or lifesport coaching.com where you can find a lot of information about Jeff and the services that he provides. You can also follow Jeff on the tridoc podcast, Facebook page, tridoc coaching on Instagram and the tridoc coaching YouTube channel, and don’t forget to join the tridoc podcast, private Facebook group, search for it and request to join today if you enjoy this podcast. And I hope you do. I hope you will consider leaving a rating and a review as well as subscribe to the show wherever you download it. And of course, there is always the option in becoming a supporter of the podcast@patreon.com forward slash tri doc podcast, the music heard at the beginning and the end of the show is radio by empty hours, and it’s used with permission. This song and many others like it, can be found@www.reverbnation.com where I hope that you will visit and give small independent bands a chance. The tridoc podcast will be back again soon with another medical question and answer and another interview with someone in the world of multi sport. Until then, train hard, train healthy.
Trevor Connor 1:03:58
That was another episode of fast talk and the tri doc podcast. The thoughts and opinions expressed in fast talk are those of the individual subscribe to fast talk wherever prefer to find your favorite podcast, be sure to leave us a rating and a review. As always, we’d love your feedback. Tweet us at at fast talk labs, join the conversation at forums dot fast talk labs.com or learn from our experts at fast talklabs.com for Jeff sankoff, Juliet Hochman and Alex Larsen, I’m Trevor Connor. Thanks for listening. You.
