Coach Tom (00:02.332)
Hey Kenny, how are you?

Kenny Bailey (00:04.128)
I am Fantastic Tom Harreau.

Coach Tom (00:06.052)
I'm fantastic as well. We're back after a brief hiatus of a few weeks. We've had this challenge this year of getting some consistent content out. And I've been crazy, you've been crazy, it's all true. But we still get everyone checking in and we appreciate all the little notes and the, keep up the good work. And when's the next episode coming out?

Kenny Bailey (00:11.182)
Yeah,

Kenny Bailey (00:17.187)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (00:27.502)
Yeah, absolutely.

Coach Tom (00:32.892)
So we're giving you a little touch here. We've got some other ones that I'm lining up. We'll have some stuff through the holidays. You'll have plenty to listen to while you're basking in family fun and trying to avoid people, trying to politics and religion conversations with family over Thanksgiving. There you go, right?

Kenny Bailey (00:46.786)
or trying to Christmas music. There go. You could just talk about, have you seen that podcast instead? So welcome to the innocuous. So there you go.

Coach Tom (00:57.37)
He goes, hey, guess what these guys are up to? So yeah, so subscribe, make sure you keep subscribing. Five stars thumbs up, give us some reviews, send us some notes. We I do appreciate hearing them. I don't always get to respond to everybody. There's a bunch of different ways you get a hold of us on Facebook, Instagram. I think on our on our website, you can through Buzzsprout, you can actually send us a text message as well. So send us some notes.

Kenny Bailey (01:23.096)
There you go.

Coach Tom (01:25.982)
And we'll try to respond to them and get some stuff up, give us some ideas of stuff you want to talk about. So let's get started. Kenny, we've got your steps away from high rocks. We talked about this a couple of episodes ago. How's it been going? What's happening?

Kenny Bailey (01:38.742)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (01:44.142)
It's been kind of unique experience. My wife started getting back to training. She was doing great and I was looking for the next sort of thing to do. And so we were going in as a mixed couple. She's signed up. We're going to be in Chicago on the 15th of November competing together. It's the first thing we've ever competed together with. We've been in the same race before, but we were never dependent on one another.

Coach Tom (02:04.382)
Nice.

Coach Tom (02:13.17)
Mm-hmm.

Kenny Bailey (02:13.933)
I did the California International Marathon with her, the sim. When I got done, I got done about 15 minutes ahead of her and I was a puddle. My calves are on fire. I could barely walk. She gets done and she's like, that's it. I miss it. So her approach to racing and my approach to racing are entirely different. So this should be an interesting one. But the training is really kind of, it's kind of interesting from a, from a endurance sports perspective. It's, it's basically akin to doing a brick.

Coach Tom (02:33.054)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (02:43.787)
which is basically you run and then you're gonna go, so imagine doing a brick except your bike portion of your brick is going to be an 8 % climb. That's kind of what it is. So for those who don't know, it's a series of eight exercises and around each exercise is a one kilometer run. So you start as a one kilometer run and then you go do kind of the skier where you just, it's a simulated ski.

ski, you go do a kilometer. The second one is you take a 335 pound sled and you push that for 15 meters or 50 meters. And then you do the sled pole. then so every time you do these things you do, so you do this big high intensity thing and then you go run a kilometer. So that's what makes it unique. Crossfit is usually just you big Olympic movements. So they say that people that burned out on Crossfit generally do high rocks and then burned out triathletes kind of do high rocks as well.

Coach Tom (03:32.168)
That's, yeah.

Coach Tom (03:41.246)
Triathletes who were being forced to do some strength training get excited and find their good at high rocks.

Kenny Bailey (03:42.482)
which, know, I, And so, yeah, so I, and learned that skipping leg day is a bad idea because it's all legs. So, you know, you're pushing a sled, you're pulling a sled, you're, it's all lower body. So we've been training, my wife and I've been training, we each have a, we each have a coach, a trainer. And this last Saturday was the first time we actually trained together, like how to do transitions and all that sort of stuff. So.

Coach Tom (03:54.142)
Yeah. Yeah, it's all low. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (04:08.89)
Ooh yeah, how'd that go?

Kenny Bailey (04:10.797)
But you know, well. think there's sort of strategy on this as a mixed pair because there's ways in which you hand off of a 45 pound sandbag.

Coach Tom (04:23.592)
So how does that work in the race when there's the two of you? You're not both doing every single effort, right? You're trading off strengths and weaknesses, maybe? Okay.

Kenny Bailey (04:31.336)
That's correct. So we, yeah, so for example, correct. Yeah, so we have to run together on the 1,000 kilometers. So you run 1,000 kilometers, or excuse me, 1,000 meters, a kilometer, 1K, sorry, that sounds really long, 1,000 kilometers. So seven and a half hours later, so we do a 1K run and then we both have to go into the station at the same time. And it's very formal. For example,

Coach Tom (04:46.14)
Yeah, has made it 1K. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a long.

Coach Tom (04:58.91)
Mm-hmm.

Kenny Bailey (05:00.685)
When we're doing the sled push, we have to do a 50 meter push or 40 meter, something like that. It's a 335 pound sled. It's not fun. And it gets buried into the carpet. And so you have, there's a technique to do it. But I push for a while until my quads kind of hurt. And then I stop. They don't, I could either do the whole thing by myself and she just follows me the whole time or vice versa. And so just, it has to get done.

Coach Tom (05:11.144)
Yeah, that's not.

Coach Tom (05:15.646)
There's a total technique on pushing. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (05:28.865)
but you have to stay within your little box. Like she can't touch the sled when I'm on the sled or vice versa, because when you do a sled pull, you're pulling with a rope. I can't touch that rope to get it out of her way. I can't help her in any way. So when you're on the apparatus, you are a solo bean, but we can switch off as much as we want. So for example, when we get to the thousand meter row,

Coach Tom (05:40.7)
huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (05:55.246)
I'm probably gonna do 250, get off, let her do 200, 250, so that way our heart rate stays down. So the whole point is keep that heart rate down, keep it steady.

Coach Tom (06:03.198)
So you don't want to redline this whole thing because you'll never finish. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (06:05.973)
No, or pick your red line, right, yeah. And then you have to do 100 wall balls is the last thing you have to do. So you have to just, you And again, she does really well on things that I don't do well. I tend to get injured when I do walking lunges. So she's taking over most of the walking lunges. I'm a little bit bigger than she is, so I'm gonna be pushing a heavy sled. I'll probably do a majority of that. And then we have a farmer's carry, which is a 52 pound.

Coach Tom (06:18.526)
Church is

Kenny Bailey (06:31.48)
kettlebells on either side and you can go as fast as humanly possible and I can walk really fast. So I'm probably just going to own that one. And so there's certain things we do trade-offs and you know when I get tired and the idea is that you don't want to blow up your legs or don't want to blow up so you go to the point where you can then hand it off to the next person. So there's a ton of strategy when it comes to that. So that's what makes it kind of fun. It's similar triathlon right? It's the same thing where you don't win it on a bike but you can certainly lose it on a bike right? You know how you go out on your swim.

Coach Tom (06:37.747)
There we go.

Coach Tom (06:51.07)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (06:58.829)
That kind of thing. Where you run, do weight and do negative splits or how you do that, how you hydrate. mean, the funny part about it, the whole thing, we estimate the whole thing's gonna be done in 90 minutes, which is kind of cracking me up. So I'm used to getting ready for a five to six hour or a 12 to 14 hour Ironman. And it's like 90 minutes later, I'm gonna be like, okay, well, where's the Chicago dog and a bag of ice to put on my hamstring. Yeah.

Coach Tom (07:20.412)
Yeah, it's a sprint. It's a sprint race. It's a sprint.

Kenny Bailey (07:25.581)
So it's fun. It's a unique experience for me because it allows me to do kind of heavy stuff. But at the same time, the irony is the one kilometer run is actually rest time. like heart rate goes down, you know, I'm able to just do a nice cruise. And then you go back and you start, you know, pushing a really heavy sled for a while and then your heart rate spikes and you get that done. So I'm doing my recovery is actually my run, which is weird because we're not, you know, again, we're, you know, we're not going for a podium.

Coach Tom (07:35.614)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (07:45.01)
Yeah, that's your recovery. Yeah. Okay. In between.

Kenny Bailey (07:55.202)
this is our first one, we know our age, you know. And by the way, she's younger than I am, so what they do is they take her age and my age, they put it together, you average it, and that's the age group that you're in. Because that was the first question I had. they also have women's weights and men's weight, but in the mix, you have to use the men's. So she's actually doing it heavier than what her peers would have done if she just did solo. So yeah, it's the thing, it's the same type of

Coach Tom (07:58.398)
Hahaha!

Coach Tom (08:06.718)
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause there's... You have a...

Coach Tom (08:16.51)
Yeah, that makes sense.

Coach Tom (08:20.99)
Good for her.

Kenny Bailey (08:26.423)
kind of workout type, right? It's five days a week kind of stuff. You do some running just to, cause you just need to have lungs and then you, you know, go do some heavy stuff and this is constant brick. So today was, you know, five, 800 meter runs with, you know, five of the eight stations that I did today as a, as sort of a readiness. You do, you do tests like once a month, you do a readiness test to find out where your time is and you know, where that's going and where your strength is at. So it's very similar.

Coach Tom (08:28.21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (08:40.286)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (08:46.664)
Nice.

Kenny Bailey (08:55.597)
But it'll be interesting either, you know, the joke is we're either going to be stronger for it or I'm going to have to go buy an apartment. So nothing in between. So.

Coach Tom (09:00.414)
Yeah, well, that's the question is, so how did the first training together go this weekend?

Kenny Bailey (09:07.883)
It went well. mean, I think we're a lot older, right? I think, you know, in the past I used to do road racing and, you know, you don't just want to beat somebody. You want to make sure you crush them. You want to make sure that, you know, that you're a trash kind of thing, right? I want you to regret that you even purchased a bike. You know, that's how bad I want to beat you. Where my wife is like, can we just have a good time? you know, so I think we're going to go back to that. So again, we go back to the, you know, know my age, just enjoy it have a good time. It'd be the first time, like I said, we do something together and I think it's going to be a...

Coach Tom (09:23.47)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (09:37.43)
I think it's gonna a lot of fun. There's no pressure. We're not putting any time. This is completely new, so I can't like, well, you know, I think I'm gonna get this kind of time. No, it's just let's just go figure this thing out. There's 20,000 people doing this thing. It's insanely big. And then like I said, you're in Chicago, so you either go get a Molinaris or a decent steak or a hot dog and call it a day. There you go.

Coach Tom (09:38.782)
It's cool.

Coach Tom (09:55.582)
crazy.

Coach Tom (10:01.694)
And call it a day. Yeah. Well, that'll be exciting. I can't wait to hear about how about that, it went. Cause that seems like it's an interesting sport that's been bouncing up, right? It's a, as you said before, like it's kind of taken over where CrossFit is kind of flat lined a little bit. Um, and a lot of people are kind of moving to this and it's amazing because anyone who did CrossFit hated running and that was just their weakest, their weakest thing was having to run on super tired legs. And then that's something that we've found.

Kenny Bailey (10:12.223)
It's a... Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (10:21.762)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (10:28.545)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (10:30.29)
works really well for us, right? How to have a bulletproof run in a triathlon or an ultra. How to make those legs strong and, and yeah, it's perfect.

Kenny Bailey (10:41.707)
The same applies to this. I've talked to two of the pros and first thing they had out their mouth is I said, do we need to do? He's like, run. Just get used to running because it's all going to be, you yeah. And the good news is I had that already to a certain extent. It wasn't good, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (10:49.214)
You have to build that aerobic base. So this is my segue into the, yeah, well you did. Well, it wasn't at your peak for sure, right? But you have that base, that kind of fitness that's part of endurance sports, that's part of triathlon. That's why I said it's a perfect segue into off-season type stuff. So high rocks is a good off-season because we want you

lifting weights, we want you building strength, but we also want you building that aerobic base. And for anyone who's new, or newer to the sport, or, you know, kind of just kind of getting their feet wet, for whatever reason is just getting in there. And it's like, you always say, well, I'm running and you know, my heart rate spikes, and it's, it's hard to go that slow. Well, ultimately, that's because you don't have aerobic, the aerobic base fitness. So what do have to do? have to

You have to slow down, you have to walk. So if you can't do a brisk walk, then you shouldn't be running, right? So we need to build that, if you really take the time and patience and take the steps to build that aerobic base that properly, wow, the sky's the limit. What you can do down the road, two years later, three years later, you can do all these fun sports. It's really something special, but most people don't have the patience to do that and they jump ahead and.

Kenny Bailey (12:04.993)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (12:17.07)
they're running those 1k runs where they're practically redlining. They're, you know, 20 beats per minute, you know, higher than it's supposed to be. And you're just jacking yourself, setting yourself up for inflammation and injury. So, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (12:19.597)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (12:31.851)
Yeah, I was thinking about this too, like post-Hirox, I have a friend of ours that's actually gonna be racing a 50 kilometer trail run. And that's always intriguing to me on the off season to go do trail running because of two things. One, well three things. You put your watch away because normally what you do on a road run is you're like, if I'm not doing this particular pace, I'm somehow, right? You can't do that on a trail run, you just can't. Well, you can, but you have to be really good. I don't think people are that good at it. The second thing is,

Coach Tom (12:57.35)
No, most people aren't that good.

Kenny Bailey (13:01.417)
It relies you to pick up your feet. And yes, by the way, you're gonna force to walk. You're not gonna be running those steeper hills to able to do that. So that idea of just getting out there, turning your watch off, because it doesn't matter anyway, it just matters on a total time. And then having to just go side to side and be able to use those muscles and be able to do something besides just that straight ahead thing is a great off season to do. And you're out in the woods, there's nothing wrong with that.

Coach Tom (13:08.594)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (13:26.898)
Yeah, it breaks it. It breaks it up. have, I always encourage my athletes to go out and do some trail running for those specific things to build strength. It's in nature. It's a little bit more exciting. It mixes up your, your footfall and your stride. I talk with some of my, some of my in-laws like to, like to do board games and puzzles and things like that to keep their mind sharp. Like we're all getting older and we want to do things cerebral.

Kenny Bailey (13:34.497)
Mm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Coach Tom (13:55.102)
I'm not that interested in those things. I tell them my thing is I like to run downhill really fast because I have to look and I have to know exactly where that foot is gonna step and then I have to spring off and put the next one down. And that's what I find exciting about it, right? That keeps my mind sharp because it's running downhill super fast. Yeah, that's where you gotta pick your feet up real quick and you gotta place them in the right spot. And if you misplace, you have to be able to shift your weight really quickly.

Kenny Bailey (14:01.741)
You

Yep.

Kenny Bailey (14:11.521)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (14:24.674)
Yes.

Coach Tom (14:25.2)
Otherwise you're going down, you're tearing things and it's ugly. So and no one wants to do that.

Kenny Bailey (14:28.097)
Yeah, yeah, and well, I think also off season to me, it's sort of early off season in the winter, like early, you know, the late in the embers, you know, October, December, November, just, you know, just go, you know, you're gonna kind of slow down anyway, you're gonna have to go to, you know, Thanksgiving events and Christmas events. So first off, just give yourself a little bit break, kind of, you know, enjoy the family time. They've been putting up with you. So it's time to.

Coach Tom (14:35.772)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's good.

Coach Tom (14:54.524)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (14:55.851)
It's time to return the favor and just kind of do those kind of fun exercises or go with your spouse or your significant other and do a nice, you know, go walk the dogs. Just do something that's active, but it doesn't have to be, you know, strapped to a watch to figure out what's going on. And then, yeah, then early on you can start doing the, you know, those base build kind of runs where you don't go above 145 and, you know, that kind of thing. But yeah, take the numbers to kind of, you know, remind yourself why, you know.

Coach Tom (15:10.76)
Yeah, definitely unstructured. Definitely unstructured.

Kenny Bailey (15:25.325)
To me it's it's again you spent most of the year, know training and giving up Saturdays and Sundays to do silly things and you know So letting letting those significant others see you Or yeah, yeah Yeah

Coach Tom (15:25.8)
Shake it up. Yeah.

Coach Tom (15:35.454)
Yeah, actually go out and spend some time with them, right? Actually take walks with them, do some runs with them, do some hiking. Hiking is great. Power hiking. I call it power hiking, but it's just hiking as anything. That's a kind of a pill. You're taking some of the trails. Once again, you don't have to be tearing through them, but you, you keep moving on it and keep your body moving. Keep it active. Watch the calorie intake that don't overdo it. I mean, you can put on

Kenny Bailey (15:42.807)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (16:03.068)
Like you put on a little bit of weight, you don't have to stay super lean and trim. you know, fight that on the off season, let your body relax a little bit. don't go crazy and add 20 pounds on. Like I know some people that have done like that's unhealthy. but there should be a little bit of a, a little bit of a flow and, and certainly not, not structured. And then, you know, so you've got, you take four, four to six weeks where you're just non-structured, just doing some fun moving.

Kenny Bailey (16:12.525)
Mm-hmm.

Kenny Bailey (16:19.073)
No. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (16:32.013)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Coach Tom (16:33.118)
And then start building on what you want to build for next year. Where does it, where the weaknesses, strength, strength is always something you should work on. And then, you know, is it in the pool? I'm going to work on specific things. And then you start doing a little bit more structured, but more focused on form for the swim, the bike, the run, whatever it is. Yeah. Mechanics, fundamentals, get back to the fundamentals. That's the most, the most key thing is just consistent fundamentals. And then that, that's your, that's your basis for the whole next season.

Kenny Bailey (16:48.481)
Yeah, mechanics, that kind of thing.

Coach Tom (17:02.502)
So you're jumping off. You've probably already planned out. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (17:03.253)
Yeah, I mean it reminds me of like, it reminds me of Tom Brady. I the guy won five Super Bowls at the time and in the offseason he goes to Northern California and still works on footwork. The guy's got five Super Bowls. He's, you know, first bat at Hall of Fame. He's like one of the most decorated quarterbacks out there and he's still working on fundamental footwork in the offseason because he knows that those things is what continues to get him there. And that to me is like, that was always an inspiring thing. It's like, what are you doing? Going back to my old high school coach and working on footwork.

Coach Tom (17:21.256)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (17:33.33)
Yeah, and it's the most basic stuff. Watch the players, especially the good players, but watch all the players like pregame stuff if you're watching an NFL game or something like that. And you'll see them over there and they're doing these little silly, what look like little silly drills, step, step, whatever. they've got, even the linemen have drills and things that they do. They have techniques, they have a five-hand technique and a four-hand technique and things. And it's just a pattern and they just run it.

Kenny Bailey (17:33.485)
It's like, you know. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (17:41.442)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (17:48.779)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (17:57.752)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (18:01.474)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (18:01.69)
over and over because it needs to be second nature. No one rises to the occasion. You fall back to your training. So if your training is sloppy and your fundamentals are sloppy, when you get to the race, you're just going to revert to your fundamentals, which are terrible, right? So if you actually work on those fundamentals, then you don't have to think about them, right? But in the beginning, they're really boring, especially swimming. I know people hate it.

Kenny Bailey (18:04.001)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (18:09.837)
That's a great idea. It's a good one. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (18:18.999)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (18:24.797)
100%. Yeah. And it's, oh yeah.

Coach Tom (18:28.86)
But look at Katie Ledecky is working and she gets faster and faster. All of them get faster and faster because they're working on like their pinky is up just a fraction, right? And there's a thousandth of a second and they're working on that. The rest of us have our head out of the water and we're sinking and we've got a lot more obvious stuff to work on, but it's just focusing on one or two things and just really, you know, hammering it home, the fundamentals, fundamentals, so.

Kenny Bailey (18:40.897)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (18:51.585)
Yep, that's a good point. Yeah, that's a really good point. So switching gears slightly, I understand that you were out at Gravel Revival, were you not?

Coach Tom (18:59.486)
Oh, Gravel Revival. Yeah, because I had had Shannon Burke on here and we were talking about Gravel Revival meeting up. We got to see him again there, which was great. So Gravel Revival is a great race. It's put on out here in Hickman County, Tennessee, out near Centerville. And they've got 10. think there's an 11 mile 30, 40, 60, 100, like every distance you want.

We're camping out. You can stay overnight and camp out. You can bring RVs if you want, but it was a, it's an amazing event. I think they had somewhere around 500 riders. They've also added in some trail running as well. So we've got a few, handful of trail runners that were doing different distances that were out there. So if your spouse was riding a bike and you wanted to run, great, you know, that way it made it more of a family, family thing. It was.

Kenny Bailey (19:33.325)
That's awesome.

Kenny Bailey (19:40.097)
Neat.

Coach Tom (19:56.378)
It was perfect. We had good weather right up till Saturday night. So the event, you get there Friday, there's a ShakeOut ride Friday, then there's a Starlight ride where they actually ride out, turn all their lights off. And you can see the stars. It's like, it's so pitch black out there. It's amazing. And then they put their lights on and come back. It's just like two miles or something like that. It's just kind of a fun thing. And then Saturday is the big event. They've got bands playing Friday night, Saturday night.

Kenny Bailey (20:11.405)
Cool.

Kenny Bailey (20:18.349)
Okay.

Coach Tom (20:25.022)
And then Sunday is a 20 mile ride to I think it's 20 mile total. It's like 10 miles to a winery for lunch and back and everyone parks and goes home. So we had a storm roll through on Saturday night and they didn't do the Sunday. The Sunday winery ride didn't happen because it it there was some heavy thunder big storms that roll through here in Middle Tennessee and we.

Kenny Bailey (20:33.549)
Neat.

Kenny Bailey (20:42.475)
Okay.

Coach Tom (20:54.206)
I was there with I brought Wendy came with me this time and we had of course Rosie with us so we packed up and actually left on Saturday night because the weather did not look favorable for us to be in a tent. So

Kenny Bailey (21:05.517)
With a storm. Yeah, Tennessee storms. I mean they they're fierce when they come in so Yeah

Coach Tom (21:09.052)
Yeah, Tennessee stars can can get nasty this time of year and and certainly in the spring they're even worse. They can be worse. So we ended up bailing out because Sunday morning is not much we were going to just pack up and go for me anyway because I've set up as a vendor. I did ride the 11 mile on a mountain bike and had a blast. Definitely definitely checked my it's it's kind of indication to go like

You're watching the calculations that you do tell you what your max heart rate is. And as we get older, it tells you a much lower number than you would want. Like that's my ego, right? So, and when you do the calculations, your age minus whatever, this is what your max heart rate should be. Like I'm a good, almost 15 beats per minute over that.

Kenny Bailey (21:45.623)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (21:59.33)
That's awesome.

Coach Tom (21:59.482)
and I was able to test that out because it was about, it was 11 miles and about 900, just over 900 feet of climbing. So there was two relatively big climbs. and we went out and had fun. went out towards the back and actually just kind of was passing people on and having fun and blasting up this thing. And I redlined up the big long climb, the big long climb. I totally read climbs, redlined and hit. yeah, I maxed, I maxed out. was pretty.

Kenny Bailey (22:19.223)
Yeah

Kenny Bailey (22:30.029)
That's funny.

Coach Tom (22:30.312)
pretty shagged after the, at the end of this thing for 11 miles. It was a blast. It was a blast. The roads were, I did, did, did come in third overall on that one, which was kind of fun. They don't have that one technically as a race, so they don't give anything out for that one. But we were, we came in, I came across and it was nobody else around and they said, you're third. I'm like, third what? Like third, they're like third overall. I'm like, I left at the back of the group.

Kenny Bailey (22:33.431)
But I mean...

I remember has he got on a podium for that one too. Did you? Well, look at you.

That's funny.

Kenny Bailey (22:53.14)
Kenny Bailey (22:57.549)
F.

Coach Tom (22:58.29)
And there were riders all over the place doing different different mileage is and things. So we were in just like, just followed the route and hammered it and didn't didn't I stopped once there's a great photo shot spot a spot that they do with a pew a church pew up on the top of the big climb. And they were handing out the athletic brewing was handing out beers at the top, which is great. So I got a great photo of me lounging on the on the top of the big climb, which are

Kenny Bailey (23:01.057)
That's funny.

Kenny Bailey (23:05.709)
That's funny.

Kenny Bailey (23:23.533)
That's awesome.

So I think.

Coach Tom (23:27.504)
It was pretty epic. It was pretty epic.

Kenny Bailey (23:29.997)
I think when you look at, and maybe that's the misnomer on my part, when you look at the website and you look at it, it can be kind of intimidating. It's not a bunch of 140 pound gravel pro racers out there doing that. It's... Yeah. Okay.

Coach Tom (23:44.166)
No, no, there's no pros there. There's some fast guys, but it's a, it's a family friend. I mean, there's rest areas out there. Like the idea is that you do the distance, right? You choose the distance and you go, we were cruising along, just chit chatting with people. couple of people got lost. missed a turn for their, their ride and ended up jumping on another one. It is a timed event. So there is a timing chip and there is, you know, as a race, but there's

Kenny Bailey (23:54.839)
Got it.

Kenny Bailey (23:59.363)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (24:07.437)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Coach Tom (24:12.828)
you know, you're always going to have some people that are going to cruise off the front. The rest of everybody that went there was a there was a there was a good group from the Beat Triclub over here who I think it was their first time on gravel. I'll just say I'll just say because I hope they're I hope they're listening. It was it was cute to hear them say, like, we'll be done in an hour. It's 11 miles. It's just like we'll be you know, and I went

Kenny Bailey (24:13.805)
If you want to race it, you do. If you don't, you don't, right? Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (24:22.541)
Mm-hmm.

Kenny Bailey (24:26.965)
Yeah... Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (24:38.399)
yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Coach Tom (24:41.436)
Really? And you've never ridden gravel before and you're on a mountain bike? Okay. Let's see what happens. Yeah, it took them a little longer than that. They were like, by the way, it's not flat.

Kenny Bailey (24:46.801)
Have fun. It's funny. Well, it sounds like it's more like a half marathon or a marathon thing, right? It's like some people are going to be up front and let them go up front, right? Let those people that are kind of, you know, let them go and then you can just go, you know.

Coach Tom (24:57.33)
Yeah, let them go. There's some really talented riders and they like, they're amazing to watch. then, everybody goes off. Most people in the longer distances have their little hydration pack and they've got their bikes all set up. Like it's a mix of gravel and mountain bikes. It's just whatever you need. You just need knobby your tires. You just can't do it on a straight road bike. It's a little too sketchy.

Kenny Bailey (25:06.657)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (25:11.393)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (25:16.375)
Yeah. There you go.

Coach Tom (25:26.494)
And if you haven't spent time on gravel, the only thing that like, this is not mountain bike ish, right? So there's some potholes here and there that you have to keep an eye out for and it's fall, right? So the leaves are falling down while we're riding and they cover the little hole. So every once in a while you got to get used to, know, getting, getting a little slam with the front, the front end, like you had a pothole. So you got to be a little careful of that. You've got to pay attention where you're going. But the biggest thing is coming around corners.

Kenny Bailey (25:33.687)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (25:37.569)
Hmm, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (25:43.201)
Yeah, a little bit of a, yeah.

Yeah.

Coach Tom (25:55.738)
in loose granular dirt and and gravel and sand, the bikes don't grip, the tires don't grip. So you can't just hook the corner, lean in and go right and certainly not pedal through it. So you have to, you know, kind of manage a wider turn on some of these. And I think it's probably the dissents that probably got more people, you know, kind of getting a little squirrely and you see a couple people come back a little scraped up knees and little stuff like that. But for the most part,

Kenny Bailey (25:58.37)
Yep.

Kenny Bailey (26:02.413)
Thank

Yeah.

Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (26:11.649)
Yep.

Coach Tom (26:23.464)
That's all it is. mean, you're just going out there and you're just keeping an eye out and just weaving around for potholes and you know, other stuff that's out there. This is Hickman County is great for this because they've got a lot of gravel roads. And this is their regular roads. You're out there and there were cars on them. Like there's, you know, people farms and other stuff. it's like, you had to pay attention. You had to respect the road. You couldn't just ride, you know, six wide on certain sections. You had to pay attention because it was coming up on a corner and there could be.

Kenny Bailey (26:25.42)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (26:33.826)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (26:39.291)
that's crazy. That's gas, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (26:46.221)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (26:52.178)
you know, a farm vehicle around the, around the side or something. So, with that many people out there, it's yeah, you need to pay attention. You need to stay focused on it, but it's, anybody can do it. I hope those guys come back and want to do it again. So.

Kenny Bailey (27:04.119)
Yeah, and that's what's kinda neat. Yeah, and I think you just gotta, like you said the first couple times, your bike gets loose around a corner, right? You pucker, but it holds, right? You just gotta kinda get used to that, like, cause when you're on a tri-bike or a road bike, nothing gets loose, right? You're stuck, it's almost like NASCAR, right? Where this thing is like, you're gonna do a little spin, and you're gonna be like, okay, as long as you don't freak out, right? Yeah, you're gonna drift a little bit, they don't drift, yeah. This is gonna be a little looser, yeah, yeah. yeah, now keeps.

Coach Tom (27:13.298)
Yep. Yeah.

Coach Tom (27:20.114)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, you're gonna drift. You're gonna drift the back end a little bit. You're gonna drift the front end a little bit. You're just kind of gonna go around it. So the wider the tire you have, the better the grip. And then that sets you up for what kind of tire tread. So people talk about the knobbies versus they get a gravel bike and they get more of a road surface on it. That's great. Not the greatest thing for gravel, right? Better for road. So you're not trying to grip and it's the outer side of the of the tire itself that gives you the grip.

Kenny Bailey (27:33.665)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (27:41.665)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (27:47.489)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (27:52.437)
Mmm. That's where you're leaning. Yeah.

Coach Tom (27:53.66)
Right? So as you lean the corner in, if it's got a little bit more knobbies on the outside, it's going to grip a little bit better for you. So that's what you set it up for. This is not super technical. Actually, it's not technical at all. Mountain biking type stuff. So I've got a mountain bike with a 29er with a two and three quarter inch or two and two point three inch wide tires. And and it just it goes fine. Like it just it just soared through it. So.

Kenny Bailey (27:57.922)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (28:21.982)
I was able to grab, I was able to go. So that was good. It fun.

Kenny Bailey (28:23.659)
Well, it sounds like, it just sounds like, jealous. I want to go do this again. I think next year I'll put it on the calendar.

Coach Tom (28:30.174)
Well, you got to do it next year for sure. I'll probably be out there again. I have no reason not to. It's on my calendar. Once they set the date, it's in October. You can get an RV. It was great because we just showed up. I set up the vendor. I set up the vendor tent. I've got my sleeping tent right next to it and the car is right there, right? So we just set everything up, get my little stuff up that I have and then just sit down and relax. And Wendy's like,

Kenny Bailey (28:35.831)
Grab.

Do I have to be in a tent though? just, I'm old. Can I, can I get a... Okay. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (28:50.914)
Jeff.

Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (28:57.409)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (29:00.414)
This is it. This is it. We get to chill. I didn't do the ShakeOut ride, which I probably should have done, but I need to be there because I'm, you know, I'm selling stuff. So I'm there for conversation and chit chatting and everything like that. And then that's where I go off for the shorter ride in the morning. But they had a solo acoustic guitar singer on Friday night that was, he covered every genre.

Kenny Bailey (29:00.939)
Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, you're ending now, yeah, man's working, so yeah.

Kenny Bailey (29:25.666)
That's awesome.

Coach Tom (29:29.702)
and sounded fabulous. He was fantastic. The band that was playing on Saturday night was fantastic. They do a big bonfire Saturday night. And it's just, it's just chill and hang out. And it's all a bunch of vendors there from, you know, Wahoo and Specialized and a couple of the bike shops and Moab sponsors it and puts it on. You've got REI, you've got Shannon was there from Tennessee Gravel.

Kenny Bailey (29:29.954)
That's awesome.

Kenny Bailey (29:36.503)
That's great.

Coach Tom (29:58.13)
Bike Tennessee was there. There's a few other things. Bike Walk Franklin, I think, was there. He was there. Konamichi. There's a whole little area you can just chit chat and hang out with people. then it's just like, everyone's just hanging out. It's such a great festival.

Kenny Bailey (30:00.236)
Neat.

Kenny Bailey (30:05.704)
no kidding.

Kenny Bailey (30:14.445)
Yeah, it's such a nice community. mean, people are just kind of there to, like you said, it's super chill and have a good time, get a good write in, know, tell stories over the fire, kind of thing.

Coach Tom (30:19.73)
Yeah. Yep.

I got I got beers flowing. They've got food trucks. got food trucks that you can get. Hattie B's was there. Shout out to Hattie B's because that was good stuff and a bunch of other stuff. right after Hattie, Hattie B, Hattie B's and a beer afterwards. Yeah, no, definitely not. Although they were there. They were there Friday night. They had the mild chicken, chicken strips. But exactly.

Kenny Bailey (30:27.969)
Burt.

Kenny Bailey (30:34.477)
That's what you need right before you ride is super hot chicken. Yeah, I was gonna say you don't do that before. You know I had had to be the night before. Yeah, not the night before. Yeah. Yeah. That's gonna say. Only the crazy ones would do that. So we're like...

Coach Tom (30:52.804)
Exactly. But that was fantastic. That was a really good event. And I have to have to do another shout out to Shannon Burke at Tennessee gravel because this is there's a bunch of events coming up that he puts on that are fantastic. Plus, also touch base with the fact that he's doing the he's doing the rides and curating there's 52 of them right now around Tennessee.

not gravel rides, road rides around Tennessee that he's curated for Bike Tennessee, which is part of the Visit Tennessee tourism thing. So he's actually working with them and it's fantastic. And they're trying to do a rail to, what is it? A rail to trail course out near Jamestown, out through that, I can't remember the county that's out there. They're trying to do that because the...

Kenny Bailey (31:20.78)
Really?

Kenny Bailey (31:28.258)
That's great.

Kenny Bailey (31:36.716)
Yeah

Kenny Bailey (31:43.063)
I love that notion of it, right? It's just convert it to a trail and then give it access.

Coach Tom (31:44.878)
It's, fantastic. It makes it nice and easy because you know, it's, it's going to be flat, right? Because the railroads didn't do well going up steep hills. So it's going to be there. If they can actually get this all pulled together, they'll have a nice, I think she said it was going to be 42 miles one way of, of just like Greenway just to go ride. so there's a lot of good stuff going on like that. I'm trying to get her on the, on the podcast. We'll have her to talk about.

Kenny Bailey (31:49.771)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (32:00.981)
Wow, that'd be fantastic.

Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (32:12.333)
That'd be great.

Coach Tom (32:13.308)
some of the stuff they're doing with that so she can give us some more information on that. But really good stuff happening in the world of of riding here in Tennessee and around. So it's good stuff. Yeah, we've got that. So and then and then we're we'll get through to next year and figure out we'll do a wrap up. We'll do a wrap up show for the year and then we'll do an upcoming. And I'm about to scoot out to to see Correll. Our favorite nutritionist, Correll Laurent.

Kenny Bailey (32:17.431)
Cool.

Kenny Bailey (32:22.295)
Yeah, good. Should be exciting. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (32:35.725)
There you go.

Coach Tom (32:43.166)
who does her bike retreats out in Portugal. So I'm about to get on a plane and go do the retreat. So we're, taking off to do that. Really excited to spend about nine or 10 days in Portugal riding bikes. So yeah, that's our definitely. It'll be good. Not, not with Carell's, we're going to eat very well, but we're not going to eat

Kenny Bailey (32:51.095)
How exciting. So. So.

Kenny Bailey (33:01.069)
Yeah, we'll have to talk about that when you get back on the next episode. Just how is Portugal? You're probably going to gain weight. It sounds like you ride for a while, you eat a lot, you ride for a while. There you go. Yeah, dude.

Coach Tom (33:13.266)
bad. and we're going to be riding every day. So we're going to ride to cafes for lunch and we'll do exactly what I want to do, which would be a nice, a nice break for the way this year is shake, shaken out. So, it's all good. So cool. So thanks everybody for listening can continuing to listen and make sure you subscribe.

Kenny Bailey (33:18.675)
lean and mean so sounds glorious yeah

Sounds good.

Coach Tom (33:38.618)
As I said before, let us know your feedback. Give us five stars, thumbs up, share this with everybody you know. I know there's a lot of people I talked to at Grav Revival that were scanning the code. So hopefully they're popping in and listening. Keep it up. We appreciate you all. Yeah, that's it. Thanks Kenny. And until next time, we'll catch you then.

Kenny Bailey (33:52.546)
Hi guys.

Kenny Bailey (33:59.969)
Thanks, Tom.