COEUR d'ALENE - With knowing glances and quiet chuckles, Andy Potts, Heather Wurtele and Trevor Wurtele described trials and tribulations they endured on their journeys to Ironman fame.

"I wish I knew that in hot conditions, my feet swell," said Potts, of Colorado Springs. "Your feet do swell in an Ironman, and I actually started (bike) riding in a half a size shoe bigger. Not a big deal but it's actually helped me a lot."

Potts and his Ironman colleagues spoke Thursday evening during the first "Ironman Pro Meet and Greet" in the Kroc Center. More than 40 people, many of them budding triathletes or relatives of Ironman competitors, heard stories of success and failure as Potts and the Werteles, of Kelowna, British Columbia, discussed the guts and glory of their triathlon triumphs.

"This is my biggest tip - listen to your body," Potts said. "Your body will be communicating with you all day long. Your No. 1 job as an athlete is to listen. I communicate fairly well with my body. When my body says, 'You're hungry,' I eat. My body says, 'You need Gatorade,' you drink Gatorade ... listen to the cravings ... listen, obey, and it will propel you forward."

Heather said taking salt pills is really important, especially in hot weather, as well as not overexerting oneself too early in the race.

"Pacing is a pretty key thing to know," Heather said. "Just back it off, and OK, yeah, dude went flying past you, it really doesn't matter because you're going to pace yourself properly and you're going to be picking people off and passing them all day."

She discussed the frustrations of blowing a bike tire in one of the races and how she had to keep herself calm as she fixed her flat, even though she knew she was losing precious minutes.

"Don't expect it to be easy," she said. "Get through those times when you feel bad and want to stop or you want to walk on the run. That's part of the whole deal ... getting through those moments is something that you signed up for in the first place."

"Adapt and overcome," Potts added.

Potts is an Olympic athlete with an abundance of race experience, including winning the 2014 Ironman Coeur d'Alene. Heather was the first woman across the Coeur d'Alene finish line last year and overall has won six Ironman titles and set three course records. Trevor won his first Ironman in New Orleans in 2012 and consistently finishes in top slots. He said when he competes, he has to remember to clear his mind and make sure his body and brain are still in sync.

"I got to just take a step back from the race for a minute and just make sure that things are going well physically," he said.

Andrew Evanson of Hayden attended the meet and greet because he will be competing in his third Ironman Coeur d'Alene on Sunday and wanted to hear some tips from the pros.

"I just wanted to get a little bit of their perspective of how to overcome these obstacles of the heat, what they do to prepare for the race and just to get a little bit of insight from that perspective of how they're dealing with it as well as the age-groupers are," he said. "The one thing that I heard Heather say that I've been kind of telling myself is, 'Make a plan and stick to it.'"