Coach Tom (00:01.181)
Hey Kenny, how are you?

Kenny Bailey (00:02.416)
I am Fantastic Tom. How are you?

Coach Tom (00:04.6)
I am fantastic as well. And we have Darrell Myrick with us today. We're very excited to have you Darryl. Welcome to the show. Darryl is a retired police officer, PD out in Southern California. He's also a triathlon coach, a badass triathlete, husband, grandfather, just all around does a lot of stuff.

crazy stuff. So we wanted to talk to Darrell because Darrell had, well, let's get back into this. We're getting older. Darryl's much older than us, as you can tell. So we wanted Darryl on. I've raced with Darryl. I've known Darryl for quite a while. But Darryl had a heart issue. And that really struck a chord for me because that's one of my biggest paranoia. I'm constantly like...

Darrell Myrick (00:39.637)
Thanks for that. Appreciate that.

Kenny Bailey (00:42.346)
We welcome all of our guests this way, by the way.

Darrell Myrick (00:43.65)
I always, I always disliked Tom.

Coach Tom (00:57.704)
doing the scans or trying to figure stuff out and trying to stay on top of it. But Darrell has a very unique story on his heart issue because he kind of knew about it. And then like, yeah, then it kind of blew up on him. So, and here he is. So still crushing it, doing great. But Darrell, welcome to the show. before I get into that, couple of, a couple of little business things. Please subscribe.

Darrell Myrick (01:17.996)
Thank

Coach Tom (01:21.62)
Subscribe to the show make sure everybody knows about it and we actually have a few folks in I think was Frankfurt Germany that have been listening to every single show for a long time There's a bunch of you out there. Thank you. Send a note. Hi I don't know how to say it in German, but you know, hey, we appreciate you for sure I was just looking at that that data just the other day I was like, well and I keep going back episodes like thank you. We really appreciate that so anyway

Kenny Bailey (01:30.482)
No kidding.

Kenny Bailey (01:37.887)
Yeah.

That's crazy!

Kenny Bailey (01:48.373)
Shout out to Frankfurt, right?

Coach Tom (01:50.062)
Shout out to Germany, we like you guys, thank you. I think we should, maybe we do that. that would be fantastic. There you go, we can write that off. Anyway, Daryl, so welcome. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Let's go back to your training. You've been a triathlete for like a long time, so.

Kenny Bailey (01:52.501)
We'll have to make a trip there and do a podcast from the road. Yeah, it'll be a business expense. can do it. So.

Darrell Myrick (02:00.732)
Ha

Darrell Myrick (02:12.716)
Yeah, I started in the 80s and kind of got away from it after a while. Did some other things. Went back to my roots in swimming. I tore a rotator cuff and was rehabbing and couldn't swim for six months. So I liberated a bike out of somebody's garage, an old Trek 6000, you know.

So I fixed it up and started writing again and fell in love with writing again and said, why don't I run some more? And so I ran and, yeah, triathlons just kind of came into it. And then...

Coach Tom (02:46.416)
It's crazy that triathlon is usually people that are coming home from an injury in another sport. And then we add three sports to it and then we get injured again. Anyway, it seems odd, but that's what we do apparently.

Darrell Myrick (02:52.364)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (02:56.3)
yeah yeah yeah so it hooked up with couple sorry go ahead

Kenny Bailey (02:56.328)
Yeah

Kenny Bailey (03:00.712)
Yeah. So were there, sorry, were there, distances were you doing? Were you just doing local races like sprints, doing Olympics?

Darrell Myrick (03:09.646)
I started doing Olympics and I started writing with a couple of the teams in town.

I went into the half Ironman distance and did Oceanside. I think I Oceanside like eight years in a row. And just looked at a full Ironman and said, that's just ridiculous. Who would want to do That's stupid. Why would you do that? Submit yourself to that kind of torture. But I decided to do one for, I think I was turning 55 and wanted to do one. So I did one.

Kenny Bailey (03:28.484)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (03:30.654)
Yes.

Kenny Bailey (03:42.292)
It's a ripe age to do that, 55.

Darrell Myrick (03:43.886)
Yes, did one. Did Coeur d'Alene and did well. I think I finished in 1201 and Coeur d'Alene. They've got some hills there. so I'd go and then of course that's all I wanted to do, you know. So now halves are sprints and speed work. So I've done 50 almost now. it's just, you know.

Kenny Bailey (03:48.083)
Wow.

Coach Tom (03:51.326)
Sweet.

Kenny Bailey (03:51.622)
in quarterling. Nobody likes you Darryl. Now I understand why Tom doesn't like you. So that's great.

Coach Tom (03:56.235)
Hahaha!

Kenny Bailey (04:06.87)
Hahaha

Coach Tom (04:11.38)
Daryl is the epitome of the Ironman athlete. Like that's his distance. Like that's it. He's just, I told you he was a badass.

Kenny Bailey (04:14.313)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (04:17.81)
What is it about the Ironman distance that is it because you have to go through 12 hours of fun that that's just, is there like a like a runner's high or a triathlon high of that distance that just you gravitate towards or what is it about that distance that you seem to like so much?

Darrell Myrick (04:35.971)
You know, it really is, it's just a mental thing.

It's something you can just slide into on race day. You're not all amped up. I grew up as a swimmer and I swam high school, college, and I did all, I was a drop dead sprinter, so it was 50. You have to be totally amped because you are, any mistake, mistake on the start, mistake on the turn, you don't pick up your stroke immediately and you're done. With an Ironman, it's, I get in the water, it's like, okay, just settle in my stroke and just swim, just get that long

Kenny Bailey (05:09.844)
Mm-hmm.

Darrell Myrick (05:11.216)
slow, relaxed stroke in and get out on the bike and start nice and easy and just hold pace and then hang on until mile 20 on the run and see you got legs left. But I'll see if I can, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (05:22.309)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (05:24.187)
See what you got left.

Darrell Myrick (05:26.65)
Did they fall off, you know, two miles ago or do I still have legs there? And then you race starts and then you realize, you where you are and if you have to push to catch up to somebody or if somebody's catching you and or if cannot, which never happens. Can I just cruise it on in the last six miles and hold this place? That never happens.

Kenny Bailey (05:29.202)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (05:44.692)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (05:47.194)
No, it's hold on.

Darrell Myrick (05:49.58)
and i got quite we don't we travel as a group and lot of times if you're clients are racing to come out and ship out and you know they're screaming at me there's a guy catching you you know you're two minutes behind the guy in front of you and thing and i was hoping to just be relax and go easy this last you know turn yourself inside out

Kenny Bailey (06:07.796)
That's awesome.

Coach Tom (06:09.488)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then, so what happened with your heart? Walk us through that because this is an issue that you kind of knew about, right? That was kind of, that was kind of building with age, I guess, right?

Darrell Myrick (06:21.614)
Yeah, it was diagnosed when I took the physical for the police department when I was 19. But it wasn't causing any problems, so they just let it go.

Coach Tom (06:29.134)
okay.

Coach Tom (06:35.07)
So what was it?

Darrell Myrick (06:36.362)
it was a mitral valve leak. So when it's leaking, your heart pumps and pushes blood forward. If the valve doesn't close completely, when it opens up to suck blood from the supply side, you're sucking blood back down. And so it's an inefficient way for your heart to work.

Coach Tom (06:38.803)
Okay.

Coach Tom (06:53.032)
Okay.

Darrell Myrick (06:57.71)
I figured out I had some issues with Ironman Santa Rosa. was running third and catching the guy in second, so I was really pushing hard. Mile 13, my heart rate started going nuts, and so I figured I'd just walk a little bit and recover, whatever happened, and I tried to run again.

I couldn't see anymore and I passed out. I got a nice trip to the hospital. I woke up with a nurse holding my legs up to get some blood back in my body. in my other body, yeah. Generally, yeah, the nurse goes, I got some bad news for you. You're not going to be able to finish. I knew I was done a couple miles ago. I was just trying get to the med.

Kenny Bailey (07:26.718)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (07:26.77)
Yeah, that's usually a bad thing.

Kenny Bailey (07:31.828)
So you got a DNF, you got a DNF.

Coach Tom (07:32.892)
And your body, my god.

Kenny Bailey (07:43.572)
But did you stop my watch? That's all I care about, right? Did you stop the Garmin?

Coach Tom (07:43.774)
Hehehehe

Yeah, I just hit the data.

Darrell Myrick (07:50.71)
I didn't and I have that data from my heart rate going nuts and then I have the speed of the ambulance going to the hospital so my per mile pace was really good.

Coach Tom (07:56.966)
of the ambulance. Nice.

Kenny Bailey (07:57.492)
Yeah, that's Yeah, there you go.

Coach Tom (08:04.262)
outstanding. So this is what year? This is not that long ago.

Darrell Myrick (08:06.222)
So this was four years ago, five years ago. Yeah, five years ago. Yeah, 2020. then I went, that got everybody's attention and I went to my cardiologist and he said, well, what were you doing? I said, well, was taking some caffeine, know, because I was mile 13 and I was really trying hard.

Coach Tom (08:12.02)
five years ago. So we're 2020 just before yeah okay.

Darrell Myrick (08:35.668)
And he goes, you probably did over caffeinated and put yourself into AFib. That's what it was when I went down. I went to AFib, my heart went from 150s when I was holding to 220. It's not good for an old heart. And he said, so just monitor it. And then it was a year later, I was getting ready to go to Ironman, Wisconsin. was actually the weekend before I was going.

Kenny Bailey (08:47.774)
Oof.

Okay.

Darrell Myrick (09:03.97)
I was having a rough time. I thought I'd over trained or something. And I went out for a run. Actually, we did a brick. did a two and a half mile swim and we're going to do just a 10 mile run. I couldn't even get the first mile in.

at the pace I was going to run for the Ironman and I was out of breath and I go, something's wrong, know, I'm just not right. And I woke up that night and I just, so I, you know, you get a panic feeling, impending feeling of dread and just something wasn't right and I'm at three in the morning, I'm awake and I'm ah, I should go to the ER. No, I'm debating with myself, you're an idiot. gotta tell you, there's nothing wrong and you're gonna feel like.

Coach Tom (09:44.564)
Yeah, yeah,

Darrell Myrick (09:48.75)
Now I really need to go. No, I don't. So at 5 o'clock I went to the ER and I had 11 blood clots in my lungs. That is a problem with the heart, you know, the heart valve issue. So, yeah. I didn't tell my wife I was going to the ER. I...

Coach Tom (09:56.531)
No.

Kenny Bailey (10:04.02)
What do you see? I'm gonna go get ice cream and just, you know.

Coach Tom (10:05.426)
you drove yourself to the ER.

Darrell Myrick (10:08.942)
It's not the first time it wasn't the last time either and so I call her and say I'm in the ER and they're admit me I've got 11 blood clots and then I had to call the rest of the team I was going with see I I'm to bail out of Wisconsin so So I got I was in the hospital when when the race was going on so it's not not the best thing but So, you know that that happened and then

Coach Tom (10:12.498)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (10:24.862)
Hell, I

Coach Tom (10:30.522)
No. No.

Darrell Myrick (10:34.496)
I qualified for Kona at Coeur d'Alene again, as it turns out. I've done it four times. this is 2022. So just fast forward here. The doctors are saying, yeah, everything's good. I had all of the wazoo tests and stuff. They said, yeah, it's a moderate to severe league. But I was still competing at fairly high levels. So they were letting me go. And so I qualified for it. Yeah, qualified.

Coach Tom (10:42.1)
So is this the same year? Okay, so now we're at 2022.

Coach Tom (10:51.377)
Everything was good.

Coach Tom (11:00.638)
That's pretty amazing that like the rate that you're pushing your body and doing all of that stuff. What was your resting heart rate?

Darrell Myrick (11:12.76)
My resting heart rate was 42.

Kenny Bailey (11:14.707)
Nice.

Coach Tom (11:14.972)
Yeah, it's not pumping efficiently like yeah.

Kenny Bailey (11:17.726)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (11:18.99)
It used to be lower when I was younger. My resting heart rate was 38 and my max was like 220. I used to train with a cardiologist and �Man, I just love to study you.� I �No, no, you don't want to study me. Once you crawl into my head, you'll never get out of there.�

Kenny Bailey (11:21.704)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (11:26.612)
Wow.

Kenny Bailey (11:27.092)
That's our range.

Kenny Bailey (11:32.296)
Hahaha

Coach Tom (11:33.426)
No.

Kenny Bailey (11:38.761)
There you go.

Coach Tom (11:39.014)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (11:40.462)
So anyway, back to the story. At Coeur d'Alene, I qualified. It was the year it was 109 when I started the marathon. So that was all kinds of fun. And so I was all jazz. I'm going to Kona in October. And then the pandemic really took hold, and they canceled Kona. And so I picked up a couple halves. So I did half Ironman in Arizona. And I was first off the bike by like 25 minutes. Nobody else in my age group showed up, I guess.

Coach Tom (11:50.363)
yeah.

Darrell Myrick (12:10.494)
And I couldn't run. just couldn't. My heart rate would just go up to like 170, which is too high for me to maintain to run. And so I'd have to walk and it wouldn't go down. And I'd try to run again. And I ended up having to just DNF. So I said, well, again, I took it out too hard. Something was wrong. I'm making all the excuses to myself.

Coach Tom (12:19.102)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (12:29.62)
Mm-hmm.

Darrell Myrick (12:34.158)
you know, didn't reek enough, know, electrolytes, all the things that could have been. So then I did the Indian Wells half. And so I backed the bike way off. You know, I averaged, I think I averaged 20. just, I know.

Kenny Bailey (12:47.678)
Slacker.

Coach Tom (12:49.8)
Hahaha

Darrell Myrick (12:50.944)
I picked up the run and go, okay, you my heart rate was like 130, you know, on the bike. So I'm really just cruising and I get off and run and same thing. My heart rate just went. First off the bike again and I ended up fifth. So there by passing, which was annoying. But, I just couldn't, I couldn't maintain a heart rate. As soon as I picked up the run, you know, I'd get a quarter mile and my heart rate would go to 165, 170. And I finally said, okay, you know, something's wrong. Something is really wrong.

Kenny Bailey (12:53.138)
Live.

Hmm.

Kenny Bailey (13:00.372)
Hmm.

Darrell Myrick (13:20.848)
The next week I went to my cardiologist they redid the the test that checks the valve and they said well It's it's let go so Yeah, it's you need surgery It's good. Yeah, it's definitely for surgery It was like two weeks later. This is so that's pretty quick for so it was They called it

Coach Tom (13:31.956)
It gave up finally it just said Darrell you win

Kenny Bailey (13:37.054)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (13:44.754)
Yeah, because this is kind of a critical thing at this point. This is like, this is not like I'll just kind of make it work. It gave up. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (13:47.486)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (13:50.286)
They called it emergency surgery so but so I

Kenny Bailey (13:53.876)
Just so we're clear, that thing was blown open and you did a half marathon on it. You did a half Iron Man on it with a valve. And then like, I know, but was like, you know, looking back, it's like, you Wow. It's funny.

Darrell Myrick (13:59.97)
Yeah, yeah. I didn't say I was smart, OK? know, gee, come on.

Coach Tom (14:01.3)
and got fifth in your age group.

Darrell Myrick (14:09.496)
Yeah, so they scheduled me for it and the very worst part is I go in and the pre-op, I'm two days away from surgery all ready to go and they said just cancel because I came positive for COVID. Totally no symptoms, I'm totally asymptomatic.

Kenny Bailey (14:25.812)
Hmm.

Coach Tom (14:25.874)
So on top of that, you get COVID.

Darrell Myrick (14:30.454)
So I had to wait three weeks. And in that three weeks, I went downhill so quickly. I went to my granddaughter's softball game and had to walk across the field to get there, carrying the chair and stuff. I couldn't make it halfway. I had to stop in breast.

Kenny Bailey (14:46.772)
Hmm.

Darrell Myrick (14:47.21)
And so that's how far I had gone. And so I just completely, totally detrained and just completely out of breath. And so I go in and of course, know, typical me, nothing goes right. I came through the surgery well, but I had several bouts of AFib in there. So they had to do an ablation and they had to shock my heart back in rhythm. And I've had two more ablations since then.

Kenny Bailey (15:12.617)
See ya.

Darrell Myrick (15:13.73)
Yeah, sorry, it's going. But yeah, a lot of other things along the way, know, little things, you know, because I stand up and pass out, which generally is a bad thing. So you can't see this right there. That's a flower on my front porch.

Coach Tom (15:13.79)
Jeez.

Kenny Bailey (15:26.953)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (15:27.508)
Nice Yeah, wrap you in bubble wrap every time you stand up

Kenny Bailey (15:31.097)
jeez.

Kenny Bailey (15:34.834)
That's funny. That's after surgery? So after surgery you're still, okay. Okay. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (15:35.01)
Yeah, and I found out that was before surgery. that was before surgery. Yeah, you know, doctors don't have a sense of humor because, know, hey, I'm the one bleeding. I can make the jokes if I want. I went, what happened? said, my wife hit me with a flower pot and he got all excited. Yeah. It's a joke. So,

Coach Tom (15:39.664)
as before surgery.

Coach Tom (15:46.386)
Yeah, yeah, right.

Kenny Bailey (15:46.548)
There you go.

Coach Tom (15:51.252)
It's a joke.

Kenny Bailey (15:52.584)
PD comes.

So how long did it take you for the recovery then? I mean, you were...

Coach Tom (15:57.673)
So this is.

Darrell Myrick (16:00.782)
I started, I couldn't do anything for three months. even walk, yeah, I could walk a little bit, but they wouldn't allow me to do hardly anything. And then I got released after about four months to really start training and immediately got COVID. This one was symptomatic and I had my lungs all full of stuff. And yeah, so I was down for about three weeks after that. And...

Kenny Bailey (16:04.035)
huh. Wow.

Darrell Myrick (16:27.534)
I started just slowly training and so it's June 3rd and I just failed on a two mile run and I just, you know, I got like 500 yards in the pool and my arms just fell off. And so I'm climbing with a friend, a long time client.

and we're climbing Glendora Mountain. You know, it's kind of an iconic climb here in Southern California. It's the old tour of California used to use that climb to up Baldy Village. So we're climbing up and it's usually, it's an eight mile climb. It averages 5 % grade and it's usually just our warm up to climb up to Crystal Lake which is another 26 miles up or go over to Baldy Village and up to the lifts. And I get halfway up and I am, I had a strict heart limit of,

Kenny Bailey (16:58.824)
Mm-hmm.

Darrell Myrick (17:19.184)
of 150. My cardiologist, I don't listen to him too much. So at 165, my legs just completely failed. I was completely out of breath. I'm getting kind of lightheaded. So I'm stopping. I'm halfway up. And this is just a warm up.

and I can't do it. I'm sitting there, it's June 3rd, I've got three and a half months to train with two weeks of taper, and I'm going, I can't even get going. And so I really, really had the heart to heart with myself.

Kenny Bailey (17:51.508)
Darrell Myrick (17:58.99)
really had to realize what I can and can't do. When I was in the hospital bed, I had three goals. First was to be active, to be healthy enough to be active. Watch my grandkids grow up, able to chase them around and go to all the stuff that they do. I'm like, God, I've got some athletic grandkids. Don't get me started. We don't have the hours to be talking about my grandkids. My second was just to finish an Ironman.

Coach Tom (18:22.164)
Yeah, yeah

Darrell Myrick (18:29.09)
that was the second goal and the third was to able to compete at the level that I or anywhere near the level I was at so you know be active finish an Ironman and then really compete again and so I dialed it back and my expectations said okay I'm you know still you know Kono's coming up I had you three and a half months

Coach Tom (18:49.736)
Yeah, not just finish in Ironman, but you had the world championships on the plate because you qualified. Right?

Kenny Bailey (18:53.47)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (18:54.094)
Yeah, I just dialed back my expectations to Kona and said, I'm going hit goal two. I'm going to finish Kona. Because I had visions of really doing well at Kona and that wasn't happening. So I got my distances up and it was about a month when

Kenny Bailey (19:01.364)
Mm.

Coach Tom (19:04.306)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (19:18.126)
things started clicking again, where I could see there was some improvement. And that's the first time in my life I had never demanded stuff from my body and didn't have it respond. And so it was humbling. And patients, Tom knows patients, this isn't my strong suit.

Coach Tom (19:35.444)
Yeah

Darrell Myrick (19:36.628)
So I was pushing as hard as I could and then slowly it was coming back. And I got a 100 mile ride in and I got a 20 mile run, walk, jog. And the swimming, swimming's easy. So just came back. And so I get to Kona and...

Kenny Bailey (19:46.835)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (19:55.31)
You know, I was prepared to stop at any point. know, I was prepared to stop after the swim if it wasn't right. I was prepared to stop during the bike if it wasn't right. I was prepared to stop on the run, before the run, after the run. You know, I had pretty much just come to terms with I'm going to just do what my body will allow. So.

One of the coolest things I did was I'm sitting, you know, it's 10 minutes before the start of my wave and I'm sitting in my back against a tree and I'm sitting there being thankful to be alive. know, 30 years ago or 40 years ago they didn't have the surgery.

Kenny Bailey (20:24.628)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Coach Tom (20:25.972)
sure.

Darrell Myrick (20:32.206)
that kept me alive. So I'm alive, I'm at Kona, which is kind of cool, and I'm getting ready to race, and it will be what it'll be, and so out of my hands. And so I got in, I swam, I think I'd swam an hour and 15, which was kind of slow, but just very relaxed, I looked at all the fish and stuff. The swim at Kona is the coolest thing I've ever done as far as the swim. There was a school of fish, between our, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (20:55.432)
Yeah.

I would like to give my IT for an hour 15 swim by the way. So your easy one is my goal. So is my dream just so you know. Hour and 15. Okay. Sure.

Coach Tom (21:02.164)
Yeah

Darrell Myrick (21:02.186)
Was there?

Darrell Myrick (21:10.426)
I always push, I try to get under an hour in all races, but yeah, it doesn't always.

Kenny Bailey (21:13.074)
like you do.

Coach Tom (21:15.4)
Well, when you come at it from a competitive swimming background, yes, that's good for you.

Kenny Bailey (21:19.182)
Yeah, that's true.

Darrell Myrick (21:20.874)
It's, yeah, is, technique based. It's not like running and cycling where you can just pound and get faster. Your stroke has to be right. And it's something that develops. So I just sit there being thankful and just going through. So the swim goes well. I get on the bike and honestly, up to Javi and back down, I was feeling pretty good. I was going slow. I was really keeping the pace down.

Coach Tom (21:25.33)
Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Kenny Bailey (21:26.558)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (21:45.13)
and then you head up to the scenic overlook, which is heading back into Kona. It's about four or five mile.

gradual climb that gets a little steeper into a pretty good headwind right there. So that's when it really hit me and I was really struggling and just getting up over a hill and so I got done and my heart rate was way elevated so I cruised a back down end and finished the bike and I'm sitting in the T2 and just I just sat for five minutes which I never do. I'm always hauling through transitions.

Coach Tom (22:00.765)
Hmm.

Darrell Myrick (22:24.878)
just sitting and debating whether I should go or not. And I go, you know, I don't know if I can do it. And I said, well, you can always walk. I got up and I actually told myself, have this discussion with yourself while you're Yeah, yeah, yeah. You moving. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (22:40.166)
There you go, right, yeah. Exactly, just keep moving, right? Yeah, I like that.

Coach Tom (22:40.53)
Yeah, first off, keep moving, keep moving, and then you can have this conversation while you're moving. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (22:48.77)
this. So I'm out and I'm just walking and my heart rate is starting to come down and there were I had a bunch of clients went with me to root me on I guess and so I get to like mile two and I'd done some lock jogging and stuff and they were telling me exactly what I needed to do to finish and I'd already done the math in my head so I knew I could you know go fairly easy and still finish so I'm

just hanging on and what I ended up as I got into it my body was failing. So I would basically jog until I was too dizzy to run and then I'd walk until my heart rate came down and then I'd...

Coach Tom (23:31.412)
You weren't caffeinating yourself while you were doing this, you? You weren't just like having the Morton, you know, with the super caffeinated or the Coke.

Kenny Bailey (23:32.542)
just rinse and repeat for 26 miles.

Darrell Myrick (23:39.586)
No, I didn't do any more. I was drinking coke for the last, you know, we got down to the energy lab. You know, the energy lab was just, it just lets the soul right out of your body. It's pretty tough. And so I was drinking coke, but I was nauseous. You know, my body was not digesting. So I...

Coach Tom (23:47.476)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (23:57.822)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (24:00.43)
Once I got out of the energy lab and heading down, I was doing the math and I knew I could walk it in from there, you know, slow walk in from there and still make it. So I was jogging and walking and jogging and walking and get in and of course, you know, I walked until you make the turn and head down to the finish line. I made sure I was walked and recovered there and then ran the finish line.

Kenny Bailey (24:26.356)
100%, right? Yeah.

Coach Tom (24:27.39)
Damn straight.

Darrell Myrick (24:29.498)
and it was all I could do. I was all in, all done. And I get in and they grabbed me and dragged me right into the medical tent because I must have looked like death warmed over.

Kenny Bailey (24:44.018)
Hahaha.

Coach Tom (24:44.948)
Hahaha.

Darrell Myrick (24:45.774)
And I get in and there's an ER doc in there and they do my blood pressure was 70 over 45, which is kind of low. the ER doc, know, ER docs are great. You know, as a police officer, you work with the ER staff a lot and they have a brilliant sense of humor and they pretty much cut right to the chase. And the guy sees my, the scar, the open-air surgery scar and he goes, so what's going on here? And I told him, I said, I had open-air

Kenny Bailey (24:52.323)
my gosh. Yeah.

Coach Tom (24:53.572)
Oof. Eee.

Coach Tom (25:13.417)
Yeah

Darrell Myrick (25:15.828)
surgery in January he goes you're not very bright are you? That's a general consensus, yeah not that bright. So they gave me IVs got me got some fluid in I threw up everything that I had taken in for the last probably 13 miles and then felt great.

Kenny Bailey (25:21.007)
Hahaha!

Coach Tom (25:21.301)
Here.

Kenny Bailey (25:25.594)
Eh... Eh.

Coach Tom (25:39.133)
Wow.

Kenny Bailey (25:41.682)
Yeah

Coach Tom (25:42.017)
That felt awesome.

Darrell Myrick (25:43.566)
I didn't pound my legs like I normally do. know, walk jog is pretty easy on the joints. Yeah. But yeah, I wasn't that sore the next day and... Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (25:46.473)
Yeah, just GI distress for days, right?

Coach Tom (25:46.684)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Coach Tom (25:56.136)
Dizzy, but not sore.

Kenny Bailey (25:57.428)
But what's fascinating is at any point, I mean...

I mean, obviously the logical terrible end is that you just collapse. mean, that's it. how do you, I guess the, don't try this at home, people. What Daryl's doing, don't try that at home. So I'm just, know, let's, yeah. The guys in Germany don't do this, whatever German language. But I mean, did you fear for your life, I guess would be the, rather than just fear for collapse, like, hey, I can't make it, I got to DNF. I mean, was there a point where you're like, hey, I may be,

Darrell Myrick (26:11.384)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (26:16.564)
Don't do... We have to state that.

Darrell Myrick (26:19.054)
Yeah, don't be a Darrell, kids.

Kenny Bailey (26:34.014)
Permanently, you know, this may be a point of no return on this especially when you look at that I mean when you're at that blood pressure you're yeah, you're half a step away from coding at that point

Darrell Myrick (26:41.964)
Yeah, it did cross my mind, you know, and that's why, you know, I'd get dizzy and I'd have a hard time running and have to, you know, pick up the walk. And I didn't want to go out and go head first. You know, I knew what going head first down into the concrete does to you. There's just no flower pots around, so was like... So, you know, it was tough, you know, but, you know, I'm hyper competitive and I just...

Kenny Bailey (26:56.734)
Sure. Yeah, no fire pots to stop you. Yeah.

Coach Tom (26:59.316)
Yeah, there's no flower.

Kenny Bailey (27:05.609)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (27:09.294)
Once I knew I was within striking distance of the finish, but for the first 13 miles I was ready to quit. I was prepared that if it got real bad early that I would just give it up and I gave it good college try and that's what it was. I didn't think I was going to push so hard that I would just expire, I would just pass out. Just pass out. Better on the run than the bike.

Coach Tom (27:25.972)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (27:31.614)
Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah.

Coach Tom (27:32.978)
Yeah. Just pass out. Which is the first step to expiring, by the way.

Kenny Bailey (27:39.322)
Yeah, well, yeah, I think, you know, because for me, you know, I have a history of my dad died of a heart attack, his dad died of a heart attack, right? So for me, it would be, I think my, shit level would be, you know, at a nine if I was dizzy. I don't know if I could mentally get through that. You know what I mean? In the fact that it's like, is this it? is, I mean, forgive me for asking blunt questions, but I mean,

Darrell Myrick (27:48.43)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (28:08.538)
Was there an ROI decision in your head like if I keep doing this? I know you had to probably quit on the previous ones before your heart surgery, right? Now that you've seen that the valve is, so they fixed the valve, so were you confident in the surgery and you were like, look, think there's a, I think I still have something in me. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (28:15.819)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Darrell Myrick (28:21.08)
absolutely.

Darrell Myrick (28:25.39)
Yeah, I was absolutely confident in the surgery. The cardiologist that I go to is really good. My heart surgeon was different and the cardiologist says it's perfect. He says it's as good as it can get. It's better than, you know, it says there's nothing wrong with your heart. You just have to push, you just have to get back into shape and that takes a long time. The atrophy, especially when you're in your golden years.

Kenny Bailey (28:37.417)
Great.

Kenny Bailey (28:44.67)
Got it. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (28:49.81)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (28:49.972)
Hehehehehe

Darrell Myrick (28:52.302)
gold is gray years I guess. I am 69, I was 67 at the time. You atrophy so quickly and it takes so much longer to get back. I remember when I was 30, I could take three months off swimming and be back into 99 % shape in a couple weeks. I take a year off, I'm toast. So I atrophied and...

Kenny Bailey (28:53.278)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (28:59.486)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (29:18.508)
the things, old injuries came up to haunt me and I had an injury that I'd gotten past and my legs atrophied and the meniscus was no longer holding in. So I had to knee surgery in August. So I wasn't able to run for like nine months and then had the knee surgery in August and so I'm just now getting back to really anything that looks like learning. yeah, so.

Coach Tom (29:32.636)
top yeah

Coach Tom (29:42.1)
Yeah, there's a couple of studies that were done just recently and I can't remember I have to have to pull them up but they were with I think they were like using 80 year olds just just as it was about building muscle mass the fact that we lose muscle mass every decade we lose like 10 % right so the test was over six months they gave them a regimented strength training workouts right

Kenny Bailey (29:43.4)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (30:09.716)
And in a six month period of time, they were able to gain 2.9 % muscle mass, which is good news, right? Because in your 80s, you can still build muscle mass. The second study, and I don't know how connected the studies were, but there was a second study where they had people be absolutely sedentary, same age group, absolutely sedentary for one week, and they lost 3 % muscle mass. So 3 % muscle mass in one week.

Darrell Myrick (30:16.835)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (30:33.314)
Yes. Yes.

Coach Tom (30:39.304)
That's how quickly it goes away. took them six months to almost make that much muscle mass back. that's our, you we're not quite that old, you know, but it's like, even like, yeah, seriously, I'm like, we're late fifties, I'm knocking on the door of coming up on 60 myself and, you know, in a couple of years, and it's just like, you know, it's trying to stay on top of this and kind of, we had this conversation about,

Darrell Myrick (30:44.994)
Yeah, that's, yeah, I could hit that with a rock from where I'm at, but yeah.

Kenny Bailey (30:51.453)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (30:57.282)
youngsters.

Coach Tom (31:08.52)
driving yourself and the, you know, what keeps you going. What was the conversation in your head like when you were going up in June on the ride, climbing up the mountain and going like, I got nothing in here and I've got months to my race. What kind of conversation? Like, well, you could have probably sold tickets to that. It would have been amazing.

Darrell Myrick (31:27.054)
you

Kenny Bailey (31:30.452)
Mmm.

Darrell Myrick (31:30.51)
Yeah, again, don't climb into my head. You'll never get out It was it was pretty dark honestly, I do Do tend towards depression if I don't exercise I exercise is my drug of choice and a couple of times in my life where I haven't been able to work out, know, you get the the darkness starts creeping in and you really You know, it's like

Coach Tom (31:34.196)
Bring lots of popcorn.

Darrell Myrick (31:58.498)
the things that I normally wouldn't do, do, as far as eating or just sitting around and not being motivated to do stuff. And so it's very, very difficult.

Coach Tom (32:08.212)
It's quick to spiral too, right? It's quick to spiral, but you've got grandkids that you talked about, how much you love your grandkids. That must've played a major role in this, good or bad, right? When you're pushing too much, like you still wanna be there for them. When you're not pushing enough, you wanna, you

Kenny Bailey (32:12.788)
But,

There.

Darrell Myrick (32:16.102)
gosh.

All those things drive. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (32:27.778)
That's the logical side, but the emotional side is not as easily controlled. When depression comes in, and some people don't understand it, when depression comes in, all logic goes out the window. It's just, it's very emotional state, and it's very difficult to deal with, and it's hard to just tell yourself don't be depressed. That's easy.

Kenny Bailey (32:50.706)
Yeah. Well, and your profession doesn't help you out either, right? You're not like coding on a desk job doing, you IT stuff. I mean, you were a police officer too at the time, so, or, you know, retired, so that's a... okay, you didn't do anything. All right, you just, you were at a desk. Okay, nevermind.

Darrell Myrick (33:00.832)
Yeah, retired. was, was assistant chief. So I sat behind a desk. I typed, I typed a lot. Yeah. I, I, I did, I did all that cool stuff early in life.

Coach Tom (33:06.94)
You sad a desk.

Kenny Bailey (33:12.18)
But you know, that's, but the story that you have, mean, that's a couple things, right? Is you had to reset yourself to say, okay, I'm just happy to be here, right? You look up, right? Because that's an interesting thing. remember I was, you know, when I was training to race, when I was racing road bikes and you know, I had a friend of mine, it's like, my gosh, we're in the most beautiful place. And I finally looked up, right? And you look up, you look around and in Kona, that was your epiphany moment. You looked up like, oh my God, I'm sitting in Hawaii.

Darrell Myrick (33:23.608)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (33:39.522)
Yeah.

and men who want it.

Kenny Bailey (33:42.546)
This is one of the best, it is legendary, the place you're at right now, and you get the opportunity to still do that. So resetting those expectations, and the other thing is, to your point, hey, you knew it was gonna, your surgery wasn't a death sentence on your sport, right? You got the ability to repair yourself, you got the ability to get back. It's not like, well, I had surgery, so I can no longer do this anymore. Not only can you do it,

Darrell Myrick (33:49.73)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (34:01.238)
No.

Kenny Bailey (34:09.812)
But you also reminded yourself that that path isn't going to be, like you said, you're not 30. That path isn't going to be, in 60 days I'm done. It's going to be six months, nine months. Even the race itself was just sort of resetting. Sometimes you need that kind of smack in the brain to get that reset to appreciate what you have, right? The fact that the head's down, of course I'm going to get at least third or higher. And all of a sudden that gets taken away from you and you have to kind of reframe your brain to go, okay.

Darrell Myrick (34:20.888)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (34:28.205)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (34:37.202)
The idea of being here is good enough, right? Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (34:37.742)
Bye.

You really have to take a step back and really look at why we do what we do.

We don't do what we do to get medals and trophies and accolades. It's kind of nice. On the way to pick up a couple of medals and some cool stuff is great. But we do what we do because what I call the Ironman lifestyle, it keeps you on the straight and narrow. It keeps you healthy. It keeps you active. It allows you to do all the things that you really want to do.

Kenny Bailey (34:48.724)
Ehh.

Coach Tom (34:50.014)
T-shirt.

Kenny Bailey (34:55.026)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (35:12.014)
It's not just being alive at 70, it's being alive and being active at 70. It's being alive and being able to go to my grandson's track meets yesterday and watch him run faster than I've ever run in my entire life. And watch my granddaughter swim and you know.

Coach Tom (35:26.514)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (35:30.99)
playing baseball and softball and wrestling and gymnastics and all the stuff that they do and being able to go and do those things. Go on vacation and walk up the Parthenon. My wife and I went to the Mediterranean a few years ago before I started having the problems and all the stuff that you have read about and studied about since you were a kid, there were people in our group that we were having dinner with that couldn't do those things. They couldn't go see the thing.

that we always heard about in the history because they couldn't go up a couple of hundred steps. They couldn't walk for two miles. And it's like, I don't want to do that. I want to be there. And walking is easy now. It's still easy. And I want to keep it that way for as long as I can.

Kenny Bailey (36:24.212)
Well the good news too is that you were attuned to your body, right? So you knew something, you're not like a sedentary, to your point, you weren't those people that were sedentary and then they're walking up the stairs and they're like, I'm walking up the stairs, I must just because I'm winded or we're in a foreign, we've traveled internationally. It's like, hey wait, this is not right. My heart rate shouldn't be spiking. You knew about yourself because you've been testing your body for decades, right? And so that you knew.

Darrell Myrick (36:45.816)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (36:49.804)
Yes.

Kenny Bailey (36:51.34)
hey, there's a real problem. This isn't just, you you tried to write it off, but your body's like, no, no, because you pushed yourself and because of the shape you were in, hopefully the recovery to your point was a lot better because your body was able to do that. because you're an athlete, even though you did have a problem, you knew the boundary, you knew the kind of like, hey, wait a minute, this is not within the normal parameter, so I think I need to go do something versus, I'm just tired and I never really pushed myself, so I don't know how I should feel otherwise, right?

Darrell Myrick (36:54.978)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (37:19.116)
Yeah, the body. The body told me several times before I actually listened to it. Don't give me that much credit.

Kenny Bailey (37:21.46)
You're stubborn, feller!

Coach Tom (37:26.196)
Occasionally the occasionally

Darrell Myrick (37:26.38)
Stubborn is another statement. Your point really came into play with the blood clots because the doctor said that most people would not have noticed the integration in your breathing and your oxygen intake because they don't push themselves. I only knew that because I pushed myself and he says, if you would have gotten on that plane and gone on vacation, you probably wouldn't have come back. yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (37:32.232)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (37:37.469)
Yeah, exactly.

Coach Tom (37:51.294)
Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (37:51.988)
Yeah, that's my point, right? Which is you were tuned enough, so it's not just that you push yourself, because the question could be did you push yourself to get injured? It's like no, it was always there, it's genetic. But by pushing myself, I was able to say wait a minute, this isn't right, and be able to course correct. Where like you said, you could be 35,000 feet and that would have been the end of it, right?

Darrell Myrick (38:01.966)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (38:09.982)
I think that's a huge benefit of Iron, you talk about the Ironman lifestyle, but the triathlon lifestyle, endurance lifestyle, that active thing is that I think the longer we do it, we're almost forced to listen to our bodies at time because then we realize things. think we get to, I think it's a long education process for us, the ones that, you know, we've been doing it for years, right? And we learn something new every single year, right? And now that we have all those data trackers and everything else, that helps as well, but still.

Darrell Myrick (38:15.64)
breath.

Kenny Bailey (38:28.317)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (38:29.891)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (38:34.403)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (38:38.684)
Ultimately it comes down to feel. You have to feel it. You have to know what it feels like and you have to know when it's, you know, your body occasionally will, you know, kind of give you some, some warning shots and tell you something's wrong. And you'd be like, yeah, it's not right. It's not wrong. We're fine.

Kenny Bailey (38:40.681)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (38:52.284)
Well, there's a difference between being sore and like, I'm out of shape and wait a minute, this is just fundamentally not right. I shouldn't be spiking from 130 to 170 like that. Like this is a fundamental problem versus, you know.

Darrell Myrick (38:52.31)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (38:57.448)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (38:58.286)
correct.

Coach Tom (39:01.704)
Yeah. Yep.

Darrell Myrick (39:03.114)
Absolutely correct and those those things you have to pay attention you have to be attention to those things because You could be over training even if you're you know, you're doing the right things You could be over training your heart rate's not recovering and and those all those the data that we get is fantastic But you know

Kenny Bailey (39:06.846)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (39:13.928)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (39:19.99)
Scott Molina, Tenley, Dave Scott, all those, Allen, those guys had Ironman Timex watches that had a start and stop for time. That's all they ran with. And those guys were awesome. So, you one of the things that we do, you I have my clients, too, we have no watch runs.

Kenny Bailey (39:26.857)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (39:29.512)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (39:37.405)
Nice.

Darrell Myrick (39:37.804)
You go out and run and you just run by feel and you estimate how fast you're going. You estimate your heart rate. You estimate what you have left in the tank and then when you're done, then you reflect on that. And what we find and what I found out a lot with my clients is that when they're not paying attention to their heart rate, when they're not paying attention to pace, they run faster. And it's like they break through because those are limiters. So that's...

The technology is fantastic. allows you to learn your body much quicker and know what you can hold, but it can also be a limiter. because you get too dependent on the very expensive cool watches we have.

Coach Tom (40:16.488)
Yeah

Kenny Bailey (40:17.684)
Yeah, I think that's a really good point because RPE, know, rate of perceived effort, you know, is you can, if you look down and like, wow, I shouldn't be doing 300 watts right now because, you know, that seems like a lot, but it feels okay. But my computer tells me I shouldn't be there. You know, it's one thing to use it as a way like, hey, I need to get back to your point. I need to control. need to throttle, right? I don't want to overcook myself, but I love the fact that you're doing that with your clients because I think that's a whole.

Darrell Myrick (40:21.666)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (40:33.346)
Yes.

Darrell Myrick (40:38.382)
Mm-hmm.

Kenny Bailey (40:43.994)
your point, I think we're such a slave to, I mean I am, I'm looking at my left right, know, 51.49 and what's my average watts and you know, what's my, you know, the whole, I love it, I love data, love love love it, but to your point, I think absolutely, I think we're slipping into kind of the slave to data rather than, you know.

Darrell Myrick (40:54.243)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (40:59.394)
Yes.

Coach Tom (40:59.76)
And I think that data, the watches like Garmin's, think like 82 % accuracy. The Apple watch is somewhere around that range. So they're not 100 % accurate either. So there is a big wiggle room in there. So yeah, the rate of perceived exertion or effort is huge. If you can tie those two together, that's what it's about.

Kenny Bailey (41:03.058)
Hmm? Hmm.

Kenny Bailey (41:10.42)
Mm-hmm.

Darrell Myrick (41:12.994)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (41:18.242)
this.

Kenny Bailey (41:21.876)
Yeah, but I mean, it also works out well on the other end, right? If you're doing that sort of that zone to like, don't get your heart rate above 140 because you're trying to get more efficient. I mean, that's great to have that, right? It's a good tool, but I think you're right. Sometimes we rely on the tool a little too much versus rely on, hey, I'm kind of having a good day. I think I'm just gonna go run, see what happens, right?

Darrell Myrick (41:30.307)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (41:30.472)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (41:38.322)
When it's really important is for guys that are a little amped at beginning races as a governor. So go back through all your data and figure out what your FTP is and you set your Watt score for the bike. Everybody, when they first get on the bike, you're excited to be on the bike, you're excited to get out, but you've got 112 miles to go, so it's going to take a little time.

You don't want to set a PR on the first 56 miles of the bike on an Ironman. That generally is bad. what we do is we have a set.

Kenny Bailey (42:10.536)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (42:11.539)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (42:19.33)
base for watts for the first 20 miles, for the first 40 miles, for the first 60 miles, and then you roll into feel. If you're at 80 miles, do a very honest self-evaluation and see exactly what you think you have left and still have legs for run. If you feel like you've pushed a little bit hard, back off little bit. If you feel like you hit it right on the nose, then go. And then if you feel like you went to

slow, then pick it up and you're going to make up some time. you have to have that. And it's hard to, because they have all this data. The data is great, but every day is different for every athlete.

You have all this data, but this data, it didn't come along when you were tapered. And it didn't come along when you were racing with other people on the big stage and everything else. So it's just a basis to start from, and it's basically a governor. And then you have to do that on a self-evaluation halfway through, two-thirds of the way through, three-quarters of way through the race, and figure out what do have left, and then go finish the bike, and then do the same thing on the run. Start slow.

And I had a client on Ironman Arizona and he was, he started third off the bike and I had him at an easy pace for the first six miles of the run. And he was like maybe 10 minutes behind the guy who was in second place and he was losing a minute per mile for the first three miles to that guy.

And he's like, no, stick to the plan. Stick to the plan. so after three miles, then he was running the same pace as that guy. Then after six miles, he was making up 30 seconds per mile.

Coach Tom (44:03.102)
chomping at the bit.

Kenny Bailey (44:03.88)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (44:14.986)
At the end, was gaining on the guy by three minutes per mile because the guy had just blown up and he ended up winning. So you just go to Nice now. I got two clients out in Nice. That's why we're climbing so much right now. I am actually just running them up and down the mountains all day. It's a lot of fun.

Coach Tom (44:23.316)
Nice. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (44:23.348)
There you go.

Kenny Bailey (44:27.39)
That's awesome.

Coach Tom (44:27.603)
Nice.

Coach Tom (44:33.692)
Yeah, you've got the mountains there for it too. That's perfect. Baldi.

Darrell Myrick (44:37.689)
Bye.

look at Nice and the elevation and then you look at the climb to Crystal Lake and it's very comparable, very, very comparable. Not exactly the same, but very similar type of climb, very similar as far as grades go. We've got the sections that I think we're talking about between the first and second bridge climbing to Crystal Lake. It's 8 to 12 % grade for a mile. And so it really pushes you a

Kenny Bailey (44:39.486)
Yeah, it's insane. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (45:08.516)
and then it flattens out a little bit and it's up and down and it's 26 miles of all kinds of fun.

Kenny Bailey (45:14.292)
Yeah, no kidding. When you have an older client versus a younger client, when you got somebody that is 26 or 30, versus somebody that's 56, do you approach it differently? Or is it recovery more, or what tends to be the fundamental difference between the two?

Coach Tom (45:14.547)
Hehehe

Darrell Myrick (45:26.03)
absolutely.

Darrell Myrick (45:31.054)
The recovery, you need more rest. you need more rest. really need to focus on sleep more. need to focus. Everybody should be focusing on that. But it is absolutely critical for your seasoned athletes, your golden years. Yeah. I was like putting salt all over me or something.

Kenny Bailey (45:46.002)
We'll call him that.

Coach Tom (45:46.836)
Seasoned, like that. Seasoned athlete.

Darrell Myrick (45:54.04)
but the season athletes really need to focus on sleep, need to focus on nutrition, hydration even more.

Kenny Bailey (45:55.518)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (46:05.344)
again, a client that qualified for Nice. He just was having a hard time sleeping and we took a look at, I took, out everything and he took a look at his heart rate and saw that he wasn't recovering so he's on four days rest. He can walk and he can spin real easy but nothing hard. He's pushing really hard to build the power to get up over the mountain in Nice.

your body only let you go so hard. At some point the diminishing returns from your efforts, you're gonna get less with more and that's just not what you wanna do. So your body doesn't get strong from training. Your body gets strong from recovering from training. absent that component, what you're doing is you're just staying in a constant state of fatigue and not recovering and really realizing the gains that you're really working so hard for.

Coach Tom (47:02.834)
Yeah. And for those athletes that like to beat themselves and destroy themselves for every single workout and they don't feel like it was a good workout unless they're absolutely destroyed. Yeah, this is a, this is a big note. Like you're not absorbing the training.

Kenny Bailey (47:11.941)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (47:17.544)
Yeah, you're used to, mean, Darrell, but you're kind of unique creature. You're used to that, right? That's the thing, right? Because I think there's been more than a couple of times where I know I've walked in, you did your taper week, but you're going into the race pretty exhausted. You're going into the race where you feel fatigued, right? You don't feel fresh. I always think of it as a coiled spring, right? I want to be able to hit that race like I coiled up, like I'm ready to unleash because I've had a good rest and I'm ready to go. But there's some times you just, you kind of go in and you're like, okay. And you just, didn't.

Coach Tom (47:21.204)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (47:22.548)
Unique. That's like...

Darrell Myrick (47:35.181)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (47:45.8)
to your point, you just didn't allow for that recovery and now you're wondering why you're having a mediocre race and it's like, well, you I didn't. Four days is a lot. You tell an endurance athlete to take a rest for four days, that's like, yeah, it's like, four days? Like great, there goes all my gains. I hope you're happy, you know what I mean? It's just like, it's a.

Darrell Myrick (47:48.664)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (47:54.862)
And it's the, yeah.

Darrell Myrick (47:59.694)
Yeah. only client. Yeah.

Coach Tom (48:07.188)
Tell an athlete that they're gonna have two rest days in one week and they'd absolutely just go mental.

Kenny Bailey (48:11.87)
Yeah. Yeah. So.

Darrell Myrick (48:16.45)
My only, the only client that doesn't listen to me is me. So I am by far my worst client, so yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well yeah, but you

Kenny Bailey (48:18.994)
Hahaha!

Coach Tom (48:19.38)
You should fire yourself.

Kenny Bailey (48:22.632)
There you go. There you go. So, too funny.

Darrell Myrick (48:27.342)
Again, a lot of the stuff, what I'm really finding, the longer I get into it, the more I'm realizing how important the easy days are. We call it stupid easy. You got a stupid easy day. You're gonna go out and you're gonna run 15 miles and you're gonna take your Ironman pace and add two minutes to the mile. And that's what your pace is. We call it stupid easy because anybody sees you running that slow, you're gonna feel stupid. And it's...

The harder you run, I mean the faster you run, the more damage you do to your joints. I mean the more pressure you put on everything, the more the impact is. And you get a big benefit even from running slow, especially if you're running an upgrade. So running slow is a good way to build that big base and then you drop in a reasonable speed workout once a week. it really seems to work. then starting the Ironman run.

very conservatively is by far the best thing that we do. I got another guy that's going to Nice, he finished in podium at California, and he was, you know, the guy that was ahead of him, that he bumped off the podium.

Started like a half hour before he was so we knew exactly what time he had to do to get to the finish line ahead of him and so you know I'm I'm at mile five and I'm at mile three and I'm at mile two yelling at him telling him what he's got to do He ran the last mile and a half at sub eight minute miles

Kenny Bailey (50:05.236)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (50:05.372)
Nice.

Darrell Myrick (50:06.126)
He beat the guy by 11 seconds. I I don't know how he did it. I honestly don't know how you did that He says you said I had to go and I went Listen to me Yeah

Kenny Bailey (50:08.409)
Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah.

Coach Tom (50:08.734)
Nice.

Yeah, yeah,

Kenny Bailey (50:18.92)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, the fact you had it in the tank. Yeah, I did the opposite in California. I had a 40 mile an hour headwind. So all of that, you know, rate of perceived effort and all those watts just went out the window. Right. And then when I got to the run, I think my first mile was like a 730. I was just so happy to be off the bike. And then I completely blew up the first. I'm like, because it's slightly downhill and I get done with the first mile, look down because you feel so slow. Right. You get off this bike and I ran a 730. I'm like, that was a huge mistake. And then, you know, went downhill from there.

Coach Tom (50:19.028)
And I went, yes, somebody listen. This is cool.

Darrell Myrick (50:27.758)
those. yeah.

Darrell Myrick (50:42.658)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (50:48.904)
You can only do that at Lake Placid. Lake Placid, you can't not run fast because it's all downhill. It's steep downhill for the first three, four miles. So you just let gravity take hold and you just go flying down there at like 730s. And that's just normal to each loop that way.

Darrell Myrick (50:49.048)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (50:49.224)
But... It's just, yeah, stupid. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (50:57.432)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (50:59.976)
Yeah, it's always fun. Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (51:04.664)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (51:06.1)
So Darryl, we're glad you're with us. You said your knee was reconstructed? Yeah, just in spirit, with us on this earth still. You've tried many times not to be, and you just will not, you will not die. So you said you had knee surgery for a while, you're back after that. Are you training for anything now, or what is on the docket for you?

Darrell Myrick (51:11.126)
with us here or with us in the not dead.

Coach Tom (51:13.012)
yes with us yes

Coach Tom (51:21.564)
Not to be here.

Darrell Myrick (51:22.766)
this close.

Darrell Myrick (51:33.408)
I had, I didn't sign up for it, but I had targeted Hanu doing the half Iron Man and Kona. We got, think eight of our group are going. But my run's not there and I'm not.

going to really try and just go in just to finish. want to be ready to race again. So I've kind of looked. There are couple of half Ironman that are close that give me a couple of more months because my running is starting to catch now, finally. Starting to catch. And so I think with two more months, I'll be able to at least put in a decent effort. And so I'm looking at Ironman Boise or maybe Oregon or one of the ones.

Kenny Bailey (52:02.132)
Good.

Darrell Myrick (52:17.968)
up in Washington and I am signed up for La Quinta in December so and that's that's a local race and I've done that one bunch of times and the bike course is so cool it is so fast as long as there's no wind yeah until you're to your point of California yeah as long as it's headwind tailwind you're okay if it's all sideways it's miserable

Kenny Bailey (52:25.278)
Nice. Yeah.

Coach Tom (52:31.764)
That's a fun race. Yeah.

There's always wind, but yeah, you'll get through it. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (52:41.78)
Yeah. Yeah, and I did Oregon on the half. It will be your PR race. I mean, it's a 12 and a half mile river. mean, Miranda Caffrey did it in I think 13 minutes, 14 minutes. It's insanely fast. It's so, it does. People like me, but I mean, the bike's relatively flat. The runs really nice. It's a beautiful, and it's like, it was 82. I mean, it's a good course. think he, I'm a big fan.

Darrell Myrick (52:49.496)
Really? yeah.

I avoid those. It takes away my advantage. why I say, I don't.

Coach Tom (52:57.594)
It does!

Darrell Myrick (53:06.798)
Yeah, somebody tested the swim course at California and they jumped in with a big rubber ducky or something and floated down in an hour and 50 minutes. There are guys that are getting out, guys that I know in my age group that I swim with that are usually around an hour, they are getting out in like 48, 49 minutes. And then guys that were looking at two hours were getting out in an hour and 10. So it really does take away some of the advantage.

Kenny Bailey (53:16.553)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (53:35.758)
I would, I want to go the other way. Swim up. I want the guys that are, you know, pounders on the bike to have to put in full two hours and 20 minutes on the swim and be dead.

Coach Tom (53:38.684)
I swim up against the current, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (53:45.043)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting course, but it's a fun one. think if you're trying to PR, that's a good one to get.

Coach Tom (53:48.763)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Darrell Myrick (53:55.662)
I yeah. So Boise looks pretty interesting. yeah, I like I like I've done Coeur d'Alene four times and it's just just a nice place. Boise is a lot different than Coeur d'Alene. It's more desert than Coeur d'Alene is all forested. But still, there's some old retired guys from my PD that are living in Boise so I can catch up with them.

Coach Tom (53:58.484)
Yeah.

Yeah, Boise looks good. That should be.

Kenny Bailey (54:15.09)
Hmm. Yeah, there you go.

Kenny Bailey (54:23.646)
There you go.

Coach Tom (54:24.445)
Cool. there you go. Even better, right?

Darrell Myrick (54:24.622)
might be able to stay for free.

Kenny Bailey (54:27.686)
Even better, yeah, I was gonna say. It costs us enough anyways, if you get free lodging, that's a plus, so.

Coach Tom (54:32.798)
Seriously.

Darrell Myrick (54:33.804)
Yeah, it's an expensive sport and it's tough.

Kenny Bailey (54:35.954)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm thinking about doing Formula One to save some money. So, so. I told my wife, said, you know, I could do cocaine and stay, you know, stay thin like I am an Iron Man and save money if we could just do it that way. Because the amount of carbon fiber it's costing me is, and the travel time, it's like, I might as well just do drugs and make myself thin.

Darrell Myrick (54:41.454)
Hahaha

Coach Tom (54:42.276)
It's definitely cheaper.

Darrell Myrick (54:46.112)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (54:50.642)
here

It's... It's... Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (54:55.598)
yeah. I've got two good bikes and I'm staying with them right now. You look at the new bikes and you go, those are bike porn and stuff. I can't justify my bike. I've got a Shiv S-Works and it's still faster than I am. yeah, it's good enough.

Kenny Bailey (55:00.756)
There you go.

Kenny Bailey (55:04.712)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (55:05.396)
They look great.

Kenny Bailey (55:14.021)
huh. There you go. That's all you need.

Coach Tom (55:16.382)
Yeah. Yep.

Daryl, thank you so much. It's great to catch up with you. Great to hear your story. We really appreciate you coming on and joining us and sharing. Thanks everybody for your questions, your comments. Give us the thumbs up, five stars, all that good stuff that gets the algorithm, pumps us up so more people outside of Germany can hear us and check it in. And shout out to those guys again as well. Whoever.

Darrell Myrick (55:24.813)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (55:25.14)
Hmm?

Kenny Bailey (55:39.796)
Hmm?

Darrell Myrick (55:41.92)
Hahaha

Kenny Bailey (55:45.672)
See you next time.

Darrell Myrick (55:47.214)
For the guys in Germany, I'm one quarter German. I did the genetic testing, so I am one quarter German. The beer drinking quarter.

Kenny Bailey (55:50.12)
Yeah, there you go.

Coach Tom (55:50.46)
Okay, there you go. Right? Even better. You'll love this episode. You want quarter German outstanding. Cool. yeah, everything is good. We appreciate you, Darryl Kenny. It's been fantastic. And for everybody will will catch you on the next show.

Kenny Bailey (55:55.39)
There you go.

Kenny Bailey (55:59.216)
Yeah.

Darrell Myrick (56:08.27)
Great.

Thank you guys so much.