Athletes in Motion Podcast - EP 020 Ian Murray

Ian Murray: 0:10

Welcome to the athletes in motion podcast from race to recovery. With your hosts, Tom regal and Kenny Bailey

Tom Regal: 0:19

Hey, Kenny, how are you today?

Kenny Bailey<br>: 0:31

I'm doing well. Tom, how are you?

Tom Regal: 0:32

I'm doing fantastic. We have a great guest today as we always have great guests for some reason. We're doing really well with that. But this this, this shows got in Murray, Coach Ian Murray, who is got quite a list on his resume. So USA T level three coach. USA Cycling level two, itu level two. And my goodness. All

Ian Murray: 0:55

right, that's those are those are there's a lot of numbers. Now.

Tom Regal: 0:57

There's a lot on here. Yeah, it's all going. Badass is basically yeah, kind of there's a huge list on here. i i What I didn't see on your resume, though, was probably one of the most prolific things which I think you need to update was you were the very first coach that I hired. Way back way back when to coach me and got me started down this path and kind of led me towards the coaching thing, which you probably didn't know that. But anyway, so

Ian Murray: 1:25

I'm calling my web editor now. The CV

Tom Regal: 1:28

make sure you have that on there. Yeah. And also a podcast host Tom. And produced one of the best is and Is it still available to triathlon training series? Can we still get copies of that there was a six DVD set. It was everything a beginner wanted to know about triathlon, it was probably one of the best things out there.

Ian Murray: 1:48

I still have two cases. So if there are left in the world who own a DVD player out for free, honestly.

Tom Regal: 1:58

We need to get the streaming on it. So so that's the rough, the rough background on on em, but yeah, and tell us a little bit about yourself. You grew up in Aspen, you were a skier. You said that's too cold. I want to race year round. What was it that that that made you jump sports?

Ian Murray: 2:16

Yeah, I was born in Detroit. But my folks got divorced when I was really young three and my mom had visited Aspen. She was a she was a huge she is still a huge spirits and there was no way there was no way southeastern Michigan was going to keep her. She went to Aspen and then went on to do amazing things. She led trucks to Nepal and and wow, wow, she was a an equestrian. And I mean, she's just done some amazing stuff. But she she dragged me. At age three, you don't know what you're getting into. But in hindsight, of course, growing up in Aspen, Colorado was quite an experience and and I'm very grateful to have done that. But at age 21 I burnout so spectacularly. I had lived in a ski town for all those years. I had coached skiing, taught skiing from age 15 on I had won a couple of World Championships in something called demonstration skiing, which is, you know, kind of like a less athletic synchronized swimming, let's say. It's a judged event. And it took me a lot of places I skied in Austria. I skied in Japan, I skied on the, on the glacier at Mount Hood in the summer. And it was it was a lot. And by the time I was in my early 20s, I was I was done in a very big way. And a buddy of mine who was on my ski team lived here in Los Angeles and said, Look, you're clearly finished in this sport. Why don't you come out to LA to help my family run this, this this gym, this Athletic Center there and I think you'd really like it. And I thought there's no way I'm going to like LA, I'll despise it, I won't survive, but I had nothing else to really go on. So I came out here and for about four years, I was pretty rudderless. I was still an athlete, but I didn't have purpose. And I found triathlon and, and started racing for myself personally and was really enjoying the challenge and, and the balance and just the whole thing of it. Just the ability to drag your own flesh across all the surfaces on the planet at speed was something that interested me. Yeah. And

Kenny Bailey<br>: 4:25

I've never heard it approach that way. Drag your flesh across.

Ian Murray: 4:28

I mean, we've got Yeah, it's kind of true. We've got land and sea and it doesn't matter if it's rugged and you're running or smooth in your writing or when you're swimming. It's just such a beautiful way to do it. And athletes were coming to me and saying hey, you know, I saw your results. How'd you do that? That looks really good. You seem to be coming along quickly, etc, etc. And I realized just from those, the sort of impromptu conversations that I really missed working with athletes, like I did when I was skiing. And so in 1990, maybe seven I mean it was for in terms of you At coaching education standards, it was very early. I went to maybe the second USAT coaching certification meeting it was it was at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs at the time, and I'm going to I'm going to use the term we hear because I, I was involved with coaching education for a decade with USA tea. And I really feel like it was like I was part of that. At the time, we had no idea what we're doing, we threw everything at the level one, we had no other levels. And it was a five day deal and it was a thing and so we really powered through that. And then a couple years later, I went to meet up a man that I really had liked and admired named Dan Enfield, who was teaching a bike fifth certification, and then I went back for my level two at USAT. And then I started working with some professionals. And that sort of guided me into my level three at USAT. And then I started leading coaching education at USAT and got more involved in bike fitting, and then worked with Terry Lachlan at total immersion for quite some time and, and all this time, by the way for many years, I had other jobs in I was managing an environmental building consulting office for a guy who was brilliant and then I managed a restaurant at night locally here in Topanga near Malibu, California near my home and and I just eventually the work kept coming as a triathlon coach. And finally, I just went full time and now here you and I are Kenny Tom, I'm so glad to be on the show. Thank you for having me. And I'm, I'm over two decades into coaching triathlon full time. Wow, I really enjoy the work. So I think about this sometime because, you know, when I would say, I don't know, 789 years into a skiing career, I was fried. And here I am 22 years, 23 years into a triathlon coaching career, and I can't see the horizon. I mean, I'm so stoked every day I get up. And I just, I'm thrilled with that. So it's, it's a great, it's a great career. And it's a weird career, but it's a great.

Tom Regal: 7:09

Yeah, and you found that balance with the sport and the love of actually teaching people. So

Ian Murray: 7:14

I do have to say this and I think, I think for sure, Tom, you can relate to this. I think life would be simpler for me. If my hobby were not triathlon, for instance, if I was a triathlon coach, that was my job, and my heart like I was into bowling, that would really, that would make things a lot easier because you can separate stuff. Yeah. And also, we have a lot of triathlon coaches who have zero coaching, education, specific education to coaching but they have, you know, they have five World Championship titles. And so it can be an interesting situation to be in, in this sport, in terms of liking to race as a, you know, I'm, I'm 53 now, so I still race 50 to 55 and grade 5054 and dig it, but I coach and those things sometimes get conflicted and Ingram intermingled in an odd way. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 8:06

53 two, so it'll be in your same age group. That's not what I wanted to hear. So I just aged,

Tom Regal: 8:11

I just aged up, I'm in the 55 to 59 Good now, so thank goodness. When Ian aged up, I was so depressed,

Kenny Bailey<br>: 8:19

there you go. Get out as quickly as possible. So during those Haiti days in La La really exploded that trysting it seems like, right, yeah, you were sort of in an epicenter and at the beginning of a fundamental movement that that really started ramping, right, you're talking, you know, kind of the giants of triathlon just rattle off a couple of names, right. So did you know at the time you were in that sort of like, or did you kind of look back later going, wow, we really, I mean, this is a place where we really started something. I mean, yeah,

Ian Murray: 8:48

I didn't I didn't feel that at the time that Kenny You're so right. I mean, it was unreal here in 99 2000, all the way up to Sydney, the market crash or to say 2008 It was just an outrageous time. You know, we had we had the first Olympics for triathlon going on in Sydney in 2000. And the race started here called the LA triathlon that had the largest pro person sport that year. Well, and the LA tri Club was in its infancy, maybe a year old. I'm a the head coach and one of the founders of that program, and you could not do anything wrong, like whatever you want to do in triathlon, your business just grew, and, and it looks so promising. Oh my God, it was fabulous. And of course 2008 When the market dipped. We felt that in triathlon, there's no doubt about it. But But those people who were still inspired by the sport were passionate about the sport hung on and when we came out the other side of it almost it was almost as if this sport especially here in LA, had a purity to it afterwards because it was only the people that were completely dedicated. That were still in it.

Tom Regal: 9:57

Yeah.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 9:59

Well, and in It's terrible to think that you had to go through that. But in some respects, right, you kind of weed out those. Those people that are they're there for the fun of it not necessarily being, like you said, being dedicated to the sport and if you can survive that and be dedicated through that, you know, those are the people you want to continue to talk to and hang on to. Yeah,

Ian Murray: 10:18

I tried to take a 5000 foot view of that whole thing. You know, we still live in the United States, there's an obesity epidemic. Here we deal with diabetes here, there, there are health issues attached to Terry and not eating well. And I think the sport of triathlon is something that can really lift people out of that hole. So I don't care if it's Johnny Come Lately, who are just bringing bringing folks in the sport for one off, all of that still helps our nation our community and I'm all for that.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 10:49

There's it's an interesting because you have a 20 year view of this kind of whole thing, right? You probably people that really wanted to do triathlon people like you that were former skiers, you probably had former athletes, you had a lot of people that were looking for that next sort of thrill that next drug, right? I mean, triathlon, by definition, you have Type A personality, people that can't seem to let go. Big shock, and all three of us are doing it. So there's a lot of that out here. Clearly over the 20 years, you know, it moved into and triathlon was very much you know, it needs to grow the sport beyond just hardcore athletes, right? As you see that progression. How have you seen over that those those couple of decades? There's a lot of questions wrapped in this one, right? You've got different types of people? Did you did you want to or need to, I guess, or both be able to change sort of how the coaching approach and how their approach you get to more people I know, for example, the swim portion of triathlons or, you know, Ironman struggles with that quite a bit, right? Because they know that's the least favorite. I guess, you know, I'm an adult onset swimmer. So, you know, it's difficult for me. How did that how did that view over time? Did you embrace it? I know, there's some hardcore people that hate the fact that, you know, let's keep it pure. Let's keep it light like it intended to be. People are saying we need to kind of move into into allowing sort of a broader range. Where do you fit in with that? Or how did you see that?

Ian Murray: 12:20

That's a good question. I can say this. And again, this is the problem of commingling the fact that this is my businesses, my career and this is what I like to do. So let me tell you for my career I love the fact that we have a lot to offer and I love that Ironman is out there still drawing people in there still people coming to our sport who don't really know what triathlon is, they know what Ironman is. Exactly. And and I'm, I'm fine with it. And I'm fine with it. You know, we're having this conversation, the three of us and what five days hence, is Oceanside Ironman, 70.3 Oceanside, and there are people walking around saying they're they're doing Ironman, which for the three of us who've been in the sport for a while that that signifies a distance these people aren't doing an Ironman. They're doing a half. Yeah, but it doesn't matter. Bring it bring that on. And I want to go a step further with Oceanside. Because now let's bring it around to your swim question. Oceanside has a map on their site, right I've I've many athletes go to this right? So I'm, I'm tuned into it. And it's right down the street essentially, has a map for their swim which starts, wait for it through the surf. Oh Ma. Okay, now they've drawn that map many times in the past hasn't changed. And then when you show up, and it's a little bumpier than a koi pond Whoa. Come on everybody over here to the boat ramp because now we're gonna swim in the marina where it's protected. So in terms of my business, I love that Ironman is still on it. I love that people are stoked about it. I love that there's opportunities for draft legal and as people come in, I love that we have this this youth a talent ID Junior development, you 20 Good, the elite. I love that pathway to the Olympics. I love everything about the Olympic pathway, the draft legal thing. I love the fact that guys our age can go and race draft league a couple times a year. I don't know if you took note of it, but we have in the national championship festival that they're calling it now we have a gravel national championship and gravel crowd.

Tom Regal: 14:18

Awesome. Awesome. Yes. So thrilled.

Ian Murray: 14:21

So there are so many avenues for people to stay satisfied and I want everybody to come in. I have athletes that have zero desire to do an Olympic. They just want to keep winning sprints they want to be the fastest, fastest triathlete they can be with five feet off the bike. I'm loving that. I have people of course because this is the traditional who come in and they're like hey, I'm a beginner Sprint's this year Olympic the next I don't want to do half and I'm going to do art Fine. Fine. I'm, I'm open to all that for business. In terms of myself, I want it weirder. For me. I wanna, I want it to be where I want. I just by the way, I I'm proud I'm going to be coughing through this, I'm gonna get a loss mentally because last Friday at 8am, I started a bike packing race called the stagecoach 400. And I didn't finish until Sunday at 6pm. Five hours and three days outstanding. I rode 380 Miles was the course this year with 27,000 feet of gain my bike, I mean, I'm so beaten up. And I'm still not seeing it. I wanted as weird as I can get it. I want in self supported, I want to have to navigate, I don't want anybody holding my hand or handing me cups. I just want to go, go go. So as we come into things in this multi sport world, this endurance world where swim run events where you're, there's no paper, and the whole course you're just carrying a little flat. I mean, I'm crazy for that, personally. And so what's nice is still when somebody comes to me and says, Hey, listen, I'm really attracted to Ironman, I want to I want to finish an Ironman, I want to get a tattoo, and then I'm done. I still support that 100% Because it's good for them. Yeah. So it's, it's nice to watch the curve. It's nice to watch. And I want to say something else too, because you mentioned being an adult onset swimmer, I love that that phrase. I didn't learn to swim until I was 26. And that was a big deal. For me, it was the thing that kept me from triathlon. And when I finally made the commitment and and really immersed for three years, in not only learning to swim myself, but learning several different philosophies on how to teach adults to swim freestyle. And by the way, in all honesty, I'm going to say this, I am a great adult, freestyle, efficient, fast swim instructor. But keep in mind how narrow that is. I don't I don't teach kids I don't teach breast fly. I don't teach blocks. I don't teach turns. I'm i It's so narrow. And I'm great at that incredibly narrow sliver of a definition. And I didn't I didn't learn to swim until late and I become a really good swimmer, I have a 55 minute Ironman, PR now. I've swam the Maui channel solo 10 miles. I've done some big things in the water now as an adult, which I didn't, would never have done because I didn't like to put my face in the water I'd water fear. And now to come that way. And also I only swim twice a week. And when I show up at a local race like the Malibu Triathlon, I'm second or third out of the water my age group all the time because swimming is such a technique minded sport. And if you can get the technique down your fitness doesn't have to be huge and you can still be right up there and triathlon right up front. Yeah, and that's the crazy part about that. It's like, you know, I

Kenny Bailey<br>: 17:41

didn't want to play golf because it was just getting too technical. So what I do I get to try to swim and which is the most idiotic thing.

Tom Regal: 17:46

It's even more technical. Like, oh, let's

Kenny Bailey<br>: 17:48

just say at the you know, at the at the level of like, I don't know breathing, right at least in golf, you can take inhale if you do it right. So well.

Ian Murray: 17:56

And I got I got I went through all the levels of certification and professional ski instructors of America and an Alpine parallel ski turn is a very complicated thing, very complicated, like a freestyle stroke. And, and PSA, you know, I'm 15 years old, going through my level one PSA. And basically I saw the logic of it, which is, hey, we're going to take this super technical thing and we're going to break it down into a gliding wedge like that's where we're going to start and then we're going to, then we're going to learn to guide that gliding wedge, and then we're going to guide that gliding wedge and bring the skis parallel to finish and then bring them into a wedge again and and guide that turn in the brain Pearl and then that goes to a stem Christi, and then eventually you get to a parallel turn. Well, in freestyle swimming, I saw the exact same thing and and Terry Laughlin is no longer with us. But that guy, loved people loved teaching, like he could have doesn't matter. He could have taught like, he could have taught how to type and he would have been an amazing typing teacher, he could have taught anything and he would have been I mean, he just loved people love teaching. And it just so happened that swim was his thing. And I get totally get why high performance swim people look upon total immersion with disdain, I totally get it. But I also get why do athletes who are incredibly fit, go to one weekend workshop of total immersion and come out the other side thinking Well, Jesus Christ is down here until Terry Lachlan is up. But Terry really found a way to break down the freestyle swim stroke into digestible pieces, and teach it to people in two days. And you know, that was an amazing thing for them. Yeah,

Kenny Bailey<br>: 19:37

yeah. It's not painful and all that because you're seeing your shoulders aren't blowing up.

Tom Regal: 19:41

People come through a two day workshop total immersion workshop, which I worked with Stu and and taught with him on some. I was totally blown away on people that could barely paddle. You know, just barely keeping from drowning type of thing and they're coming out here with a pretty decent freestyle stroke after two days. I was just kind of like that to

Ian Murray: 20:04

my business. It's so funny because triathlon coaching is incredibly complicated. I mean, if you think about it, it's, you've got, you've got your swim, you've got bike, you've got run, you've got strength, yep, you've got nutrition, you've got psychology, you've got, I mean, there were so many aspects to it. And there are single sport coaches, there are running coaches that are struggling to complete their package. And yet, we have two other sports. So it's very interesting for me now to just finally own the fact that there are some things that I'm very, very, very good at. And there's some things that I'm not that good at, frankly, I would rather have an athlete, go see somebody who is super good at that thing, then then have to deal with my mediocrity or whatever. So there's a pool, a 25 yard pool, that's a block and a half from my house, and I teach. I teach 456 lessons a week there and have for years. And I think what happens when you get into that kind of a rhythm. You figure out the fastest ways to get an adult to swim well. And so I'm not really interested in a swim coach who can teach somebody to swim freestyle. I mean, I think anybody can teach somebody different swim freestyle, what I want you to do is teach them to swim freestyle. And what? Three weeks, three hours? 30 minutes? Like how fast can you do it? Because that's really what somebody's interested in?

Kenny Bailey<br>: 21:28

Well, I think there's a confidence level to to your point, right? You can teach in a pool, which is great and you feel good. But guess what, you know, you get out in the real water there. Not a whole lot of mid to long distance pool. triathlons, right. So guess what, you have elements, you have waves, you have salt, you have you know, you have critters, you know, you go to the northeast, you're gonna get stung in the face. Just get ready for it. You know, fun, right?

Ian Murray: 21:50

There's a lot of anxiety that comes from Yeah, exactly. Yep.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 21:53

So as a as a coach. I think you brought up to the point, you get these people to come in and like this is I'm gonna do here's my three year plan, right? I'm going to do sprint, I'm gonna do an Olympic and then we do a half and then we go full, right? And then you have people that are coming in and going, Okay, I think a little bit more seasoned, if you will, or they just kind of know what they like, and they're okay with that. Describe to me sort of a little bit more detail about sort of those people that you see coming to you. And how's that changed over time? Probably the following question is, is there people you just like, look, I maybe this isn't working for us. Well,

Ian Murray: 22:28

okay, hold on. Let's talk about that. Because that's interesting. I I still keep a stable of a dozen athletes. That's my max. That's how many I coach. It's fine. I'm good with it. I just did a console last night with a new athlete. She's a surgeon. She's in her mid 30s. And she's she's like, She's totally type A she's got a real

Kenny Bailey<br>: 22:50

and discretionary income type A Yeah.

Ian Murray: 22:53

Yeah, she's single. She has no children. I mean, it's she's the perfect, perfect athlete. And she's cool for 70.3 worlds. And she has a real purpose in that mission. And she's, she's all in right she's like bike fitting important to me swim efficiencies. Importantly, like she's everything you'd want somebody to be. And when you get an athlete like that, it's it's just so easy to just relax into it and say, Okay, this, this athletes, philosophy, goals, desired direction, aligns perfectly with mine, philosophy, goals, desired direction, and it's going to be such a piece of cake to work with this person. It's no problem, okay. Also, the LA tri club, after 22 years of existence, offers two membership levels. Now, we just launched this on January 1 of this year, we have a performance membership now, where when an athlete joins that at $99 a month, I'm the coach, and I'm writing programs for all the people that come on board. And when I'm sorry, a lot of people, it sounds like I want it. I wanted to get to a lot of people. Okay, great. Right now, it's 23. I'd like it to get by mid July, to be at 14 and we may very well. But there's such disparity there. You know, we have we have two athletes that are coming off of injuries. One is an Achilles tear. And the other one is back surgery. And they are they're doing a one minute run by one minute walk five times through for 10 minutes, like that's their starting workout. And I've got other people that are borderline elite age group who are trying to qualify for big stuff. And to that end, you still have to work it in and to be honest, the only way this is possible is through software. Now that kind of helps automate some of the stuff so we're using yesterday's plan platform and it just it makes it all possible and it's it's great. And of course I'm a Luddite so it took me what nine months to learn how to use. It would take somebody else 90 days, but I mean, that's fine. And so the people who are coming in still run the gamut. There's still all different times and it's, it's just fine for me. Look, this is true for all service industry. If the three of us were into restaurants, okay, and we owned a restaurant, you know, Tom, your place might be a vegan, no animal products at all. Mine might be like Lowery's where we actually kill the cow right there at the table. And Kenny, you might be some high end French thing that does 16 courses, it doesn't matter what we do. Still, when somebody comes in and sits down, and they, they, you know, they're allergic to nuts, or they don't want any dairy or what we're still going to accommodate in triathlon business. We're coaching, we want to provide a service I'm going to accommodate Now, what's cool is we can we can to a point, the customer's always right, and we're going to deliver the service. And then what's great is you to a place where you're like, I know, I know, my borderline. Yep, I know, when I do a consultation. You know, for years, when I did a consultation, it was like, Please let this athlete work with me, please like, and now it's like, let me see if I want to work with this athlete. Yeah. Because I can tell early on if they're, if their values just don't align with mine. And I'm like, You know what, I think you're gonna be great in this sport, but I think there's a better match for you somewhere else, like you can tell that now. And I'm grateful to say no, sometimes, because in this business, and in a lot of businesses, 10% of your athletes will eat up 90% of your time. And if you can identify those people early on and and move them off, you'll just have a you'll provide better service for your other customers.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 26:38

Is there a number I mean, what's uh, I know, I know, it kind of varies by coach, but and I know, in my experience in hiring coaches, the you can pay a little bit and just sort of get the software program and they'll just make sure to double check software programming, pay a little more, and then you get a little bit more personal attention, you pay a lot more and then, you know, they tuck you in at night and make sure you're, you know, your alarm is set. Right. So for you guys, because both of you are coaches wears a comfortable number when it comes to that mix. And I guess the follow on question to that is, as someone like me looking for a coach, when should I get nervous that this person is just basically doing it to get, you know, massive amounts of people?

Ian Murray: 27:21

Yeah. Wow, what a great question. I think about this a lot. here's the here's the two ends of the spectrum. There are free free training programs on the internet right now that are what you know, 10 weeks to an Olympic or 16 weeks to an Ironman or whatever. Okay. So that's, that's the bottom? Actually no, no, that's not fair. The bottom is the athlete doesn't get any program. Yeah. And they're just waking up going. Well, stiff today, I think I'll go for a bike ride up flat tire, I guess I'll run, you know, no guidance. No, got it. That's the worst. So in terms of having a coach or program or some sort of involvement, the free training program is the worst because some of those are not written for course, like you may be doing a hilly, super hilly Half Ironman, and this is a flat training program. That's a problem. There's also no acknowledgement of where the athletes started. Like, is it has the athlete been been running for five years and very competent, but doesn't know how to swim. Like there's no acknowledgment of, of strengths and weaknesses in this thing. Okay, the other end of the spectrum, and we're going to extreme here is the squad environment. You know, you, you move, you move into that camp, like a campus. And there's a pool and a track right there. And there's a chef over here in the in Oh, sorry, yeah, you live in these rooms, and there's room in the strength room, and you wake up every morning and a coach is there going, Hey, let's all go to the pool together. I'm gonna be there watching you swim, let's all go to the tracks. I'm gonna get my checkbook. That's, that's the dreamiest. And that's so rare that's really left for probably six or eight squads around the world that are preparing for the Olympics. Right? Okay, so now you have everything in between. And I really think that the scale shifts with the personalization of the program. And the amount of contact, that's what it is. So if you have a program designed just for you, you're gonna pay more. And if you want to be able to call that coach say between 6am and 6pm, six days a week that you're gonna pay him. And so you try and find that balance point where there's some people, I mean, I charge 249, I probably should be charging 299. I just, I'm too lazy to up my

Kenny Bailey<br>: 29:34

rate. Change the website. Exactly. To do that,

Ian Murray: 29:38

I just haven't. And for some people, they're like, 249 I'm not paying that for a coach. I want to find something else. Well, at the electrical performance plan, it's $99. And some people will threaten Oh, yeah, I can do that. So then what we do is we have a zoom call with a whole team on Monday nights. Every Monday night everybody gets on and we just chat and catch up and Carla, we're at my assistant coach and I just start out with something like a theme like this. This Monday, we talked to about intervals and like the purpose of intervals and how they work and why they're important. And then I think the week prior to that I did something about psychology, just phrases and keywords and mantras that can keep you in a good headspace while you go. And so we just start with a little like seven minute topic. And then we open it up to questions. And it works great. Not everybody will talk in front of others about their issues, understandably. So then we have office hours through the week where somebody can call and schedule a 15 minute call and get on and say, Listen, you know, I've got this toe fungus, what do I do, and then you talk about the personal stuff, it's fine, and it just works out. And then the program, this is the thing about the software that I'm loving. I can write, you know, four or five weeks of a training program for everybody all at once. And then the customization begins after that. So the athletes can take stuff and say, Wait a minute, I swim on Wednesday, Friday, not Tuesday, Thursday. So let me drag and drop over here. And then I like to ride with my friends on this group that way, so I drop it there. And then I can get on a 10 minute call or 15 minute call with an athlete who says, Look, yeah, there's the Olympics there. But then I'm doing an Ironman, so I need to up my, my my ride mileage, and I can go in and tweak all for the long rides and bring that up. And so So you start with something on mass, and then you just tweak it enough to make it perfect. Now you've got a balance of personalization in the training program, connectivity with the coach to get your questions answered. And it works. And I gotta tell you, when you compare that to, and I'll name them right now I don't I'm not gonna be shy about this. These automated programs, there's something out of Texas called try dot, which uses artificial intelligence and an algorithm of past training programs off of digital devices. Yeah, it helps write programs. Okay, okay. Then there's peakers.ai, which, three or four years ago, a couple of German guys were in Santa Monica, they said they had 1.5 million in first round founding funding or whatever. And then they were going to build this thing. They sold it recently to a local coach. I don't know what's going on with that. But the theory was that this artificial intelligence was creating training programs for people. There's another one I just got from Scott Shinde span the former director of high performance at USAT, who now works for the US Olympic Committee. And he's got something called I forgotten the name now, but human go, human go.ai, another artificial intelligence driven training program. And by the way, this stuff isn't new. You guys might remember, in the late 90s, early 2000s. The Mark Allen coaching engine, right, there was a there was a, there was a software guy in San Diego, who basically figured out this way to automate training program design and then attach Mark Allen's name. It didn't last long, they had a business divorce. But the theory has always been out there. How can I write more programs for more athletes? And in my mind, there's nothing about that that benefits the athlete. It just benefits the coach. Yeah. Because what happens is your if you say, Hey, I'm coaching along here, 300 a month, and it's great if I could have 30 athletes now, that would be amazing. If I could have 90 athletes, that would be incredible. But how am I going to do that there's not enough time in the day. So let's figure out how to automate this whole thing. And the reality is that doesn't serve the athlete.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 33:17

Well, not always happen.

Tom Regal: 33:19

Sorry, as as we get and talk more and more about mental stress and anxiety and things that are going on. And we're actually more focused on on mental health. distress is stress, your body doesn't know, training, stress versus work stress versus home stress. And that's where I think, like being a coach, that's where I, I don't want to deal with an athlete that just wants a training plan. Because you can find 100 of those, right? I take on less athletes, because I'm going to overanalyze the damn thing, right? I'm going to be way too much involved in knowing what's going on. So we can make those adaptations as we go along. Because

Ian Murray: 33:58

you are so right, I think on a certain level, the body doesn't know the difference between a really hard and full run and an argument with a family member, I just don't think and so to have fewer athletes, but provide a better service for that smaller group. And that's something of quality that you really want to deliver on. I agree.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 34:14

Yeah. And I think like you said, you can automate like the interesting thing about sort of the fitness industry right is we thought if we strap our watch on somebody tell them how many times they make a step that they're going to automatically just become more fit. And at first it seemed like it was working right gotta get my steps in but you find out humans are social in nature. And that you're more beholding to Kathy who you are going to meet at nine o'clock for your walk on Saturday morning, then you are your watch. And I think from a coaching standpoint to your guy so at least from my perspective, I'm not you know what to look for a coach is empathetic and understands and wants to look helped me get through but also kind of understands that I'm kind of a crazy individual. My life is all over the place. But I'm, you're almost looking for a psychologist, not somebody that knows how to write eight miles versus 10 Miles like you said, I can do that on program when I'm looking for somebody that that can learn, adapt and understand me, and then figure out, okay, based off of what are the trigger things that that, that, that work for you. And I'll tell you specifically, like Tom and I were in a lake last year, and I was getting ready for Ironman California, and I was just weak and tired. And I'm like, we're heading back. And I'm like, I don't know, I don't know. And he looks at me goes, Hey, man, you're a fucking Iron Man. Oh, my God I am and then you know, and then you know, finish it, right? And it's just, that's all I needed, right? I didn't need the lighter the psychology of the stroke or the serum. Or maybe you need to, you know, try to plain better and, you know, you know, he always does a patient lead hand, if I hear patient lead hand. It's, it's just, you know, it's that it's just like, I just needed to be like, Hey, dude, just do this go. And then it was like, okay, and then I went, right. And then that's, those are the things you look forward to code, right? It's so funny.

Ian Murray: 35:53

How often or how many times have we as coaches had the conversation where you're you spend weeks and weeks and weeks down in the minutia with somebody? And they're like, Hey, man, this is really hard. I can't believe what we'll do. You want to do an Ironman? If Ironman were easy, nobody would respect it. So just harden up. Want to do this Get ready.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 36:11

You know, there's some people that respond to that. And I think the challenge for coaches is trying to figure out what are those triggers that you can say that yeah, versus those times you can

Ian Murray: 36:18

see now Kenny, you're talking about psychology, and I gotta tell you something, I think psychology is is one of the biggest factors and what we do in the sport. Because in any endurance sport, you have to you have to have the mindset to keep moving forward, even when you're hurting. Okay. And also, it's probably one of the least explored area. And and even if you did something on on just a surface level of figuring out is someone motivated intrinsically or extrinsically? Like, have just some basis just to figure out how to tap into their desire, I think that would be a great step

Kenny Bailey<br>: 36:50

forward. Yeah, I was gonna ask you, there's, there's sort of a few fewer to Peredo out sort of those things that and maybe those are hidden things that people just don't understand.

Ian Murray: 36:58

Hang on. Did you say Pareto? I

Kenny Bailey<br>: 37:00

did. I don't know what they used to be. I used to be a corporate guy. So you have to take the highest problem first and go down at least, okay? Create a Pareto. I know I'm sorry. I can, I can PowerPoint, the hell out of that, like, I will, I will make a PowerPoint to beat the band. So if you look at sort of like you got the three disciplines on actually doing the disciplines, those things that I don't think we talked about a whole lot are like nutrition is a big deal. Sports Psychology is a big deal. So when you start looking at sort of the priority of, of how you coach people, obviously, mechanics and getting these people to be efficient is probably one thing, but how do you rate sort of sports psychology and the nutrition part along with the physical part as well?

Ian Murray: 37:44

Yeah, for me, and I'm coming back to this, this athlete who I just talked to last night, because we're going to meet this weekend, and I'm going to see her swim, we're going to do an hour in the pool. I'm going to watch her swim, I'm going to watch her mechanics and I'm gonna put her through a marker set, I can tell you right now, it's going to be 10 ones on 140. So she's gonna swim 10 100 yard lengths on the time standard of a minute. 40. And while I'm sure she's gonna make it, she might blow it. Like at number seven, she might come in and 142 and a fine, that's still a good test. Because, you know, my job after that is to write a training program that suits where she is that has technical focus points that are appropriate. I'm not just going to grab it fun stuff, like, Hey, I saw a video on YouTube of an athlete swimming with a glass of milk on their forehead. I'm gonna have you do that? No, no, no, there's going to be actually wasn't. Yeah, that was cool. So then I'm developing a training program that has appropriate frequency, appropriate duration, appropriate intensity, and the technical fixes that she needs. Like, if you're doing that, I mean, my God, I think you're hitting on 99% of what needs so then I'm gonna watch her run in that she's gonna have a three hour visit here with me, I'm gonna watch her run for maybe 25 minutes locally here on a flat Street, and we're going to talk we're probably going to find three focus points, and I can guess they could be posture, they could be stride length, they could be the arm swing, it could be heel height, it could be knee drive, it could be whatever these things are, okay. And again, afterwards, I'll be able to say, All right, I'm going to want you to run X number of times a week, the so I've got frequency. I've got duration, I've got intensity, and now I've got these focus points from me being able to see her okay. Then we're going to come into, you know, my camera right now is in my garage. My garage has custom kitchen cabinetry. It is built out to be my office, my bike fit studio, my testing facility, and I'm going to put her on the trainer on her bike now. She's already been fit by Jim manton. Now he's a great bike fitter. He's very near to me here. He's a great bike fitter. He's a great guy. So I expect her fit to be almost perfect. But she says she has a she has some shoulder discomfort in the front of adult cool, we're going to try and solve that with probably aerobar tilt or wider pads or something I don't know yet, but I'm going to find it, I'm going to watch her pedal, I'm gonna see what her cadence is, like, I'm gonna see how she points her her ankle, etc. And then from that, and a console, I'm gonna know how often we're gonna bike ride with frequency, the duration of those rides the intensity, and now I'm gonna have some technical aspects for her. So once you have those, and those are the top priorities, you got to have all of those in swim bike run to start, otherwise, you can't write the program, then I'm just gonna let it roll out. And during the next two weeks, we're going to talk often and I'm going to start to get a sense from her. Is her nutrition working? Like I already know, because of her size and her body weight, I we had a consultation on the phone, and I asked her some very basic questions. age, height, body weight, how do you like the way you look in the mirror? And from that I'm starting to get a sense of her overall relationship with nutrition, not just how she eats, but how she feels about the way she eats. Interesting. Yeah. And then we can see over the next two weeks, we can start to look at, hey, we had that we had that three hour bike ride. You know, how did you feel? We had that little brick you were you ran off the bike? Did you have good energy? What did you drink? What did you eat, because now I'm slowly pulling out the details of how she's dealing with training nutrition, which is going to be the same as racing nutrition. And we can start talking about that. But I'm also going to ask about her sleep habits at that point in time. You know, we're really going to get into the details. And then those conversations will start to reveal what her psychology is about what she prioritizes what matters to her. And from that I can start to get a feel for it. And I'll drop in other little questions to to reveal more of that. I'm not as good as that as I need to be. I keep improving my education as a coach to improve those aspects. But I have some little tricks now that make it work.

Tom Regal: 41:56

Good. Yeah. I think finding the relationship with food. I think that is key for all athletes, especially female athletes, but all athletes for that has been kind of eye opening for me once we once I started looking at it as relationship, how you deal with food, what your relationship is, is that a reward? Is it a punishment is whatever it is. That's been that's been eye opening? And that's that's certainly something that we need. We all as coaches need to spend a lot more time diving into Eysenck No, no, no.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 42:29

So there's a it's funny to me because I go to two different two different websites I go to, if I if I just want to watch people get beat up all the time, I go to slow twitch, and just watch that army beat the crap out of people. And then there's one that it's for beginners. It's called pathetic triathletes. It's on Facebook.

Ian Murray: 42:49

I'm aware of both of those. Yeah, so you go to pathetic slow twitch, but we'll come back in a second.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 42:54

So it's fun watching pathetic, because that's generally people are just now getting into it. They're they're newbies, and they're excited about doing it. And they're scared and they everyone has the whole thing. And you know, I posted a couple of things. I'm pathetic about how pathetic Am I that we do this kind of stuff, we laugh at ourselves. That's the whole point. But one of the one of the almost universal things is, should I get a road bike? Should I get a tri bike? You know, what kind should I get is a carbon is everything else? And I try and I'm hoping you guys will smile? My universal answer is always be don't care what you get. Just go get it fit. Oh, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how nice is how pretty it is. If you don't like writing it, it doesn't matter. So there I teed up a softball for talking about

Ian Murray: 43:40

that is such a great answer. Listen, I teach bike fit school, both for Dan Enfields fist at school and for Canada's goober Academy. And bike fits a really important thing to me. And I'd like to just spend a couple of minutes on this. So the first is, is the absolute best way to go about this is to go to a bike fitter before you purchase your bike before get on their dynamic fifth bike. This is a device that allows you to keep pedaling, and the fitter can move the saddle up and down, back and forth, handlebars up and down back and forth while you're pedaling. And it allows the fit to be driven not just by the fitter, who's looking at your body angles and saying yeah, we're moving towards a better place. But then as it gets close, close to perfect. The fitter can basically become an optometrist and say what do you like better A or B. And the end result is this. This Yes, higher, lower, higher lower, and it's such a fabulous way to finalize and perfect the fit and when the athlete gets off. This is kind of a mind blower but when the athlete gets off the dynamic fit bike after the process. The bike fitter can prescribe not just the size bike hey, you need a 56 centimeter road bike button, you need a 56 centimeter road bike with a 100 millimeter stem, that's an A minus six degree pitch with 15 millimeters of spacer underneath it and a 70 degree bar curve. And that the athlete doesn't have to understand what that means. I mean, I'll explain to him because I want them to know, but they don't have to know, all you know is this, you're buying a bike that is going to fit you not just fit you, but becoming an extension of your body. Exactly. And that's what you want to have happen. And nowadays, by the way, more important than ever, because so many bikes have hydraulic disc brakes, and you do not want to change a stem length and have to pull out the hydraulic disc brake lines, cut them and reinsert it and re bleed, you don't want to have to do that. So many, so many bikes today have internal cable routing, you do not want to have to pull the spinal cord out of the stem and out of the frame of the bike that's all hidden in change the stem length and then reroute all that stuff. Because if we have an I'm going to use I'm gonna use a term of art here. If we have a mortal bike, okay, this is a bike with a regular old stem on it. And I've got drawers here, Tom's got tours of stems, we've got stems that are 60 millimeters long, or 140 millimeters long, we got stems the point straight down point straight up and everything in between. If we're on a mortal bike where none of the cables or housing or anything is going through step, we can change that 790 seconds if you're on a super bike, so here's the other term of our if you're on a superbike where all of those wires and hoses and everything are running internally through the stem and down into the bike, it's going to take you all day to change that step. And so if you're going out to buy a bike, let's just do the fit. First, the whole fit is done, you'll not only know exactly what bike to buy, you'll know exactly what front end you need on it. But also, you'll know all of your foot coordinates, you know, you see hide your setback, your Koco does your hand about like the fit is done and you don't even know the bike yet. That's a great place to be. So you're comfortable, right? And you're actually going to ride the thing, right? You're not going to get you're not going to you know it the primary, the primary thing about the bike is it has to be comfortable. And then what's amazing as we can stay comfortable and make power, we can stay comfortable, make power and get out of the wind a little bit more and be faster. So those things can happen together. You just have to go with so I love the fact that you go on to pathetic acts, the pathetic triathlete group on Facebook and say, Hey, listen, see a fitter first. And then it doesn't really matter. Because if they buy an aluminum 10 speed bike from, you know, 2003 for 700 bucks. If they're fit to it. They will be faster than somebody else who's on a $10,000 alter carbon disk thing.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 47:43

Slammed front end.

Ian Murray: 47:45

Oh yeah, that's so uncomfortable. Narrow, terrible, terrible, terrible.

Tom Regal: 47:49

How many times should we take pictures of at the Malibu try going up and down the coast where everyone was in these beautiful super bikes sitting up upright with their hands on the on the you know, the elbow parents, there's what Tom's

Ian Murray: 48:03

talking about is I went out on a Saturday Saturday's the Olympic distance race at Malibu and Sunday, classic. And I just went out and sat up on the hillside, you know, like 12k into this like course, and I filmed every athlete who went by who had arrow bars and was not enough. And this is a flat section of highway and I mean, I had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of athletes and the end of the video. You know, because some of these people are road bikes with clip ons and I almost say yeah, I get it well you're not an arrow like a road bike with clip ons. That's not as it's very hard to get that comfortable. Yeah, but some of these people are coming by with absolute high end you know$9,000 Plus try bikes with aero helmets and disc wheels and everything imaginable. Yeah. And they're they're up on the pursuit bars with their chest up in the wind and and it's because that bike is not comfortable in aero and if it's not comfortable in aero you know, denim I just will be on a Schwinn Varsity, you know, five speed from from 1972, you just might as well be on that bike.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 49:06

So your follow on question. Hi, following question from the crowd. Hi, Kenny, longtime listener, first time caller. You interesting thing also that occurs because I used to do a lot of road bike racing, right? And then I moved to triathlon. And so my hips move things got you know, I got a different, my body came different and I'm getting older. Right? So as a person that looks at people when you fit them first, like let's say you're fitting a relatively new person, they're 30 pounds overweight. They're just new to triathlons. They, they get on they get a comfortable fit at what point do you do you look at them and say, Okay, I think it's time for another fitting they lost 20 pounds or they're trying to get faster, or what are those trigger points that you would recommend? People should start? You know, I understand the first bit, right, that makes sense right? Over time. When do you start going when's a good time for kind of a tuneup fit, if you will?

Ian Murray: 49:59

Well, let me say this about what I think is a logical progression. And Tom, I want you to interrupt me anytime, if you disagree. I think if somebody comes into the sport early and they're like, Hey, I just wanna do a couple of Sprint's. I'm interested in triathlon, this should be fun. Great. And let's get a road biking. Let's get a cheap one. Yeah, let's get, let's get a decent road bike built with like, 105. And, you know, let's not spend too much money on it. Let's get it comfortable. And then go and race your season. Okay, next season rolls around, the person is totally stoked. And they say, look, I want to do all the reasons I did last year, I want to go faster. And then I want to do some other things that are longer. I can't spend a ton of money. What's the next step? Well, let's do something that I'm not a fan of. But I'm willing to do for you to bridge the gap, we're going to put a set of clip on aerobars on that road bike, and maybe we'll change the seat post to bring you forward just a hair, and we'll falsify the triathlon position on that road bike so that you can be faster and go longer and be more efficient. Okay, cool. Season two ends and the person's really fired up. And they're like, Look, I've signed up for the beginning next year, I'm going all in, what can we do. And now it's time to do a pre fit for triathlon bike. And early in this conversation, I said, Look, you should get a pre fit done. If you're going to buy a robot, you should, you should, you should, if you're going to buy a tri bike, you must get a prefect you must. Okay, so let's do pre fit for the tri bike, then let's get that tribe, I can finalize it, make it perfect, then let's take all of that weird garbage off the road bike. And now you have two bucks, you have a road bike and you have a tri bike. And that's the perfect place to be. And there and now your coach can go to work and say, Hey, listen, I want you to do the group ride on Thursday on the road bike, and stay in the pack and really go for it. And then I want you to recovery ride on Monday on the road bike, stay flat spin easy. And then Saturday is long ride is on the tri bike, and I want you to be an arrow and we're gonna gear too big. So we're gonna ride a tension set, you know, for 10 minutes we're gonna do for those with recovery. And so now your training program becomes more precise, because you have two different pieces of equipment, each one with their sort of appropriate moment. Yeah. And so that's a really logical way to go about that. And it's the best way to proceed through the whole thing.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 52:02

Okay. And then as they kind of change over time, if that person started off that I'm so sorry, you're right. Yeah, I forgot that part. That's fine.

Ian Murray: 52:09

If you get somebody who comes in who's unfettered by that, I'm going to just get right down to it if they have a beer belly. Yep, that is going to limit how low we can put the error bars. Exactly. Because at the top of the pedal circle, their thigh is going to be smashing into their stomach. Yep. So if somebody you know, goes out and races the season, or four or five months, and they're like, listen, I lost a ton of weight. And I'd like to check, recheck my fit, absolutely come back in. Let's figure that out. I think there's a lot of fitness aspects that can cause reason for a refit. But since we're on the subject, I want to put a couple of things out there. When you're fitting a triathlon bike in the triathlon position, the most important piece of equipment on the bike is the saddle. If the person doesn't have a saddle, where they can ride sort of the front half of it comfortably, then the Fit cannot ever come good. And so you need to go through and then the question from athletes, as I said, Well, what's a good saddle? Well, good saddle is the one that feels good under you. So we have to put a bunch of saddles onto you until you find I can't tell you what the good saddle is. Sure, a Damo makes a great saddle, John Cobb makes a great saddle speed and comfort makes a great sell. All these people make great saddles, but we have to find the one that feels good under you. Unless you're sitting in the proper spot on that saddle, the rest of the fit will not even happen. So that's a critical part. Another thing is there's been a lot of discussion in the past, say seven to 10 years about short cranks. And I'm not going to have that discussion around mountain gravel, cyclocross Road, etc. But if you're racing, triathlon or Time Trial, short cranks are mandatory. And it's the same reason for the Fitness Question, which is this if your handlebars are going lower, lower, lower, and you're still comfortable, because remember, that's the priority, you can still make power because yeah, that's incredible. And you're getting out of the wind, maybe going lower, cool. As you go lower, doesn't matter if you've got a flat six pack, washboard abs stomach, if you've got 175 millimeter cranks, you're going to get a hip impingement. And you're going to have flesh coming together from your stomach, your top of your thigh at the top of the pedal stroke. So if we can drop that down to 160 millimeter crank, so 165 Or if you're tiny 155, or whatever, what's going to happen is the foot is going to come around the top of the pedal circle without any of that flesh in the hip flexor area, getting sticky, coming together binding up, and you're just going to flow right over the top and start into the power phase. And you're going to be faster, you're going to you're going to create more power, you're going to have less less crappiness in your head, but it's going to be great.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 54:39

Hey, Tom, after this, we're going to have a chat because that's exactly what's happening right now. Right? That is exactly what's happening when I'm coming over. Right now. It's It's It's my wagon. Yep, this is the layman's term. I got a little hitching my wagon. You know

Ian Murray: 54:53

what's funny, is people always talk about you know, for the layman bike fit is all about seat height. And if the PA If they see their hips rocking, right? Oh, you're you I see your hip hip rocking your seat might be too hot. Well, in triathlon, if your cramps are too long, your hips probably going to rock because as the foot comes up to the top of the pedal circle, you know, most of the time, if you think about seat height, you're worried about the bottom of the pedal circle. Exactly. But at the top of the pedal circle, it's pushing the hip up, which is causing it to rock. So now you've got a hip rock. Yeah, but you've got it for a totally different reason a different at the exact antithesis point of the medicine.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 55:26

Yeah, yeah. So I have to ask, I always have to ask coaches these questions. And I always, you know, same thing with physical therapist too, is like when you're out on a casual run, or you're out on a casual bike ride, and you see someone that's just absolutely goofy, right there. It looks like I can't believe they're running. Like, you know, there are six things in your head that you can say, how do you control yourself? Not going, hey, you know, because I used to race with our my PT, I used to race on his bike team, and I hate it when he was behind me. Because I know exactly what he's doing. He's looking at my stroke. He's looking at my knees and everything else. He's like, Well, he's gonna come see me. Because you know, do you guys just you just have to swallow all of that? Or how do you? How do you do that?

Ian Murray: 56:09

How do you do that?

Tom Regal: 56:11

I kind of swallow all of it. Unless, unless they're talking about doing a an epic race or something. Like if I see somebody out on a ride, and their hips are rocking all over the place. And it's they're obviously not even in there. And they're saying, Yeah, I'm only, you know, five or six months away from Ironman X, whatever it is, then I might just, I might just say, you know, have you? Have you looked at your bike fit recently? Just kind of drop a hint that way. Yeah. But in swimming, I encourage my athletes to watch other swimmers. Yep. And not to say anything, but to actually watch because as they see it, then it helps them with their stroke as well. Similar thing on the bike is pointing out people's bike fits or just having people look at their angles and look at where they're at. There's so much that goes into it when we start talking about, you know, past injuries. Yeah, any of that stuff, there's so much to dial in and go back there. And we all know Paul Swift, like we got to start at your feet, right? We got to work our way up and kind of go through this. So there's so much to unpack on it. But yeah, I tend to just smile and right off.

Ian Murray: 57:25

I I very rarely discuss things with runners I see out in the world of I see them all, by the way. I think when you're trained in movement analysis, and coaches are, you cannot help but I rarely get into it with them. And what's very funny is here in on the west side of Los Angeles, in Santa Monica, we have a stretch of road called Santa Sandy that has a bike lane, and then a grassy median with some gorgeous coral trees. And everybody trains on that and has been for years. And in my little circle. And I'm sure in other circles too. We have names for folks, you know, back seat woman and head down gotta go guy and all the people that we see they're just every day. Yeah. And there's a lot of odd movements going on. Yeah, and but I, what I do, do frequently, and I've had tremendous success with it in terms of resolution in business is I ride with a red with a sylco cycling wallet, and inside of in my in my jersey pocket, and inside of that is some business cards. And what will often happen is I'll be riding on on pch it through Malibu, and I'll pass someone or they'll pass me that typically they'll pass me because I have a tendency to do a lot of long, easy mileage, and I'll just look at their fit. And if it's terrible, I'll ride up to them and say, Hey, listen, you know, you're obviously really strong. What are you training for? Blah, blah, blah, we'll talk about it. And I'll say, Look, I'm a bike fitter. That's what I do for a living. And I'll pull out a business card and slide it into their pocket, I'll say I'll just put my business card in your pocket. If you'd like to have me look at your fit, please give me a call. And let's discuss it and I would say one out of every five times which for that what is essentially the coldest of cold call. Exactly. Yeah, I'm pretty impressed with that true. Hey, listen, you put your business card in my pocket two weeks ago, and I'd like to come in for a fit. And I'm like, fabulous, let's do great. I think if you approach that now, I would never do it if people were in a group because of course, the way humans are gonna respond like they're gonna defend themselves. Yeah, it'll only happen if they're alone. And if it's egregious, if somebody's in a mediocre position, I probably won't get into it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I

Kenny Bailey<br>: 59:38

just but I just kind of can I can tell like when you guys are bike fitters or anybody that works on mechanic or movement, and when you see this, I just don't it's kind of in your head,

Tom Regal: 59:45

right? It's just training. It's like, the more you see, the more you can analyze, the better you'll be when you get the opportunity to work. So doubt, no doubt. So that's all that's all good. So

Kenny Bailey<br>: 59:58

Ian, what do you got coming up? What You gotta go next.

Ian Murray: 1:00:02

Let's see, in terms of coaching biz, we've got the race season starting out here you know, we have the LA Triathlon Series is the longest running Triathlon Series in the world, I think we're coming up on 43 years or something that's going on it's it is that a little lake in the east end of the county. And I'm going to, I'm going to drive the LA tri club van there on April 10, as the first one of those at four in the morning, you know, and park it in the prime spot instead of our 10 by 10. And I'm going to support all the LA truck lovers that are racing that race and I have a bunch of people in the performance program at La tri club that are going on to bigger races, and we're using that as sort of the, Let's scrape the rust off from the winner. Let's Let's tune up our transitions. Let's get our swing start going. It's an inexpensive race where we can sleep at home, go and race and come back before noon. It's just a great aspect for us here in SoCal, you know, we're lucky to have a lot of close races. And then we have the Herbalife 24, triathlon of Los Angeles that's happening on May 15. And that's going to be a big, big turnout for us again, this year, that race has been going strong for some time. So we're happy about that. For me, as an athlete, this bike packing thing has really taken hold, and I, I've been eyeing the tour divide for some time. This is a bike race that is self supported, it's mostly on dirt. It starts in Banff, Alberta, Canada, and it goes 2700 miles through the Rocky Mountains to the Mexican border. Wow. The record on this thing is like 14 days, so Wow. It's so funny. You know, when when we read times for age group, Ironman, you know, it's, it'll be like 13 colon 22. And, and you look at it, and it's okay, this person went 13 hours, 22 minutes, I get it. In this turn of it, I have to shift gears because that 13 doesn't relate to hours it relates today. It's sort of a wake up call. So I don't I don't know if at this time in my life, here's the thing. I am so fortunate in, we're in two aspects of my life that I don't think I can do the two are to buy. I'm married to a woman named Alexander Paul, who's just an absolute catch. We've been together for 25 years, and it feels like 25 days. I mean, it's so exciting and fun. And I don't like being away from her. That's, that's a beautiful thing to be able to say. And I'm so pleased I can say that. And then the other thing is my business is going well. And that's another great thing to say. And I don't know if I can walk away from everything and have put my phone on airplane mode for three weeks, I just don't know, I'm having a tough time imagining doing that. So to that end, I'm not sure the divide is going to happen like a one or two this year, but I cannot stop thinking about it and that's causing of

Kenny Bailey<br>: 1:02:48

concern. So there's, it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.

Ian Murray: 1:02:52

But I can tell you this, I have raised the Malibu Triathlon, I think 26 or seven years in a row, I haven't missed one. In fact, every year that they've doubled up like one year, they added a half Ironman on a Saturday to the class on Sunday, I did them both back to back and then when they added the Olympic, I did them both back to back. And I want to keep that streak alive. I even had my hip replaced 14 months ago, and I did Malibu without being able to run just because I wanted to keep the streak alive. So I, I think I ran like 300 meters and then walked 100 meters and kept that going for a while and, and so I very much love that race. It's in my backyard. I'm going to definitely do that event too. We have, you know, maybe 180 la triathlon numbers. Yeah, so I've got a season full of coach work. Gravel riding is a very important thing to me now. So I trained mostly on gravel. I feel like I've had I bought all the years of luck I can get of riding on the road. And now it's time for me to spend a little time on dirt. Yeah. And so I'm excited about our season ahead. I think I got a lot of a lot of fun things coming up both as a coach Anna,

Tom Regal: 1:03:56

that's fantastic. That's awesome. And la tri club

Ian Murray: 1:03:59

I have to tell you, Paul Hekimian has now taken sole is doing well. ownership of the club. Has he okay. And he has two people that he's working with Kimberlie Dykeman. And myself, and we're both I think the three of us are more enthusiastic about the club than we've been in in years. So when we had a call yesterday, and while this club, by the way, you know, we were talking about how hot things were in the early 2000s. We were at 3000 members at one point in time. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Huge. Yeah. And now we're at 600. And it's growing like a weed again. Yeah. So I'm thrilled with that this new membership is going great. We had two new people sign up for the performance program in the last four days. So I'm doing consults with them today and tomorrow. And things are just there to good. We've added a master swim program to the to the eletrical membership. We're providing more services than ever. It's just going it's going too well. We're too excited about it. So it's great.

Tom Regal: 1:04:51

It's fantastic. Yeah, it's and coming out of the pandemic. I think this is it's all good. All good signs of things pointing out ports. Yeah. So that's fantastic. So cool. Well, Ian, thank you so much for being off. It's

Ian Murray: 1:05:05

great. Having me Kenny, meet you.

Tom Regal: 1:05:10

We might have to ask you to come back on again. Especially if you do the Bear Divide, that would be great.

Kenny Bailey<br>: 1:05:18

Only if you do the bare divide.

Ian Murray: 1:05:20

I would love to come and chat with you. If it's about bikepacking. If it's about the tour, divide, if it's about any of that stuff, or just, you know, more specificity into something like bike fit or like swim on game

Tom Regal: 1:05:31

game. I think we should we'll dive into some stuff like that. And it'd be great to have you back on. So. Yeah, thanks, everybody, for listening. We appreciate all your comments and all that keep coming. Give us five stars, five thumbs up whatever it takes. If you don't feel it's worth it, hey, let us know why. We're always trying to improve and get better on this thing. But the more the more responses we get, the better the algorithm is and more and more people can find this. This podcast. We're having a lot of fun with it. So thanks again, Kenny and fantastic and we'll catch you all on the flipside.