Coach Tom (00:02.028)
Hey Kenny, how you doing?

Kenny Bailey (00:03.722)
I am Fantastic Tom, how are you?

Coach Tom (00:05.92)
I'm fantastic as well. We're back here. Can you believe it's the end of 2025 already? I mean, this has been an incredible, crazy year. Haven't got out quite the content that I really was hoping that we would do, but that's just life in general. So thanks everybody for sticking around and listening. We'll probably get one more wrap up for the year show in. And then we've got some cool stuff set up, getting scheduled people.

Kenny Bailey (00:12.64)
Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it?

Coach Tom (00:34.91)
scheduling people. Yeah, I'm of hurting cats trying to get schedules set up for the new year for some new fun stuff. It does. It's doing this. So it's a so it's all good. So everybody, if you haven't subscribed, please subscribe so that when the new stuff shows up, it'll pop up and let you know and then give us some some feedback. Keep the feedback coming. Five stars, thumbs up, all that stuff. That algorithm is crazy. And the more little like thumbs that we get and

Kenny Bailey (00:37.612)
Sure. There's a people on their schedule involved. We'll try and get those together. Let's connect those two.

Coach Tom (01:04.472)
positive reviews or any reviews pretty much at that point will boost us in the algorithm and it'll get out a little bit further. So we appreciate all the love and support. Thank you so much. This is our fifth year of doing this. Yeah, I know, right? Fifth season. I know. So much has happened from the first show to the last show.

Kenny Bailey (01:15.926)
Yeah, if you want more guests on, if you want content, fifth year, no kidding. We were just young then, weren't we? We were puppies.

Kenny Bailey (01:26.537)
old salty dogs now.

Coach Tom (01:28.108)
Yeah, so this one we're going to talk a little bit about some off season training tips because the weather has changed. It's getting cold. It's getting crazy. So we're to touch a little bit on that. I also want to go over the best way to set up your bike on an indoor trainer because there's a couple of things that people miss completely. So we'll go over some of that. But first, we got to catch up. Last time we chatted, you were getting ready to do high rocks with your wife and like, how did it go? Let's hear.

Kenny Bailey (01:31.884)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (01:41.879)
Nice.

Coach Tom (01:58.454)
here. You're still alive.

Kenny Bailey (01:58.624)
Well, yeah, it was, yeah. So the crazy thing is the way High Rocks works is they don't tell you up until three days before the event when your time's gonna start. We knew it was gonna be Saturday based off we were a mixed couple, but we didn't know what time Saturday. When we got the email, it said you're going at 8.20 p.m. And I'm like, wait, what? Wait, what?

Coach Tom (02:12.332)
Awesome.

Coach Tom (02:25.954)
Ha ha ha!

Kenny Bailey (02:27.553)
820 p.m. Like do you know how old we are? We're in the 50 category. I'm brushing my teeth at 820. And we're in Chicago, which means we flew in Friday, got there Friday night. Saturday you don't get to do anything. Like you don't want to walk. It's like when getting ready for a, we did a Disneyland, you know, half marathon and you can't do anything. Like you don't go to Disneyland the day before your half marathon because people walk six miles and you screw up. So we sat in the hotel.

Coach Tom (02:31.507)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (02:56.029)
in Conita, Chicago, dog. Our flight was Sunday morning. So basically it was all high rocks. That was it. And we went to the venue early. So it's a little less than it was like 0.8 miles from our hotel. And so we thought we'd walk there. That's our only walking we did. Check the venue out and just kind of see what's going on, which is good because that gave us a chance to be more confident when we got in. So we weren't like looking all over the place. The event was fun. The good news is our trainers set us up for success.

Coach Tom (02:59.598)
Ha ha ha.

my God.

Coach Tom (03:11.576)
Good one.

Kenny Bailey (03:25.249)
There was no surprises. For people to remind people about high rocks, you run a kilometer and then you do some sort of hit thing like a sled push or sled pull or carry a 40 pound rucksack on, know, a sack of sandbag while you're doing walking lunges, all that sort of stuff. And it's the first time my wife and I ever did anything together as a team. We would run, we did, we both did the California International Marathon.

Coach Tom (03:25.934)
Nice.

Kenny Bailey (03:52.726)
But we took off at roughly the same time and then I waved at her and then I took off and she came. So we never really had to rely on each other. And it was a fun event. She's been doing a lot of training, getting really beefy, getting a lot of strength training. The funny part about it is the biggest lesson we learned is everyone told us when we first started, run, just run, go run. It's eight kilometers, that'll decide it, just run. I'm like, cool.

Coach Tom (04:01.474)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (04:21.609)
Forgot that the whole training time, right? We were so worried about the sled. It's 335 pounds. We're so worried about, you know, walking lunges with a 40 pound bag. It's a 35 kilogram kettlebell, which is 52 pounds. So it's 104 pounds. You're having to walk for 60 meters. So we were just all worried about the strength effort. And I look at my wife.

Coach Tom (04:23.51)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (04:43.195)
And I'm like, hey, just, get, know, we never ran together the whole time. We, we trained a couple of times together, you know, for hand up. never ran together. So what's your pace? She was like, I don't know. I haven't run since September. I'm like, wait, what? And so it was like September. Like she, yeah, I haven't run since September. I was all worried about that. So we were like, okay, I guess, but we're, but you know, we're a couple of long distance runners. So, we got started and we just did our pace, what we wanted to. It was a nice healthy pace, kept the heart rate down. everything was predictable. My biggest concern was the sled push and I absolutely killed it.

It was like we did the practice beforehand to make sure that I understand that you know how to push it without Kind of getting it, know lifting it up to drag it into the thing and I'm all ready to go and I'm like surely that the The practice one isn't the same as a real one. It's got to be heavier and I guess I was so freaking Paranoid about this that I just grabbed the thing. I just pushed it as hard as I could I ended up like running with the thing So that was a great that was a great surprise

All the other stuff I knew was gonna be hard. If you ever tried to do broad jump burpees, I mean, I don't like burpees to begin with. It's a lot of weight coming down to the floor, coming back up. So broad jump burpees, and then you have to do a broad jump. So you do that for 40 meters and it was not fun. And then my hamstring is kind of.

Coach Tom (05:49.278)
Ugh.

Okay.

Coach Tom (05:57.865)
my God.

Kenny Bailey (06:00.865)
was trying to tweak on me. So Lori did the walking lunges, majority of it. I did a majority of the heavy stuff. She did a majority of the stuff and then we did it equally. It was a lot of fun. we, unfortunately she tweaked her back on the last part. So we had to walk the last two or three kilometers, which wasn't fun, but we had no time set. This is the first time where, when you do an Ironman, you're like, whatever time it is, as long as it's 12 hours, right? You just, yeah, I just want to finish as long as it's 12 hours, right?

Coach Tom (06:10.894)
Nice.

Coach Tom (06:26.37)
just want to finish. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (06:29.697)
And so 90 minutes for high rocks is sort of the 12 hour mark for Ironman. It's sort of like, if you get under 12, it's fantastic. Get under 90, great. You get over 90, it's whatever. We ended up getting an hour and 49 minutes. We were on pace to do like an hour and 30, about 95 minutes. But when she tweaked her back, I'm like, look, we're here for fun. No sponsors are going to be removed. We didn't, we weren't there. We had some people from some colleagues of ours that were racing, but they're

Coach Tom (06:51.773)
Yeah, you're not gonna...

Kenny Bailey (06:58.881)
30 years younger than me, I'm not gonna keep up with those guys, nor did I want to. It was just a fun time. We left and we thought of the 14 things we could have done better, like run, for example. Yeah.

Coach Tom (07:04.288)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (07:09.25)
Yeah, that's the first thing that happens. You finish the race and you just go like, okay, I could have done this. I could have done that. Once you, once you learn, it's better.

Kenny Bailey (07:15.329)
Yeah. Yeah. And so we get back to the hotel at 11. She pops three-eyed bill, lays on the ground because she tweaked her pack. And we sat there and we're like, well, there's nothing to eat. It's after 11, we both stink and there's not, we're not going to go, you know, there's an Irish pub, but I'm not going to be, you know, so we ended up getting up like bright and early and ordered room service and ate like 17 eggs and pancakes and everything. overall, think if,

Coach Tom (07:29.934)
Ha

Kenny Bailey (07:41.182)
If you're a triathlete that's looking to do something, if you're trying to do some weight on, if you're lifting and you want to challenge yourself on that part, you're absolutely as a triathlete, your advantage is a run, which I should have done a better job on. The lifting isn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. Anybody can really do these weights. It's just, do you do it in four minutes or you do it in four and a half minutes? And I think the part that we focused on is because of the unknown,

you gain more time if you just run a little bit faster than you do. I could push that sled for three months and make up maybe 25 seconds, but if I just run more efficiently, I can make up three minutes. So it was just because we were so afraid of the weight part, I don't know why, but our trainer set it up. There was no surprises. We knew exactly what the events were gonna be. We knew exactly how we were gonna do. was just a matter of, and it was fun because we got to trade off. So if my heart rate spiked,

Coach Tom (08:24.77)
Yeah, make up way more time on that.

Coach Tom (08:34.659)
Yeah, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (08:40.907)
She stepped in, did her thing. She was doing horrible on the wall balls.

Coach Tom (08:43.95)
So the goal is to keep the heart rate at a certain level, right? Yeah. So I'm thinking of this as a like, cause in the off season training, this is the best time to do some heavy lifting and some weights and some stuff. But I think a lot of athletes have an issue with like, they're not training for anything.

Kenny Bailey (08:48.053)
Just like everything else. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (09:00.214)
Yep.

Coach Tom (09:09.696)
And it's hard to stay focused and they don't like lifting weights. So maybe, I mean, would you recommend this as a, Hey, do one of the high rocks things as you're, I'd say off season, but kind of as a strength training kind of thing, that's your motivation to pin something on a calendar to do one of the high rocks events.

Kenny Bailey (09:11.488)
Yep.

Kenny Bailey (09:27.391)
Yeah, think the challenge with that is like the next one's the end of January in Phoenix. And then they're global. So if you want to go to Spain, you want to go to Portugal, you want to go to China, know, spring, spring, in Spain. Yeah, so I think it's for me, it was I needed something. Yeah, I needed I like right now I don't have a goal and it it's bugging me. Right. It's that off season. I have nothing to train for.

Coach Tom (09:36.707)
Yeah.

springtime in Spain.

Coach Tom (09:54.702)
Well, it's hard to stay focused on it. Why are you training if you don't have a goal? Some people really need the goal to get them kind of going. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (09:56.874)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm one of those people. So I think November for me, having a high rocks in November kept me honest, kept me showing up. I ran, you so I was doing one K intervals between my training sessions and then, so it was fun. But yeah, it's just like any other, it's like an Ironman. You just break it down, right? You don't think of the whole thing. You think of, okay, I've got a thousand.

meter skier I gotta do in front of me. I'm gonna do 250, I'm gonna switch it off, we keep that heart rate steady. Same thing on anything, you'd wanna keep it in zone two, zone three. It's a 90 minute effort, so think of it as an Olympic distance probably. So whatever you kind of, what level of zone you wanna do for an Olympic distance triathlon, would be the same thing for here. But it's short burst effort for four minutes, you're panting like a dog, but you just start running and your heart rate goes down and then.

If you do a slower run on the way out, you kind of get that heart rate back and check and then you start up again. It's like a brick. So if you've ever done brick training where you run and then get on a bike and run to get on a bike, that's basically what you're doing. Just imagine your bike being 10 % grade every time you get up. And that's kind of what's going on.

Coach Tom (10:59.822)
Yeah, you manage it. You manage it through that. Yeah.

Coach Tom (11:05.88)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (11:10.842)
Every time you get one of my favorite brick workouts to throw at people is to do that where you're biking and then running and then biking and running and biking. You just keep going back and forth and killing yourself. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (11:18.655)
Yep. That's all Hirox says. Yep. yeah. So I think, you know, I have some triathletes that I know that are kind of looking for something different. They've been doing some lifting and they want to, they want to, you know, give it a try. think it, there's no time limit. So it's not as if you, if you don't get it under a certain time, they pack up and go. You, I saw, what's fun is, you know, I, the guy in our heat was, you know, the dude that looks like he's, you know, frowning. has a

know, ripped up abs, he's shirtless, he's got his, know, he's, errr, him and his wife, errr, you know, like, cool man, go for it. Right, we're just kind of chill, and then you see people that are on a weight loss journey, and they're not small people, and they're walking, and that's okay, but they're trying just as hard as this guy. It's just, their time's gonna be different, and hooray for both of them, right? You know, I'm really glad. So you can do this and not be...

Coach Tom (11:52.792)
There we go.

Coach Tom (12:01.816)
That's awesome. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (12:13.569)
You don't have to be that poster. You can do it just like you can on any other triathlon. It's a combination of ability and will. You just keep chugging, forward is the pace.

Coach Tom (12:18.936)
Yeah, well that's what we like about the sport. It's that, yeah. Yeah, I think it might be a good cross training type of thing to mix it up a little bit if you take a little break from some of the triathlon stuff to throw some more strength in there and then kind of aim towards a high rocks event and then kind of bounce back to whatever. I mean, that's the beauty of it. I think that's good.

Kenny Bailey (12:40.95)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (12:44.705)
Yeah, and the funniest part is we were running, I think we were on the fourth kilometer, and my wife is just cussing up blue streak about the whole thing. I don't like running, this is so dirty. And I started laughing, she goes, why are you laughing? I said, because you're complaining. That means you're not out of breath. It means you're not gassed. The fact that you can complain is a good thing. I'm actually glad you're complaining, because it takes breath to complain. So she starts laughing and we're just like, you know, whatever. We just keep plodding along and we'll get done when we get done. And we high-fived.

Coach Tom (13:00.714)
Yeah, and your heart rates at the right spot. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (13:14.101)
The pictures look great and all that good stuff, but I didn't have nearly as much fun as you did though. You were in Portugal just living the life of dreams, were you not?

Coach Tom (13:14.872)
Nice. Nice.

Coach Tom (13:20.654)
Well, the question is would you do the high rocks again and would she do it again with you? Yeah, so that's good. Okay.

Kenny Bailey (13:25.973)
Going to. Yes. Yeah, I think we're gonna, you know, we almost, we were half a step away from getting the Hi-Rox in Arizona, because we were just mad because she had to walk. You know, it's just grinding her no end. But it's a five hour flight and I don't want to go five hours one way and then race 90 minutes and go five hours back. Yeah, exactly.

Coach Tom (13:39.126)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah

Coach Tom (13:47.626)
and wait till midnight to do your event type of thing. Yes.

Kenny Bailey (13:51.746)
So I think there's one in mid year, I think it's around May, it's gonna be in DC, and there's also one in Miami. So we love going to DC, it's a fun town, we did a 10K run there. So for us it would be, yeah. And so I think you'll miss the cherry blossoms, but yeah, I'll definitely do it again. I think with anything you do one and then you figure out the 15 reasons, things you did wrong, you wanna go fix that. But we're not like...

Coach Tom (13:57.526)
here we go.

Coach Tom (14:01.976)
Yeah, in May that'll be nice. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (14:19.969)
I'm not now buying a ton of Hyrox gear and Hyrox branded. Exactly. We're not there yet, but bless people that do it. They found something they love and they found something that keeps them motivated. But yeah, I think we both are like, yeah, this is kind of fun to do. And we both agree to be no pressure. I I'm too old for pressure these days. So anyway, Portugal, just...

Coach Tom (14:25.08)
Hi Rox Brandon, we're seeing all the t-shirts and yeah. yeah, go do it.

Coach Tom (14:42.062)
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So while you were, while you were doing that, I was gallivanting into, in Portugal with, uh, with Corel, yeah, Corel, uh, Corel, Lauren, who's been on the, on the show a couple of times now, we're going to have her on again in January, um, as our sports nutritionist is, uh, so her and a friend of hers, uh, uh, Fiona, and I'm blanking on Fiona's last name.

Kenny Bailey (14:49.215)
drinking wine, eating the cheeses.

Coach Tom (15:09.486)
Apologies Fiona, she's fantastic. She runs Paradise Cycling Tours that she lives in in Portugal in the Algarve region in southern Portugal and she puts on amazing bike tours all around Portugal, self-guided and then they do a bunch of group rides and things. So we show up, make our way to Portugal and show up for a week.

Kenny Bailey (15:25.515)
Sounds beautiful.

Coach Tom (15:35.176)
of riding. We got four solid days of riding in Portugal. It was just amazing. And we stayed at this, we stay in this little hotel, a very small hotel that's on a, I think it's like a 2000 acre farm. And most of the food that we're eating is coming from the farm, right? It's a working farm and there's fresh pomegranates falling off the trees while we're there. And it's just, it's that season and the oranges are falling off the trees were there and they're

Kenny Bailey (15:50.411)
That's fantastic.

Kenny Bailey (16:02.081)
Ugh.

Coach Tom (16:04.818)
And it's just so the food was amazing. Correll worked with the hotel to, you know, put a nice healthy spin on everything and we ate really well. So all the meals are included and we go off a ride and you have choices. You could ride the long, the longer, harder rides. You can do the moderate rides. You can do the easy rides depending on it. And I think there was 14 of us. That was one of their larger groups. It was about, how many have 12, 12 crazy Brits and two crazy Americans. So we had a

Kenny Bailey (16:24.293)
nice.

Kenny Bailey (16:31.045)
At least you're all crazy.

Coach Tom (16:33.11)
We had a really great time. There was a lot of laughter. There was a lot of stress relief. And we went out and rode every single day. And then this big storm rolled in. Helene, I think it was actually a named storm. I think it was like a hurricane that rolled in on the last day, which was fine because we got an extra massage and some more yoga and still ate really well. And Karel did a couple of nutrition talks, which was fantastic.

Kenny Bailey (16:53.058)
darn.

Coach Tom (17:01.854)
So yeah, there was yoga in the evenings, a couple of nights and massages and it was fantastic. We did some great, riding. It's just beautiful, beautiful country out there. We'd ride for 15 K and then stop for coffee and a cake and then we'd ride another 15, 20 K and then stop for lunch. And then we ride another whatever, whatever back to the hotel and then have some free time. then, yeah, so was good. I highly recommend.

Kenny Bailey (17:19.627)
That is awesome.

Kenny Bailey (17:29.301)
sounds beautiful.

Coach Tom (17:29.876)
If you're thinking of doing a trip where you want to go and be taken, taken care of, well taken care of, Carell and Fiona put on an amazing cycling focused wellness retreat. So it's definitely a cycling focus. You can rent bikes. Everybody rented bikes. We rented an e-bike for Wendy. And I say half of the group was on e-bikes and half the group was not.

and everybody get out and we just had a great time. It was fantastic. Everybody was nice. They took care of us. The weather was great right up to the end. then we spent an extra couple of days with Correll and her husband David and her son Jules at their place, which was great. Got down to the beach. Was hoping to get a swim in with the local tri club down there. But if you saw my Instagram feed, the ocean was extremely angry. There was no way. It was red flag warnings.

Kenny Bailey (18:08.064)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (18:25.523)
Yeah. That darn hurricane thing. Yeah.

Coach Tom (18:29.262)
Yeah, it was and it was it had just kind of passed and we got down to the beach to walk through there and you could see the waves you could see that you could see what the storm was It was like a day and a half that that thing took to get through there and it was it beautiful Absolutely beautiful people people are amazing Everyone we we ran into is super sweet and nice and and great occasional, you know, so

Kenny Bailey (18:50.817)
Yeah. What I love about what you described too is if you want a light day, go do a light day. If you want to go a longer ride, go a longer ride. If you don't want do a ride, don't do a ride. And darn, you, yeah, and then you go back to a farm at a boutique hotel that's absolutely picturesque and gorgeous. So even if you just don't, know, just die, feel like doing it today or just something's going wrong, you're still.

Coach Tom (19:02.338)
Yeah, you could totally choose and the groups were there. Yeah, they had a different course each day. Yeah.

Coach Tom (19:17.432)
Yeah. He just... Yeah. Yeah, there's... There's the...

Kenny Bailey (19:18.399)
in an incredible location. You're in Portugal for God's sake. So that sounds heavenly. That sounds so much fun.

Coach Tom (19:30.008)
Cork trees, were seeing all the cork trees. There was a carob trees, which they had just done all of the harvesting of that and massive amounts of olive trees. And they were all trying to get the olives harvested before the storm came in. And if you've ever seen anybody harvesting, you know, olives, it's by hand. Literally they're pulling them off onto.

Kenny Bailey (19:54.527)
Wow. Yeah.

Coach Tom (19:57.944)
big tarps and then taking the tarps and dumping them in the stuff. you have to go, like, there's no, like, it's not like the almond trees where they got the machine that goes up there and just shakes the hell out of it and they all drop off. I was like, no, they cut some of the taller branches because they're trimming it anyway. But they pull them all off by hand and they're all just kind of scraping and pulling them off. And you can see them working out there. The families were just out and were just like, my God, like they're trying to get it in before the storm.

Kenny Bailey (20:05.387)
Yeah. Shake said, yeah.

Coach Tom (20:26.356)
It was fabulous to see all that. I will, yeah, we'll definitely put it in the show show links to go check out Correll's page and the cycling tours. And then if you can't make the ones that they do two in the spring and one in November, if you can't make those, Fiona has tours throughout the year. I mean, she's busy all through the year. So her paradise cycling tours, you can go anytime and set something up with her and.

Kenny Bailey (20:26.677)
Yeah, we just need to make sure to provide a link. Yeah, provide a link for folks if they want to explore that a little bit. Absolutely. Sounds gorgeous.

Kenny Bailey (20:54.241)
Very cool.

Coach Tom (20:55.538)
I'm going to look and see if I can get some training camps set up over there so we can go ride for two weeks at a time and do some base training in Portugal, maybe in a spring time or something. I don't know if we'll get that in 26, why not, right? Why not? We're gonna go. We'll go there and do some solid riding. Cause it's not flat. I mean, it is not flat. There's nothing flat. Even by the ocean, it's not really flat.

Kenny Bailey (21:00.545)
I like that.

Kenny Bailey (21:05.931)
like the pros do, right now, bass training in Portugal. That's awesome, I love the idea.

Coach Tom (21:21.326)
So there's some good climbing. think we did one big climb that's actually on the Pro Tour that comes through Portugal, the week long Volta do Algarve. And I can't remember the name of the climb, but it averaged at, I think it averaged at 9.9 % grade for two and a half kilometers, which is about a mile and a half or something. So yeah, we worked to get...

Kenny Bailey (21:21.995)
That's awesome.

Kenny Bailey (21:29.76)
Have fun.

Kenny Bailey (21:43.243)
So you're working. Yeah. You feel it. Like maybe it's an e-bike day today.

Coach Tom (21:48.098)
to get up that, yeah, there was, and then we came down the backside. Yeah, the e-bikes went up first. Well, two of the e-bikes went up first. Of course, our Fiona and Tomas was our other ride leader for that day. And the two of them, of course, jetted on up. I came traipsing after them and a few other folks came after that. So we kind of worked our way up. But at the top, of course, there was this really pretty Buddhist,

Kenny Bailey (21:54.923)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (22:11.126)
That's funny.

Coach Tom (22:17.514)
Temple Memorial Temple up at the top. It was super windy because the storm was coming in It was an excellent was our last next to last day and and of course a little cafe So we had coffee and if I pronounce it right pastiche pastiche Donata is their little cream Pastries that they have So the the jerseys that that Correll had made up has we ride for petite pastiche

Kenny Bailey (22:38.945)
guys.

Coach Tom (22:46.52)
Pestishtenada because they're amazing and they come in all different sizes. So you go up and you get a coffee and you got a Pestishtenada and you sit and just talk more cycling and have a good time. Totally. Exactly. And I did almost that to get up there, Co, and a little bit of a tailwind on one section, which was kind of cool. I was, that was handy. And then we came down the other side, which was even longer and windier and windier. And it was just, we just kept riding.

Kenny Bailey (22:48.129)
That's nice. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (22:54.997)
Well, if you told me the top of the climb I'd get a coffee and a pastry, I'd turn myself inside out on that climb. yeah. That's funny.

Kenny Bailey (23:09.205)
That's right.

Coach Tom (23:16.526)
It's such a great day. So I highly recommend that. So big shout out, big shout out to Karel and Fiona for doing an amazing, amazing job on that. So that gets us into our off season. We're into off season. It's cold now. I've got a couple different things. Let's do, let's do, well, one of the big off season things is usually taking our bikes and putting them on a trainer and sticking them in the house.

Kenny Bailey (23:16.673)
That's awesome. Good. Good. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Definitely.

Kenny Bailey (23:26.879)
So with that, I was gonna say, how do we get prepared for those things? Yeah.

Coach Tom (23:45.324)
So let's go over just, there's a couple of notes on that that I see when I talk to athletes all the time, when you're setting your tri bike up on your turbo trainer, your indoor trainer, two things come up. Sometimes people put a secondary bike that's not their favorite bike or whatever, it's their winter bike or whatever you want to call it. It's a cheap bike that they stick on the trainer and they don't worry about it. They get fitted on their tri bike or their good road bike.

and they don't do anything with the bike that they're going to be locked in on their trainer. And if you're looking for an overuse injury, that's one way to get it. So I highly recommend making sure that your fit is correct when you're putting your bike on your trainer. That's really good. If you're thinking, well, I'll get a bike fit in the spring when I'm, you know, fresh and feeling good and doing whatever, but I'll just ride on it now. This is the time where you're going to be locked in. You're not going to be.

Kenny Bailey (24:21.666)
There you go. That's the fastest path. That's funny.

Coach Tom (24:43.362)
you know, kind of coasting or moving around on the bike very much, you're going to be locked in a position. So it's going to actually have the potential to do more damage to you, which will slow your training down. So that's kind of critical. I hear that a lot. I know there's athletes that I've worked with where they said, I didn't realize they had a second bike on the trainer and we fitted them on their race bike. And then they didn't ride that bike for their training.

Kenny Bailey (24:53.345)
Really good point.

Coach Tom (25:08.982)
So it's like, okay, this is something to take a look at it. You don't necessarily need to go get a full bike fit on it. But if you come see me for a bike fit, then get your bike fit, bring your other bike and we'll make sure that that's set up. And I include that and take care of you on that to make sure that's good. A couple of the other things is stay in good posture and form.

So when you're riding on that, don't sit up or don't sit away that you normally wouldn't while you're pushing the miles and cranking out the watts. You want to be in your proper position. This is what's getting your body, your brain wired to those muscle groups to be in either it's aero position or in your road bike in a good solid position where you've got proper form. You'll, you'll generate more Watts. you'll ride much faster. You'll be much happier with the progress that you're making. And then when you do get off onto the road in the springtime,

you'll actually be riding better and you won't be all of a sudden uncomfortable again because all of a sudden you're in a different position. So keep that in mind as you're doing it. So when you set your bike up on there, one of the key things is to make sure that it's level. You want front wheel, back wheel to be level. You don't want them tipped too far down. You want them tipped too far up. So one of the things to look at is the air pressure in your front tire. Your air pressure in your front tire after a month,

has gone down a little bit because that's what it does. It kind of leaks out a little bit, even on the tubeless ones, it will go down a little bit more. So that will cause you to tip a little bit more forward. So make sure there's proper pressure in the front tire. I'm assuming that's if you have a smart trainer and you don't have the rear wheel on. If you have the rear wheel on, yes, make sure that has enough pressure on it as well. But since it's being held at the...

at the back end of the bike, not the actual tires, not keeping it up. It's not as important, but it will be against the roller at that point. So you want to make sure that that's set up. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (27:03.361)
Yeah, and think with the roller ones you're up anyway, so you need a kind of a block to keep that level anyway, where the ones that take the wheel off, tend to be a little bit more flat. But yeah, I'm guilty of that every time. know, the front tire is just flat as a pan. well I should probably do something about that. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

Coach Tom (27:11.54)
sitting a little more flat. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you'll find it going down and down. You'll find yourself pitching forward, especially if you've got a tri bike set up there. You're like, why am I my pressure on my elbows and my arms? And so the other thing is if you're putting it on a, on a carpet, it's going to sink into the carpet. So I would suggest getting a piece of wood. You can get it cut at Lowe's Home Depot, wherever the home places are. That's wide enough for the trainer to sit on.

and then get another block the same thickness whatever for the front wheel. So you set the two nice and level and then make any adjustments you need to with the wheel. There's wheel chocks that you can put that will raise the wheel up to level it off. We used to use phone books in the old days when they actually had phone books. You can do that with a book. You can find something that's under there. Measure the, you know, at the points, you know, where the wheels are.

Kenny Bailey (27:57.238)
No.

Kenny Bailey (28:01.067)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (28:08.334)
like right in the center there, just measure and make sure that they're about the same. They want them to be as close as possible so that you're nice and level. those are the big things.

Kenny Bailey (28:15.881)
Yeah, and I think I stole, yeah, I stole Laurie's like old yoga mats. So I put that underneath so it can catch sweat and stuff like that to kind of be able to do that. Yeah.

Coach Tom (28:21.592)
Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, yeah, you want to, you want to cover the ground, put, put whatever they make, you know, where you can get, you can, you can pay and get branded, you know, vinyl mats and things that you put on there, or you can just buy some stuff from, you know, Home Depot or wherever. And, and make sure you put lots of towels and wipe the bike off because it rusts pretty quickly with the sweat. It really will. All the bolts that are underneath your arm rests and stuff will start to rust out.

Kenny Bailey (28:35.423)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (28:43.775)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (28:50.446)
They're gonna surface rust on them making them almost impossible to move So keep an eye on some of that just wipe the bike and dry it down which comes to another point is Fans you need it. You need one big one or you need several the more fans you have the better one of the one of the challenges we have riding the indoor Trainers is that you don't feel like you're as strong as you were outside mainly because you're a lot warmer You don't have the air cooling you off cooling your skin off

So get a couple of fans, get more than one. I think they're pretty cheap right now. You can find some really good turbo vortex fans, whatever, and set them up on things so they're aiming at your face and your body and your legs, and that's gonna help cool your body down and make it feel like you're riding. It'll be probably loud as heck, but you'll put your earbuds in and you won't mind. You'll be watching your TV show at the same time.

Kenny Bailey (29:30.699)
Mm-hmm.

Kenny Bailey (29:41.643)
Go like crazy.

Yeah, and you think you don't need it at the beginning because it's like, this is kind of weird. I'm already cool. But like five minutes into it, because there's just no airflow, right? You're not getting wind, right? And you just your core body temperature. Yeah, exactly.

Coach Tom (29:51.394)
Yeah, there's nothing and you just heat up. Yeah, I'm up here in my bonus room and I have my trainer set up and I'll get up in the morning. It's like, it's chilly up here. I'll turn the heat on. I'll go on, get on the bike and I'll start doing a workout. And then I'm like, why did I turn the heat on? I'm like, I'm blowing a fan while I'm pumping the heat. And I'm like, get off the bike, turn the heat off, know, put the second fan on. Just try to get as much airflow on you as possible. Cause it'll, you once again, you'll have a better workout.

Kenny Bailey (29:58.625)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (30:02.321)
Mm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (30:17.333)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (30:19.98)
Like your numbers will be better. You'll be happier.

Kenny Bailey (30:22.889)
Yeah, and what's kind of funny is there's a lot of schmancy like deaths and stuff you can get. And what I ended up getting was a music stand to hold music. And I just do it flat and it costs very little because I use an iPad because I can't figure out how to get it to my TV. So I have an iPad that has that. So I have like those virtual rides where, you know, I can go to France or go to Portugal and ride Portugal. And I just put that iPad in front of me, put it on the music stand and that, you know, I have my bottle there. have.

Coach Tom (30:27.768)
Yep. Yep. Yeah, I'd do the same thing. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (30:51.521)
But like you said, put the headphones on and listen to angry music and watch myself ride virtually in Portugal and hope that was like, maybe just put like a maybe an espresso in one of those pastries like on the stand. So you're forever chasing that. Yeah. Yeah. Just just in front of you. like just kind of. But yeah. But in all seriousness, I think you bring up a really, really good point, which is if you're.

Coach Tom (30:51.576)
Perfect.

Coach Tom (30:55.158)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (31:04.006)
there you go. Put a Pestishtha Donata on it. Yeah, you're just just in front of you where you just can't reach it. Just just a little bit past you and that's your reward. Right. We have

Kenny Bailey (31:17.971)
If you're acting lazy on your bike, your injury can be higher and you're also not training those muscles that need to be trained. Proper form still counts. The problem is because you're not having to hold yourself up, so you're not using those little stabilizer muscles, but you still need to have good form, make sure that you should be feeling the same sensation you would on a road with that turnover. Knee can't be out here like this or you can't be squatted too low or whatever.

Coach Tom (31:43.022)
Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to splay out or do. Yeah. mean, if you, if, if you have a tri bike and you've got it on the trainer and you can't stay in the arrow position for the duration of your workout, my guess is that your fit's not right. you, you should on a tri bike, you should only want to be in that position. And if you're up on the, on the, on the bull horns,

Kenny Bailey (31:48.288)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (31:53.152)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (32:02.507)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (32:11.98)
holding yourself up, the only thing you should be thinking about should be like, I just want to get back down here again. So like get a fit, like get it fit right. And if you think like, I really want to be aero and I want to stay super, super low, but if your body can't handle it right now, then you add more stack height until you can. And then training yourself in that position on the turbo over the winter will get you into that position. It's the best way to get you comfortable with that.

Kenny Bailey (32:18.069)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (32:31.169)
There you go.

Kenny Bailey (32:35.457)
Mmm. Yep.

Coach Tom (32:41.504)
So it's that poor posture will get you. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (32:42.389)
Yeah, find a good movie. mean, that's the thing. It could be boring as heck, so find a good movie. Find that one. If you have an action movie or... HBO Max. Put on Star Wars and just watch Star Wars if you need to. Just something, right?

Coach Tom (32:48.248)
There's so many options these days. Yeah. You got Zwift, got Ruby, you've got Velocity, you've got all sorts of stuff. Yeah, you just, you put it on the...

The velocity workouts I do, you can put it into a transparent mode and you can watch the football game behind it. And it has all the meters and stuff up. You see the steps, you see all your data like you would if you're a trainer road geek and you really want your data and it's there and then you can watch the game at the same time. And then it's not like you're looking away. The game's not up here and the screen is over here. That's the other thing. If you set it up off on the right,

Kenny Bailey (33:04.47)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (33:08.289)
There you go.

Kenny Bailey (33:12.661)
Yep.

Kenny Bailey (33:16.139)
That's really cool.

Kenny Bailey (33:20.661)
That's awesome.

Coach Tom (33:29.388)
and you're riding and you're constantly turned over to look at that, that's going to tweak your neck. That's bad posture. Try to set it in a position that's in front of you. Stack books up, bring tables in, you know, go to, go to Goodwill and buy a cheap table or something that you can find there and just set it on there. It doesn't have to be pretty. mean, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (33:45.217)
There you go.

So I have a crazy question for you. I have a buddy of mine who usually has issues with his helmet in that position. So he'll ride with his helmet on in the winter to help get used to that weight, that extra weight on a, is that a thing? Yeah.

Coach Tom (33:58.37)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (34:04.45)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Part of the part of the tri bike fits that I do is if you have an aero helmet, I like to put you with your helmet on so we can see where it sits on your shoulders because it has the slot in a certain way. If he has a longer tail versus shorter tail, if you have just a regular standard road helmet, it's not as as critical.

But yeah, if that helps them hold the position for sure, I think that's great. I don't know if I'd do it every single time, but certainly put it on there and make sure that you can do the sustained longer workouts with that.

Kenny Bailey (34:38.785)
Yeah, it's that strength too on your neck, sometimes it's just you're riding without a helmet and you're riding without a helmet and you put a helmet on and you're wow, okay, why does this feel like it does? So I thought it was interesting. Correct.

Coach Tom (34:42.51)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (34:46.2)
Totally, yeah.

It does weird things if they cover your ears, your vision. I had to change helmets because I would have my sunglasses on, but then I couldn't see over the top. So when I was in position, I was looking up, I was looking right at the top of the glasses and I was really annoyed with that, but I couldn't ride without them. So I ended up getting a helmet that has a clear visor across it. And now I don't have to wear my sunglasses. And then when I look up,

Kenny Bailey (34:56.671)
Yeah

Kenny Bailey (35:00.725)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (35:05.44)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (35:11.947)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (35:15.438)
At the top of my eyes, I look down the road a little bit. I'm like, I can see without an issue. These are things that you figure out on the trainer. I can't see the football game. I can't see. Bam.

Kenny Bailey (35:23.137)
Yeah, because see, I figured that out as I was in the ambulance going code three with a concussion when I hit a bus because the last thing I said before I woke up was, I can't see. And then the next thing I know, I'm like, what's that noise? Those are sirens. Take it from me. Yeah. Make sure you have good visibility because it kind of matters. So.

Coach Tom (35:39.214)
So learn, hey kids, yeah, hey kids, learn from Kenny. And that's a legit thing, like when I have people in for bike fit and their head's straight down and I'm like, okay, I want you to look down the road for me. And they look up and then they look back down again and I'm just like, okay, you're too low because you can't, if you have to do like crazy stuff to get your head up just to look down the road, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (35:50.901)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (35:54.869)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (36:01.11)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (36:04.885)
That's exactly what happened. It was exactly what happened. I was racing TT and it was like, we're gonna slam that front end because we wanna give you aero. And I'm like, the last thing I thought of is, you know, I'm down here and I look up and I'm like, I can't really see that much. I went back down and then I woke up in an ambulance. So yeah, it matters. So take it from Uncle Kenny. Visibility counts. yeah, that's why I started laughing. You're just like, you know, when you can't see, I'm like, yeah, I found out the hard way.

Coach Tom (36:09.132)
Stack height's too low, yeah.

Coach Tom (36:13.972)
as aero as possible. This is really

Coach Tom (36:21.73)
Yeah. Visibility counts.

Coach Tom (36:33.87)
That's it. There's like, want to be aero. We want to look like the pros. We want to do that. And we can get there, but maybe not right away. Yeah. Safety first.

Kenny Bailey (36:35.999)
Yeah.

Yeah. Safety first. Yeah. I think it's a great idea. It's a great, I mean, that's a great off, you know, off season thing to do, right? Get into a more comfortable position and just start, know, take, you know, as you get more comfortable, see, you know, where you get in a position where you want to, cause you know, most, you don't have to, you don't have to be slammed down. Like again, we're not, you know, time trial too, or whatever's really comfortable, whatever you're comfortable with, you know, can grab a bottle, you're comfortable on your bike where you feel like you're down, you feel good about it.

Coach Tom (36:48.056)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (37:08.918)
where you feel like you've got combination of good speed and good power without being good, know, fatigued, that's a great thing to practice, right?

Coach Tom (37:16.142)
And the key word here is comfort. And I think we use the word too loosely. I think people are relating it to, especially new cyclists, new triathletes come in and we talk about getting comfortable on the bike and being comfortable in a position and all that stuff. And it's really not comfortable. It's sustainable. You're sitting on a post for crying out loud. It's never gonna be that comfortable. We get you set up in a right position so that your sit bones, like all the pressure is on your sit bones.

Kenny Bailey (37:19.85)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kenny Bailey (37:26.891)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (37:31.925)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (37:45.782)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (37:46.062)
two very sharp points. They feel very sharp, especially in the beginning, and your body gets a little used to it. You get some conditioning and then you get in the right spot. If you're in the wrong spot, it's pressure in all sorts of areas that make things go numb and that's bad. So it's about conditioning yourself a little bit. But if you wanna go super, super aero and you wanna be slammed all the way down and you go, great, okay, like how long is your race? Are you doing an Ironman and you're going to be on the bike for six hours? Is that sustainable for six hours?

is if you're doing a sprint try and you're like, that's sustainable for 40 minutes or an hour, is that, that's where you can kind of play with that setup a bit and just go like, and the other thing is to look at the amount of watts that you're pushing. If you can't push that many watts cause you're super aero, then you're not going to be going any faster. You're not gaining anything. So we, we throw that comfort word around quite a bit and I want to make sure that it's sustainable more than it is comfort.

Kenny Bailey (38:42.773)
Yeah, and if you just look at the pros in Ironman, I mean, they've got comfortable positions. If you notice, like, some of them are in the Lotus position where everything's really relaxed up front, right? And they keep in that relaxed mode. So they are sustainable, right? I mean, they're pros. I mean, they, yeah.

Coach Tom (38:55.426)
Yes, they sit in sustainable. Some of those guys are a little bit, a little bit going crazy. Sam Laidlawood did a super, super stretched out type of thing, which did great for the bike. He blew up on the run. So that'll, that'll just tell you. But if you look at the women's this year had more of an arch to their back, which Matt Steinmetz, who's a great bike fitter that's out in Boulder was questioning and saying, are they giving up and leaving a little bit of aerodynamics?

Kenny Bailey (39:01.011)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it's a three sport thing. Yeah.

Coach Tom (39:22.786)
that they could be getting a little bit more arrow by flattening themselves a little bit, stretching out just a little bit more. But when you look at all of them, they put out amazing power, they did great. I'm thinking that they went for stuff that was more sustainable. So there was at least a dozen that they looked at. Yeah, yeah. You want to set up for the run. You've got all of these little things that we, you know, it's very.

Kenny Bailey (39:26.197)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (39:36.213)
Well, at hip flexors, right? So if you're slammed down like this and then you come up like that, I mean, I'd rather be in a little bit more comfortable position. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (39:49.336)
I don't wanna say it's not complicated, but it is complex in the sense that if you adjust one thing, it affects a bunch of other stuff. So you wanna make sure it's not just, we just slam you and stick you down. Well, then there's consequences to that. So yes, it's all about the run. It's all about the run. So that's your indoor training. That's your, in, yeah, it's all about the run. Yeah, it's all about the run. So.

Kenny Bailey (39:55.657)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (40:01.409)
I mean the whole point is to set you up for successful run. Even in high rocks, that's our theme today. Even in high rocks it's about the run. So if you guys hate running, sorry.

Coach Tom (40:16.75)
Yeah. So, so other, yeah, other, uh, other, uh, off season kind of training stuff. Um, what do you, what do you think? I'm, I'm big on, uh, strength training this time of year on all of the small stuff, doing the, little banded work, doing everything to build the stabilizer muscles and going through that would be my off season. Like get into the gym. It mixes up a little bit, changes some stuff. What else? What, what else do you think Kenny?

Kenny Bailey (40:18.334)
Stick to kayaking.

Kenny Bailey (40:38.465)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (40:44.353)
You know, actually, so Lori and I just got done. We had that typical, you know, when you get done with any sort of race, like you have a date, you have the of the blues afterwards, like, well, what now, what? And we made a decision, at least we know we have holiday, like we have to go to a work event. We have a thing we gotta do on Saturday. I mean, we've got, you know, holiday parties and people to see and all that sort of stuff. So we decided.

Coach Tom (40:54.715)
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (41:12.417)
that between now and the end of the year, we're gonna just do fun workouts. it's not going to be, because mentally you kind of need to take a break too. So if you're just focus, focus, focus, that's great. And maybe people do that. I know you need a goal, but we decided like, hey, I'm just gonna, whatever my body tells me, like when I go in, like, hey, I haven't done this set for a while. I think I'm gonna go do that. And to your point, try to keep, know, slow it down a tick, do more band work, more kind of stretching kind of.

Coach Tom (41:21.699)
Yes.

Kenny Bailey (41:39.104)
I'm not, you know, and I don't have to get a certain number of reps in or certain thing because I'm not, you know, I'm not have to do, well, I have to do a row and a K, one K and I got to carry a kettlebell and I got to get this. This is my training block because if I don't do that training block, I'm not going be ready. It's sort of like, Hey, I think I'm just going to do a push exercise today because I just haven't done that in a while, but I want to make sure I get some good band work and some good ab work and pay attention to recovery and just have fun with it and not have a.

That for me, I this is me personally, think Lori's doing the same thing. It's just, we needed to turn our brain off and just let our body do some fun stuff and just not feel an expectation of like, well darn it, I missed this. And try to be consistent still, but try to be, and by the way, walking the dog is consistent. Going to a park is consistent. Doing movement is consistent. It doesn't have to be, if you're gonna go do a swim, maybe do a happy swim. Where you know what, I'm just gonna get,

Coach Tom (42:25.038)
Totally. Totally.

Kenny Bailey (42:35.453)
If I get a thousand in or if I get fifteen hundred or if I want to do hundred drills or if I just want to do playtime or if I, know, whatever, just as long as that winter's, you know, really easy to, you know, with the weather and everything else, especially me to just do that. But so just movement is great. So we just decided to make it. That's it. We're just going to have happy fun. And then January we'll go, OK, now we'll start kind of start paying attention. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (42:48.131)
God, Yeah, it's.

Coach Tom (42:55.726)
Yeah, perfect. Unless you have a race in the springtime or something that you're gaining up, then this is not off season for you. But for the rest of North America or the Northern hemisphere, basically unstructured workouts, walking is probably one of the best things you can do is get out and walk for 30 minutes to an hour every single day. If you can get 30 minutes of walking and walk the dog, just go for a walk with your spouse, go with your family, get out there and move.

Kenny Bailey (43:05.846)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (43:20.117)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (43:25.314)
keep the body moving, so stay consistent with that is huge. Having unstructured workouts where you just, it just needs to be 30 minutes at the pool or an hour at the pool. So you go and you just swim and you do different things. It's also a great time to look at, like if you've got stuff set on the calendar already for next year, right? know, okay, my A race is going to be in July and you know, I've got a B race in May, June, and then, you know, something else in the fall and you're kind of looking at your year already.

Now's a great time to sit back, work with your coach if you have a coach or just if you're coaching yourself, just go through and go like, these are the goals I want to reach. What are the weaknesses? What are the things that my, what's the SWAT analysis, the strengths, weaknesses, you know, type, type setup is like, what is it that I really need to get better at? Like for this particular race, I need to have a stronger swim. What does my swim look like? I need a little bit better form. So then you can go, okay, I'm going to take four weeks.

and I'm going to do less running, less biking, and I'm just going to get in there and I'm going to work on some drills on the swim just to make that, to get the jump start on getting yourself ready for next year. If it's the run, then you you do more running, do more fun running, do some trail running. have a couple athletes that we've got off on the trails and they're running and loving the trails right now because it's different. It's so awesome.

Kenny Bailey (44:24.929)
Perfect.

Kenny Bailey (44:44.042)
Yeah, fun.

Coach Tom (44:46.926)
a little muddy and slippery occasionally, but we've got them doing all sorts of stuff and I love the trails. I'm always a big fan because it teaches you to pick your feet up like if anything else in the world shuffling along on a pavement like you want to face plant, don't pick your feet up, right? Yeah, you just go have fun.

Kenny Bailey (45:01.985)
Yeah, well, and pace, you don't have worry about pace. another, you and the other thing I think you triggered the thought on was around like, I think I'm like every other tradlet, you have really tight hip flexors, those kinds of things. Off season is a great time to start working, like you said, working on those deficits, like, hey, I need to know, I know I need to open up my hip flexors more. I need to work on.

Coach Tom (45:18.36)
yeah.

Kenny Bailey (45:24.895)
you know, smaller muscle groups that are supporting muscles that are critically important, but we don't really think about because we're always worrying about big muscles, right? You know, what can I do in the off season? To your point, you know, hey, I notice I start to get injury or fatigue when I ignore this. So how do I make it a habit again, where I can get it back in there? It's a great time to be able to do that and be able to, the other thing, just to go back to the mental thing, I think also if you have a spouse or a loved one or a family.

that has done a very good job of making sure that you've been supported throughout, make sure you put some chips back in there and maybe do something they want to do, not something you want to do. If they want to go like, let's go for a hike or I want to go to Portugal, go to Portugal. Just go anyway. But let me just do those things where if that's something that really interests them or something they want to do, you took the driver's seat and

Coach Tom (45:59.118)
Yeah, Yeah, exactly.

Coach Tom (46:08.584)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (46:18.657)
for your time now, it's time to, I think, kind of give back and say, hey, what do you want to do? And let's do something fun. And that's why I think that's why we, part of reason why I did High Rocks with Lori is because I spent well over a decade, you know, when you do Ironman training, it's nine, 10 months of being selfish, right? So what do you want to do? Is this something that sounds fun to you? We can do it together. We've never done something together. Those are the kinds of things you just got to give back once in a while. So you, so you have balance. I guess balance is the kind of the thing I keep going back to, I think, when...

If it's just intense and training and that you got to kind of reset rebalance and work on those things that like you said with the band worker work on those deficits or like you said just work on swim drills that you know just noticed my head goes up too much and I dropped my body let's just work on head drills just nothing you know throw the watch away and yeah.

Coach Tom (46:58.67)
work on.

Coach Tom (47:02.498)
Yeah. And you can use a combination of, yeah, go into the gym and work on the building of muscles that you need for that particular drill. And then you go into the pool and you do those particular drills or run or whatever it is or bike. If you want to get stronger on the bike, then you lock in and go, okay, here's my program for the bike. And you just kind of lock and load on it. So it's a good time. Still want to keep consistency. Consistency is what keeps us healthy.

Kenny Bailey (47:10.441)
Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Kenny Bailey (47:25.056)
Live.

Coach Tom (47:31.118)
What keeps us going I think just in general even if you don't have a goal Your life goal should be just to be consistent to keep your health in a good spot It helps settle hormones. It brings the cortisol levels down. It just gives you a better Well-being overall. I mean get into some yoga, you know get into some breathing exercises now is a great time it's it's cold outside you want to put the football game on or some something on and

Kenny Bailey (47:48.309)
Yeah. Yeah, great time. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (47:58.774)
and do some breathing exercises so you can relax and kind of bring all that stress down that you've been gaining.

Kenny Bailey (48:01.813)
Yeah, try Pilates. Trust me, that'll show exactly where you have a deficit. Go do a Pilates class. You'll go, wow, okay, those little stabilizer muscles. Honestly, comes back to it. Same thing as the swim drills. Swim drills are great. It keeps the joints good, but nothing but benefit. How you swim better is you swim more. Right.

Coach Tom (48:06.818)
Great ways. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, like where you start shaking violently where you're just trying to do a little.

Coach Tom (48:27.672)
Yeah, yeah. And then for getting outside and doing things in the colder weather, I think the best quote, and I don't know who to attribute it to, but I'd seen it a couple of times. As I said, there's never bad weather. It's just bad gear choices. So, you know, there's lots of stuff out there. You can still continue to ride outside on your bike. I mean, it gets cold, but there's all sorts of heated gloves and.

Kenny Bailey (48:43.282)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (48:54.658)
proper gear and that type of stuff. at certain temperatures, you can still get out there and actually get a good ride in or a good run in. search out, there's Amazon Prime days or holiday sales and things like that right now. As you find some of that gear, put that on your Christmas list to say, I want to keep running outside during the year as much as possible or on the bike and just make sure you take care of yourself. when there's some people that get super, super crazy,

or so I should say not crazy but dedicated when it's you know minus 11 degrees and there's a windchill of less than that and they go out I got to get my run in like that I'm going to say there's a point where it's too cold and it's not helping your lungs or it's not doing anything for your sinuses or your lungs or anything like that so it's like at that point is like okay ride indoors run indoors you know figure out those other options and but have them available so it's not like that helps you

Kenny Bailey (49:35.977)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (49:53.1)
just make the switch. Like the weather's bad, I have my indoor option. The weather's good, I have my outdoor option. You're there, it's not like you show up and you go, I only have an outdoor option and the weather's terrible, now I don't do anything. So.

Kenny Bailey (50:04.045)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of fun. mean, I remember, you know, when you get down with a cold ride or you get a cold run, you know, you get that hot shower and it just feels, you know, it feels like you earned it. Right. And it's kind of a fun thing to do. yeah, I mean, we, you know, Lauren and I did Ragnar together and, you know, it was like 19 degrees out at two o'clock in the morning. And, but man, that shower felt good when we got home. I mean, it was.

Coach Tom (50:12.718)
Yeah, you burn more calories when you're shivering. You do.

Coach Tom (50:27.271)
definitely, definitely, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (50:28.201)
And it's fun. I feel like you earned it. That's what's kind of fun when you do a little bit of suffering, you know, then it feels like that. rest of day you're like, yeah, I earned it. yeah.

Coach Tom (50:32.43)
Yeah, feels good. I like I did something. I'm pushing myself this year to ride outdoors as much as possible and continue running outdoors as much as possible, which the running was always easier, but I've gotten all my runs in and it's been down in the 20s and 30s here. It's been a bit chilly where I usually don't want to go out, but I have all the gear, I have everything, and I'm still going out and getting my workouts outdoors. And then I'm doing my...

Kenny Bailey (50:42.517)
Very cool.

Kenny Bailey (50:46.901)
That's a great.

Coach Tom (51:01.662)
specific kind of indoor stuff as well. But that's my goal this year.

Kenny Bailey (51:05.045)
I think that's a great winter goal, right? Which is like, hey, you know what? I'm not gonna let weather to a point, like let's be real, right? But to your, you know, I'm not gonna let weather, that's gonna be my goal. I'm gonna be outdoors at least once, you know, this week, right? And yeah, perfect.

Coach Tom (51:10.414)
to a point.

Coach Tom (51:18.284)
Yeah. And I get, I get our pup Rosie out for a walk. We try to do two miles every day. So we try to do it every day. Last week, I think I like, it was supposed to be bad weather around 6 PM. So at 2 30, I grabbed her lead and I said, let's go for a walk. We're going to get her walk in. And we stepped outside and it was sleeting like downpour sleet. I went, yeah, not happening. So we played indoors and, and she took a nap and

Kenny Bailey (51:35.041)
Yeah.

Yeah. Nobody happening. Plan B. Yeah. There you go.

Coach Tom (51:48.142)
That was it. so, but every other time we're out there, she gets like, so I always get a two mile walk in, I would say five, at least five days a week. Um, if not seven, um, with her and that's the extra excuse to get outside. So I get at least that, and then I go for a run afterwards. So lots of stuff to do. there's

Kenny Bailey (51:54.134)
Perfect.

Kenny Bailey (52:04.033)
There you go.

Yeah, I like that. mean, that's the kind of like small goal. It doesn't need this big hairy thing. It's like, I'm just going to try to get outside, do an outside activity at least once a week. That's a great, not a hard goal to hang your head on.

Coach Tom (52:14.456)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

Kenny Bailey (52:20.907)
gives you something where you feel committed to doing something, you feel good afterwards, you feel like it's sometimes been accomplished. That's a great kind of, or like you said, I wanna be able to live two days a week because I know I need to start doing some strength training and work on areas where like my core, I absolutely could do a better job on better core. So that should be the focus. yeah, we don't. There you go. There you go, right, exactly.

Coach Tom (52:38.306)
Yeah, I think we all can. We think we have a strong core and then we learn that we don't have a strong core at the wrong time. At the wrong time. Yeah. So if anyone has any tips or tricks or things that they do to get themselves out the door in the cold weather, please let us know. We'll share those. We get some good ones. So yeah, let us know. We're always up for new tips and tricks. Make sure the chapstick, you keep the chapstick and keep your face and lips from.

Kenny Bailey (52:51.905)
Yeah, I'd love to hear it.

Kenny Bailey (53:06.133)
There you go.

Coach Tom (53:07.938)
you know, completely freezing off. But yeah, send us those notes and yeah, keep up the comments and the five star thumbs up, all that good stuff, sharing this around. So we appreciate everyone on that. I think that's a good wrap up for this one, Kenny. We'll do one more. We'll try to do a nice year end type of thing and pull up some hot topics. Yeah, we'll do a little.

Kenny Bailey (53:22.848)
Yep.

Yep.

Kenny Bailey (53:31.915)
try to find a Santa hat or... There you go. We'll do the ugly sweater, you know. So, there you go.

Coach Tom (53:35.31)
We got to do the holiday party, right? got to do the little, there you go. We'll do something with that coming up shortly. But thank you again, everyone. We appreciate you all. And Kenny, as always, this is a blast. And for everybody, we'll catch you on the next one.

Kenny Bailey (53:49.878)
Yep.