Coach Tom (00:01.161)
Hey Kenny, how you doing?

Kenny Bailey (00:02.909)
I'm Fantastic Tom, are you?

Coach Tom (00:04.382)
I'm fantastic as well. We have Joe Fleener of Magic Sports joining us this time. So we get to talk to one of our favorite race directors. We're missing Faye. We'll send her our best. She's definitely the favorite. Let's be real, right? But we're super happy to have you guys back on to talk about triathlon and short course racing and all the fun stuff that happens around that. So first some business.

Joe Fleenor (00:16.33)
She's the favorite.

Kenny Bailey (00:17.595)
Yeah, I would agree.

Coach Tom (00:32.974)
Thank you guys for lots of comments and thumbs up stars all that good stuff. Keep that up. We really appreciate that that boosts up our our standing in the algorithm. We're closing in on that 10,000 download mark. So we're getting there and we're almost at 100 episodes. We're in the 90s right now. We're 91, 92, I think someplace around that. So we've been doing this for a little bit and having a lot of fun doing it. So we appreciate everybody's comments and keep

Kenny Bailey (00:54.717)
Crazy.

Coach Tom (01:02.328)
Keep listening and subscribe. Subscribe if you're watching YouTube, hit the channel. So Joe is one of our favorite race directors, especially here in middle Tennessee, because Magic Sports has been around for how many years now, Joe?

Joe Fleenor (01:16.682)
This would be 41. You're 41.

Coach Tom (01:19.384)
This is 41, which doesn't seem like it because both you and Fay are much younger than that. So that's like, that's crazy. It's wild. It's fantastic. All through middle Tennessee. we've got Kentucky and Alabama putting on some of the great races that are happening. So welcome back to the show, Joe. We appreciate you. We've, we've, you've been on a couple of times now and we love to hear what's actually happening. So how was 2025?

Kenny Bailey (01:19.878)
No kidding.

Joe Fleenor (01:26.686)
Wild. It's wild.

Coach Tom (01:49.231)
What did it look like for you guys? It seemed great. I was at most of the races. It seemed like there was good turnout and all of that. How did it look for the last couple of years? 24, 25? What's it? What's it? How's it trending? What's new?

Joe Fleenor (02:04.99)
Yeah, well first of all, thanks for having me. The fact that I'm a repeat guest hopefully is a good sign that people actually tune in when I'm on.

Coach Tom (02:10.722)
Always good. Yep. We can work on that. No budget.

Kenny Bailey (02:11.261)
You don't get a jacket like SNL by the way. There's no jacket. Sorry. No budget.

Joe Fleenor (02:19.598)
No budget. More subscribes. No. So for real, thank you for having me on. Magic Sports, we had a great year in 2025 coming off of the best year in our company's history in 2024, which is surprising considering the boom of triathlon in the 2010-11 time frame.

Kenny Bailey (02:23.869)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (02:23.872)
Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Coach Tom (02:39.118)
Okay.

Joe Fleenor (02:46.922)
And then our numbers actually increased in 2024 over that, where a lot of companies and a lot of local independent short course races can't claim that. So we were pretty fortunate to have the year we had two years ago. And then we saw numbers, I wouldn't say they dropped off really, but they went back to more of a normal level for us, similar to our 2023, 2022 numbers, which is still very good.

Coach Tom (03:12.216)
Okay.

Joe Fleenor (03:15.146)
overall the grand scheme of the sport for us here in our region. So overall we still processed roughly 5,500 athletes across all the different events that we produce. And roughly half of those in our triathlons we produce were brand new doing that particular race. So we showcased our races to a new audience in many cases.

Coach Tom (03:28.834)
Nice.

Coach Tom (03:40.001)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Coach Tom (03:44.248)
That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (03:44.65)
So it was a good year. Every year is kind of the same kind of numbers like that where we, you know, we have roughly 50 % of our audience is doing that race for the very first time, no matter what year it is. So that's kind of a common trend we have. And then roughly 20 to 25 % of our athletes at every race are doing their very first triathlon ever at that race. So it's kind of cool.

Coach Tom (04:06.978)
to bringing them into the sport, which is great. And I think you're gonna get a bump. We've got like a triathlon magazine listed out all the favorite triathlons and all the different areas of the country. And you guys got three out of the four in Southeastern US. I mean, that's pretty good. Hopefully there's a little bump that comes from that because they're legit good races. I mean, the ones that they picked, I'm like,

Kenny Bailey (04:26.631)
That's cool.

Coach Tom (04:35.606)
little disappointed and get four out of four but you know like three out of four is good shot yeah I mean that's pretty that's pretty awesome I mean so that they recognize that

Joe Fleenor (04:39.306)
Not bad. Yeah. And it's races like, you know, River Bluff triathlon and Mountain Lakes trials. So it's not, you know, what I would consider, you know, the high profile races like Chattanooga. It's some of our others that are more grassroots, but have a strong following and they're just amazing races. So it's pretty cool to see those races honored.

Kenny Bailey (04:50.417)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (04:55.886)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (05:04.428)
Yeah, yeah. And especially,

Kenny Bailey (05:04.849)
What would be the anatomy of a good race? when you think, what does that formula look like?

Joe Fleenor (05:12.936)
Well, we take pride in a lot of different things. Obviously, we want to have as many races as possible come out, but not the biggest races aren't always what we consider the best races. But every race, I feel like of ours, has a common thread throughout, regardless of the size. And we pride ourselves on two main things. Number one is safety. We put in a lot of time and a lot of energy in making sure that we have a safe course.

Kenny Bailey (05:14.333)
Or is that trade secret?

Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (05:41.906)
And that's not just making sure we have enough cones out there, volunteers, that's making sure that we have all of the various entities responsible for helping us on board and understanding what their role is. So that's everything from the Corps of Engineers to the Coast Guard to the Fire Department to the Police Department to the Security Team to name it. There's a lot of logistics that go into that. And so we pride ourselves on making sure that we have that piece.

Coach Tom (05:46.286)
Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (06:11.503)
nailed down better than we feel like better than anybody else in the game. So that's number one. And number two is just creating kind of a sense of fun and relaxation around a high stressful event. So we want it to be very welcoming and showcase ourselves as not this stuffy, you know, rich man's intimidating sport.

but it's meant to be showcased as a lifetime sport that's fun and something you can participate in for the rest of your life. You can kind of come and go, and hopefully you come and go with Magic Sports through your lifetime.

Kenny Bailey (06:43.581)
and familial and yeah.

Coach Tom (06:50.754)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The one thing I've...

Kenny Bailey (06:52.465)
Well, I think you pulled both sides perfectly. think you absolutely have the right touch on that.

Coach Tom (07:01.066)
I was gonna say the thing that I was always impressed with from when I first met you guys, when I first got out here was the fact that the level of quality didn't change from the small races to the bigger races, right? It's the same. Like you guys, like it's easy when you're consistent that way, it's probably easier to manage that you're not backing off for one and better for another. It's the same level of quality across all the races.

Joe Fleenor (07:24.307)
Right.

Coach Tom (07:29.708)
regardless of the size. And I think people feel that and they certainly feel the safety and the welcoming that comes with all of that. So that's pretty awesome. You guys are really, really hit that one. So that's solid. For 2026, you've got a new race coming up, swim only. So how did this come about?

Joe Fleenor (07:43.079)
Yeah, thanks.

Joe Fleenor (07:55.625)
swim only.

Coach Tom (07:57.955)
Like we're getting the triathletes down there to get their warmups, to get more swim training. It's great to have. So tell us about this one. How did this one come about?

Joe Fleenor (08:08.905)
Yeah, this, and I'm going to be fully transparent on it, it's not something that we were planning for a long time that this was going to be a part of our new agenda or our new schedule. It sort of popped up on us for a number reasons. Number one, sadly, we had a race that disappeared from the calendar this year. So that opened up a date where our Tri-Montgomery race that we had produced

For many years in its first iteration with the team Magic brand, and then it went away during COVID and we resurrected that race back in 2024, I think. And so we held it the last two years and lots of different reasons why that race just didn't come back. But regardless, we had that date open and we had a local person in kind of the Birmingham area.

Coach Tom (08:49.486)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Fleenor (09:07.379)
that has been talking to us for a couple years now about trying to bring an event like that to Oak Mountain State Park in Pelham, Alabama, which is where we are. she's an avid swim instructor, is very heavily involved with the juniors in that area and showcasing multi-sport to the youth. And so she's been all over us in a good way about...

We need more opportunities like this to get them in open water swim. Plus there's just a lot of master swim programs out there and tri clubs that just don't really have those opportunities for swim specific racing. So we saw it as an opportunity. We had a date opening. It fit well on the schedule. It wasn't too cold.

Kenny Bailey (09:44.605)
you

Joe Fleenor (10:00.618)
The water temperature is not too cold. The lake we're very familiar with. We've kind of got all of the foundation already built in the park, so it wasn't a real heavy lift. It's just more of a... In some cases, it's a new audience for us where it's not only, you know, we'll get a lot of triathletes, but a lot of the people that do open water swims are not triathletes. And so they're not always a part of our, you know...

our database at this point. it's taken a little bit of marketing that we don't normally do, which is more direct outreach to the local master swim programs or USA swimming, things like that that we don't normally have to do. So that's sort of how that whole thing came about and we're excited about it. It's the first, and I should say this, we actually did an open water swim last year.

Coach Tom (10:35.426)
Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (10:55.413)
as part of the World Police and Fire Games that came to Birmingham last year, which is a huge, amazing, cool event that Birmingham got to host last year. And we were hired on to help them manage the open water swim at that venue. So we actually did this event out there for them and we're like, hey, this is really cool. So it all just kind of worked, worked perfectly. And so that's kind of how that event.

Coach Tom (10:58.764)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (10:59.965)
That's cool.

Coach Tom (11:11.35)
Okay.

Coach Tom (11:16.846)
That works.

Coach Tom (11:21.837)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (11:23.005)
That's great.

Joe Fleenor (11:25.181)
and how it started came about. So we're excited about that. That's on May 2nd.

Coach Tom (11:26.862)
May 2nd, yeah, so that's coming up. That's coming up quick. The water temperature is going to be cool, but shouldn't be too bad in Alabama.

Kenny Bailey (11:29.885)
Nice.

Joe Fleenor (11:34.825)
It's roughly 70 to 73 degrees is our guess. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What's that? Yep. Yep.

Kenny Bailey (11:37.937)
That's perfect. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (11:38.051)
Really? that's not bad at all. That's perfect. That's perfect. What's what suit legal? So make everybody happy. I'll make the triathletes happy. They get there. They get that they won't have to worry about, know, not no wetsuits. So that'd be that's the first question that comes up. So and then you've got multiple distances on it. We've got what half mile, one mile, two mile and five K right for distances. Yeah. So yeah.

Kenny Bailey (11:43.932)
Yeah.

No kidding.

Joe Fleenor (11:51.599)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (11:55.101)
There you go.

Joe Fleenor (12:00.179)
We have four distances, So hopefully something for everybody. We even talked about even offering even a shorter distance and we opted not to, but we wanted it to be kind of for everybody. And we feel like the half mile is a fairly good entry point for people.

Coach Tom (12:12.834)
Yeah, think that's, yeah, yeah, that's a good spot. And then maybe we get some people that were not triathletes that now get a little bit interested. Maybe they meet a couple triathletes and they go, hey, they're not that bad people. Like maybe we could make, we could do one of these. These guys aren't so, aren't so bad. I was at an awards, triathlon awards thing in San Diego and Taylor Finney was the guest speaker.

Kenny Bailey (12:16.859)
I would agree.

Kenny Bailey (12:23.965)
become more confident.

Joe Fleenor (12:28.048)
Not so bad.

Coach Tom (12:39.466)
and Taylor got up and spoke and he's great. He's amazing. He's also like six eights. He's massive. His young guy just goes, you know what, you try athletes are pretty cool. I was like, we should hang some time. It was almost like he was surprised and you know, he sat and chatted with everybody afterwards. I was like cracking up ever since that I've been just kind of like, we're not that bad. Really not that bad.

Joe Fleenor (12:48.776)
You're not so bad.

Kenny Bailey (12:48.945)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (12:53.8)
Thank

Kenny Bailey (13:00.434)
There you go.

Joe Fleenor (13:00.54)
Well, you and I were at that endurance exchange conference and Rowdy Gaines was the speaker and he said something very similar. He was like, you know, I don't really have much to do with triathletes, but you guys are pretty cool.

Coach Tom (13:03.18)
Yeah, yep. Yes. Yep.

Kenny Bailey (13:07.901)
Cough

Coach Tom (13:11.234)
You guys are pretty cool. It's not bad. Like, we're okay.

Kenny Bailey (13:13.507)
Speaking of pretty cool, let's not gloss over the one other race that you put on, which was the beer mile.

Coach Tom (13:20.032)
yeah. Yes, this is an important race. I've heard there's more than one race that you added.

Joe Fleenor (13:20.206)
I'm glad you brought that up.

Kenny Bailey (13:22.845)
I'm just curious to know how that fits in the pantheon of long distance races and chugging beer every, you Yeah, yeah.

Joe Fleenor (13:28.908)
Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. That is, I'm not going to say it's our showcase new event, but it was a new event. And so I've been wanting to do a beer mile forever. And I've just been trying to figure out how to like, where to fit it in. And so there just really hasn't ever been the great course or the great

Coach Tom (13:32.214)
It's important.

Kenny Bailey (13:37.998)
Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (13:55.729)
timeframe, but we have this St. Patrick's Day run that we do that obviously makes the most sense to kind of incorporate into that. But we never really had a great venue for it because we were always down in Shelby Park. And Shelby Park in Nashville does not, it's not conducive for a beer mile down there. But this year we moved out of Shelby Park to downtown Nashville next to Nissan Stadium. And it's just got kind of a much bigger feel to it with the Nashville back.

Coach Tom (14:12.846)
Yeah

Kenny Bailey (14:12.974)
Yeah

Kenny Bailey (14:24.583)
Yes.

Joe Fleenor (14:25.0)
drop behind you in the stadium and it's you know that setup you've got an easy little quarter mile loop you can do up there. So we decided the night before the St. Patrick's Day run to host during Pack Your Pickup the beer mile and just for those of you who are unaware of what a beer mile is you chug a beer, a full beer and then you run a quarter mile and you chug a beer and you run a quarter mile so you're doing this you're chugging four beers and running four quarter mile laps for a total of one mile.

Kenny Bailey (14:49.596)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (14:50.35)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (14:54.952)
And we did it as a, we capped it at eight men and eight women. It was an application process. So people had to submit an application as to why I should choose them for the beer mile. We had some pretty great, we had.

Kenny Bailey (15:03.197)
thought that was fantastic.

Kenny Bailey (15:07.325)
I'm a fast heavy drinker. I come from a long line of heavy drinkers. You're in.

Coach Tom (15:10.358)
Yeah. You see, I'm from Wisconsin. should. no, you're not.

Joe Fleenor (15:19.62)
One guy submitted like a, I asked for like 30 seconds or 45 second long videos, nothing too intensive, but one guy submitted like a two and a half minute well produced video. And he made, had to give him, you even though he went over the timeframe, it was too good not to, so he made it. But anyways, we had eight men, eight women, and from all different walks of life, one of which was a Nashville city council person, which is really cool.

Coach Tom (15:25.738)
and just have some fun.

Kenny Bailey (15:30.109)
Did he make it? there you go, yeah, he had to.

Coach Tom (15:30.84)
Ha ha ha!

Yay.

Coach Tom (15:46.264)
Nice. That's always cool.

Kenny Bailey (15:46.33)
Heh.

Joe Fleenor (15:48.585)
And we did it in a way we had a lot of fun with it I wore like a referee Jersey and there were very specific rules where if you you You spilled your beer you had a time penalty if you vomited you have the time penalty like all these various rules and Yeah

Kenny Bailey (15:49.287)
So there you go.

Kenny Bailey (15:55.217)
There we go.

Coach Tom (16:02.806)
Yeah. Nice. Nice. So how was it? Did you have a track or you weren't on a track? You were obviously in the, in the parking area or you were just sidewalk area. Okay. Down to one end, back to the other end, just like swimming, like down and back, down and back. Perfect.

Kenny Bailey (16:03.683)
Yeah, good stuff. I love it. How do you, so how does...

Joe Fleenor (16:11.292)
We were just using kind of the sidewalk area out in that area. And there's a good little kind of quarter mile loop around our packet pickup area.

Kenny Bailey (16:11.473)
Yeah. There you go.

Kenny Bailey (16:19.645)
There you go. Was there a subcommittee formed on what type of beer should be consumed? Was that a, because I mean, you don't go in there with like a dark brown ale, right?

Joe Fleenor (16:20.732)
Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (16:26.408)
You

Coach Tom (16:26.56)
Right.

That's important. No, it's Guinness. It's St. Patrick's Day. You imagine that? That would have been awful. my God. Okay.

Joe Fleenor (16:33.192)
You don't. Yeah. I mean, I could have been cruel and I could have done that. But you know what? I learned some lessons in this where I chose a very light, know, Miller light, just kind of an easy to drink lager. But the problem was, this was my first year doing it, I didn't realize you don't really need it to be really cold. It's a hard thing to drink when a beer is freezing cold.

Kenny Bailey (16:40.433)
Guinness would have been horrible.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (16:58.254)
No. When it's cold. Yeah, yeah.

Kenny Bailey (16:58.514)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (17:01.864)
So we had it on ice all day long and then just pulled it out of the cooler to pour these drinks as they came around their laps and that was hard. So next year I'll get them a little warmer beforehand. Okay. Well, I've always wanted an alcohol sponsor at our races. So if you know anybody. Okay. By the way, speaking of alcohol, is it okay if I drink like I have a little like.

Kenny Bailey (17:04.476)
yeah.

Kenny Bailey (17:09.147)
Yeah. All right. We'll have an idea for a beer sponsor so we can talk offline.

Coach Tom (17:11.374)
There you go, yeah.

Coach Tom (17:22.37)
Yeah, taking sponsors, taking sponsors.

Kenny Bailey (17:22.415)
I do. Let's talk. There you go.

Coach Tom (17:28.334)
Absolutely, we're doing this in the evening. It's after work hours. Yes, it is it is there. Kenny, Kenny on many occasions has had a little imbibing going on while we do this, which is perfect. mean, it's, it's the end of the day, we do this in the evenings. It's, it works out, it works out really well.

Joe Fleenor (17:30.834)
We're recording this in happy hour.

Kenny Bailey (17:31.037)
Beat me to it. So there you go.

Kenny Bailey (17:39.151)
Look, look, just, I've had a day. needed, just, just.

Joe Fleenor (17:40.84)
and have a listen to these.

Kenny Bailey (17:48.925)
dealing with the people I have to deal with. You know, so... So... All the time.

Joe Fleenor (17:52.547)
Coach Tom (17:53.343)
Yeah, all the time, all the time. So what else is new for this year? What's going on? What are your expectations? Now? I'll jump on to another question after that. So what's what else is? What are your expectations for this year? What are we looking at?

Joe Fleenor (18:08.859)
Yeah, there's, in terms of racing, there aren't a lot of differences this year. We're just fine-tuning a lot of what we've been doing and making these events bigger and better. So outside of our normal schedule, nothing new. We are involved in an organization called Sports ETA, which is kind of an organization that

It kind of pairs destinations with events or rights holders of events. so it's an opportunity for us to see is there opportunity for growth for Magic Sports outside of our current region. So it's something new for us that we're doing. As all of, you know, pretty much every one of our events we do, we have a really strong relationship with the local, either the Convention and Visitor Bureau,

the sports commission or some other entity there, some cities don't have kind of the formality of that, but some entity that wants to drive tourism through these types of events and we love those kind of relationships. And so we are thinking about leaning more into that if we are to want to expand and grow, which we don't yet know if that's in our horizon, but we are gonna explore it through this organization. So that's kind of our big new thing we're doing.

Coach Tom (19:38.616)
That's cool. Yeah, you have to look at all the options and see what's good for the company and what's good for growth. So I mean, that seems like.

Joe Fleenor (19:38.695)
We'll kind of see what happens with that.

Joe Fleenor (19:48.072)
We see opportunity with, there are a lot of races in the United States that are run by companies or race directors that are, they're on their way out, right? Like they've kind of gotten to the point where either they're getting burned out or they're aging out. And it's unfortunate there might be a lot of races that we no longer see.

across the country in the next five years or so. And so we're aware of that and we're not going anywhere. So we've, you know, where we are currently in our region, we can't add many more races without saturating the market unless we get into different types of events. And so we have to start looking outside of our region. And that's kind of where we are right now.

Coach Tom (20:19.554)
Hmm. Yeah.

Coach Tom (20:43.234)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (20:43.761)
Well, and the good news, you have a quality product. mean, you've already proven that. sources have already said that. Like you've got, you know, literature that are saying, look, this is a quality product. So you come in with a reputation, you come in with the numbers. What I like is you come in with the North Star too. So.

Joe Fleenor (20:57.435)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (21:00.379)
the fact that you were able to pop out like, it's safety and it's fun, right? So that's a skill set that you can, if someone is working on your behalf in another state, they know their North Star, make sure to make it as safe as possible, as fun as possible. having to just the infrastructure, it's brilliant actually. So go forth.

Joe Fleenor (21:04.423)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (21:18.862)
Yeah. So for some of these races or race directors that are doing it, not every race director does this full time, right? So there's a lot of the smaller events and things like that where they do this part time and it's very labor intensive to keep them on, especially trying to go after and get volunteers, right? I think that's one of the things that you guys have stood out with because you're

Joe Fleenor (21:19.013)
Yep. Thanks.

Joe Fleenor (21:30.319)
Right. Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (21:44.315)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (21:47.663)
This is a full-time gig. This is what you guys do. So it's your focus and it's easier for you guys to, you know, have a, have a pulse on it and not just be a small organizer of an event that you're doing part time. That, that just takes a lot. can see the burnout on that side of it. Um, a couple of race directors for other events that I've talked to, I was like really surprised. I'm like, what do you do? Like, do you do this for a living? And they're like, Oh, no, no, no. I work for company XYZ over here. do that. I'm like, really? Like, how do you find the time? Like every weekend you're

getting ready and doing this stuff. Like, yeah, yeah, it's a labor of love at that point. And I just go, wow, that's a lot.

Joe Fleenor (22:20.615)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (22:21.649)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (22:23.163)
It is.

There's not many organizations like Magic Sports that are like a full service, full time event production company putting on triathlons. There's maybe, I'm gonna say, just 10 across the country that are kind of like us. The rest are people that do this on the side. And they do it well, but it's not like they're full time gig and they don't have multiple events across this territory.

Coach Tom (22:35.628)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (22:43.918)
Yeah, yeah.

Coach Tom (22:48.45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (22:54.393)
It's always funny to me when somebody's like, now tell me what you do again, and I tell them, and they're like, and you can do that full time. I'm like, yeah, you can. And you can make money doing it.

Coach Tom (23:00.978)
Yeah, it actually is a full-time job. Yeah

Kenny Bailey (23:03.825)
Yeah, well, we, you don't put on an event. So far. Yeah.

Coach Tom (23:09.518)
Putting on, what is it, 14 events? Is that your total calendar?

Joe Fleenor (23:14.183)
We have 12 that we own. We own and produce 12 of our own events and then we help manage probably another five or so a year. it's,

Coach Tom (23:17.879)
Okay.

Coach Tom (23:23.638)
Okay, okay. Yeah, that's definitely full time because you realize that people can hire your company out to manage events for them.

Kenny Bailey (23:25.885)
full-time job.

Joe Fleenor (23:32.933)
And actually that leads and that we're welcome to talk about this or not, but I don't, don't know how much you all know, but we, we do have a new service line or a new kind of sister organization, under magic sports called magic fit, which is magic fit is, we've taken our expertise and kind of event production and we have now started servicing the conventions that come to Nashville with fitness and wellness activations.

Coach Tom (23:48.054)
yeah, I actually heard about this. Yeah.

Coach Tom (24:02.765)
Nice.

Joe Fleenor (24:02.887)
So if they want yoga or massage or group fitness or pickleball or running tours or anything you can think of, we provide those services to the conventions that are coming to Nashville, which are huge. And so that's taken a lot of my personal time is growing that piece of the business, is that's probably kind of the future growth opportunity for our organization is through that. And so I'm focusing a lot of my efforts on

Coach Tom (24:07.758)
Pick a bar.

Coach Tom (24:15.788)
lot. Big, big numbers, big conventions.

Coach Tom (24:30.35)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Fleenor (24:33.028)
that piece of the business right now.

Coach Tom (24:34.734)
That's awesome. That's definitely a big growth. And I'm sure there's a lot of demand for pickleball right now. It's insane. Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (24:40.25)
Yeah. Kenny can tell you.

Kenny Bailey (24:42.631)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, with Nashville being more and more the destination where people want to go because you see a lot more conventions coming because of just the vibe of Nashville. Nashville. When you tell people you're from, you know, where do you live? I live outside of Nashville. They either tell you the last time they've been to Nashville or the next time they're going to it. So having companies do that, it's a, and you know, the world's trying to get healthier. So the good news is that it's a great marriage for you to be able to swim in. So.

Coach Tom (25:12.28)
Yeah, yeah, we're making.

Joe Fleenor (25:13.36)
Yeah, there's not many people that do what we do in that space. Or if they do something like that, they're siloed into yoga or whatever. And so we've become kind of the one stop shop for all things fitness and wellness for them. So they know if their client or the convention wants to have some sort of activity, we're the go-to now. So it's fun.

Kenny Bailey (25:16.583)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (25:21.666)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (25:33.346)
Nice. Awesome.

Kenny Bailey (25:34.873)
And to your point, the HR person's probably trying to figure out, or whoever's doing this for the company is trying to figure out something new and exciting. And sort of like we do the same thing all the time. To your point, like, hey, anybody? Yeah, right?

Joe Fleenor (25:40.654)
Yeah. Yeah, mm hmm.

Coach Tom (25:41.292)
Yeah. What's different? What's different for the conference? That's cool. Well, that's cool.

Joe Fleenor (25:46.019)
Yeah, and it all started from a running tour. We've been doing running tours for the past 10 years in Nashville, leading tourists and conventions on runs around Nashville. And that's just kind of like grown into just hearing from those clients like they a lot of them are like, well, we don't want to run tour. We actually wanted chair massages. And that's that sort of led us to, well, let's figure out how to start doing that.

Coach Tom (26:05.474)
like yeah we could do that yeah if there's a need you fill the need that's that's how that's how you grow the business on that side of it so that's that's awesome and that's great to hear too because that means more healthy business for you guys that's really good stuff so the other piece of those that we can talk about is growing the triathlon community

Kenny Bailey (26:09.757)
Cheers.

Exactly.

Joe Fleenor (26:16.036)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (26:32.366)
It's something that's near and dear to my heart. I know it's near and to your heart. So we all decided to partner up to make Team Magic again. So you created Team Magic. Team Magic was the business, became Magic Sports. And then last year, was it last year you brought Team Magic back, right? As a VIP program. So tell us what that looked like when you were thinking about bringing that back.

Joe Fleenor (26:51.94)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe Fleenor (26:58.958)
Yeah, so Team Magic is the original brand of our company. Before we rebranded to Magic Sports in January 2022, maybe it 2020, I forget. 2022, 2023, we rebranded the company to Magic Sports. And Team Magic, the brand, was kind of dead at that point. But I always knew that at some point,

I would like to resurrect that brand as a true team, right? Back to its original roots. So just for a little bit of history lesson, the company was founded by a local triathlete in Birmingham, Alabama, who started a local triathlon shop in Birmingham, which for those of you who are unaware, Birmingham is called the Magic City. That's their nickname, hence the name Team Magic.

And so she created a triathlon shop in Birmingham and a lot of her clients were females. This is the eighties. And so there wasn't a lot of like female racers. There wasn't a lot of racing in general, but a lot of the females came together and they created their own little racing team where they would go and they would participate in local races under the brand Team Magic. And then they were like, well, we want...

more racing opportunities. So let's create our own races and just go set up an event, race the event, and then we'll just break the event down after we race it. And then they started doing that and it slowly grew and it kind of went from this little kind of like pop-up event thing that these women were producing into more of like a full-scale event production company and became a little bit more sophisticated and it grew from there. So that's the history of the name Team Magic.

Coach Tom (28:30.654)
Yeah

Coach Tom (28:49.208)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (28:52.198)
And so it's really cool, that history of it. And so I've always thought, let's, at some point when it makes sense, could we bring that back? And so then last year we were celebrating our 40th anniversary as a company. I was like, that's perfect timing to kind of bring back kind of the retro feel of the company, even though it's only been gone like two years. Bringing it back under this new form, which,

Kenny Bailey (29:11.975)
Mm.

Coach Tom (29:14.146)
Yeah

Kenny Bailey (29:14.621)
Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (29:22.374)
What it is now, I wasn't quite ready for that last year. So last year when we brought it out, I didn't want to buy it off too much. So we decided, let's create it as, it wasn't even a VIP program, we had nothing last year. was pretty much just, let's sell some swag. So we created tri-kits and running singlets and.

different things like that, and let's sell the retro look of Team Magic at our races. And so one of our partners helped us kind come up with that. And so we created some fun around that. then at the end of the year, we launched our registrations for this year's races, we unveiled a VIP program, which has kind of taken the Team Magic thing to the next level, which was, if you sign up for Team Magic, you're now getting...

VIP access at all of our races. So there's a lot of incentives that we had built in with that that we were excited about and kind of seeing what was going to happen with that. Again, not wanting to bite off more than we could chew. Let's just do kind of a VIP program. And as we unveiled that, we got a number of signups for it and it's always going great. But then I approached Tom because I realized that there's much more that we

could be doing with this that I don't want to wait too much longer on. And I'm just, I don't think I could do it all alone. And so Tom and I have talked for years about Nashville, our region and the sport and the triathlon community about creating more community in our sport. So it's not so much of an individual sport, but creating this community and

Kenny Bailey (30:49.437)
you

Coach Tom (30:50.158)
Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (31:10.861)
Magic Sports is in a, we feel like we're in a very unique prime position to help facilitate community building, where we're not just a race company in our minds, we should be in the business of full service everything for the athlete. So we decided to ramp it up and take that VIP program and turn it into this full scale

Coach Tom (31:17.934)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Fleenor (31:40.131)
life cycle for an athlete. So that membership now still includes everything that they were getting from the VIP side of things, which was significant discounts on any race you want to do with us. All of our triathlons, got, you know, prime bike rack positioning, you got early access in the water for the swim if you wanted to start earlier than everybody. You got VIP check-in and like you're just your experience was elevated.

Coach Tom (31:52.76)
Yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (32:09.134)
And yeah, totally.

Joe Fleenor (32:10.8)
So now, same model, same price, everything, we've decided to expand upon that and now bring Tom into the fold where we're now partnering with Triton where he and I are going to be working very closely together on becoming kind of the customer service tool for them where they're now going to have a community with each other. We're going to build that out. There's going to be lots of different kind of layers of what this is going to look like, but group

chat features, private message boards. At some point we'll get into group training opportunities with one another. There'll be early, you know, before each of our races, Tom and I will work with them on some things to know about each of the races that not anybody will have access to. So some behind the scenes tools, training opportunities like...

Tom's a coach and so there will obviously be opportunities for private coaching, but he's also going to just as part of the membership help with kind of general coaching advice and tips and techniques. So a lot of different things that we're going to be kind of rolling out with the Team Magic program where we're now going to take this massive audience that we have with our races, most of which are unaffiliated at any capacity with any sort of

Coach Tom (33:13.282)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (33:31.845)
club or other community. They're just there as an individual racing. And it's probably 80 % of our racers are unaffiliated. So that's a significant number. And we don't want that leaky bucket effect of like, okay, you come into a race and then now what? And we might not ever see them again. So we're hoping that this will help seal that leaky bucket, give them

Coach Tom (33:42.67)
Which is wild. That's a big number.

Kenny Bailey (33:43.899)
Wow.

Joe Fleenor (34:02.47)
a home, a community of sorts, where we now become all things to them for the sport. They come to us for the race, maybe initially, they join this community, they now have friends, they do the training, they can elevate into custom coaching. Obviously Tom has bike fitting, like every component of outside of retail, which Tom even sells things now, we're hoping to be kind of a one-stop shop for all things in their triathlon journey through the Team Magic membership program.

Coach Tom (34:03.32)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (34:22.99)
Couple things.

Joe Fleenor (34:31.525)
And so we're excited about seeing where this goes and how it grows over the next couple of years. And we're excited to have Tom on board with it. So yeah.

Coach Tom (34:40.3)
Yeah, I'm totally excited to get on board. There's enough times that we've talked over the years where I've just lamented about how we keep people in the sport. Like how do they get started and go through? I've coached enough and bike fitting enough one and dons as I call them. Like they're just planning a flag. They're going to do a big long course race. They're going to destroy themselves just to check the box and walk away from it. Or they come, they do one triathlon and then they disappear.

Kenny Bailey (34:58.813)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (35:09.686)
out of the sport. And I've just like, I think just probably just sick of me just going like, how do we keep them around? How do we keep them around? Like, how do we? I love the sport so much. I'm very passionate about the fact that I've made this a lifestyle over 20, almost 25 years, maybe 25 years, I don't have to go back and look. But it's been a very long time that I got in on it. And I do a lot of long course racing. But I also do a lot of short course racing. And I think

when you look at the numbers, less than 10 % of my races are long course. Everything to me is about short course. I think that's where the lifestyle is. That's where the fun is because you can do multiple races. You meet a bigger community that way. It's less about you and more about the community and the group. If you do multiple races, you run against the same people. You're the same competing, in the same age group with people.

And it's been fun to meet some other people. then, you know, over the course of the year, when, you know, until the next race shows up that you're doing that you get to, you know, kind of joke around with them and tease them a little bit and trash talk some. you know, I'm to get you next year and we'll come back and, you know, kind of throw that in there. We've built more friends that way racing all of this. So I think, I think short courses is where it's at. And this is the main focus. I mean, that's the main focus of Magic Sports. That's the

the races you put on. And I think this is going to be a huge opportunity to give that elevated level. Like you're already giving great service. Your newbie program for first timers is like nobody was doing that. You really set the bar high. I know you guys have talked about that at the endurance exchange with the other race directors and showcased what you're doing is bringing newbie people, new people into the sport, giving them

Kenny Bailey (36:44.093)
Mm.

Coach Tom (37:06.604)
the backgrounds that they need, the help that they need. They can get an extra, you know, a special color swim cap if they're uncomfortable in the water so that from the safety aspect, your kayakers can keep an eye on them. You you've got Janet and Megan doing a fantastic job just walking them through how to set up a transition area, giving them all the details and things that overwhelm a new triathlete, kind of bring them into this. So this is the next level of that, right?

I hope to have course talks, we'll be able to put together, you know, little tidbits and things, things to look at for the course. And we'll grow it as we go for sure, as much as we can and bring on this. I'm really excited about it. think the more I think about it, the more I talk about it, you tell I'm just kind of like, like, like I got to, we got to pace ourselves. Definitely got to pace myself on this and, and, make sure we know, hey.

Kenny Bailey (37:39.025)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Fleenor (37:57.509)
It is over, it's overwhelming, right? Like, because...

Kenny Bailey (37:59.987)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (38:00.928)
It is, there's so much we can do. There's so much we can do and deliver on this, but the idea is quality, right? Which I'm always about quality first, and we're gonna add little bits and pieces. So anyone that gets into it now is going to be in there and they're gonna, I think they're gonna see some good stuff. We got a Slack channel started, invites going out soon that will have everybody in there so we can start disseminating information. we're seeing the signups, and it's getting positive reviews, so that's exciting.

Joe Fleenor (38:07.045)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (38:30.658)
That's definitely exciting.

Kenny Bailey (38:31.409)
Yeah, I think it's important. mean, you could just see it through like we were in Northern California and the Fleet Feet Run team was a very tight group and it became a tight group because it's you see it on like game shows where if you give everybody the same color shirt, suddenly they have that camaraderie, right? It's sort of that, hey, that's you're with me on that. And by having just

putting on that same jersey, being part of that club, being part of that, you now feel a sense of not only like I'm part of something, but I saw this in other kind of areas where then you also start helping those other folks because...

if they have an issue, like, let me help you out because you're on my team, right? And you see that sort of growth occur and people cheer for each other and wait at the finish line for other people to come across the line that are part of that team magic. I think it's gonna be hugely successful, right?

Joe Fleenor (39:25.132)
Yeah, I hope so.

Coach Tom (39:25.742)
We've had, yeah, we've had the conversations about how overwhelming triathlon can be. And we had Sarah Malamon to talk about like the issues of triathlon looking like an elitist sport and, know, kind of having some of these issues of, you know, what people perceive it as. And there's a whole host of things that tie into that. It's a great episode. Check it out. It's in our library there.

Kenny Bailey (39:28.029)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (39:41.212)
Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (39:53.88)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (39:55.577)
But it's like this, I think this will help, like get people over that and just come back, do another race, volunteer for a race, just be part of the community in a way that I think a lot of people have talked about, like volunteering for race is one of the biggest ways they get fun and give back. And it's just as much fun with a little less stress.

Kenny Bailey (39:59.912)
Yeah, absolutely.

Kenny Bailey (40:15.655)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (40:18.871)
You get the excitement, you get the energy of the race weekend, the race morning, and everyone going there, but you don't have to worry about racing yourself. You get out there and you help somebody else create that, you know, create that dream for themselves. So it's pretty cool that way.

Joe Fleenor (40:25.272)
Right.

Kenny Bailey (40:25.553)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (40:32.594)
Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (40:33.668)
I want to make shirts. It says short course is not a crime. I truly believe there's so many people that view the long course racing, whether that's Ironman or whatever, as the be all end all. And it's just not true.

Coach Tom (40:39.734)
Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (40:39.973)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (40:55.41)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (41:00.315)
Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (41:02.242)
the masses really just want to race. Let me even bring it a step further. I think we talked about this a couple years ago on the last one. We believe that triathlons should not gobble up someone's identity. It should be a part of one's identity, but not become the identity.

Kenny Bailey (41:21.671)
getting tattoos, racing the gear, those guys. Yeah.

Coach Tom (41:24.448)
not become the identity. Exactly. That's the biggest challenge. Yep.

Joe Fleenor (41:28.94)
And so, you know, we understand like it's an expensive sport. It is what it is. It's a time consuming sport. And, you know, unless you just have that kind of lifestyle and you can kind of devote your life to it, fair. Most people don't. And most people have families and new budding careers and things that take time. And our belief is that's awesome.

Coach Tom (41:34.454)
It can be.

Joe Fleenor (41:56.833)
If we can find one little wedge of your life that we could be that one little wedge and you can kind of come and go as your life allows you to but keep coming back to us. That's all we're asking for. We don't want you to come once and lose you. And so this is one piece of that big puzzle of us to keep all these athletes to help show them that this is a great lifestyle sport, a lifestyle lifelong sport, hopefully.

Coach Tom (42:04.686)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Tom (42:25.902)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Fleenor (42:26.232)
and not something that overwhelms you, out prices you, burns you out. We want it to be totally different. And so we're trying to reframe it that way, not just in how we produce the events and show our events that way, but also now through this Team Magic piece. And so this is just kind of like another piece of that puzzle that we're pretty excited about. Nashville and the markets that we're in, especially Nashville, is huge.

Huge in terms of the growth that we've experienced the demographic we have here But we haven't yet seen it translate into more racers from Nashville. And so That's got to change and so, you know, we we see that demographic of the 20 to 30 somethings that love The camaraderie of fitness and athletics and things like that

and triathlons shouldn't be any different and we want to kind of fill that gap for them so that they want to come be a part of what we do because we're still very much a 40 to 60 year old sport and we'd like to get more of a youth kind of surge in here.

Coach Tom (43:24.931)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (43:37.709)
Yeah, yeah. And I think I think people realizing that like we we I reframe everyone that comes into my shop and says, well, I just did a sprint. I'm like, well, you didn't just do a sprint, you know, or just a sprint. It was just kind of like you did a sprint. You did a triathlon. It's you're still a triathlete, regardless of the distance of the sport. And so many people that aren't involved in the sport whatsoever still think that this one particular branded race is.

triathlon and that's the only thing it is like that's one distance and that's all triathlon is it's like no there's a lot of distances in fact the shorter distance has been around longer you know it was a few years before the i'm avoiding the branding name of it just on on principle you know to say that long course is it's a brand right that came around later so short course was actually around before and that's what it started out and it yeah it's different

Joe Fleenor (44:31.363)
Short course is hard too. I mean, let's not pretend that it's easy. It's very difficult.

Kenny Bailey (44:33.191)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (44:34.722)
Yeah, you can make it as hard as you want or as easy as you want, but it's challenging. There's different levels and sprint and Olympic distance themselves are two different animals. There's some people that, you know, they push themselves on the Olympic, but they're more of a sprint person, right? And that's great. You're still the same level of triathlete. You're still in the community. It's still part of it. It could be a little part of your personality, but it doesn't have to be the whole thing. It doesn't have to take over.

Kenny Bailey (44:39.568)
Yeah, I mean...

Joe Fleenor (44:52.706)
Mm-hmm.

Kenny Bailey (45:01.469)
Yeah, and that's what I tell people, look, what are you going doing this summer? Are you going to do an Ironman? I can say it, but I have the tattoo. It's like, well actually no, because I want go fast, I don't want to go far. Right? And it's different to your point. It's just, I'm working a fast twitch set of muscles because I want to go fast, I don't want go far. And that's a different type of training regime. It doesn't require 11 months and half of your life and 20 hours a week, but it's still...

Joe Fleenor (45:01.89)
Any next?

Coach Tom (45:14.06)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (45:25.325)
Right.

Kenny Bailey (45:29.361)
You're shelled at the end of it because you're doing a, sorry my voice is crying, you're shelled. Puberty, I just hope it, get a bigger beard, finally. But it's just, you're just as satisfied when you get a PR there than you are when on a long distance one. Yeah, that's what's great, right?

Coach Tom (45:32.13)
Yeah. He just had puberty, finally.

Joe Fleenor (45:32.515)
You're getting very emotional.

Coach Tom (45:47.862)
and then you get to go have brunch. Yes, Richard family right there, right? And take a nap.

Joe Fleenor (45:48.195)
And then you get to go home and have lunch, right?

Kenny Bailey (45:52.828)
And I think the other thing that, in all seriousness, what Tom and I have been doing on multiple shows is even I talk to people today, and I'm talking to, I work at a club, so I talk to a lot of people and they're like, well, I just have a mountain bike or I don't have a tri bike. It's like, dude, you're doing a sprint. It's your first time, you can do this with most of the stuff you have already. It's not this, I gotta go buy a high-end tri bike and I need an $800 wetsuit.

You know, we've been talking to multiple shows about this, is just get people in and go have fun. Like, just give it a try. know, it doesn't require months and months of training. Just get your swim done. I mean, you can dog paddle at 400. You know, it's like...

Joe Fleenor (46:30.571)
It's such a hard thing, right? Like we all have a story probably of how we started and what we looked like in our equipment. And we all think very fondly back to that. And I wish, but inevitably you're there and you see everybody else and kind of what they have and you get a little envious of what they have and that kind of leads you down the trajectory of wanting what they have. I wish that we could get away from that and just be like, have more, like I want more

Kenny Bailey (46:35.185)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (46:41.884)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (46:49.834)
Lofama.

Kenny Bailey (46:49.841)
Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (47:00.585)
diversity in the sport in bikes, right? I want mountain bikes out there. Like there were, in Chattanooga a couple years ago, a guy came up at Packet Pickup and he was like, hey, I came from out of town to race. I didn't want to like drag my bike around. So the bike shop doesn't really have anything for me to rent. So would it be okay if I get one of these city bikes that like you put a quarter in, like it pops out?

Kenny Bailey (47:02.204)
Mm.

Coach Tom (47:04.054)
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Kenny Bailey (47:28.669)
I love it.

Joe Fleenor (47:30.563)
But I don't want to like, when I'm running and I have to like rack it in transition, I don't want to pay for it sitting in transition. So would it be okay if I just rack it back into city bike rack and I can get my money? And I was like, absolutely. So like more of that kind of stuff. And he had a great race on like a city bike.

Kenny Bailey (47:38.269)
You

Coach Tom (47:43.438)
Yeah, right, that's awesome

Kenny Bailey (47:46.403)
Absolutely.

So yeah, mean, you could make a non-tri-bike triathlon. Like you cannot, you know, I think it'd be funny.

Coach Tom (47:55.855)
Yeah, I think we need to make a rule. If you come in and start in the sport, you are not allowed to buy a triathlon bike. It's just illegal, right? You can't, you need to go three or four years before I get people that come in, they've got a bike, they're getting fit, right? I'm getting them fit. And they're just like, all my friends or everyone they met is telling them, oh, you need to spend this on this. You need to buy this. You need to get a special bike and you need to do this. And I'm looking at them like, no, you don't. And they're like, really?

Joe Fleenor (47:56.195)
It would be awesome.

Kenny Bailey (48:02.607)
Yeah, but I think it'd be hilarious just.

Joe Fleenor (48:03.683)
Thank

Kenny Bailey (48:09.031)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (48:23.438)
I'm like, no, the bike you've got here, this road bike that you bought off of, know, or borrowed from a friend or whatever they were getting set, setting you up on, it's perfectly fine. They're like, really? I'm like, yeah. And you don't need to buy anything else. You're fine. Flat pedals, go for it, right? Rock it. You're, you're awesome. You'll have a faster transition than everybody else and you'll be, you'll be so much happier for it. So, I mean, I think we need to make a rule. I need anybody that comes in that's new to the sport. Like it is such a different bike. It doesn't handle the same way you don't ride at this. It's just totally different.

Joe Fleenor (48:37.099)
Absolutely.

Joe Fleenor (48:41.901)
Yep.

Coach Tom (48:52.952)
Get yourself a road bike, get yourself a mountain bike, get a commuter, get a whatever. Just ride a bike, just have some fun with it. Like get out there and do it.

Joe Fleenor (48:57.741)
Commuters are fantastic. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (49:02.397)
Yeah, I agree.

Joe Fleenor (49:03.063)
And there are some good commuter bikes out there that are perfectly fine. had a basket on the back of my first bike that I put a triathlon in.

Coach Tom (49:05.804)
Yeah! Yeah.

outstanding nice i like that all your nutrition piled up on it yeah

Kenny Bailey (49:10.855)
There you go.

Joe Fleenor (49:14.915)
My father-in-law gave me a bike. I don't have a bike. So I used his old bike.

Kenny Bailey (49:17.661)
It just, you just gotta get for me to be at 16 miles or 13 miles or whatever it is. It's not that long. Like it's whatever the distance is. Just pedal real fast. You know?

Coach Tom (49:23.118)
have 12 some of them 12 15 depending on the distance so you can do that that's good

Joe Fleenor (49:23.683)
I was gonna.

Joe Fleenor (49:27.203)
Whatever the hell. I was gonna see if I could find a photo. It's not great for podcast purposes, but there's a guy that raised our, there we go.

Coach Tom (49:33.688)
We have a YouTube channel, so if they're listening, if they're watching on the YouTube channel, they will see our beautiful faces.

Joe Fleenor (49:39.875)
There's a guy here, I found it. This was in Chattanooga and this was the bike that he was riding.

Kenny Bailey (49:48.178)
that is a, you know, fold up bike, yeah. I have a friend of mine that takes foldable bikes all through Europe. It works great. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we hear it here first, Joe's gonna make a non-tri triathlon. A no tri-buck triathlon. You know, you can have like a circle and a cross, no tri-bikes. You have to show up with something other than a tri-bike. And I think...

Coach Tom (49:48.372)
Outstanding.

Joe Fleenor (49:50.179)
It's a fold-up bike.

Coach Tom (49:53.248)
I love that.

That's fantastic. Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (49:56.387)
And he had a great time. I'm sure he didn't have a great, you know,

Joe Fleenor (50:05.537)
be pretty epic.

Coach Tom (50:05.688)
There you go, there you go. And no tri bike triathlon, yeah. We're gonna make it.

Yeah, something something other than that. And not some not some, you know, 20 year old tri bike that you're trying to make work or we're trying to we're trying to fit you on with the rusted bolts that don't come off. So we can't make any maneuvers and we're just go like, yeah, just suck it up. You'll be fine. All right.

Joe Fleenor (50:16.374)
Yep.

Kenny Bailey (50:17.639)
Turned into an outrageous.

Joe Fleenor (50:21.186)
Hahahaha

Kenny Bailey (50:21.98)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (50:28.189)
I mean.

The funny part about it is, I mean, if I used my gravel bike over my tri bike, I'd probably be like three minutes slower. That's about it. Like, you know, it's, you know, and it's a gravel bike. I mean, it's fine. You know, you just pedal real fast. Just pedal real fast.

Joe Fleenor (50:37.346)
Exactly.

Coach Tom (50:38.137)
Yeah, I like that so much.

Coach Tom (50:44.75)
Now with the bike handling skills of a lot of these people, it's like you'd be fine either way. You'll be, it's a wash. You'll be good either way.

Kenny Bailey (50:48.505)
They should have heard. Yeah, exactly.

There you go.

Joe Fleenor (50:54.132)
There's a guy that raced with us, you might know him, I'm not gonna use his name today because I don't know if he wants me to talk about him. But he's in his, I'm gonna guess he's upper 60s. I probably shouldn't even say it because I don't know who he is when I'm saying this. But awesome dude, he races a lot. And he reached out last year because he was like, hey, I've been racing for, I forget what he said, like I've also been racing for 40 years. It's your 40th anniversary.

Kenny Bailey (50:59.303)
There you go.

Coach Tom (51:06.53)
Don't say that, yeah, don't, yeah. He's 20.

Joe Fleenor (51:22.88)
I want to go back to my roots and I want to, I've still got my original tri bike that he had from 40 years ago or something. I don't know if they had tri bikes back then, whatever he had. And he said, I'm going to race like I raced in 1985 or whatever it was. And so he brought out this big ass tri bike that was really heavy. He wore a Speedo cause he's like, this is what you wore. So he was in full Speedo.

Coach Tom (51:30.592)
Nice. No.

Kenny Bailey (51:47.099)
There you go.

Coach Tom (51:47.976)
the 80s were great. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (51:50.161)
Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (51:51.456)
this bike and he looked awesome and he had a great time.

Kenny Bailey (51:54.578)
Yeah, helmet looks like an igloo cooler, you know? Very aero.

Coach Tom (51:57.455)
Yeah, yeah, strapped strapped in well Kentana Roo is the first triathlon specific bike designed by Dan Enfield so he he created design and built the very first triathlon specific bike and that was in the late 80s So it was late 80s late 80s. He sold I think he sold the company in the early 90s early mid 90s

Joe Fleenor (52:17.515)
When was that? Was that 80s?

Coach Tom (52:26.35)
I have to look up the details on that again. My bit of history is going away, but Dan was an amazing, is an amazing like mentor in the sport. He's where I learned bike fitting from. So he's big on that. So he learned a lot of the history.

Joe Fleenor (52:29.185)
Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (52:42.37)
Can I tell a story about Tom? Would that be alright?

Coach Tom (52:45.006)
Yo, maybe.

Kenny Bailey (52:45.33)
Yes.

Joe Fleenor (52:48.002)
Because we're talking about it. We're talking about cool people that race and Tom's a pretty cool Tom had one cool experience But this is this is what I love about the sport and there's all types of athletes and they all have Everybody has a story which I love being in my position because I I hear about a lot of people's stories and that's just it fills me but Tom

Kenny Bailey (52:50.075)
Is it embarrassing?

Kenny Bailey (52:54.482)
not Tom, not this Tom then. Okay, different Tom, different Tom.

Coach Tom (52:56.01)
it's a different Tom then, totally. One, just one.

Coach Tom (53:13.219)
Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (53:15.966)
was racing with us a couple years ago at the beach and Tom was behind a pretty bad wreck that occurred on the bike course with somebody and to like avoid the carnage that occurred he got in a wreck himself like he punctured his tire from some glass and you went down and so he was roughly you weren't even maybe like halfway through

Coach Tom (53:20.27)
No.

Coach Tom (53:26.658)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (53:34.08)
I... Yeah, I took a piece of glass. The front. Front tire.

Coach Tom (53:45.486)
Uhhhh, it's a little over halfway. Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (53:45.95)
the bike course. Little over halfway. His bike is ruined. He's beaten, bloodied. And he's like, well, I mean, this isn't an excuse. And so he just picked his bike up in his bike shoes and ran six more miles in bike shoes with his bike. He ran like an eight minute mile, maybe even faster than that, I forget.

Coach Tom (53:51.694)
I was seven miles in.

Kenny Bailey (54:08.497)
blisters.

Hahaha

Coach Tom (54:12.716)
Nine. It was nine. 850.

Joe Fleenor (54:15.523)
850 he ran all the way back with the bike. He's bloodied Still in his bike shoes. He ran sub 9 and then finishes the race He like puts his bike in transition and goes out for the run and that and he finished

Kenny Bailey (54:22.226)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (54:27.613)
That's amazing.

Coach Tom (54:29.43)
I was so happy to put my running shoes on. I still have holes in the back of my heels from that was

Kenny Bailey (54:32.879)
I wouldn't have doubted it, yeah.

Probably. Blister's like crazy. Yeah. We don't recommend doing that. That's not a story you want to emulate, just so you know. So, use caution. So, yeah.

Joe Fleenor (54:38.156)
I mean that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool.

Coach Tom (54:45.272)
Well, it either stand around for three hours to when he could come get me, you know.

Joe Fleenor (54:50.786)
Well, I just remember we have people on the course, like our crew is out on the course and we've got radios. And so you're constantly hearing chatter about what's going on in the course. And our bike guy was like, Hey, we got this guy out here and should I pick him up? Like he's running with his bike down the road and he's long way away. And I was like, what's his number? And they gave me his number. was like, Nope. that's one of our, he's good. He's good.

Coach Tom (54:53.986)
I think that was the best part, yeah. Yeah.

Coach Tom (55:10.774)
No, don't pick him up.

Kenny Bailey (55:11.158)
He's got it. That was making me mad. So, that's funny.

Coach Tom (55:16.024)
I think there were a lot of flats, because we had rain the night before, the day before. So I was like, if the crew can catch me, right, come up. Because I had done a silly thing. was like when I rushed out to come down, I forgot to put my bag on the bike for my spares. So I didn't have a spare tube or anything. So I was like, well, if they...

I'm just not going to stand there. I'm just going to keep moving forward. That's my whole mantra. And so if they catch up to me, then we can fix the tire and go on. If they were running out of tubes, they had a bunch of flats. by the time, look on the young girl's face, was a volunteer at the turnaround point. So for the Olympic distance, when I come running up, she's looking at me, she doesn't know where to point me to go. She's absolutely bewildered.

Joe Fleenor (55:48.29)
You're right.

Kenny Bailey (55:59.304)
Yeah

Joe Fleenor (56:00.514)
you

Coach Tom (56:03.726)
You've got a cop standing there directing traffic doing stuff and he runs up and she's like This this this way. I'm like, no, I got another loop to do the cop just Gaffawed laughed so hard like here I come running in like I'm gonna go out and run another loop like this like and she was like, okay It starts pointing me in the other direction. I'm like, no, I'm kidding. I'm honest. I'm going I'm going into transition I'm like but I

Joe Fleenor (56:10.017)
Yes, sir.

Thank

Kenny Bailey (56:13.233)
You

Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (56:20.445)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (56:24.027)
that way. Yeah.

Coach Tom (56:31.438)
It was funny because as I started moving along, people started cheering me on. And I, yeah, it was like, and then I saw somebody else that had a flat or something like that. And then I see them walking back. I see the dad walking back with his bike on his shoulder and he sees me going on and I'm like, what, he quit? I'm like, goes, yeah, I don't know what's going on. It's like, so all of a sudden I couldn't stop at that point. I don't think I was allowed to because I had.

Kenny Bailey (56:32.541)
Do what you take.

Yeah.

Joe Fleenor (56:36.789)
Yeah, you became a legend.

Kenny Bailey (56:46.365)
Yeah.

Yeah

Joe Fleenor (56:52.417)
Ha

Kenny Bailey (56:54.671)
Yeah

Coach Tom (56:57.25)
people riding by cheering me on, had crowds cheering me on, and I'm like, shoot, now I gotta keep going.

Kenny Bailey (57:00.605)
That's funny.

I gotta finish this thing.

Joe Fleenor (57:03.841)
I mean, you're also like bleeding profusely. Did anybody like stop and be like, are you all right? Just for show.

Coach Tom (57:06.894)
But yeah, I had like I was like that was that was just for show. Now I'm just kidding. Yeah, I don't I don't bounce very well. It was probably good that I kept moving because it was like I was really sore. Like, oh, that like I just knew to tuck my arms and go down. But that was yeah, that was yeah, that's a good story. I got a lot of good stories. Yeah. But that one was was that was a lot of fun. So anyway.

Kenny Bailey (57:07.111)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

There you go.

Kenny Bailey (57:17.906)
Yeah.

Kenny Bailey (57:23.933)
Go, there you go.

Joe Fleenor (57:26.891)
Good story.

Kenny Bailey (57:27.933)
It's a good way to end a podcast, I'm telling you.

Joe Fleenor (57:29.663)
Yeah.

Coach Tom (57:36.207)
Really good stuff, Joe. Thanks for sharing that story and all the good work that you guys are doing. And I'm super excited about our partnership and what Team Magic can do and keeping people in the sport. So join, everyone sign up, join, come do the races, join Team Magic. We'll have some fun. And also a little, you know, support and backstories and history and everything that we need to give you to have you race and get your experience even better.

And it currently does so we're super excited about that. So Keep keep up with the comments thumbs up stars all that good stuff subscribe if you're watching on YouTube Hey subscribe button floating around here someplace. Make sure you subscribe because we're We're getting better about putting these out our schedules get a little crazy and and we appreciate you guys when there's a little bit of a gap we get the next episode out, but if you subscribe you'll get the little

little ding and it'll let you know that we're here. We've got the next one up, so please please do that. Joe, Kenny, fantastic. Really appreciate you guys, and for everybody, we'll catch you on the next one.

Kenny Bailey (58:34.215)
There you go.

Joe Fleenor (58:45.985)
Great, thanks guys.