Coach Tom (00:00.674)
Hey Kenny, how are you?

Kenny Bailey (00:02.082)
I am Fantastic Tom, how are you?

Coach Tom (00:04.074)
I'm fantastic as well. It's just the two of us today. Figured we'd do a little catch up show and talk about some of the fun stuff we're going on. One first thing to mention is that we just did a milestone of 7,500 downloads, which I thought was pretty cool. We crossed over that with 90. I think we're on 95, 94 episodes, 93 episodes, somewhere around that. We're just getting close to that 100 episode mark. So we want to thank everybody for listening.

Kenny Bailey (00:21.016)
That's very cool.

Kenny Bailey (00:26.744)
That's awesome.

There you go. Shout out to Germany. Get us over the mark.

Coach Tom (00:32.13)
Yeah, shout out to Germany for sure. Yeah, yeah, we're almost there. A few more downloads. We're doing really well. We're really appreciating everybody. We've got some notes and some comments. I hear for some people every so often pop in that they're listening and they just enjoy the show. So we're going to keep at it. Hope everyone's appreciate everybody for sure. So we've got some good shows coming up.

Kenny Bailey (00:38.146)
There you go.

Kenny Bailey (00:50.254)
Okay, cool.

Coach Tom (01:00.654)
So we get a little bit of lulls in there because both myself and Kenny are pretty busy. So we're still doing this because I still love it. Yeah. I turn it into Spon. Yeah. Sponsored by Triton. Our endurance is let's talk. Let's talk about that. Yeah. Good stuff to talk about today, though. Some interesting things. Where do we want to start? Well,

Kenny Bailey (01:06.904)
darn full-time job thing, right? So waiting for those sponsors to help us turn this into, but we'll have to hold off a second. There you go.

That's what it is.

Coach Tom (01:28.534)
Everyone keep coming in with the notes, comments, thumbs up, five stars, all that stuff is really good. That keeps it out there and keeps it fresh. There is like a couple of days per month that we get like massive downloads and then it dips off into a normal range. So it's kind of interesting how the algorithm works, but the more people like it, send a note, like just a little something there and let us know you're listening. Helps everybody, helps gets it out there a little bit more. So we've been at this game for a little bit. Most.

Kenny Bailey (01:51.47)
Yeah, absolutely.

Coach Tom (01:57.568)
Most podcasts make it, I think they said the average is seven episodes. kudos. Ignorance is bliss, we just keep plowing at it. We keep plowing at it. So on a couple of things we're gonna talk about, like I mentioned that I'm using the circular ring. It's called circular ring two. So I've got an update on that. Kind of my review, it's not very technical.

Kenny Bailey (02:01.517)
There we go. Either we're too stubborn or too good, we can't figure it out. So, probably both.

There you go, who cares, world?

Coach Tom (02:26.561)
sounds not very good, but that's a, we'll go through all the details on that. I'm working on a project myself. We mentioned before that I actually have settled on a coach. I've hired a coach. I'm working on a coach. So we're going to talk a little bit about what it's like being on the other side again. Cause it's been a few years since that. But first off, because it's relatively fresh only a week or so ago from when we recording this was watching Milan San Remo race, the men's race, the women's race was

Kenny Bailey (02:28.129)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (02:52.375)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (02:54.995)
Exciting as well. Unfortunately, big crashes on that. was horrible. But the men's race with Tadei Superman, it's just absolutely insane how he crashed so hard, managed to get up and his words thought it was over, like thought his chance was was over. Seriously, right? I would have been like I've hit the deck before and it

Kenny Bailey (02:56.461)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (03:05.813)
just nobody's going to stop him.

Kenny Bailey (03:14.093)
Any normal cyclist would, right? Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (03:20.949)
I don't bounce, I get up very slowly and then I sit down someplace. So to see them actually kind of like his teammates came back, two teammates came back and pulled them back up. And this is just before the big suppressor climb, the first two big climbs, pulled him back to that, got him to the front of that. He was able to take off up the climb. They narrowed the field down to, you know, just a few riders at this point, you've got van de Pol, you've got Wout.

Kenny Bailey (03:24.087)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (03:50.306)
Venard, amazing, amazing athletes descend like madmen on that, then hit the next climb, whittle it down to a few more people. And then it's just him and Wout just duking it out for the longest sprint in history for the win.

Kenny Bailey (04:07.947)
And how frustrating is Wout for that, right? I mean, you got an injured guy with a broken bike and you still can't beat him. Like, how, like, what do I have to do? Like, because before that he's probably, what do have to do? Like, have the guy crash? He does and still, you know, like, that's right. Yeah, but he didn't get quite as hurt, right? I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (04:12.685)
Yeah, Yeah, exactly. I mean, the fact that he was right there with him. Yeah, yeah, he does. A while went down with him to why was in that pile up as well. So while came, but he didn't hit. No, he didn't get he didn't get anywhere near anywhere near what what Tade did. So yeah, you got to be thinking that they were all working together get up there. But pretty amazing. Epic when you come what 200 K and it comes down to a bike throw.

Kenny Bailey (04:34.455)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (04:41.515)
right at the line and then to find out that he had a cracked frame and his disc wheel was, his disc brake was dragging.

Kenny Bailey (04:49.197)
Yeah, a few hundred extra watts just for the fun of it. But I mean, when you do crash, you get back up from a crash, you got that adrenaline going. So it works for you for the first 15 minutes. But once that adrenaline starts wearing off, it's sort of like how you continue muscle, especially on the downhill if you think about this. You're climbing, you're using it, but now your muscles are starting getting a little bit cold because you're coasting a ton and you're diving and moving. And that soreness of that fresh crash is sitting there just starting to, you know.

Coach Tom (04:53.281)
Yeah, no big deal. Yeah.

Coach Tom (05:05.89)
yeah.

Coach Tom (05:18.294)
yeah, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (05:18.739)
And yeah, it's just the guy's unreal.

Coach Tom (05:21.685)
Once the adrenaline, yeah, once the adrenaline wears off for sure, it's painful. And to watch him step up on the, you know, to get the, you know, the finishing stand, he put one leg up and that left leg, just kept straight and he just kind of pulled it up because you could tell that hip was just sore and actually all probably all tightening up.

Kenny Bailey (05:24.588)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (05:37.483)
Yeah, yeah. And to out kick Wout when you did that, I mean that's the crazy thing about it, right? Because he's in front of them, right? So, you know, the classic, you know, is the guy behind is going to be the one that has the advantage and nah, nah. Yeah, it's wet. Yeah.

Coach Tom (05:47.246)
Yeah. Yeah. And then he just, he didn't wait for Wout to go. He just went and then that got the, that was enough. I think if there was another, I don't know, 25 yards up the road, don't know, Wout would have, would have finally caught him at that point, but it was just, it was, it was very, very cagey. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's.

Kenny Bailey (06:04.065)
Yeah, it's crazy. It's a good, it's an interesting start to the season, right? So it'll be, the classics are the fun ones, right? So yeah. Yeah. It's getting a little wacky. Yeah.

Coach Tom (06:13.279)
I love them. I just wish I could see the whole thing because there's too many different streaming services and I refuse to pay for every single one of them. So, and it bounced back and forth with when there was, what was it? GCN plus, and they grabbed up most of the rights to the races. You saw everything all in one place. It was a hundred bucks a year is fantastic. And then, and then went to flow bikes and I went to a GCN plus got closed down when Warner Brothers discovery bought them.

Kenny Bailey (06:23.234)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (06:31.393)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (06:43.933)
And then they took it over to Eurosport and it's just so it's all over the place at this at this point see and Probably spending five hundred dollars a year just to watch the different races I'm like

Kenny Bailey (06:46.039)
Yeah.

Good said.

Well, it's getting that way across the board. mean, NFL now, can't, know, you have to Thursday if you want to, you have to have an Amazon account, you have to have a Netflix account. I mean, it's just getting insane, right? It's sort of like, remember it was three channels and we were happy. Yeah, we kind of are, right? Yeah, it's just, yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (06:57.325)
same thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (07:05.581)
Yeah, we're back to cable TV. We have cable TV only. Yeah, it's right back to the same bundles of, you know, we're to give you one network you want to watch and then a whole bunch of other junk and charge you $12 extra a month on top of everything else. So it's frustrating.

Kenny Bailey (07:21.173)
Yeah, and you don't even know, we sit there every night, like, was that a Netflix show, was that an Amazon show, was that an HBO show? I don't know, so we have to look it up on our phone to figure out what streaming service it's on. But anyway, it's kind of crazy.

Coach Tom (07:25.995)
Yeah, yeah, we have no idea.

I know. Yeah. Oh, well, well, I'm just, I'm just riding my bike more. I'm not paying attention. So I catch that I catch on YouTube. I'll catch all the highlight shows. So, the, the circular ring. this, this is a device I've, I've, I got on Kickstarter, I a Kickstarter. So I've wanted to track my sleep more than anything else. Just

Kenny Bailey (07:36.289)
There you go. There you go. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (07:55.63)
Because I'm curious. like data trends. I'm not like, oh, did I have a good night's sleep? Like, no, I know if I had a good night's sleep, I'm looking for, I don't know, validation, but I just like data points. And I like a lot of data points so that I can look and see trends. That's one of my, I guess, hobbies. like trending, things that trend and see, and then you can correlate them to how you're feeling or how your workout was. And then you can kind of look at that and see how it, see if there's any correlation.

It's not necessarily causation, there is, you know, see what correlation is there. So, I wanted to get the or ring, but then they came out with the subscription, which is like six bucks a month, plus, you know, $300 for the ring. I was like, I just didn't want a subscription, another subscription. so I, I don't know how I tripped across this on Kickstarter came across my, my frame of view, for this company called circular.

Kenny Bailey (08:50.263)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (08:52.755)
Circular ring there to their second one that they've come out with so the first one apparently was okay. It was good They have a new one this one if you on the app connected to an ECG You actually touch this and do this it will actually monitor your heart in real time. So it's one of the only ones that Has this option kind of neat has a whole AI like chat bot thing that like

Kenny Bailey (09:07.797)
No kidding. That's Yeah.

Coach Tom (09:18.519)
can help you breathing exercise and all things, which I'm not really that interested in, but to see how it is and then whether it could be used as a device for tracking activities. It's supposed to be able to do that as well. real time monitoring, sleep, HRV, all that typical stuff. And I didn't want, I didn't want my big watch, my Garmin watch on at night because I'm afraid I'm going to kill my wife. If I roll over, it's big, it's heavy. actually makes my hand go numb. If I sleep with it.

Kenny Bailey (09:40.002)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (09:43.693)
Tom's apparently a floper, so... You flop.

Coach Tom (09:47.886)
Yeah, you know, I can't, know, something happens in my dreams, like I won. You never know. So so it tripped across this, it was a couple hundred bucks. Kick, like I said, Kickstarter. So I said, What the heck? Why not? It seemed good. You know, they sold a lot more than they were anticipating, which was great. So I think they wanted to, you know, a couple hundred thousand, they ended up like 2 million.

Kenny Bailey (09:53.737)
Yeah, you don't know. You don't know.

Kenny Bailey (09:59.928)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (10:16.661)
So you figure, okay, this this looks decent, you know, all the backing it took them till so that was like April, May, maybe it was end of April, beginning of May of last year, 2025. They didn't deliver the ring until August. So there were about six weeks behind schedule getting that all being made overseas. Every, they were having enough issues with tariffs and everything else. So they got everything going. They got it all packaged. They got it shipped out. Boom.

Kenny Bailey (10:37.069)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (10:46.445)
get the ring, put it on, it for two weeks solid. And it seemed to do pretty good. Like it was tracking a lot of metrics and everything seemed good. Then it started to have some hiccups. And it turns out that the way they set up their backend database, they went the cheap way. And then they sold too many rings and the data bogged down. all of your time to...

Kenny Bailey (11:04.001)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (11:13.921)
connect and download and see what your data was, was taking forever or not happening. And they kept insisting that it was there, it was just not getting back to you because of this backlog. So they redid the whole infrastructure on their backend. Yes, did that, right? Yeah, yeah, I can't get it.

Kenny Bailey (11:15.17)
Yep.

Kenny Bailey (11:26.913)
Yeah, the transport layer needs to be changed. as a tech guy, that's what happens, right? You have all the data. You have the person that needs it. It's the transport layer that needs work on. Yeah.

Coach Tom (11:37.134)
Right? So was kinda, it was sorta work like three or four days and it wouldn't work. And then it was just like, would take forever to download. So you can see the app and the app was laid off pretty cool. It was pretty, it was pretty neat. You can change around, do some things. So that took them from August to December. It took them a very long time to go back and fix all of that. In the meantime, like I said, the data was on and off, on and off and on and off. January rolls around, we have high hopes. Like all of that's fixed. Everything's good.

Kenny Bailey (11:40.087)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (12:05.866)
But I'm still getting maybe three days, four days before it just doesn't capture something right. In the meantime.

Kenny Bailey (12:12.215)
Hmm. Do you think it's a ring issue or do you think it's a data?

Coach Tom (12:16.29)
I don't know. That's hard to say. When I tried it earlier on with activities, it's not an activity tracker, just flat out. You can put it and have it do that, besides draining the battery super quick. It counts the time, but basically, you pull up your app, you sell it to start tracking whatever, you put your phone in here, and then it goes into sleep mode, and then it basically, on the...

Kenny Bailey (12:31.905)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (12:40.546)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (12:46.094)
like I did it for a run and it basically draw a straight line from the start to the finish and had no metrics and, but it had the time, 50 minutes or whatever. Yes. It was like, okay, so that's useless. I tried it on a bike, same thing. So it doesn't, it doesn't work for an activity tracker whatsoever. But the ring thing I was trying to figure out. I went, you know, on their, on their customer service tech link, which is their automated AI thing. you

Kenny Bailey (12:56.855)
So you ran. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (13:14.734)
put in some stuff and put some screenshots and they had me go through and basically reset the whole thing, a factory reset on it and then charge it and then put it back on. And it wasn't, it was like having me go to bed at 1 a.m. even though I'm asleep at nine, waking up at three, two hours later and of course telling me I have a terrible HRV or telling me I have a great HRV. And then it wasn't tracking during the day.

Kenny Bailey (13:23.286)
jeez, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (13:31.426)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (13:41.698)
and then it would be spotty and then it was and then it wasn't it was just weird and they were like, well, maybe this is something else wrong. And then it wasn't tracking anything. And then I put it on the charger, just left it there for like 24, 48 hours and I put back on again and it started working again, kinda like it was two or three days and then it was like wanky. So it's hard to say, I mean, I could go, I've got to pull up the serial number.

Kenny Bailey (13:44.045)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (13:59.832)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (14:07.882)
and then send them a note to the next level tech service to see if they're gonna, if I want them to send me a new one or if I just wanna give up on it and just say, it's just not working. Like it's been a long time and it's not working.

Kenny Bailey (14:20.973)
Yeah, what's interesting, think you bring up an interesting, success sometimes can be a problem when you, used to be a tech guy. So, generally, if you're trying to hit a $200,000 thing and people want to give you money, you're like, this is awesome. Well, okay, but then you hit a volume issue to your point where you have to then spend a bunch of money on larger server infrastructure. You have to a bunch of money on middleware, a bunch of money on that. And then, by the way, hope your client doesn't die, right? And so,

Coach Tom (14:29.006)
Yep.

Kenny Bailey (14:48.909)
and how to troubleshoot that because it's one thing to your point, it's one thing to get data for the first three weeks. It's three months, six months down the line and how do you troubleshoot to say it's actually whatsoever, either we're have to send you new ring because if the ring itself isn't working or is it the data on the backend. That's why generally if you're gonna do these Kickstarter things, if you stop at it like, look, I want no more than 10,000 users and just stop, it's better to say, hey, by the way, we've already filled it with 10,000 users, put people on a wait list because that creates, you know.

cool stuff like oh my gosh and then you can incrementally add and I think they went through the classic thing of like everybody you know open the door to everybody and then all of sudden it's a mob and you don't know how to do that and now you piss off a lot of people rather than you know some people so yeah.

Coach Tom (15:30.132)
the people were writing notes in and stuff like that because they took longer to sell stuff. They were being accused of not having a product. So they were they were literally in the factory, like snapping pictures of somebody putting one in a box and they had stacks of them in there and they could show all this. They were look, we're honestly we're working on it because it was like it was they had that many people and they're not just doing this in the US. I mean, this is worldwide, right? So so now they have to ship.

Kenny Bailey (15:36.439)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (15:47.499)
That's Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (15:59.158)
Now they have to ship these things all over the place. Right? It's it's a

Kenny Bailey (16:01.805)
But that's not complicated at all. Well, that's what's funny, right? Is because when you, it's not, you thought you bought a product with software, right? And then what you find out is you have to have a logistics company within your company. And by the way, you have to have a customer service department within your company. And to your point, most of them go to AI. So I had some software in my last company that I couldn't talk to actually a person. I would send an email.

And then they, because it was in Australia, and then they would send an email back, you know, maybe within 15 minutes or so, but like, I have a problem with this, this isn't working. And they're like, we'll try this, this and this. So it's an interesting problem as a small company when you're trying to start these little technology things. But the stuff you got to figure out is logistics. You have to figure out troubleshooting. You have to figure out customer support. And then to your point, you said nothing about whether or not the fit of it feels good.

Coach Tom (16:31.618)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (16:50.701)
or if it looks good or if it feels comfortable, your number one complaints are, know, I'm not getting the data I want and, you know, I'm not getting answers I want on time. So they did one thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (16:57.602)
Yeah, it fits fine. Yeah, it fits fine. It looks nice. I still kind of wear it because I like I like the ring look. I'm like, okay, let's

Kenny Bailey (17:08.641)
Well, the, do you like the, so if you had the Aura Ring, and let's just say you said, okay, I'd rather just pay the monthly, by the way, there's why you pay the monthly, because it costs money to keep a server up. Do you like the idea of a ring? Like, let's start there first. I agree with you, I don't wanna watch. I'm seriously thinking about getting the Aura Ring myself. And I just, yeah.

Coach Tom (17:17.656)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (17:25.25)
I do.

Coach Tom (17:30.968)
Yep. I like the idea of a ring though. The whoop band. didn't like, I don't want to something else on my wrist. I don't wear the watch at night. I just wear it during the daytime and for track my workouts and all that stuff. So I didn't want a band on both band, but I was okay with a ring. I've, I've worn rings before I wear a wedding ring all the time. And, I was like, I think I could do the ring. And that was part of like testing this out. It feels comfortable.

Kenny Bailey (17:44.151)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (17:47.595)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Coach Tom (17:59.99)
Occasionally if I'm trying to open a jar or something I have to take it off because I don't you know, but aside from that The ring has been it doesn't bother me when I'm sleeping. It doesn't there's no issues with it So and it that to me that's a plus

Kenny Bailey (18:02.283)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (18:10.029)
Okay, so the next question then is like you said, you, do you need, like you already have a watch for tracking your runs, you already have a bike computer if you wanna track your bike stuff, you already have a watch for swimming. I mean, the limited features you generally get with a ring, are you okay with that? Like the sleep patterns and getting data. So.

Coach Tom (18:34.722)
Yeah, really, I wanted to sleep. I want to sleep and some stuff. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Kenny Bailey (18:37.387)
So then you just need, so now it becomes a quality issue, right? So you like the idea of a ring, you like the idea that I'm okay with the limited features, I don't expect it to know what my VO2 max is off of a ring, but I just need to have a consistent data set that I can rely on. The joke is, or the joke, not the joke, but you may not measure the right watts on your bike, like it may be inaccurate, as long as it's consistently inaccurate.

Coach Tom (19:02.882)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (19:05.119)
then it's okay because I'm pulling 240. You're not, you're pulling a buck 40, but that's all right. As long as it says 240 every time, then you can see the difference between it consistently. So that's an interesting thing. Yeah.

Coach Tom (19:09.068)
You're not really with this. Yeah, yeah, consistently. That's the trending I like. And that's where it was just kind of like, well, if I'm not feeling good, can I look back and go like, well, there's data that's not consistent. And that's consistent with what I'm feeling is just like, okay, I don't look at it. I know I've talked to a couple of coach friends and some other folks who were just kind of like they don't like the HRV trackers and stuff or the sleep trackers because

Kenny Bailey (19:19.083)
Yeah, correct.

Kenny Bailey (19:25.675)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (19:37.08)
they feel like you're stressed. causes more stress for some people to think that I need to sleep well. I need to sleep well because I want a high score. I want a good score on my sleep thing. And I'm like, I don't care what the score is. Really? Try athletes? Really? Endurance athletes? Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (19:40.843)
Yeah. I didn't get enough room. Yeah. Yeah.

Big shock, type A personality that wants the prize. give me the gold star. Well, it's an interesting, yeah, I think it's an interesting phenomenon, but also as you move into, like, you're making changes in food or you may change in supplements or sleep habits or, you you're trying to correlate, like, hey, I'm gonna switch, you know, I've been having some GI issues, so I've been trying to figure out, you know, different.

different supplements but those supplements may have an effect on my sleep. So that's kind of the reason why I like the idea of having the ring is to say, okay, I changed this part, does it affect this part or what does my sleep look like? Those kind of things. So you can.

Coach Tom (20:22.552)
Yeah. And, and I totally, I totally get, having a subscription model like Aura has. it's six bucks a month. It's really not that bad when it comes down to it. you still pay for the ring because you need to, it's hardware, it costs money. There's, there's something there, but it was like, it was really needed first with this one. was just kind of like, there's been no subscription costs ever. Right. And it was just kinda like, well, I paid like

Kenny Bailey (20:31.66)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (20:39.201)
Well, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (20:46.337)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (20:51.544)
just over 200 bucks for the ring as Kickstarter. It's selling now, I think for 350 maybe. think I haven't, I see some of their ads pop up and I haven't looked at the final price on it, but I just sat there and went the only way they can sustain building more and more into it is to sell more and more rings, which ultimately bogs the system down or potentially could, right? So.

Kenny Bailey (20:53.581)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (20:59.309)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (21:13.013)
Yeah, they're exacerbating the problem. you have to add features to the new ring or to the existing ring. A new ring that your existing ring doesn't have and you have the iPhone thing where you have to constantly get a new iPhone. But the iPhone keeps you on a subscription service for the data, right? So yeah, data's king.

Coach Tom (21:23.788)
Yeah, then you're constantly upgrade, right?

Coach Tom (21:30.37)
Yeah, to get you on that. it's interesting.

Kenny Bailey (21:33.013)
I mean, to your point, I like the idea of trying that business model, but that business model is because you're exacerbating your data problem because you have to sell more rings and therefore you have to buy more data which costs more money, bigger pipes and yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (21:39.586)
Yeah. Yeah.

money and how do you there's there's no rnd left right like you have to keep developing the software you have to keep developing i think the hardware is probably set and then it's just developing the software that goes through so i mean having the ai assistant type thing that helps you it's got some potential on it it seemed really good it was very interactive when i just when i was doing the tech support

I just put a couple screenshots of what my data looked like and they're like, okay, we see where this isn't working, blah, blah, do this, this and this and I do that and they come up and it just goes like, okay, now this and we just kind of went through the things and a couple of times where it was like come back the next day and they're like, I I.

Kenny Bailey (22:21.911)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Coach Tom (22:29.004)
continue the conversation, they're like, well, you need to do these three steps. And I'm like, I did those three steps yesterday, look at the notes above. And they're like, we see that you did those three steps. So was like, you just had to remind it that this is an ongoing thread and it was on top of it right away. And it was like, okay, you're gonna need to go to this website and blah, blah, and, you know, go through all of this. That was the next step. So it was easy, it was very instantaneous to deal with tech support in that sense.

Kenny Bailey (22:35.191)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (22:38.998)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (22:43.628)
Mm-hmm.

Kenny Bailey (22:47.223)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (22:56.746)
It's the same system that's supposed to give you advice on your daily habits and sleep and all of those other stuff, which that I don't trust because the data is not good. If the data is not good, it can't give you advice on stuff. So that's where that part breaks down for me. It was like, if the data is solid, it can probably come up with great ways to help you. you know, it has, it's got some great features. I haven't experienced using the Oro ring, so I can't compare the two.

Kenny Bailey (22:59.757)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Coach Tom (23:26.094)
But just disappointed, like not being able to get what I wanted out of it. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (23:30.797)
Yeah, I mean that's the thing with Kickstarter, mean the question becomes is there only a doctor? Are you okay with the pain? Or yeah

Coach Tom (23:37.046)
Yeah, and up to this point, I didn't say anything. Like I've never bagged on them. I've never sent them nasty notes or anything because I knew it was a Kickstarter thing. And I'm like, when they delivered late, I'm like, I'm just happy if they deliver, right? They delivered in August. I'm like, great, the ring's here. It's beautiful. The box is great. The ring looks nice. I put it on, like, look, it fits. okay. And then you just start wearing it. It charges quickly in like an hour. They get up in the morning and an hour after you're up, you know, just connect to your app and just...

Kenny Bailey (23:41.111)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (23:48.194)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (23:53.259)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (24:05.942)
have it download and they're like, here's your here's all your numbers. And when it worked, it was great. So kind of anyway, that's my that's my two cents on it. It's kind of Yeah, I got a I don't know what I did with the box. So if I can, like, I think we clear that. Yeah. I know, I know. And at this point, it was just kind of like, I probably just won't get anything.

Kenny Bailey (24:15.245)
Well, yeah, I'm curious to see if you keep it. so will you know the story will continue, right? So Well, you spent 200 bucks on it, I mean, honestly, you know, you go out to a good dinner that's $200. So, you know, yeah

Coach Tom (24:35.67)
I probably, was thinking I'll go get an order ring. I was like, well, I don't want to spend another 300 bucks plus another subscription fee. I think, I think I'll probably put this to rest for a while. spending money on other things, not going to worry about this. Cause I feel, feel confident. I know what my sleep is like when I have a good night's sleep. So.

Kenny Bailey (24:35.7)
If.

Kenny Bailey (24:39.703)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (24:53.717)
Yeah, yeah, and think that's, that's, think that's what most reviews and studies I've seen on any ring based or otherwise has always been well, look, mean, if you're monitoring sleep and you want to see, but to your point, if you want to see causation or correlation at least, you know, that's, that's what it's good for. If you're expecting more from it, you know, don't, but yeah, I'm, and I have a, I have a way that, you know, I've just got an Amex card and they have a $200, I think, gift.

Coach Tom (25:13.24)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (25:23.757)
coupon actually for an order ring and I've been wanting to do it but to your point I've been hesitant but we're gonna take off for Europe here in a couple of weeks and I'm thinking about getting it just to see how that interacts right like hey what does it look like when I'm on a plane what does it look like when you know I'm in different time zone that kind of thing so but every time I talk to you about it I'm always intrigued by it so yeah I think let that you know we'll let the let the story continue right so

Coach Tom (25:25.08)
There you go. There you go.

Coach Tom (25:35.505)
yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Coach Tom (25:43.224)
Yeah, this thing got a little stupid when I went into a different time zone. It's neat. Yeah, yeah, it's neat. I still like the idea. We'll see if we spend the money on it or not. But if you do it for sure, we'll compare the two and then that'll be a good selling point. So, cool.

Kenny Bailey (25:55.544)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, sure. Well, let's see what coach Tom gets for a coach. So,

Coach Tom (26:06.99)
So, so yeah, so we've talked about I teased this I think a couple of times on some shows That I was interviewing some coaches. I had some projects and some things I wanted to do with with me that I was pretty confident that I needed some help with so Long story short, I want to go back to like placid Iron Man

Kenny Bailey (26:12.609)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (26:34.167)
Nice.

Coach Tom (26:35.342)
I'm going to focus a lot on short course, but I do have two long course races that I really want to get to. And I want to go back to to Lake Placid. I love that race so much. I was better 14 years after the first time I did it. But my training wasn't as consistent and and very and very structured as I wanted it to be going into 2024. Like I said, I did well. I PR the race. I was happy, but I just love that so much.

Kenny Bailey (26:43.084)
Nice.

Coach Tom (27:05.486)
doing well there would be a step into getting into the Ultraman World Championships that following November. So that would be the second piece. So I would like to go back to finish that healthy. So I've done that race twice. I got injured in the middle of the first one and I was injured going into the second one. We covered that ad nauseum, I think.

Kenny Bailey (27:20.609)
Welcome to crazy town. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (27:29.197)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (27:32.663)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (27:35.822)
That was back in 2019. So my goal is to go back to that. So looking at that realistically I needed a two-year ramp up There's no way I can I can get ready for either one of those races to do things healthy And proper last year didn't train much like took a lot of time off. We had family issues We had health issues and other things going on so it was like that

Kenny Bailey (28:05.676)
Yep.

Coach Tom (28:05.846)
set me back a little bit. So I decided to do this. There was a couple of things. As a coach, I always want to learn from another coach. I want to learn from other people. So I was looking for coaches that I could get as a mentor. And part of the ways that I like to learn is to do. I can read all day long, I can get the information in, but I'm not really good at spitting it back out right away. I have to do it, then I can

then it makes more sense to me. It's just how I learn a little bit differently. So it was like how I like to experiment on certain things like the ring or whatever else is to do it myself, read about it, learn the science behind it, experiment a little bit more. And then that's where I gained my knowledge. So I started looking around for coaches for that. And I said, well, this project, which I call it a project, it's truly a project is to get me ready and, and

good to go all the way through Ultraman World Championships in 2027. 2027, I will be turning 60 years old. That's the other piece. So I age group up in the beginning of 2027. I turned 60 at the end of the year, probably a month after the race. So I'll be in the 60 to 64 age group for both races. And I went, huh, how's this going to work? So started interviewing some people, started talking.

Kenny Bailey (29:08.045)
There you go.

Kenny Bailey (29:24.737)
Yeah. Slow...uh...yeah.

Coach Tom (29:28.974)
and one of the best things you can do when you're looking for coaches to talk to multiple coach coaches. I was just talking to an athlete the other day who was saying that she wasn't happy with the coach. She was going to talk to another one. And I said, talk to three or four before you make a decision. And we're like, well, I'm to talk to this one. And if it feels good, then I'm going to go with them. And I'm like, talk to multiple coaches. You don't have to commit to a coach when you talk to them. I mean, their job is to sell you stuff, right? So they want you on the squad.

Kenny Bailey (29:42.945)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (29:58.254)
So they will ask you, but you don't have to say yes. You can just keep, keep talking. Don't drag it out for six months and waste their time, but have a couple of conversations, come back with some questions and just learn different styles of different coaches. So I did that. I did that with a few ended up choosing Chris bag up in Bend, Oregon of campfire endurance. Chris is a ex pro pro cycle, cyclocross triathlete.

Kenny Bailey (30:02.093)
Yep.

Kenny Bailey (30:20.417)
No kidding.

Coach Tom (30:27.118)
He's got some some stuff which was great, but he's been coaching for 18 years something like that Younger than me which is great because it brings a little bit more energy to the to the whole thing at this point time everybody's younger than me, right? So yeah, so with my conversation with him and he's he's online you can find you can find his his podcast and a lot of his stuff on his YouTube channel is

Kenny Bailey (30:38.795)
At this point, Tom, we're both aging up. So they're all younger. So yeah.

Coach Tom (30:56.554)
It was great. And I felt like we had a really good connection and he was very excited to to come on board and do, you know, kind of work through this project. So we started February 1st. So we're a couple of months in. And it's been fun. It's been great. learning. I'm learning a bunch of different things. I'm coming up with some new workouts. I'm also learning different coaching cues. And that's what I think is one of the things that I find

The most challenging, but the most fun is different cues work for different athletes. So he can't just give the same thing over and over again. So I'm learning different cues that he uses and, and we taught, we get to talk about why he's using different cues, certain ways we get, we get more into the nitty gritty, than you would with your coach normally, but, he's mentoring as well as, as coaching on this thing. So I'm learning a lot. I'm very excited about working with him and teaming up. He's, he's coached some, some, some good names.

Kenny Bailey (31:53.911)
Sounds exciting.

Coach Tom (31:56.078)
Some amazing athletes has a great community and it's very he's very mellow low-key

Kenny Bailey (32:02.407)
If you've ever been to Bend, it's probably one the best places to train. I mean, it's gorgeous. wow. I know. That's for good reason. So, what kind of client are you? Do you stick to the program? Do you do 90 % of it? We won't talk about me because, you know, I suck at this thing. every coach is like, you're the person that we try to train for. But how do you consider yourself so far? Have you stuck to the program?

Coach Tom (32:05.346)
Yep, yeah, we almost moved there. We came close to moving there. I made multiple trips up there.

Coach Tom (32:20.11)
That's not to say... Yeah.

Coach Tom (32:27.234)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (32:32.553)
I stick to the program, but I'm not like nuts on everything, right? And this is something that Chris and I had talked about. One of the things that he always says is if he sees you hitting every metric and making every single workout green, there's something wrong. And then he sees that as a red flag as like, you know, the workout says you need to go to, you you need to do whatever the mileage is on the bike, know, 40 miles on the bike and you do exactly 40.

Kenny Bailey (32:32.641)
Come back.

Kenny Bailey (32:48.673)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (32:56.161)
Biff. Yeah.

Coach Tom (33:02.158)
you know, and make it green or even if you're exhausted, you're doing whatever he wants to see a couple of red mist workouts in the month. He wants to see, you know, if the swim supposed to be 2,600 yards and you come in at, know, 25, 83 or 2,900 or 3000 or whatever. He wants to see a little bit of that. And I'm, I'm that way naturally. If I finished my run and I come up and it's 5.93 miles to my house, I'm done.

Kenny Bailey (33:03.906)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (33:16.246)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (33:31.726)
But I know people that have to run in circles until they get six, right? So I'm not, we had long discussions about the type of athlete and stuff. So that's, I'm following his workout pretty much to plan. I'm not changing anything of his. love seeing how it's all playing out. We just did a big testing week. Heck, that's been a couple of weeks ago now. We went four weeks of just kind of getting back into it and we did a week of testing.

Kenny Bailey (33:33.293)
Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (33:43.371)
Yeah.

Good.

Coach Tom (34:01.544)
and kick my ass. Good. Saw where my numbers are, which on the bike was a little disappointing because that's, that's definitely regressed, but that's okay because those are numbers where we're at right now. So we kind of said, okay, here's where the plan is. Funny thing is since I've been in the fall, October through the end of January, I have lifting weights three times a week building muscle mass. So I'm heavier than I was like in the previous couple of years.

Kenny Bailey (34:09.602)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (34:30.05)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (34:31.404)
not that you'll notice, right? I'm just a little heavier than there's a few pounds. not like, I'm not, I'm not Kenny over here with that, you know, on completely bulked up. but I've probably added about five or six pounds, more muscle mass, which is great. And my, but my endurance has gone down. So my short-term power is up, but my endurance is down. And it's hilarious because it was like, once we were looking at that, it was like, well I've just been lifting weights. So of course I have.

Kenny Bailey (34:34.285)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good amount.

Kenny Bailey (34:49.067)
That's Yep.

Coach Tom (34:58.752)
more strength and more power so I can push the watts for a very short amount of time, but the fade-off is more than it should be, so we're just adjusting my workout to get me to that long endurance tail so that we need.

Kenny Bailey (35:11.597)
Yeah, the bad secret, I was 188 pounds when I went into Ironman, California, and I'm at 215 right now, and I have the same waist size, so it's all muscle. And trust me, when you hit a 6 % grade hill, your watts don't make up for the, it's like it's all top end, and suddenly you're like, yeah, I may like the way I look, but dang, it does me zero good on a two mile climb. It's like, this sucks! So, you know, it's a...

Coach Tom (35:18.008)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (35:26.158)
Yeah, yep

Coach Tom (35:35.894)
I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (35:40.557)
Yeah, mean it's just a tough balance when you're trying to, I you want to have muscle because you need that sort of that kick, that power, but at the same time, but you have to balance with endurance, Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (35:42.606)
There it is.

Coach Tom (35:48.174)
You that. You need that power. Yeah. It's, good to have that and that balance. Yeah. So you set the workups, the workouts set up to build certain things that dirt and certain muscles and certain, you know, aerobic systems. It was just great. So we're focused on bike. we're focused on swim. key thing is like lots of to, to be like, need to really bring my swim up to get through Ultraman to get to Ultraman actually for, for both races to really take it to another level.

Kenny Bailey (35:58.434)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (36:16.098)
which is a minimum of three days a week, pushing 3,000 yards and getting up there. And that's just the start, right? We're gonna push from there.

Kenny Bailey (36:25.165)
So when you have a, I'm always curious about a remote coach. How do you, is the assumption you're already no form and you don't need to worry about sort of that? Like you don't have to worry about your run form or your swim? No you do. Yeah.

Coach Tom (36:36.696)
Do video, we do video for that. Yeah, he's got a training camp that I would go to, but I have a work weekend. We've got that's Music City Try here and I'm like, I just can't. So part of it would be to go to the training camp and then I would get all the analysis on the swim and bike and run and all that would be done in person right there. So what we're gonna do for this is that I'm gonna send him video in a couple of weeks from the pool.

Kenny Bailey (36:51.874)
Got it.

Kenny Bailey (37:02.871)
care.

Coach Tom (37:05.07)
And then he's going to be able to work on that. A lot of it is I know the form, but it's good to have eyes on it. Like it's, good to have eyes anyway. There's a few different tools that we're using and different ways of doing it because he's a swim smooth swim coaching instructor, which is a different company out of Australia. Interesting. So it gets you like the, coaching gets me a membership into that. So I have a whole.

Kenny Bailey (37:06.071)
Uh-huh.

Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (37:17.133)
Mm-hmm.

Kenny Bailey (37:33.41)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (37:34.866)
litany of, of, you know, videos showing the different forms and the different techniques and drills and things on there. So that's really great. So it's, it's helping me a little bit more on that side of things. So there's some interesting drills that that we're doing and working on and it's helping. mean, it definitely it's like four weeks before the swim started to get to where it was supposed to be. And then it's okay, now we're okay, now we're starting to make improvements. We got back to where

Kenny Bailey (37:52.429)
Good.

Coach Tom (38:03.68)
almost where I was when I left off over a six week period. And then, now we can start to, to, push forward and make some progress on it. And so I'll have him see some videos so I can, you know, just correct my position a little bit more. So yeah, the rest of it's all online. It's all through training peaks. so he sees the data that we tie into, and then he tracks it. There's a, an app that training piece has, called WKO, which actually takes all of that data and then draws it out. So you can see.

your peaks and valleys and stuff. So it's kind of interesting on that side.

Kenny Bailey (38:35.861)
Yeah, I think it's an interesting, you know, the fact you want somebody out of Oregon where you're in Tennessee, right? And that's an interesting kind of, you know, because some people need kind of to have their coach nearby. Some people are perfectly okay with remote. And I think your maturity level of where you're at, because you've done this stuff before. It's not like, you know, you're not just now getting in the pool trying to figure out why is it that I, you know, is my hand crossing over or not? You know, what you need is somebody that gives you structure.

Coach Tom (38:47.0)
Yeah. Yep.

Coach Tom (39:03.458)
Yep. Yeah. Yep. It's how we're building the workouts. I do the homework. So it's not that's never been an issue. Even when I went to PT for injuries, there'd be like, just give me what I need to do. And I'm to go home and do it. And they're just kind of like, we know you're the type of person that's going to go do your their stuff. There's no, I'm not. I don't skip workouts like unless, unless I'm not feeling good or, you know, I'm exceptionally tired then.

Kenny Bailey (39:03.849)
and feedback based off of that structure and say, okay, you need to do that. So it's an interesting, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (39:30.986)
And all of that is notes back and forth, right? The more notes you can give your coach, I like that for my athletes where they can give me a whole litany at the end of the workout of like, okay, that gives me an idea of like, how do you feel? How does it feel? A lot of it was time together, RPE, your rate of perceived exertion. think the first four weeks we didn't look at power meters or anything. He's like, want you to, here's what my zones look like. Here's what the standard zones six, one through six Coggins zones are.

Kenny Bailey (39:54.274)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (39:59.406)
And then we want to go, this is what I want your rate of perceived exertion on a scale of one to 10. We want a three, this is what it should be like. So we start setting what that rate is and then you're like, oh, okay. And now we did the week of testing and now we can go, okay, that's 140 Watts is my Z2, right? Or 150 Watts is, know, getting into Z. So now we can attach some numbers to that feeling and then we can kind of go from there and kind of build up. So.

Kenny Bailey (40:03.234)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (40:07.8)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (40:16.163)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (40:22.914)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (40:28.876)
Yeah, that's, you know, when I race, that's, do basically, you know, trying to Watts, like on the bike, it's Watts, it's turnover and it's RPE, almost entirely RPE. Like I don't.

Coach Tom (40:28.962)
Yeah, it's fun.

Coach Tom (40:35.0)
Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Kenny Bailey (40:40.654)
if I'm going slower fast, it's the exertion, because I don't know what the variable is. I could be cold, my muscles could be tight, right? I'm normally supposed to be going this speed and this, know, this many watts, but when you're out of a water at 65 degrees, your quads aren't quite, you know, they're not waking up as fast as you think so, right? But so it's all that RP. It's like, feel like it's a seven when it should be a three. Yeah, well, you know, so that's a...

Coach Tom (40:47.672)
There's so much. There's so much that can change on that.

Coach Tom (40:57.366)
Yeah, yeah.

Coach Tom (41:02.766)
Yeah, exactly. And I part of... Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (41:06.408)
We're so tied, I think, just to finish that, we're just so tied with numbers sometimes, you know, it's like for people to do it once in a while, put your garment in your pocket or put your watch, you know, take your watch and start it, but put it in your pocket and then find out. You may find out actually you're a much better or faster person because you're not, it's not necessarily like, I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be right here. Just try it sometime and see what RPE does. It's kind of a fun thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (41:17.026)
Yeah. Don't look at it.

Coach Tom (41:24.908)
Yeah. Try it. I it's, it's actually very freeing not to be staring at your watch or having a beep at you when your, your pace needs to be a certain thing. and the reason I'm all congested is cause I've spent a lot of time in the pool and a big workout this morning. So yay for chlorine. Love that. as one of the other things that I really like talking with him and, and listening to him and getting a lot of data back from him is that it gives me a little bit of validation on my coaching. So,

Kenny Bailey (41:41.056)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (41:53.122)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (41:54.232)
We talk about like levels of experience. have levels of experience. What I'm trying to now do is get to a level of mastery and the level of mastery is working with someone that's much better. That's going to teach me a lot of that stuff. That's going to allow me to get to the next level of coaching and my coaching ability. So that's what we're kind of looking at. But the stuff that I am doing is being validated as correct because that's the same stuff he's going through. And we're talking about that. It was like, okay, good. I feel, I feel validated a little bit because

Kenny Bailey (41:58.424)
Mm.

Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (42:17.912)
Good.

That's

Coach Tom (42:22.018)
these workouts that I was doing and the reason why I was giving these to my athletes and how we were conversing and the cues that I was going are all legit, all kind of there. I got the same experience when I went to the, the cab to show in Chicago earlier this year, with the bike fitters and the bike fitters were explaining bike fitting to non bike fitters. And I was like, yeah, I do that exact same thing. Okay, cool. Validation that like, we're all in the, we're all talking the same language and I'm not off in left field coming up with some crazy.

Kenny Bailey (42:25.357)
there.

Kenny Bailey (42:43.106)
Bam. Bam.

Kenny Bailey (42:49.614)
Well, and I think for this market, right, there's not a whole lot of you in this market. And so to your point, being able to just be able to have peers to talk to and say, hey, this is how I'm doing it. Are you doing it? Yeah, this is what we're doing. Just like you said, it's like sometimes you're an island, right? Because you're focused on your clients and you're focused on getting your work done. you don't have a whole lot of like there isn't 16, a group of 16 bike fitters around Nashville that are sitting down at dinner once a month. And yeah, exactly. So that's good.

Coach Tom (42:56.258)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (43:00.362)
It's all good. Yeah. Yep. yeah.

Coach Tom (43:12.962)
Yeah, yeah, we can all get together and have dinner with Yeah, exactly. There. We got some Facebook chats back and forth. But that's about it. That goes through. But yeah, so it's been it's, it's been good. I'm kind of excited about it. Just as a project and they Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (43:20.598)
Yeah, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (43:28.472)
Cool, you sound excited. What's nice is you're kind of, you're giddy about it. hey, got it, this is something new both from a peer perspective, but also from just learning and having somebody holding you accountable. And sometimes that's kind of a fun sometimes to just say, hey, you build a program, let me just, that frees you up also from it.

Coach Tom (43:35.075)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (43:51.765)
it actually may help you out in just in the fact that because you're only focused on that, I just need to know all I gotta do is swim today because the rest of stuff is being taken care of. So that should be fun for you. to kind of, yeah.

Coach Tom (43:57.858)
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And I was backing off some of my workouts when I was busy because I was trying to take care of my athletes and then putting my program together was like, I need to get like, was doing okay with it, but it was more stressful. Right? So now I can go like, he's, he's looking at the big picture. He knows what it is. This is going to be a long haul two year deal. so you can start building on that and look at the bigger picture and then I can focus on my athletes. And I think I'm,

Kenny Bailey (44:06.851)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (44:10.754)
Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Yep. Yep.

Kenny Bailey (44:24.301)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (44:27.852)
just more connected to my athletes this year. So I feel really good about that. So it's cool. It's been fun.

Kenny Bailey (44:30.178)
Yeah. Good.

Cool. Yeah, like I said, we got a couple ongoing stories here. Will the ring survive?

Coach Tom (44:39.106)
Yes. Well, yeah, well, it will I not fling it into the trash some at some point or we'll keep it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did after after six weeks. So we we connect twice a month. Well, video chat twice a month. mean, that's part of like he's a very what I what I refer to as a high touch coach, like we're constantly talking. And after I think after six weeks, I think it was just kind of like, OK, just checking.

Kenny Bailey (44:45.474)
Exactly. And then same thing on your coach. You're not fleeing him in the trash at some point too, right there.

Kenny Bailey (45:01.336)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (45:08.398)
still cool, like you're like, you're not going like, oh boy, this is crazy one. I shouldn't have said yes. This is now your, now is your turn to back out, right? If you want, you know, you can go off and he was like, same for you. was like, yeah, we're good. Yeah, we're cool. Um, so fun stuff. Yeah. Figured we'd share that. We've got, uh, we've got bike Tennessee. We've got bike Tennessee. We've got Jenny Veal, uh, from bike Tennessee is connected with,

Kenny Bailey (45:09.485)
Yeah

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (45:19.304)
There you go. Good. Well good, that sounds exciting. So what do have coming up on our future podcast? were, Spill the Beans. Nice.

Coach Tom (45:35.342)
Shannon Burke, is Tennessee Gravel, does some work with Bike Tennessee. Bike Tennessee is part of Visit Tennessee. So it's our state government program about cycling all around Tennessee. So I think Shannon's come up with 50, over 50 segments around Tennessee. They're on the website.

Kenny Bailey (45:56.493)
Nice.

Coach Tom (45:58.636)
You can get the GPX files. You can get everything. You can see where they are in the different areas and they're anywhere from, you know, 15, 20 miles to a hundred miles plus. so we're going to talk to, we're going to talk to Jenny who heads up that program. and that's going to be one of our next episodes that comes up. It's going to be great. She's fantastic. She's very excited. She likes to ride. she's doing good things. So, and, and I'm excited the more we ride in Tennessee, we've been here for five and a half years now. And it's like, let's, you know, let's.

Kenny Bailey (46:07.138)
That's it.

Kenny Bailey (46:21.006)
Cool.

Coach Tom (46:28.332)
Let's do more. There's great riding here. There's, there's really good riding. So we've got Jenny coming up. then we've got, we're to have our, well, I'll say our favorite race directors. They're in the top three or four, with, Joe Fleanor and Faye Yates back on to talk about the state of triathlon, not just in Tennessee, but you know, short course racing.

Kenny Bailey (46:40.45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (46:45.742)
Mm.

Coach Tom (46:54.126)
and see where the sprint and Olympic distance stuff is and what's going on with dad. And then we've got some, some fun partnership stuff that I'm going to do with them. We're going to announce coming up. It's going to be good too. We're working on the details of some of that. So they, yeah, that's a couple of the ones we've got coming up and then reached out to a couple of the folks. So it's like herding cats, trying to get everyone's schedules all together. So you'll, we'll have a bunch really.

Kenny Bailey (47:06.904)
Sounds good.

Kenny Bailey (47:11.34)
There you go.

Coach Tom (47:16.032)
Altogether and then all of a sudden there'll be a little dead space So subscribe make sure you subscribe everybody because it'll you know have it ring the bell when we pop back up because we do we keep surfacing and Bringing up some good content for everybody. So yeah, that's what we got going on fun stuff. So I Think that's it for now. This is pretty good. It's a good show. So Thanks everybody. Thanks for listening

Kenny Bailey (47:18.786)
Yeah. There you go.

Kenny Bailey (47:24.205)
There you go.

Kenny Bailey (47:28.334)
There you go.

Kenny Bailey (47:36.096)
Yeah, yeah, it's good, good follow up, we'll...

Coach Tom (47:42.126)
Thanks for sending some notes. Keep those, keep those subscriptions going. Keep the thumbs up five stars, all that good stuff. Help helps us out. And if you've listened this far into the episode, thank you. Appreciate, appreciate your making almost to the end. And I will be updating when I get some time to edit the new intro outro for the YouTube channel, because it still has our friends from the coffee, coffee house on there, which we're really not partnered with anymore. But they're still getting some free advertising out of us out of that.

Kenny Bailey (47:54.38)
There you go.

Kenny Bailey (48:11.426)
There you go.

Coach Tom (48:12.096)
at that point. whatever, one of these days I'll get around to actually re-editing an intro and outro for that on the video side. So if you're looking at our wonderful, beautiful faces on YouTube, hi, thanks, appreciate that. And listen everywhere you can. So Kenny, as always, fantastic. Appreciate you. And everybody will catch you on the next one.

Kenny Bailey (48:24.003)
There you go.