# Mark Allen - 6 x Ironman World Champion

An episode of [The Triathlon Hour](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1595443343), 29 May 2025, 1 h 32 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2640942/episodes/19698058-mark-allen-6-x-ironman-world-champion.mp3

We are joined by one of the greatest long distance triathletes of all time in today’s interview podcast. Mark tells us all the secrets of his training that led to him winning his 6 Ironman World Championships like his long runs, massive Saturday brick sessions and training camps. Sign up to Patreon Here - Patreon link Pillar Performance - Pillar Performance Link + TTH15 - 15% off site-wide for first time users Precision Fuel & Hydration - Precision Link use TTH25 for 15% off your first order (or find the code for 20% off all orders on Patreon) Nerd Belts - TTH20 for 20% off Nerd Belts Link

## Transcript

[0:30] SPEAKER_01: Here we are with the six time Iron Man World Champion and in many people's opinion the greatest of all time, Mark Allen.
[0:37] SPEAKER_01: Mark, six time, how are you?
[0:39] SPEAKER_02: I'm doing great.
[0:40] SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me on.
[0:41] SPEAKER_02: This is awesome.
[0:42] SPEAKER_01: It's a pleasure.
[0:42] SPEAKER_01: It's been a long time in the making.
[0:43] SPEAKER_01: We've been doing it for about four years now, and I really think that it's surprising that we haven't gotten around to this chat by now.
[0:50] SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, there's there's a lot of great traffics out there, and there's a lot of great stories.
[0:54] SPEAKER_02: So uh no shortage of fun stuff to talk about in this sport.
[1:00] SPEAKER_01: I've got heaps to talk to you about as well, and I'm I'm gonna try and fit it all into 60 minutes, which is gonna be hard because it was uh such a long career of yours and such a successful career.
[1:10] SPEAKER_01: I want to start with training before I get into some specific topics.
[1:14] SPEAKER_01: With your training, Mark, it's been really famous over probably the last 20 years.
[1:18] SPEAKER_01: Um I think the way you train sort of shaped the meta of triathlon training and even run training for quite a long time.
[1:26] SPEAKER_01: So, did you want to give people who might not have heard your story about the way you trained a bit of an overview of of how you went about things?
[1:33] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, I when I started um competing in 1982, there were no there were no coaches, there was nobody who knew how to combine swimming, cycling, and running together.
[1:44] SPEAKER_02: So I kind of looked at, you know, I came from a swimming background.
[1:48] SPEAKER_02: Um and as a swimmer, I was very mediocre.
[1:53] SPEAKER_02: I was I never went to nationals or Olympics or anything like that, but I loved it.
[1:58] SPEAKER_02: And I swam for 12 years.
[1:59] SPEAKER_02: And and back in those days, the philosophy was you know, the coach would throw you in the pool, you'd go as hard as he could, and you come back the next day and do the same thing.
[2:08] SPEAKER_02: And so when I got into traffic, I sort of thought, well, that's what I have to do.
[2:13] SPEAKER_02: And I looked at how fast the the top guys were running in their in their runs in like Olympic distance races, and you know, they were running around five-minute pace.
[2:23] SPEAKER_02: And so I thought, okay, every single run that I do, I've got to try to hit that that super fast pace, you know, like uh three-minute K pace.
[2:32] SPEAKER_02: And um that was too fast.
[2:35] SPEAKER_02: It was too much on my body.
[2:36] SPEAKER_02: And I, you know, I got some good results.
[2:38] SPEAKER_02: Like if you if you train hard, even if it's stupid, you know, until you break down, you're gonna actually get a lot faster.
[2:45] SPEAKER_02: But then if you've exceeded your body's ability to recover from the workouts, and anaerob anaerobic work like that is takes a lot of recovery, you start to break down, you get sick, you get injured, you get burned out.
[2:58] SPEAKER_02: And I was experiencing all of those things.
[3:00] SPEAKER_02: So my my overall consistency in in training was really up and down.
[3:06] SPEAKER_02: And I thought there has to be a better way to approach this.
[3:09] SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, about a year and a half into my career, I was introduced to Phil Maffatone, who was doing a lot of pioneer work in heart rate training.
[3:18] SPEAKER_02: And he said, you know, you have to you have to temper that enthusiasm.
[3:22] SPEAKER_02: He said, human beings are genetically designed for endurance.
[3:27] SPEAKER_02: They were not genetically designed for speed.
[3:30] SPEAKER_02: And he said, if you if you look at the the storage system for energy in our bodies, he said, you know, we use carbohydrate and fat for fuel.
[3:41] SPEAKER_02: And he said, we have enough, we have enough um fat stored in our bodies to go forever.
[3:47] SPEAKER_02: We could we could go like 500 miles.
[3:49] SPEAKER_02: I don't know what that is in K.
[3:51] SPEAKER_02: It's a lot, it's a lot, you know, but we only have about two hours worth of carbohydrate in our body for going at a top level.
[3:59] SPEAKER_02: And and that's why, of course, you know, like in marathons, people get that classic bonk where they're running great, they're running great, and all of a sudden they fall off a cliff.
[4:07] SPEAKER_02: They haven't taken the calories, they've run through their carbohydrate stores, and then and then you uh we if you've used up your carbohydrate stores because you're going hard, your physiology is shut off, you're fat burning, so you can't even access that.
[4:21] SPEAKER_02: And that's when you get the bonk.
[4:22] SPEAKER_02: So, anyway, he had he he he gave me some numbers to train by and he said, you know, stick with a lot of aerobic training for the time being, and you'll see that in the beginning you're gonna run really slowly, but then over time you're actually gonna start to go faster and faster at these same relatively low heart rates, and eventually we'll we'll we'll add back in the speed work.
[4:45] SPEAKER_02: And so I did that, and um at first I thought he he set my the top of my aerobic uh zone at 155 beats a minute, and at 15 by 5 beats a minute, at the lack of aerobic fitness that I had as opposed to anaerobic, I was barely moving and I thought this is stupid, this isn't gonna work.
[5:08] SPEAKER_02: But um eventually, you know, I stuck with it and um started to see that I was getting faster and then a lot faster, and then eventually I got to the point where, like in Iron Man, at the Iron Man in Hawaii, on the bike, I could stay with the the rest of the field without doing anything anaerobic.
[5:29] SPEAKER_02: And so I was able to conserve a lot of that carbohydrate stores so that when I got off the bike, then I had still enough carbohydrate stored in my body that I was able to run at a pretty good pace.
[5:43] SPEAKER_02: Like I didn't have to replace a lot of the carbohydrate calories to keep that level going.
[5:49] SPEAKER_02: You know, fast forward to today, um some of the some of the training philosophy has changed, kind of in like at what times of the season you do the that aerobic versus anaerobic stuff.
[6:02] SPEAKER_02: Like when we trained, sorry if I'm rambling here, but when we trained, we um you know, we kind of sort of um as tracks, we looked at what are cyclists doing, what are runners doing, you know, what are swimmers doing, and sort of the general philosophy way back then was you do you do your aerobic base buildings, long so slow steady stuff in the winter, and then you add in the speed work as you get closer to your events.
[6:31] SPEAKER_02: And that's kind of what everybody was doing, and with that, everybody was racing at the relative same level.
[6:37] SPEAKER_02: So, fast forward to just actually a few years ago, and that whole philosophy is kind of flip-flopped.
[6:44] SPEAKER_02: And so now that with a lot of research over the years, finally people are looking at what's going on in our bodies and how to optimize all this stuff.
[6:51] SPEAKER_02: They found that if you actually start out the beginning of your season adding in some anaerobic work, what happens is that you elevate your VO2 max, the ability to get in oxygen quick.
[7:06] SPEAKER_02: And you raise that up in the very beginning of the season, and then anything you do after that is going to be at a much higher level than if you start out with that aerobic work, which doesn't, it takes a long time for aerobic training to raise your VO2 max.
[7:22] SPEAKER_02: And so um, if you start out your season with that anaerobic work, um as you get closer to your races, you actually drop down some, like especially if you're doing like an Iron Man or 70.3, you drop your anaerobic work, you cut it down, and then you add in more aerobic work.
[7:44] SPEAKER_02: You're working at such a high level of fitness that you go, you're able to actually go really pretty fast in those aerobic workouts.
[7:52] SPEAKER_02: And what you're doing when you make that shift from anaerobic to aerobic is that you're shifting your body's physiology to being more fat-burning, which is what you want to have happening in those longer races because you want to conserve that precious carbohydrate that's stored in there so you don't have to keep just replace it all the time.
[8:12] SPEAKER_02: You know, the the final piece on all this is that um a lot of the nutritional products that are available now are so much more absorbable than um what we had back when I raced.
[8:25] SPEAKER_02: Like at the Iron Man in Hawaii, our speed was not limited by our fitness, it was limited by our ability to get in carbohydrate calories quick enough to sustain the pace that we were fit enough to run.
[8:41] SPEAKER_02: And fast forward to nowadays, you know, you can get in 100, maybe sometimes even 200 more calories per hour than we were able to, which means that you can actually take the fitness that you have and keep that high level of output going for the longer races, which is one of the reasons we're seeing the the time so fast now.
[9:03] SPEAKER_02: So, like, you know, look at Kona last year.
[9:06] SPEAKER_02: Patrick Longa won it, broke the course record.
[9:10] SPEAKER_02: Um, and to win, he had to beat 15 other guys who went under eight hours.
[9:18] SPEAKER_02: 15 guys went under eight hours, you know, and so much of that is, of course, some of it's possible because of bike technology and figuring out the aerodynamics, even where to how to mount your bottles that saves you five or 10 watts.
[9:32] SPEAKER_02: You know, that's that's significant.
[9:34] SPEAKER_02: Um obviously the the training methods have been refined.
[9:38] SPEAKER_02: And then the third piece is um, you know, the nutrition is so much more advanced now than it was when I was competing.
[9:45] SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of a thumbnail of some of the evolution that's gone on since you know the 80s and 90s.
[9:53] SPEAKER_01: And so when it comes to your training, like you obviously won your first Iron Man World Championships in 1989, but you'd been there three times before that, come second twice, been on the podium three times, um, and then you went on to win 89 all the way through to 93, not not being beaten, and and then what came back and won your sixth one in 1995.
[10:14] SPEAKER_01: Talk to me about the evolution of your training from kind of when you started the the work with Phil Mafitone and and when you first started making that change to being more focused on aerobic training and not doing too much anaerobic uh work and how that progressed over, say, that decade, 12 years of racing at the highest level.
[10:36] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[10:37] SPEAKER_02: So the you know, the first six years that I went to Kona, I didn't win.
[10:41] SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, in the beginning, that didn't bother me because I was making mistakes.
[10:45] SPEAKER_02: You know, I'd go too hard on the bike, have a huge lead, and then fall apart on the marathon.
[10:50] SPEAKER_02: Like, okay, you can't do that.
[10:52] SPEAKER_02: You have to pace it a little bit better.
[10:54] SPEAKER_02: Um, but after you know, the about the the third or fourth time being there and being in the lead early, or you know, even in the closing miles and then falling apart and having somebody pass me, Dave Scott, it was starting to get frustrating, like really disappointing.
[11:12] SPEAKER_02: You know, like I was I was slowly increasing the amount of overall training I was doing throughout the year because each one of those years my body was getting a little bit stronger.
[11:21] SPEAKER_02: And I thought, more is going to be better.
[11:24] SPEAKER_02: I'm not doing enough.
[11:25] SPEAKER_02: It's you know, I'm getting second, I'm third, fifth, I can be in the lead at the end of the bike, halfway through the marathon, even with you know, 5k to go, but I can't sustain it all the way to the end.
[11:36] SPEAKER_02: And um it was really, really hard in those, like that fourth, fifth, sixth iron man where I didn't win to pick up the pieces, to go back home and go, okay, next year it's gonna be the one, you know.
[11:52] SPEAKER_02: And by the time I got to my sixth um race there in Kona without victory, I thought, I'm not going back there.
[12:01] SPEAKER_02: There's something about it that's not for me.
[12:03] SPEAKER_02: Maybe I maybe that distance just isn't my distance.
[12:05] SPEAKER_02: I was I was winning every time I showed up in at Nice France, and that was about a three-quarter Iron Man.
[12:11] SPEAKER_02: I thought maybe that's my limit, you know, a five, six-hour race as opposed to a eight, eight and a half hour race.
[12:17] SPEAKER_02: And um, but I just knew that there was there was something missing.
[12:23] SPEAKER_02: And so um in 1980, finally in 1989, I'd started the season and I started my training in January, and I was like, I'm not going back to that stupid race.
[12:33] SPEAKER_02: But I a couple weeks into it, I could just I could just feel the call of the island, like, you have to come back, you have to come back.
[12:44] SPEAKER_02: And I thought, yeah, that's right.
[12:48] SPEAKER_02: I do have to, I do have to go back, but I need to change some fundamental things.
[12:54] SPEAKER_02: And so one of them was, okay, all of this training is not working.
[13:00] SPEAKER_02: What's missing?
[13:02] SPEAKER_02: So one of the things I did was from February 1989 through the first part of April, February, all of March, and a couple weeks into April, I went down to New Zealand on the South Island.
[13:15] SPEAKER_02: I was training with Scott Molina, Aaron Baker, a number of other people who were down there.
[13:21] SPEAKER_02: And even though life was a little bit simpler back then, going to New Zealand was like completely simplified life.
[13:28] SPEAKER_02: There were no distractions.
[13:30] SPEAKER_02: There was there was there was nothing going on other than for me, swim, bike, run, sleep, recover, relax.
[13:37] SPEAKER_02: And I I saw that the training that we were doing down there was massive compared to what anything I'd done prior to that.
[13:46] SPEAKER_02: And but I was recovering from it.
[13:48] SPEAKER_02: I was absorbing it, I was getting stronger from it.
[13:52] SPEAKER_02: And I realized the reason that I hadn't been able to do this before is that I I busy myself when I'm home with stupid stuff that gets in the way of recovery.
[14:03] SPEAKER_02: And so I realized if I simplify my life, I can actually do the kind of training that I need to for Iron Man.
[14:11] SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that I had seen was that, you know, in general, we do like prior to 89, we'd do like a long bike ride on Saturday, we do a long run on Sunday, you know, five, six hours on that bike ride, two, two and a half hours running.
[14:28] SPEAKER_02: So we were I was training a good eight or eight and a half hours over those two days, but then I realized Iron Man's not a two-day race.
[14:35] SPEAKER_02: It's a one-day event.
[14:37] SPEAKER_02: And I was falling apart from hours six to eight in the race.
[14:42] SPEAKER_02: And so one of the things I started doing in New Zealand was um not regularly, but a couple times throughout the year, I did a workout where I would swim about 30 minutes, get out of the water, bike about seven hours, clearly a long bike ride.
[14:59] SPEAKER_02: And then I get off the bike and I'd run anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes.
[15:05] SPEAKER_02: And that was that was an eight or eight and a half hour training day.
[15:08] SPEAKER_02: And that was the kind of training that I needed to do to get my body prepared to sustain that effort at the race itself.
[15:17] SPEAKER_02: You know, and I and I'll get into some of the things I added later in the winning years, but one of the other things that I I changed, and you know, when you're talking about training, talking about performance, you have to look at more than just swim bike run because racing is so much more than swimming, cycling, and running.
[15:35] SPEAKER_02: It's how you're approaching it, you know, what goes on in your head.
[15:38] SPEAKER_02: Like when things are falling apart, how do you deal with it?
[15:41] SPEAKER_02: Do you know, do you give up?
[15:42] SPEAKER_02: Do you panic?
[15:44] SPEAKER_02: Do you are you able to stay steady?
[15:46] SPEAKER_02: What's going on?
[15:47] SPEAKER_02: And so in 89, I I when I was down there in New Zealand, I said, how is it that I can go to pretty much any other race at any distance anywhere on this planet, and I can win.
[16:04] SPEAKER_02: How is it that I can do that against Dave Scott, who is the guy who's winning in Kona?
[16:11] SPEAKER_02: I mean, by 1989, he was at six victories and I was at zero.
[16:15] SPEAKER_02: But there were very few races other than some of the early earlier ones in my career where he he where he beat me.
[16:23] SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, what's going on here?
[16:25] SPEAKER_02: And so I thought about how I approached Kona.
[16:28] SPEAKER_02: And you know, even though Dave was my biggest rival, the toughest, the guy who was getting in the way of me um crossing that finish line at first, he he was he was a rival, but he he was also like an idol in a sense, like he was doing it right, he was setting the standard year after year, he was breaking that course record.
[16:49] SPEAKER_02: And so I thought, well, if I'm gonna do that, I've got to be just like Dave.
[16:54] SPEAKER_02: And and what I saw in Dave that felt different than me was that when he got to Kona, he just he he just became like a superhero.
[17:05] SPEAKER_02: He looked invincible, like he got off that plane, and you could just see him get this like steel armor around him, like the impenetrable, you know, like he and he loved to control the race.
[17:19] SPEAKER_02: He liked to be at the front, he liked to dictate how the race unfolded.
[17:23] SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, it was like a very um, a very aggressive approach to to how he how he did that, did that.
[17:32] SPEAKER_02: And so I thought, you know what?
[17:34] SPEAKER_02: When I go to Kona, I have to be pumped up and like a superhero and invincible, and you know, that sort of pumped up thing, it it starts to wear, it has a shelf life of about three hours in the race.
[17:49] SPEAKER_02: And after three hours, you start to wear down, and you go from telling yourself you're invincible to feeling like, ooh, this is getting kind of hard.
[17:58] SPEAKER_02: And when you get to about um I don't know, 50k or so to go on on in the bike, um 50, 60k, you you're you you realize what you've got yourself into, and there is nothing that's invincible about that feeling.
[18:16] SPEAKER_02: And that so then I thought about how how how did I approach the other races where I where I was winning?
[18:23] SPEAKER_02: And I realized, yes, I had several strategies of how I might approach the day, but ultimately I just went into them thinking, I'm just gonna see how it unfolds.
[18:34] SPEAKER_02: Like I'm gonna see how my body is, I'm gonna see what these other guys are gonna throw on, throw it down to to try to win.
[18:42] SPEAKER_02: And I'm gonna have I'm gonna figure it out on race day.
[18:44] SPEAKER_02: And so I had no need to be the guy setting the pace, and I didn't have to control anything.
[18:50] SPEAKER_02: All I had to do was figure it out.
[18:52] SPEAKER_02: And I let everybody else play their cards first, and then I would play my hand.
[18:57] SPEAKER_02: And so I thought, you know what?
[19:00] SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm not being myself and Kona.
[19:03] SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to be like Dave.
[19:05] SPEAKER_02: And you know, when you when you try to be somebody else, that takes so much energy.
[19:10] SPEAKER_02: When you're just being yourself, it takes no energy, it's just how you're hardwired.
[19:15] SPEAKER_02: And so when I went to Hawaii in '89, I I I just I fent there's a spot that I found that I really love to go to to kind of have a talk with the island.
[19:25] SPEAKER_02: And I said, Hey, big island, let it be okay for me to have a great race.
[19:31] SPEAKER_02: Just being here is me and not having to be anybody else.
[19:34] SPEAKER_02: And I just felt this ease wash over me.
[19:37] SPEAKER_02: And it was a very different feel the entire day than any anything I'd experienced there.
[19:44] SPEAKER_02: And so, anyway, you know, to kind of sum that high rate up, that that whatever I was doing there.
[19:52] SPEAKER_02: One thing is I simplified my life, I added in some key Iron Man training days, and I recovered a lot better.
[20:01] SPEAKER_02: I got stronger.
[20:02] SPEAKER_02: Um, and and I think that's a lesson like for the pros nowadays.
[20:06] SPEAKER_02: Life is not simple for them.
[20:08] SPEAKER_02: You know, they're they're constantly having to post social media, and and some of them actually just recently have been saying, you know, I've stopped looking at social media, I've stopped being the one to post it.
[20:19] SPEAKER_02: I have people that take care of it for me, but I don't do it anymore.
[20:22] SPEAKER_02: I don't occupy myself with that.
[20:24] SPEAKER_02: And that's that's one of the biggest things that uh the pros can do.
[20:29] SPEAKER_02: One, you stop worrying about what everybody else is posting.
[20:32] SPEAKER_02: Secondly, when you're home and you're supposed to be resting and recovering, you're letting your mind rest also.
[20:37] SPEAKER_02: If you're if you're frantically scrolling through you know Instagram or whatever, um your mind is very active and your mind needs to rest along with your body during your training.
[20:50] SPEAKER_02: So that those were some of the things in the lead up to 1989.
[20:54] SPEAKER_02: Something that I added in um after my um uh third victory was that I started doing um strength training.
[21:04] SPEAKER_02: Up to that point, I'd been able to kind of get away with not doing any kind of strength training, but I was starting to see that I didn't have the same resiliency that I had at a younger at younger ages.
[21:17] SPEAKER_02: I saw that my recovery was starting to slow down and that I just didn't have the speed or the strength when I was on climbs.
[21:24] SPEAKER_02: And uh so the second half of my Iron Man victories came um a lot through adding in truly structured strength training um for uh functional movement work.
[21:40] SPEAKER_02: And uh that was absolutely key.
[21:42] SPEAKER_02: And nowadays, uh you know, it's pretty much a part of what everybody does.
[21:46] SPEAKER_02: It's just sort of become part of what we do uh you know in the sport of triathlon.
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[23:38] SPEAKER_01: So when you're when you were doing your Kona builds, did you have like every year a specific kind of length of time before Kona that you would go, okay, this is now officially my Kona build?
[23:50] SPEAKER_01: Like were you doing 16, 12, 10, 8, 6 weeks?
[23:53] SPEAKER_01: And and did that evolve over time?
[23:56] SPEAKER_02: Uh that's a great question, you know.
[23:58] SPEAKER_02: And now that I'm thinking about it, I there's something that I just realized.
[24:03] SPEAKER_02: Um, I had my year was structured in three parts.
[24:08] SPEAKER_02: I would have um from January till late May or June.
[24:15] SPEAKER_02: And and in that first period, it was all about doing getting ready for long distance races and also building a pretty good base um that I'd work off of later in the summer for Kona.
[24:28] SPEAKER_02: So there was not a ton of speed work initially, but then as I got closest to close to the races, which always included Nice in the early part of June, um, you know, I had a back end speed work, but I was still doing the endurance work.
[24:43] SPEAKER_02: After that, from early June, July, um, and then most of August, that was devoted purely to speed work.
[24:53] SPEAKER_02: And I focused only on Olympic distance races.
[24:56] SPEAKER_02: Um, I I didn't do any any of the real long stuff.
[25:00] SPEAKER_02: I would do some medium-length long rides and long runs, but nothing that was like Iron Man specific.
[25:05] SPEAKER_02: And it was all very anaerobic focused.
[25:10] SPEAKER_02: And then um somewhere between eight to ten weeks out from Kona, that was when everything shifted.
[25:18] SPEAKER_02: I dropped the speed work back way down, and then I added back in a lot of aerobic work.
[25:24] SPEAKER_02: And um it was it was pretty much the same from 89 through 95.
[25:30] SPEAKER_02: There there was very little variation in that in that rhythm or in the types of workouts I did or the placement of them.
[25:37] SPEAKER_02: But interestingly, I you know, I said we it's flip-flopped, and we're we did it backwards.
[25:44] SPEAKER_02: We started with aerobic and then we went to anaerobic.
[25:46] SPEAKER_02: But if I think of it in the big picture of my season, if I'm looking at that mid, that middle third and last third as I let led into Kona, I was actually doing it that way because that middle third was all anaerobic stuff, very little endurance stuff.
[26:02] SPEAKER_02: And then those last eight weeks or so was definitely focused on endurance and not a lot of not a lot of speed.
[26:08] SPEAKER_02: That piece didn't evolve other than um adding in the strength that work in those last three races, last three Iron Man years.
[26:16] SPEAKER_01: And rid that block into Kona where you would go from having more of an anaerobic focus or an Olympic distance focus, and then for eight to ten weeks you would go back into a more aerobic focus, or maybe like let's just call it a specific focus for Kona, because that's probably what it is, right?
[26:31] SPEAKER_01: What would your what would your kind of structure look like?
[26:33] SPEAKER_01: Were your weeks very similar in that eight to ten weeks?
[26:36] SPEAKER_01: Did you have those like were you still doing your your long weekends?
[26:39] SPEAKER_01: Would you how many of those um like long days that you talked about where you were out there for seven or eight hours would you do in the eight to ten ten week block?
[26:48] SPEAKER_02: What I what I did is I would I did sort of like three-week cycles.
[26:52] SPEAKER_02: So um week one would be long long bike focus.
[26:59] SPEAKER_02: So I I dropped the swim and run down, but I do a lot of cycling.
[27:03] SPEAKER_02: The next week would be long bike slash run focus.
[27:08] SPEAKER_02: Um, and I dropped the biking way down, but then I'd really up the swimming and swimming and running volume.
[27:14] SPEAKER_02: And then the third week was um devoted to just recovery.
[27:20] SPEAKER_02: And so and I would so I it was essentially it was uh about nine weeks because I I do that once and I had you know sort of my my long workouts that I did on the long bike week, the long run week, but the first time through that cycle of three weeks, um I did I did them all at a pretty pretty moderate effort.
[27:48] SPEAKER_02: Like I wasn't trying to set any world's records.
[27:51] SPEAKER_02: The second time through that three-week cycle, I really pushed those key long workouts.
[27:57] SPEAKER_02: And then the the third the last three weeks were essentially tapering down to the race.
[28:04] SPEAKER_02: So I I kind of went through this three-week um super focused, heavy volume one one week bike, heavy some run volume the second week, and then recovery week the third.
[28:17] SPEAKER_02: I'd do that twice.
[28:18] SPEAKER_02: And that second time through, that was when I really would push the pace on some of those longer workouts, and then that three-week taper down to the race.
[28:26] SPEAKER_02: And it it was more or less what I did.
[28:30] SPEAKER_02: You know, back when I competed in Kona, the the race itself was on the weekend that was nearest the full moon, so that for the folks who were out there in the dark, they had at least the best chance of having some moonlight showing down on them so they could see where they were going.
[28:46] SPEAKER_02: And so some years Kona was early October, some years it was at the very end of October.
[28:53] SPEAKER_02: Um, unlike now where it's always the second Saturday in October.
[28:56] SPEAKER_02: So, anyway, you know, sometimes the the rhythm got tweaked a little bit um because I had more time, and other times because it was earlier, you know, I had to condense stuff.
[29:07] SPEAKER_02: But that was essentially the the rhythm.
[29:10] SPEAKER_01: And just to go back to those long days that you talked about, in those, in those two three-week blocks, would you progress your long day as well?
[29:19] SPEAKER_01: Like would you would would there be so sort of like two really big days inside of that at the end, like at the second week, and then I guess it's the the fifth week, would you do one really big day in both of those weeks as well?
[29:31] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I I did in both of those weeks, like I'd do that that Iron Man day, you know, the 30-minute, seven-hour, thirty to sixty minute.
[29:40] SPEAKER_02: Um but those were essentially the same.
[29:43] SPEAKER_02: Some of the other stuff during the week I would progress up.
[29:46] SPEAKER_02: And then on the on the run weeks, the first time through, it would be, you know, the longest run would be somewhere between two hours 30, 2 hours 40.
[29:55] SPEAKER_02: And then that second time through, it might be 245 to 250, maybe close to three hours if it was really hilly.
[30:04] SPEAKER_02: Um, so it was a slight bump up, but not not not significant.
[30:08] SPEAKER_02: It was more the total week volume might be was always bigger in that second week, that second time through.
[30:17] SPEAKER_02: Not less, not necessarily the long, the long.
[30:20] SPEAKER_01: How much are we talking?
[30:22] SPEAKER_02: Um cycling, uh, I'd I'd try to hit about 500 miles in the week.
[30:28] SPEAKER_02: Uh running, running got up to uh on the long weeks would be somewhere between 70, 70 and 80.
[30:34] SPEAKER_02: You know, so there were some days where I'd do some double running kind of thing.
[30:38] SPEAKER_02: And whether that was smart or not, it probably wasn't.
[30:42] SPEAKER_02: It was probably overkill.
[30:44] SPEAKER_02: Um, and and I would I would utilize a lot of the tools that we have nowadays to um assess whether whether that was really valuable or not.
[30:56] SPEAKER_02: But my guess is I probably could have gotten just as good a result had I uh with with less training had I um had some of the stuff that's available to athletes now.
[31:08] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and for those playing at home, Mark, that's like you probably did up to 800k a week on the bike and 120 to 130k at some of your peak weeks, which is yeah, yeah, that's um that's proper crazy.
[31:20] SPEAKER_01: So I mean there's no other way to say that.
[31:24] SPEAKER_01: That's a that's a lot of time out exercising.
[31:26] SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, like like like I yeah, I just heard something in Michael Phelps talking about the the training he did as a swimmer, you know, and it was like absolutely insane volumes.
[31:38] SPEAKER_02: And I know that in swimming that they've they've cut way back on on the amount of volume that they do, and they've really focused in a lot more on um very short race, pace, intensity type of stuff.
[31:53] SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's an ever-evolving thing, which is actually pretty cool, and I think it's cool that we're talking about it because the the performances are getting faster, even off of something like what Michael Phelps did.
[32:09] SPEAKER_02: So clearly, super high volume, which is what he did, um, isn't necessarily the best thing because they've they're cutting that back now and they're doing maybe a little bit more uh race focused type training and really reducing the overall volume and a human being's body's responding to it, you know, you're you're maybe you're recovering a lot better, and that's the key right there.
[32:30] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe it's very hard in Trithlon to compare things though.
[32:35] SPEAKER_01: Like the times are getting faster, but it's it's almost impossible to know whether the performances are getting better.
[32:41] SPEAKER_01: You know, like they're definitely getting faster, but if you put that version of you in, say, I don't know, I don't know what your best year was, 89 was good, 93 was good, 92 was good.
[32:52] SPEAKER_01: I think like from my research of your career over the last 20 years, I would say I look back and I think of those as your three really good years.
[33:00] SPEAKER_01: You could probably educate me as to whether I'm wrong there.
[33:02] SPEAKER_01: But in any of those three years, if you just took the physiological specimen that was Mark Allen and put him into, say, last year's Kona, it would be so fascinating to know how you went.
[33:14] SPEAKER_01: Like that's the crappy thing with comparing periods, is we'll never know.
[33:18] SPEAKER_01: But it would be so good to find out whether whether human performance is getting better, or is it just technology and other advancements that are getting better?
[33:27] SPEAKER_01: And was 89 Mark Allen actually the physiological best athlete we've ever seen?
[33:31] SPEAKER_01: But don't even worry, don't even worry talking about it because it's so hypothetical.
[33:36] SPEAKER_01: Going back to your long run, you said you might do two, you know, 30, 45, 50, three hours.
[33:41] SPEAKER_01: How many times in your builds did you cover the marathon distance?
[33:45] SPEAKER_01: Because I have to assume that if you were doing 245 to three hours, that you were covering at least marathon distance occasionally in training.
[33:53] SPEAKER_02: I don't think I ever covered the full marathon distance in training.
[33:57] SPEAKER_02: And part of it was because those really long runs I never did on the flat.
[34:01] SPEAKER_02: I always did them um on fairly hilly terrain.
[34:05] SPEAKER_02: And the the reason is that um one of the things that slows you down in Kona is um is muscle breakdown.
[34:15] SPEAKER_02: So, you know, the further you go into the race, the more muscle has been broken down.
[34:21] SPEAKER_02: And it at one point it reaches a level where the survival part of your brain is saying, if you keep this up, it's not gonna be good.
[34:30] SPEAKER_02: And so the survival part of your brain starts to activate and it starts to tell you, you should stop, you should slow down.
[34:37] SPEAKER_02: This is too much, you can't do it.
[34:39] SPEAKER_02: You know, that that's when you start having those conversations with yourself, like, oh I don't know if I can keep going, I'm not feeling good, my legs are killing me.
[34:46] SPEAKER_02: Wa, wah, wah.
[34:47] SPEAKER_02: You start whining, right?
[34:49] SPEAKER_02: And you've got to just like regroup your your thoughts, set your brain off, and override that survival switch that's trying to get you to stop.
[34:59] SPEAKER_02: And so one of the reasons that I did those long runs on hills and trails and really demanding terrain, I I never did them just on flats, is because you know, when you're running up and down hills, you're getting a lot of muscle breakdown.
[35:17] SPEAKER_02: And when you recover from that, your your physical cells get stronger and they get more resistant to breakdown.
[35:27] SPEAKER_02: And so what that does in the race is it it affords you a lot more time on that marathon before the muscle breakdown reaches the the critical point and the survival mechanism tries to kick in, which gives you a lot more surf to cover before you start fighting yourself and asking yourself, can I finish this stupid thing?
[35:51] SPEAKER_02: And so, anyway, the short version the long version of that answer is that I I never ran um 42k in in training.
[36:00] SPEAKER_01: They must have been quite hilly though, if you were doing three hours, like you must have been covering oh, I don't really know feet.
[36:06] SPEAKER_01: I can't do the feet conversion, like I can do the miles to kilometers.
[36:09] SPEAKER_01: But yeah, yeah, that you must have been doing you know 500 to 1,000 meters elevation in those runs if you were doing three hours.
[36:17] SPEAKER_01: So fair.
[36:18] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, quite a bit.
[36:19] SPEAKER_02: And and I we had we had this run that was like the run that we only did a few times during the summer in Boulder, Colorado, uh, because it was like the ultimate chance to like completely pound your legs.
[36:34] SPEAKER_02: It was called the the Switzerland Trail, and it started at um somewhere around 8,000 feet, which I don't know what that is in meters, but it's you know 1,500 at least.
[36:46] SPEAKER_02: No, it's even more than that, too.
[36:49] SPEAKER_02: It's probably like 23, 2500, 2500 meters.
[36:54] SPEAKER_02: Anyway, high, right?
[36:56] SPEAKER_02: And it and it had a long gradual 10k uphill, and then it had these stair-stepping climbs and downhills that dropped you way below, it was a loop, way below the the elevation that you started, and then the last stretch was a long climb back up to the parking lot where you parked.
[37:12] SPEAKER_02: So, anyway, you kind of did that first 10k, the all gradual uphill, um, at sort of just comfortable pace.
[37:20] SPEAKER_02: And then once you started hitting the the stair step up and down um part, we'd hammer the uphills, and then we would hammer the downhills as hard as we could, as fast as we could go.
[37:31] SPEAKER_02: So we're getting like huge muscle breakdown.
[37:33] SPEAKER_02: And um it's not a run that we did every week, even if you did it easy, it would be too much.
[37:39] SPEAKER_02: Um, but that run was that was one of the runs that really was a hallmark thing that really strengthened me for Kona.
[37:47] SPEAKER_02: And in fact, in 1995, um the last time I did the Switzerland Trail before going into my final Iron Man, I did, I usually ran it with a group, but this day I decided to just run it on my own.
[38:02] SPEAKER_02: And I was super relaxed, and I I I didn't feel like I did anything outstanding or spectacular.
[38:09] SPEAKER_02: Um, but when I finished that loop, I had set a PR on it.
[38:15] SPEAKER_02: And so here I am at 37 setting a PR on this loop that I had been doing for you know close to 15 years.
[38:23] SPEAKER_02: And um I'm like, wow, I am ready.
[38:30] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's always nice when you surprise yourself with something, you know, when it when it when you go when you set a PR and it act it didn't actually feel like you were you were at PR effort, it actually maybe felt better than the last time you you did a PR on that thing.
[38:48] SPEAKER_02: That's that's when you know you're really ready for something magical.
[38:52] SPEAKER_01: I reckon there's a heap of value in what you're talking about there with the way you're doing those long runs and Iron Man.
[38:58] SPEAKER_01: Like the eccentric loading from running down the hills deep into a marathon, that's so beneficial.
[39:04] SPEAKER_01: And like you talked about, the the muscular breakdown that you experience during those long runs, and if you do that chronically, that the benefit that has to the back half of your your marathon, particularly at a place like Kona, just invaluable.
[39:17] SPEAKER_01: And I reckon, like a really like maybe famous or infamous person who struggles with this is Lionel Sanders.
[39:25] SPEAKER_01: I reckon that what you're saying, no one in the history of our sport could benefit from it more than Lionel Sanders, because I think why he can't convert 70.3 performance to Iron Man performance is he just experiences such huge mechanical breakdown.
[39:38] SPEAKER_01: And I wonder if it's because he does most of his running indoors or or on the flats.
[39:43] SPEAKER_01: And like I just I've always looked at him and thought if he could do exactly what you're just talking about, long hilly runs, I just I just wonder how much it would benefit his Iron Man performance.
[39:54] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's I mean it's a great question.
[39:56] SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know how much running he does on treadmills, I don't know how much running somebody like Patrick Longer does on treadmills.
[40:05] SPEAKER_02: You know, Patrick, who's like he's he's the gold standard of marathon at the end of your Iron Man at this point at this in this era.
[40:14] SPEAKER_02: Um I saw a Lionel live in um Oceanside 70.3 this year, uh his opening race, which he won.
[40:23] SPEAKER_02: And um just seeing he even even though his run style is kind of quirky, it's actually super efficient in the sense that you can just see like when when he lands, he's loading a spring, and when that spring explodes, it propels him forward.
[40:43] SPEAKER_02: There's like no wasted motion.
[40:46] SPEAKER_02: And a lot of guys might look smoother and you know more graceful, but they don't they're not getting the same load that he's getting.
[40:54] SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, then looking at how he ran in in St.
[40:57] SPEAKER_02: George 70.3 just recently, you know, he he he's figured out how to take probably one of the worst running forms you've ever seen and turn it into something super efficient.
[41:10] SPEAKER_02: And you know, for him to win in St.
[41:12] SPEAKER_02: George seems to be an indication that maybe he is doing some more hill work because he he definitely had an amazing run there.
[41:20] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[41:22] SPEAKER_02: But again, if if he's if he's getting all of that from a treadmill, for sure, I think he could he could gain a lot of benefit from just freaking going out there on the trails on paved road, that's the other thing.
[41:36] SPEAKER_02: I would I would shift.
[41:38] SPEAKER_02: I love running on trails, but when I uh when I started get going into that um Kona block, I would shift more and more of my running onto pavement again so that I I got that pounding that you just don't get on soft dirt, so that so that I would be ready for that when it came race day.
[41:58] SPEAKER_01: Did you do much running in the lead up at race pace?
[42:02] SPEAKER_01: Like I mean, you were running um kind of like 240 to 250 for your marathons um on any given day at Kona.
[42:11] SPEAKER_01: Would you do much running, particularly for your long runs or maybe like a midweek session where you would run at that pace for an extended period of time or in broken intervals?
[42:21] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for sure.
[42:22] SPEAKER_02: I I did a lot, I did well, I don't know if I would say I did a lot of race pace running.
[42:27] SPEAKER_02: What I did is um on the on the long runs, I didn't really even worry about the pace because I was more concerned with moving for a certain period of time.
[42:36] SPEAKER_02: But I actually did a lot of running faster than race pace, but not not necessarily for long periods.
[42:44] SPEAKER_02: And and it for me, I felt it was very important to do a lot of running faster than race pace so that when I was in in at Kona, even though it's hard, it's demanding, you're getting breakdown, it's hot, you're you know, you're running out of gas, all that kind of stuff.
[43:00] SPEAKER_02: The your body knows that the pace you're running is nowhere near your top end of what you're capable of doing.
[43:06] SPEAKER_02: So it sort of helps normalize the one aspect of the race.
[43:11] SPEAKER_02: So you're kind of like, yeah, this is hard, but I've been able to run way faster than this.
[43:16] SPEAKER_02: And and so fast forward to um that um last race uh that I was telling you about, and I did that amazing run on the Switzerland Trail.
[43:26] SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, there that that that run takes about an hour and a half.
[43:31] SPEAKER_02: And um there were points where I was going way, way, way faster than race pace.
[43:37] SPEAKER_02: And so um when I when I came out of the energy lab ready to hit that last NK back to town, um, I still hadn't caught Thomas Hell Regal, who was ahead of me.
[43:50] SPEAKER_02: And there I had this thought like, oh man, it I still have so far to go.
[43:55] SPEAKER_02: And then I thought, wait a minute, this is nothing.
[43:59] SPEAKER_02: This is like Half of the Switzerland trail.
[44:02] SPEAKER_02: This is a piece of cake.
[44:04] SPEAKER_02: I'm going to make this no problem.
[44:06] SPEAKER_02: And so when you when you sort of reset some aspect of what you're capable of doing in your in your training that compared to what you're going to be encountering in the race, it helps make race day feel more like just something you can manage.
[44:21] SPEAKER_02: If you only run race pace and you do race pace a lot, um when you're at that pace in your race, your body is going to say, Oh, this is my top speed.
[44:34] SPEAKER_02: I can't go any faster than this.
[44:36] SPEAKER_02: But I was always uh I always had the feeling like, of course I can go faster than this.
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[46:27] SPEAKER_01: And was that the same for your bike as well?
[46:30] SPEAKER_01: Would you do like a lot of long, easy volume, like you've already talked about the seven-hour rides, and then also a lot of intervals faster than race pace?
[46:37] SPEAKER_01: Or how did you how did you work your bike?
[46:41] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, like when I would do that seven-hour ride, um the effort that I put out was much harder than than what I would do in Kona.
[46:50] SPEAKER_00: Wow.
[46:51] SPEAKER_02: And I and I and I can't compare, you know, I didn't have a power meter, so I can't compare the watts, and I can't compare the speed because it was definitely faster than I had to race in Kona, but I was I was in uh I was at altitude in outside a boulder.
[47:08] SPEAKER_02: So you just can't compare the the two.
[47:11] SPEAKER_02: But the effort was was much harder than anything I would have to do on the bike in Kona.
[47:18] SPEAKER_01: That's so fascinating.
[47:19] SPEAKER_01: Because yeah, that's so fascinating.
[47:22] SPEAKER_01: So all right, this this kind of takes me into some questions because I want to I I've got some like things that I've always wanted to ask you, but I've obviously never met you and we don't know each other.
[47:32] SPEAKER_01: So I've just been a fan of the sport for or following the sport for you know two or two and a half decades, and I've just had questions I wanted to ask you.
[47:39] SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of conversation about who's the greatest triathlete of all time and comparing the generations like I kind of touched on earlier.
[47:47] SPEAKER_01: And something I've heard people say about your generation that I want to get your take on is that the bike was easier for you guys because you had like lead minivans and that kind of thing out in front.
[47:59] SPEAKER_01: So you would draft off them and therefore it would make running the marathon easier.
[48:03] SPEAKER_01: Is that a myth or is there some truth to that?
[48:07] SPEAKER_02: Um I mean there were vans on the course in the in the very early years, like especially especially the years that that Dave was racing.
[48:20] SPEAKER_02: And I and I can't remember when they when they made a switch from camera vans to motorcycles.
[48:26] SPEAKER_02: It was I I remember 19 well up into up until 1988, I remember that they they used they used vans, and I can't remember what year they they sort of switched over to motorcycles.
[48:40] SPEAKER_02: But um I don't know if that I don't know if there was necessarily a huge advantage for them being out there, at least in Kona.
[48:51] SPEAKER_02: There were other races where it was a joke, like Iron Man Japan, 1989, Dave went to Iron Man Japan, Dave Scott, and he went 801, I think.
[49:04] SPEAKER_02: And everybody's like, oh my god, 801.
[49:06] SPEAKER_02: He almost broke eight hours.
[49:08] SPEAKER_02: I'm like, that course is narrow, and that they have elite van, and the van is right in front of you.
[49:14] SPEAKER_02: You're getting this massive draft.
[49:16] SPEAKER_02: It wasn't really like that in Kona.
[49:18] SPEAKER_02: And and part of the reason in Kona was, you know, because you'd have these side winds, and so the vans would be on the other side, even if they're ahead of you, you're not getting any draft off them.
[49:27] SPEAKER_02: The wind's blowing.
[49:29] SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, I don't know.
[49:32] SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's maybe it was a factor for certain periods, but not for all of the ones I was there.
[49:39] SPEAKER_01: And in that period, kind of like the 80s and 90s, obviously drugs were a heavy part of cycling, and we even know running now to a degree.
[49:48] SPEAKER_01: Were were drugs part of part of the culture in triathlon at that point in time?
[49:52] SPEAKER_01: Like, did you or anyone else you know ever use them?
[49:55] SPEAKER_01: Did you ever hear about anyone using them for performance-enhancing um reasons?
[50:00] SPEAKER_02: Well, the the very first year I raced was 1982, and um that was also the first year of the Nice triathlon that that took place in November of 1982.
[50:13] SPEAKER_02: And um I was I went over there, it was my first um it was my first trip to Europe.
[50:19] SPEAKER_02: I'd never raced in Europe, and pre-race, all of every interview that I gave, people were asking me, Well, who's your doctor?
[50:27] SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, Well, I'm not sick, I don't have a doctor.
[50:30] SPEAKER_02: And the next year I came back and they're asking me, Who's your doctor?
[50:34] SPEAKER_02: And the light bulb went on, and it's like, oh, they're asking me who's given me drugs, and um, you know, I I am I don't know if I'm a rare commodity or a common commodity, but I don't have any skeletons in the closet as far as taking drugs.
[50:55] SPEAKER_02: I there were a number of times during my career when people said, Oh, you know, this guy or that guy is taking drugs, and there's not, you know, if you're gonna beat him, you've got to, you've got to, you've got a blood dope, you've got to, you know, do something.
[51:09] SPEAKER_02: And I thought, you know, if I if I take drugs and I win, I will never feel like I could win without them.
[51:19] SPEAKER_02: And if I don't win, what excuse do I have?
[51:22] SPEAKER_02: And so I I always said, you know, um, there's no way.
[51:26] SPEAKER_02: And the hard the hardest time actually for me to say that was in 1995, because um I was at the end of my career, I was 37.
[51:36] SPEAKER_02: The first five Iron Man's that I did finally caught up to me in '93.
[51:40] SPEAKER_02: I didn't race on it in '94 because I was one, because I was burned out, two, because we had the birth of our son and I wanted to spend more time with him, you know, figure out what that meant to be a father.
[51:52] SPEAKER_02: But I knew that my body was so tired that even though I had the desire to go back in 1994, there's no way I could have done the training.
[52:00] SPEAKER_02: So um, but then 1995 rolled around.
[52:04] SPEAKER_02: I'm like, okay, this is it.
[52:05] SPEAKER_02: This is gonna be my final year, my final Iron Man.
[52:08] SPEAKER_02: Um, and I and up until about June of that year, I'd only had a handful of days of training where I actually felt normal.
[52:16] SPEAKER_02: Like, okay, it's coming around.
[52:17] SPEAKER_02: But the other days I still felt like shit.
[52:20] SPEAKER_02: And I thought, man, maybe I'm maybe I'm dying of cancer.
[52:25] SPEAKER_02: I don't know what, something.
[52:26] SPEAKER_02: But that's not right.
[52:27] SPEAKER_02: And so I I had a blood test done, and the doctor who was interpreting the results, he said, Well, you you have no DHEA, your testosterone looks like you're about 70, your, you know, your your cortisol is through the roof.
[52:45] SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, he just went on and on and on, painted this horrendous picture, and I said, Well, is there anything I can do for it?
[52:53] SPEAKER_02: And he goes, Yeah, you know, you can take testosterone, you can take human growth hormone, you can do all this stuff.
[52:59] SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, is it legal?
[53:00] SPEAKER_02: And he goes, No.
[53:02] SPEAKER_02: And I said, Thank you very little.
[53:04] SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm not gonna throw away 15 hard years of racing to potentially win one more, because if I get caught, the entire my entire career is it's it's it's in the toilet.
[53:17] SPEAKER_02: The whole thing would be put in question and it's not worth it.
[53:21] SPEAKER_02: And I thought there has to be another way.
[53:24] SPEAKER_02: For every drug that you can take, there has to be another way that you can you can figure out a different way to do it, a different, a natural way to do it, or something.
[53:35] SPEAKER_02: And I had been studying uh shamanism at that point with a gentleman, Brant Secunda, um, for since since 1989, basically.
[53:44] SPEAKER_02: And one of he's he's he was trained in a very traditional um culture uh he uh in in Mexico, in a tri a tradition from the Huicho people that they live in central Mexico and they have a very developed spiritual and healing culture.
[54:04] SPEAKER_02: Like in their language, they call themselves Verarica, which means the healing people.
[54:09] SPEAKER_02: And um he had done he he's very famous for um healing a lot of conditions that Western medicine can't figure out.
[54:20] SPEAKER_02: And shortly after that blood test, um, I was at a retreat with him and he said, You're gonna win in Kona this year?
[54:26] SPEAKER_02: And I said, You're gonna help me?
[54:29] SPEAKER_02: And he kind of gave me the shaman once-over look, and he goes, ooh, you need some help.
[54:35] SPEAKER_02: And I hadn't told him about the blood test yet.
[54:38] SPEAKER_02: And so at that retreat, it was up in Alaska, he did a number of healings on me.
[54:42] SPEAKER_02: And when I got back from it was eight days, and when I got back from that, things started to come around.
[54:48] SPEAKER_02: And then I on my way to Kona, I went and stopped in Santa Cruz area where he lives and got one last last healing from him.
[54:55] SPEAKER_02: And um, and I and I did everything else that I felt I possibly could.
[55:02] SPEAKER_02: I I looked at um you know natural alternatives and I really cut out all of the junk training that I knew I was doing just to sort of give my self-confidence a boost, but had nothing to do with gaining fitness.
[55:17] SPEAKER_02: Um and it it things slowly started to come around.
[55:22] SPEAKER_02: And then actually on race day, I literally had what I considered the best race ever, even though it wasn't the fastest.
[55:32] SPEAKER_02: And one of the reasons I say that is that in every other Iron Man that I did, one I got sick on the bike and would would throw up.
[55:41] SPEAKER_02: You know, my nutrition didn't work.
[55:43] SPEAKER_02: That year it worked perfectly.
[55:45] SPEAKER_02: Um, but the the main thing of and the main reason I said it was a perfect race is that I always got mechanical breakdown uh somewhere on the marathon, and my form would fall apart just enough that my feet would start to slip around in my shoes, and you know, your your shoes are sweat soaked and and your skin is soft, and um when you start to lose your mechanical efficiency, your form, your feet slip around in your shoes, then you start to get blisters.
[56:16] SPEAKER_02: And some of the years, my blisters were just horrendous.
[56:20] SPEAKER_02: This year, um, I didn't I didn't get one blister, I had one tiny little blister at the end of the race.
[56:28] SPEAKER_02: That year I crossed the finish line feeling like the strongest that I'd ever felt, and just like perfect form all the way through.
[56:37] SPEAKER_02: Yes, in 1989 I ran at 240.04 and it looked amazing, but I had these massive blister blood blisters that had popped, pop formed and popped about halfway through the marathon, and my shoes were completely red.
[56:52] SPEAKER_02: This year, nothing.
[56:53] SPEAKER_02: And so um, you know, I was faced a number of times with that choice.
[56:58] SPEAKER_02: Do I take drugs?
[56:59] SPEAKER_02: Do I not take drugs?
[57:00] SPEAKER_02: And I always said no.
[57:02] SPEAKER_02: Did other guys take drugs?
[57:04] SPEAKER_02: I didn't think they did, but um since my career, I've heard a few stories about some guys that did take drugs.
[57:12] SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, you asshole, you were you were taking stuff, you know.
[57:17] SPEAKER_02: I mean, fortunately, I fortunately the races, most of the races that I won were were very complex races to win, like world championship events, you know, the ITU Olympic Distance Championship in Avignon in 1989, not your ordinary run-of-the-mill Olympic distance race.
[57:36] SPEAKER_02: And so, with the complexities of the races that I excelled at, on a being probably the most complex to win, there were so many other factors that influence your day, you know, your your mental mental stability, your um ability to handle impossible moments where you feel like the win is slipping away.
[57:56] SPEAKER_02: How do you stay calm?
[57:58] SPEAKER_02: How do you stay steady?
[57:59] SPEAKER_02: How do you stay engaged and give a hundred percent of what you have to give in those down moments and not worrying about how it's gonna the day is gonna turn out?
[58:08] SPEAKER_02: And so I I was able to beat the guys that I found out later were taking drugs.
[58:14] SPEAKER_02: I think nowadays um a lot of athletes have uh more access to uh drugs just because there's a lot of a lot more crossover um with cyclists and you know, not to not to characterize characterize cyclists, but I think you know it's it's a problem in that sport.
[58:39] SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, I just I the thing is it's a slippery slope to to go, oh, that person had a great performance, they must be taking drugs, you know, because then then you look at everybody and go, oh everybody's taking drugs.
[58:54] SPEAKER_02: And maybe they are, I don't know.
[58:55] SPEAKER_02: But I so I just try to look at the races.
[58:59] SPEAKER_02: If there's anomalies that just stand out in your mind, those are the athletes I go, even though they haven't tested positive, there's something fishy about their performance.
[59:10] SPEAKER_02: And and so I think that's one of the great things that that I feel like I learned by racing clean is what's possible naturally when you cover every corner of performance, what's natural progression in fitness, what's natural um levels of consistency if you're doing things right and you're doing things smart and you're you're doing as much as you can legally.
[59:36] SPEAKER_02: And when something goes way outside of that box, that's a red flag for me.
[59:41] SPEAKER_02: You know, and I'm not gonna give names because if somebody has not tested positive, but I question their their performance, you know, who am I to say?
[59:53] SPEAKER_02: Maybe I just maybe there's something they're doing that's so amazing that it is possible to achieve that.
[59:59] SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean look at it this way.
[1:00:02] SPEAKER_02: 1989, when Dave and I had our classic battle, he beat his world's record by almost 18 minutes.
[1:00:10] SPEAKER_02: I did my best race to that date by nearly 30.
[1:00:14] SPEAKER_02: By any measure of what's possible naturally, I'm sure there were a lot of people like, what did those guys take today?
[1:00:22] SPEAKER_02: You know, but it was just a it was it was an evolution of um performance.
[1:00:29] SPEAKER_02: And it was a it was a mindset that got changed that day more than the performance itself.
[1:00:35] SPEAKER_02: Like prior to 1989, people kind of went into Iron Man thinking the the winner is gonna be the one who slows down the least.
[1:00:42] SPEAKER_02: But after 1989, everybody realized wait a minute, even though it's an eight-hour race for the best folks, best guys, you can race it start to finish.
[1:00:51] SPEAKER_02: And that completely changed how people were approaching it.
[1:00:55] SPEAKER_02: And that's I think one of the reasons why we see guys going 730 and change in in in Hawaii nowadays.
[1:01:04] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and if everyone would just uh reconsider taking testosterone or EPO and instead going to a shaman retreat, a shame retreat, I've forgotten how you said it in the mountains, maybe we'd have a lot less drug use in the sport.
[1:01:17] SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah.
[1:01:18] SPEAKER_01: But that's uh that's a story for another day, isn't it?
[1:01:22] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, it's it's when you do stuff with with natural means, the the results take longer, they're slower, and they're less um they're less obvious because core core changes in your body actually happen little bit by little bit by little bit.
[1:01:40] SPEAKER_02: So you have to be more patient.
[1:01:41] SPEAKER_02: It takes more diligence.
[1:01:42] SPEAKER_02: You can't just inject something and go wake up the next day and like, whoa, Superman.
[1:01:47] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[1:01:48] SPEAKER_01: You probab so you probably have three like camps of people when they hear it though.
[1:01:51] SPEAKER_01: You have the camp of people who go, okay, natural bullshit.
[1:01:55] SPEAKER_01: He's either he's either crazy or he's lying and he actually went into the mountains and and took drugs.
[1:02:00] SPEAKER_01: Or you have the kind you have the kind of people who are like, yeah, natural, natural's the way, like that definitely makes sense.
[1:02:06] SPEAKER_01: That we took too much Western medicine, more people should be doing that.
[1:02:10] SPEAKER_01: Or you have the third group who just don't know how they feel about any of it and are confused.
[1:02:16] SPEAKER_02: Well, and and I think a lot of a lot of people who point fingers, they're the ones that who can't imagine how you could do that naturally, even though it is possible.
[1:02:27] SPEAKER_02: And so that's sort of their excuse, like, oh well, if I took something, I'd be going that fast too.
[1:02:32] SPEAKER_02: And maybe they would if they took something, but you can get there other ways.
[1:02:36] SPEAKER_02: There's many ways to skin that that performance cat, that's for sure.
[1:02:39] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:02:40] SPEAKER_01: And I I mean, no one's really been in the sport longer than you anymore.
[1:02:43] SPEAKER_01: Like, there really isn't many people.
[1:02:45] SPEAKER_01: I I guess like Dave's there, and there's some there's a handful from your generation, but you've really seen the sport from the early 80s all the way through to current day.
[1:02:54] SPEAKER_01: So I mean, you've been here for almost 50 years now.
[1:02:57] SPEAKER_01: So I mean, I know you say, like, I'm not gonna name names, I'm not gonna speculate, but who's seen more and and done more than you?
[1:03:05] SPEAKER_01: Like, I think you know what a what a believable or unbelievable performance is by by now, really.
[1:03:13] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, and and I'm I mean, to be honest, I'm I'm more excited about the sport now than I have been in in years, and part of it stuck started leading into Paris last year.
[1:03:24] SPEAKER_02: You know, I I mean I had such a great history racing in France, and then I got engaged.
[1:03:30] SPEAKER_02: Uh USA Truston and their foundation um had me doing some promotional work and experience stuff for some of their donors over there last year.
[1:03:40] SPEAKER_02: Such an incredible Olympic Games, you know, and uh just to be there and see that.
[1:03:47] SPEAKER_02: And then now with the you know, like the Iron Man series and and some so many opportunities for the the top professionals, and then you know, as far as like, you know, I I only coach age group athletes because they're really fun and they appreciate what you do, and and they don't need you to, they're not wanting you to hold their hand.
[1:04:06] SPEAKER_02: And I have shied away from pros because I've tried it a number of times.
[1:04:10] SPEAKER_02: And one, it's a lot of work, you know.
[1:04:12] SPEAKER_02: You to get that last tiny percent out of somebody who's already super good is it's it's actually really hard to do.
[1:04:19] SPEAKER_02: But anyway, um, you know, nowadays you you've you've got you've got like the platform I've got my athletes on tried out where you've you've actually got AI that's helping you, which is super cool.
[1:04:31] SPEAKER_02: Like we we have stuff, we have these tools now that make it so that you actually don't have to do stupid stuff in your training.
[1:04:38] SPEAKER_02: We know we figured out what is stupid and we can deliver the stuff that's smart.
[1:04:43] SPEAKER_02: And um so you know, like as a coach with Tridot, I'm able to actually spend time coaching people as opposed to having to look at every little granular detail of their Garmin data or Strava.
[1:04:57] SPEAKER_02: And um anyway, it's it's it's a fun time in the sport, and you know, there will always be people who cheat, whether it's somebody taking drugs or you know, somebody who's sitting in the back of a pack and and waiting, if there's no marshal, they're gonna draft, you know, whatever it is.
[1:05:17] SPEAKER_02: It's like at the end of the day, you know what you do, you've got to live with your result.
[1:05:26] SPEAKER_02: And and and I know that you know, the this the six wins in Kona, you know, the 21 race win streak, the the win in Avignon, the 10 races in Nice that I won, those are those are so amazing.
[1:05:41] SPEAKER_02: They're precious to me, not to undervalue any of them.
[1:05:44] SPEAKER_02: But some of the most impactful moments for me were some of those years where I wasn't winning in Hawaii, you know, and it after the six, I guess you'd say loss, I just felt like Why am I doing this?
[1:06:02] SPEAKER_02: But you know, now I can look back and realize that you know the universe was helping teach me lessons through those difficult races that helped me win that race six times.
[1:06:14] SPEAKER_02: You know, lessons like when I'm not feeling good, uh being able to just keep my mind quiet as opposed to freaking out and thinking the day's over.
[1:06:25] SPEAKER_02: And, you know, even when things fell apart and it was obvious that somebody else is going to win and I wasn't, pivoting on what my purpose was there, as opposed to thinking I'm here to win, thinking I'm here to just give the best I can each and every single step of this marathon.
[1:06:43] SPEAKER_02: And it really doesn't matter how I finish, because when I cross that line, I'll know that on this day I gave the best that I could give.
[1:06:51] SPEAKER_02: And that's empowering when you know that.
[1:06:53] SPEAKER_02: You know, when you cross the line and you go, I could have given more, that's not empowering.
[1:06:58] SPEAKER_02: But when you cross the line and you go, that was all I had.
[1:07:01] SPEAKER_02: I I gave everything I had.
[1:07:03] SPEAKER_02: I finished fifth.
[1:07:05] SPEAKER_02: So what?
[1:07:05] SPEAKER_02: I walked on that marathon, so what?
[1:07:08] SPEAKER_02: I gave the best I had to give.
[1:07:10] SPEAKER_02: And that's empowering.
[1:07:11] SPEAKER_02: And it makes it so much easier on days where things are going more in your direction.
[1:07:18] SPEAKER_02: When you have those down moments on the good days, you're still going super fast.
[1:07:25] SPEAKER_01: One of the hardest things to do in your training is fuel and hydrate properly when you're out there running, particularly for your long runs.
[1:07:32] SPEAKER_01: That's why, in my opinion, everyone needs a nerd belt if you run.
[1:07:35] SPEAKER_01: Whether it's for trython or you're doing a half marathon or a marathon, a nerd belt can be an absolute game changer for you.
[1:07:42] SPEAKER_01: The thing that makes nerd belts great is that they're just practical and comfortable.
[1:07:46] SPEAKER_01: So you can carry like the basics, like your phone, keys, bank card, dog poop bags, etc., in the nerd belt while also having up to like a liter or two of water on them.
[1:07:56] SPEAKER_01: The best ones, in my opinion, are the ones that have about 600 mils of water that you can carry.
[1:08:00] SPEAKER_01: And they don't bounce around at all.
[1:08:01] SPEAKER_01: They just sit around your waist, you barely notice them.
[1:08:04] SPEAKER_01: You can have three or four gels in them as well.
[1:08:06] SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you can even have more if you get one of the bigger ones.
[1:08:09] SPEAKER_01: Um, so like you can literally be out there on a long run and have everything that you've ever needed and always struggled to carry with you, or you've had to go and place bottles out on the course, or you know, come back and loop back to your car to get your water bottle and your gels and and all that annoying stuff.
[1:08:25] SPEAKER_01: Nerd belts just get rid of that.
[1:08:27] SPEAKER_01: They're seriously amazing and they will help you fuel and hydrate better with your running, but also just carry the basics when you're out there running, like your keys and your phone on on easy days.
[1:08:36] SPEAKER_01: Um, or if you're going out for long runs in in the bush and and and the forest and you need the safety of having your phone.
[1:08:42] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Nerd Belts are so great for that.
[1:08:44] SPEAKER_01: Um, so if you want to get a Nerd Belt, then go to Nerd Belt's website and use the discount code TTH20 for 20% off anything on their site.
[1:08:52] SPEAKER_01: Um, and the details of that uh for that are in the episode description as well.
[1:08:58] SPEAKER_01: You're a spiritual guy, Mark.
[1:08:59] SPEAKER_01: I I really like it.
[1:09:00] SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's it's interesting because I don't think there's a lot of that anymore.
[1:09:04] SPEAKER_01: Um I I want to ask you about something I've mentioned twice now.
[1:09:08] SPEAKER_01: Uh I think there's no one more qualified in the sport.
[1:09:12] SPEAKER_01: The goat conversation.
[1:09:13] SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you're in it six times, Dave Scott also six time, Jan Fredino, Alistair Brownley, Daniela Reef, Patrick Langer.
[1:09:21] SPEAKER_01: Give me your give me your goat, who's the greatest of all time in our sport.
[1:09:26] SPEAKER_01: And and then and then maybe give me your podium as well.
[1:09:28] SPEAKER_01: Who's who's two and three?
[1:09:30] SPEAKER_01: And I'm not gonna let you dance around it and give me eight names.
[1:09:33] SPEAKER_01: I want a one, two, and three.
[1:09:36] SPEAKER_01: You're allowed to include yourself as well.
[1:09:40] SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, you're not you're not gonna get a distinct answer out of me because it I am, I promise you.
[1:09:48] SPEAKER_01: We're not leaving until I get a one, two, three.
[1:09:51] SPEAKER_02: Like you said, you know, um like every generation is every generation is Oh Mark, come on, don't start.
[1:10:00] SPEAKER_00: This is the this is this is how everyone starts it.
[1:10:04] SPEAKER_02: Every generation stands on the shoulders of those who have come before them.
[1:10:08] SPEAKER_02: Fact.
[1:10:08] SPEAKER_02: You know, I stand on the shoulders of Dave Scott.
[1:10:10] SPEAKER_02: You know, it when he was racing, he was the goat.
[1:10:13] SPEAKER_02: When I was racing, I was the goat.
[1:10:15] SPEAKER_02: When Janford Anor was racing, he was the goat.
[1:10:19] SPEAKER_02: But let me just say that I feel like my career spanned so many different um so many different aspects of growth of the sport.
[1:10:31] SPEAKER_02: Uh and I had to pioneer so many of the answers and solutions to come out on top.
[1:10:37] SPEAKER_02: So you're number one.
[1:10:38] SPEAKER_02: And and if nothing else, I think that stands for a lot.
[1:10:42] SPEAKER_02: I think for me, somebody who's who is being being the goat or whatever, it also is what you've done with you with your great moments after you've completed your time racing.
[1:10:59] SPEAKER_02: If it was just you in that period, and then you move on and nobody ever hears from you, you haven't really shared it with people because in the at when you're racing, you don't actually really know how it is that you're doing what you're doing compared to how you will understand that 10, 20 years later when you've had time to really reflect on it.
[1:11:20] SPEAKER_02: And so even now, as I reflect back on what I did, how I did it, I learn something new every time I think about it.
[1:11:30] SPEAKER_02: And I try to share that with people.
[1:11:32] SPEAKER_02: And ultimately, whether you win the race or you come in last, you all deal with this so many of the same things during the race.
[1:11:41] SPEAKER_02: You ask yourself the same questions, you have the same doubts, the same fears.
[1:11:45] SPEAKER_02: It's just that the speed that the top people do it at is a little different, and of course, there's differences, you know.
[1:11:51] SPEAKER_02: But um one great performance does not make somebody the greatest.
[1:11:59] SPEAKER_02: It's it okay, okay.
[1:12:01] SPEAKER_02: So let me give you this.
[1:12:05] SPEAKER_02: So a number of years ago, ESPN uh sport channel here was having they wanted to figure out who is the greatest athlete of all time.
[1:12:14] SPEAKER_02: And um so they had they had different categories, and uh one of the categories was endurance sport.
[1:12:26] SPEAKER_02: And somebody goes, You're one of the top five.
[1:12:28] SPEAKER_02: It wasn't that was it was gender nonspecific.
[1:12:32] SPEAKER_02: So there was several several women in there and and a couple guys.
[1:12:37] SPEAKER_02: I think Diana Nayad was in there, the guy who held the marathon record uh at the time was in there, my name was in there, and it was a worldwide vote, and I was voted greatest endurance athlete of all time.
[1:12:50] SPEAKER_02: There were eight categories, and so after each category, so I forget all the other categories, but after each category got its winner, then you were paired up with another person.
[1:13:01] SPEAKER_02: And at that point, they used metrics to determine who would win those pairings, and a lot of it was like speed, endurance, agility, game changer, you know, just a bunch of stuff.
[1:13:14] SPEAKER_02: Anyway, in in the first matchup, after I'd won this greatest endurance athlete of all time vote, I was paired up with Muhammad Ali.
[1:13:23] SPEAKER_02: And and I'm like, okay, I do not want to win this pair-up because you know, what he did in boxing and what who he was as a person touched the entire world.
[1:13:38] SPEAKER_02: And so fortunately he won that pair-up.
[1:13:41] SPEAKER_02: But um so anyway, you can look at you can look at Jan, you can look you can look at Paulinuby Frazier, eight eight iron man victories, and so many other Ironmans that she won.
[1:13:51] SPEAKER_02: Is she the greatest of all time?
[1:13:53] SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
[1:13:54] SPEAKER_02: Well, she she she wasn't she wasn't a standout in Olympic distance racing, so maybe there was something missing in that resume that would would give her that that quality.
[1:14:04] SPEAKER_02: Is uh you know, was Alistair Brownlee, you know, a guy who took Olympic distance racing to a new level with his aggressiveness on the bike, even though he could have outrun anybody by just sitting in.
[1:14:18] SPEAKER_02: He still mixed it up.
[1:14:19] SPEAKER_02: That's badass.
[1:14:21] SPEAKER_02: Um you know you know, you can go down the list.
[1:14:26] SPEAKER_02: And um anyway, I I think it's who who could cover all distances really well.
[1:14:33] SPEAKER_02: Obviously, Jan could do that, Olympic gold and um three Iron Man World Championship titles, a world record, and his third and final title that he did at age 38.
[1:14:44] SPEAKER_02: That's badass.
[1:14:46] SPEAKER_02: Um but then it's I think it's also what you what you do with that racing career.
[1:14:52] SPEAKER_02: Do you give do you give it back to others?
[1:14:55] SPEAKER_02: Do you help other people achieve their dreams?
[1:14:59] SPEAKER_02: Because you had that chance.
[1:15:01] SPEAKER_02: We had that chance.
[1:15:03] SPEAKER_02: Or do you just use it to get another sponsorship for yourself?
[1:15:06] SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
[1:15:08] SPEAKER_01: I respect that it's a tough position for you.
[1:15:10] SPEAKER_01: You have gone a bit all of Alexander Boo on me there, where the question the the answer got a bit long and it went and went went a few different directions.
[1:15:19] SPEAKER_01: I'm reading between the lines, Mark.
[1:15:21] SPEAKER_01: I think you've put yourself number one.
[1:15:23] SPEAKER_01: Um that's that's that seems pretty obvious to me.
[1:15:27] SPEAKER_01: It kind of sounds like you might be putting Yarn at number two, if again, if I'm reading between the lines, but I'm not sure who you're putting at number three.
[1:15:34] SPEAKER_01: Who who might be in that number three spot?
[1:15:36] SPEAKER_01: Could it be could it be Reef?
[1:15:38] SPEAKER_01: Could it be is it Paul and Newbie Fraser?
[1:15:40] SPEAKER_01: Is it Langer?
[1:15:41] SPEAKER_01: Is it your rival Dave Scott?
[1:15:42] SPEAKER_01: Who who's that number three?
[1:15:44] SPEAKER_01: Craig Alexander?
[1:15:46] SPEAKER_02: I think it would um Craig's actually an interesting.
[1:15:51] SPEAKER_02: I don't even though he raced uh short distance races and he's still involved with the sport, I don't think I I think he's just a notch below like a Jan Ferdano, because Jan Jan had that gold, and and he was one of the few guys to step up from Olympic distance racing and um you know prove his you know prove his chops in Kona.
[1:16:17] SPEAKER_02: The guy that at the end of the day might might have that title, might end up being Christian Blumensheld.
[1:16:23] SPEAKER_02: Look what he's doing right now.
[1:16:24] SPEAKER_01: I thought you might have been heavy Christian there.
[1:16:27] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[1:16:27] SPEAKER_02: He's um when he's on, he's showing a dominance that is was is rarely seen.
[1:16:37] SPEAKER_02: And um most recently, just looking at what he's been doing this year.
[1:16:42] SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously, he wins a gold in Tokyo, he comes back and he wins Iron Man World Championship in St.
[1:16:49] SPEAKER_02: George.
[1:16:50] SPEAKER_02: Um, that's pretty badass, you know.
[1:16:52] SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, he he had some races where he didn't perform well.
[1:16:57] SPEAKER_02: Um, but now look at what he's done uh uh just recently.
[1:17:02] SPEAKER_02: He's incredibly strong.
[1:17:04] SPEAKER_02: I mean, Iron Man Texas, he just he was just in another planet, um, you know, and then backside up with St.
[1:17:13] SPEAKER_02: George.
[1:17:14] SPEAKER_02: So who knows what if you know, a number of years from now, after when it's all said and done with him.
[1:17:21] SPEAKER_02: But uh Daniela for sure has to be on that list somewhere, second, third, um just because she she really evolved her career in her racing.
[1:17:31] SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that I really, really respect about Daniela Um is that she had she had this seeming invincibility, and then she became vulnerable.
[1:17:46] SPEAKER_02: And at the point of her career that she became vulnerable and started having some really city performances, generally you'd never come back from that, but she did.
[1:18:00] SPEAKER_02: And you have to give her, you have to give her a huge, huge nod for that, as far as like that's badass.
[1:18:08] SPEAKER_02: You know, when you when you struggle, you you you're you fall short, you're having problems.
[1:18:15] SPEAKER_02: Um maybe it's personal, maybe it's physical, I don't know.
[1:18:18] SPEAKER_02: But then you come back and you show you then show that dominance a few more times.
[1:18:24] SPEAKER_02: That's inspiring.
[1:18:26] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Danny Allen, absolute beast.
[1:18:28] SPEAKER_01: Um Right.
[1:18:30] SPEAKER_01: I think we did get there in the end, Mark.
[1:18:32] SPEAKER_01: I know you didn't specifically say it, but I think uh I think we can conclude that it's Mark Allen number one, Danny Allah Reef slash Jarn Fredino, two and three, and then Christian Blumenfeld might even be number four and and with the potential to go high higher if he can do some special things at Kona, is is how I interpreted that.
[1:18:49] SPEAKER_01: Um, Mark, we finish every episode with uh three questions.
[1:18:53] SPEAKER_01: They're random, they're just a little pack of cards, and they're called Let's Get Deep Conversation Starter cards.
[1:18:58] SPEAKER_01: So I'm just gonna pick the three off the top for you, and that's how we'll finish things.
[1:19:02] SPEAKER_01: So I do encourage you to get nice and deep here with me.
[1:19:05] SPEAKER_01: Number one, what is the biggest trigger for your stress?
[1:19:11] SPEAKER_02: The biggest trigger for my stress.
[1:19:16] SPEAKER_02: Well, the biggest actually the biggest trigger for my stress is um when I don't get enough sleep.
[1:19:22] SPEAKER_02: Um I'm when I get enough sleep, I feel like I'm invincible.
[1:19:27] SPEAKER_02: When I don't get enough sleep, I feel like I can't do anything.
[1:19:31] SPEAKER_02: Other people they shrug lack of sleep off like you know, water off a duck's back, but not me.
[1:19:38] SPEAKER_02: So the thing, the biggest trigger for stress for me is is when I'm not getting enough sleep.
[1:19:43] SPEAKER_02: When I do I have things that stress that are stressful, but I just sort of like roll with them.
[1:19:50] SPEAKER_02: I just I just I just click them off, I deal with them.
[1:19:53] SPEAKER_02: If they don't turn out the way I hope they do, I just keep going anyway.
[1:19:59] SPEAKER_02: Bet you weren't expecting that.
[1:20:01] SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
[1:20:02] SPEAKER_01: That actually sounds pretty in line with what I'm hearing from you.
[1:20:05] SPEAKER_01: Question number two.
[1:20:07] SPEAKER_01: Tell me something you're really passionate about.
[1:20:10] SPEAKER_01: Let's go non-triatholm related here.
[1:20:13] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[1:20:14] SPEAKER_02: Um what I'm really passionate about, um this that's an interesting question because um I'm I I'm going I got selected to be the keynote keynote speaker at this year's graduation at the University of California, San Diego.
[1:20:33] SPEAKER_02: I graduated from there in 1990.
[1:20:35] SPEAKER_02: I mean, they've had they've had some big people give that commencement speech.
[1:20:40] SPEAKER_02: Last year it was former vice president Al Gore, they've had the Dalai Lama.
[1:20:45] SPEAKER_02: I mean, the list is pretty darn impressive.
[1:20:48] SPEAKER_02: And I uh when I got the email from the chancellor, I'm like, this has this must be a scam.
[1:20:53] SPEAKER_02: There's no way they're picking me.
[1:20:54] SPEAKER_02: So anyway, I I've been thinking about it, and um passion is a it's miss, it's a misleading word.
[1:21:04] SPEAKER_02: Like I think I think passions are the things that you do that just feed you, but they don't change, they have nothing to do with the world outer world.
[1:21:15] SPEAKER_02: Um, however, pursuits are the things that really impact others that you do.
[1:21:23] SPEAKER_02: And pursuits are are pursuits are things that when you embark on them, they have intrigue.
[1:21:34] SPEAKER_02: They've they've hit like this tuning fork inside you that and it starts to hum and starts to buzz, and you know there's something there for you, and you know that this journey is not gonna be short, it's gonna be long, it's gonna come with a lot of challenge, it's going to you're probably gonna have some moments where it seems impossible to keep going, but you embark on it anyway, whether it's a job, a relationship, it had it calls you.
[1:22:03] SPEAKER_02: And so, what is that pursuit for me?
[1:22:07] SPEAKER_02: You said, What's your passion?
[1:22:09] SPEAKER_02: My passions are surfing and learning how to play the guitar.
[1:22:12] SPEAKER_02: That's not gonna that's not gonna help anybody.
[1:22:15] SPEAKER_02: It's fun for me, but it does nothing to change the world, and it does nothing ultimately to change me fundamentally, but a pursuit is something that you can't turn your back on, it's calling you, and it might seem impossible, but you got to do it anyway.
[1:22:30] SPEAKER_02: And so one of the things that I really like to do is to do stuff like this, to have these kind of conversations where we talk about stuff that's happened that's that is happening, and hopefully have that impact people's lives.
[1:22:45] SPEAKER_02: Because I've I've seen that over the years now that you know I kind of do what I do, and I'm not sure if it has an effect or not.
[1:22:53] SPEAKER_02: And people come up to me and they go, you know, the reason that I am doing this, that, or the other thing is because of something that I I heard you say or that I read that you wrote, or that I saw on on television.
[1:23:05] SPEAKER_02: And that that just feels super cool.
[1:23:08] SPEAKER_02: Like maybe there's something that I'm doing that's helping make other people's lives richer and giving them the courage to go for a dream that maybe they weren't sure that they could achieve either.
[1:23:20] SPEAKER_02: Like when I saw Iron Man on TV the first time in 1982, I'm like, all right, that looks absolutely crazy.
[1:23:27] SPEAKER_02: And I don't even know if I could finish it, but I want to go there and see if I can.
[1:23:32] SPEAKER_02: And that and it turned into this here we are, that 82, that's uh however many over four, you know, 43 years ago.
[1:23:41] SPEAKER_02: And I'm still still in the game.
[1:23:44] SPEAKER_01: That's actually brilliant.
[1:23:45] SPEAKER_01: I I liked that.
[1:23:46] SPEAKER_01: The the pursuits kind of way that you're thinking about that, that could make up a really good part of your speech, too, by the way.
[1:23:54] SPEAKER_01: Because that is that's a really brilliant way separating passion and and pursuits.
[1:23:58] SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I really like that.
[1:24:00] SPEAKER_01: I like the little humor touch there as well.
[1:24:02] SPEAKER_01: You could actually use that in your speech.
[1:24:03] SPEAKER_01: Um, that was brilliant.
[1:24:05] SPEAKER_01: Um, all right.
[1:24:06] SPEAKER_01: The last the last question.
[1:24:08] SPEAKER_01: Three things you can't live without.
[1:24:13] SPEAKER_02: Three things I can't live without.
[1:24:17] SPEAKER_02: Air, water, and food.
[1:24:19] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:24:20] SPEAKER_01: That is the easy way.
[1:24:25] SPEAKER_02: Oh no, I mean, let's see what beyond the basic survival of the thing.
[1:24:29] SPEAKER_02: Other than the real biological essentials.
[1:24:31] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:24:32] SPEAKER_01: Um toilet paper, low-key, pretty important these days, I reckon.
[1:24:36] SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, toilet paper.
[1:24:39] SPEAKER_02: Um I always feel like I gotta have something that's helping me evolve, you know.
[1:24:46] SPEAKER_02: Like I I'm not somebody who sort of gets to the level of something and go, okay, I'm good.
[1:24:54] SPEAKER_02: I'm good to go.
[1:24:55] SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna sit back and smoke a cigar for the next 50 years.
[1:24:58] SPEAKER_02: You know, I always feel like there's gotta be something that's there's gotta be something that's that sparks me to get up in the morning that that it's a purpose for me to get out of bed.
[1:25:09] SPEAKER_02: And that those things always have, they're always bigger than myself.
[1:25:13] SPEAKER_02: Um like even when I'm doing something for myself, like trying to stay healthy, trying to live uh a long, healthy, vibrant life where I push that physical slide way out as far as I can.
[1:25:30] SPEAKER_02: I feel like I'm I feel like somehow that's gonna benefit a lot of people.
[1:25:34] SPEAKER_02: And maybe it's just you know, I spent 15 years getting good at as a tri athlete.
[1:25:39] SPEAKER_02: Maybe now what I'm doing is getting good at getting older, and I'll be sharing those stories as well.
[1:25:45] SPEAKER_02: That's just one thing, but it's a big thing.
[1:25:48] SPEAKER_01: What about two more things then?
[1:25:50] SPEAKER_02: Oh uh another thing that I feel like I can't live without is um having just time to sort of sit and daydream and reflect.
[1:26:00] SPEAKER_02: Like it's easy to get on this sort of automatron cycle where you get up, you answer your emails, you go through some work stuff, you have dinner, you go to bed.
[1:26:09] SPEAKER_02: Um but I think it's super important for me to have time where I just sort of daydream, like space out a little bit and I'm not thinking, I'm I'm just sort of feeling life.
[1:26:28] SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, science has actually proven that uh or shown that when you're daydreaming, that creative problem-solving part of your brain is working at peak capacity.
[1:26:37] SPEAKER_02: It's not when you're at the chalkboard, it's when you're daydreaming.
[1:26:42] SPEAKER_02: And I and I've seen that, and I feel like it's you know, you need good sleep at night.
[1:26:47] SPEAKER_02: Um, but I think I think it's also important to have awake time where you're sort of idling, and it's nobody really talks about that.
[1:26:58] SPEAKER_02: Um, but I think it's a very important part of staying healthy as a person.
[1:27:03] SPEAKER_02: And and then the third piece is for me is um I do have to have a spiritual connection to the world, and um, you know, I I've I've found a way to have structure to that by studying with Brant Sekunda, um, studying, you know, shamanism.
[1:27:20] SPEAKER_02: Um, but when I say have a spiritual connection to the world, have a a sense of there's there's something bigger and more important than just me in this whole thing going on.
[1:27:32] SPEAKER_02: And to to be able to honor that and um support whatever that bigger thing is, you know, like your community, your family, your friends, supporting them.
[1:27:43] SPEAKER_02: That's that's bigger than just me.
[1:27:45] SPEAKER_02: Um supporting this community of athletes, that's bigger than just me.
[1:27:50] SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, that's real purpose.
[1:27:54] SPEAKER_01: You are you are a spiritual guy, like I said.
[1:27:57] SPEAKER_01: Um question I just thought of, Mark.
[1:28:00] SPEAKER_01: I reckon we'll finish on this.
[1:28:01] SPEAKER_01: It's just it's just um kind of following up on what what you said about sitting around and doing nothing and daydreaming and the power of that.
[1:28:07] SPEAKER_01: You're obviously in your sixties.
[1:28:09] SPEAKER_01: I would say almost every human in the Western world, probably under forty-five, I don't know, it might even be older than that now, is addicted to their phone and spends like four to ten hours a day, some people probably more, just mindlessly on their phone.
[1:28:25] SPEAKER_01: How how have you gone with that?
[1:28:27] SPEAKER_01: Having half your life without the internet and and phones really in a big way, and then half your life with them.
[1:28:33] SPEAKER_01: Have you have you found that you yourself are are addicted to your phone?
[1:28:37] SPEAKER_01: Do you spend a lot of time on it?
[1:28:38] SPEAKER_01: Do you scroll Instagram a lot?
[1:28:40] SPEAKER_01: How much like how many hours a day would you be on your screen?
[1:28:45] SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, you know, I I I I have um spent time looking at all that stuff, and I do, but um I've gotten to the point where it just has less and less um appeal for me.
[1:29:03] SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, after a while you scroll through stuff and it it sort of all starts to blur together and be the same.
[1:29:11] SPEAKER_02: And ultimately I've I've realized that I'm a I'm a I get more joy out of producing than I do out of consuming.
[1:29:20] SPEAKER_02: So it gives me much more joy and pleasure to like learn something as opposed to consume something.
[1:29:27] SPEAKER_02: So like maybe I'm learning something on the guitar, then that's way more satisfying than that if I'd spent that last half hour consuming something on Instagram.
[1:29:38] SPEAKER_02: You know, I I I use Instagram.
[1:29:39] SPEAKER_02: I mean it's where so much of my or so many of the things that I push out are.
[1:29:45] SPEAKER_02: And I've I've we've shifted that a little bit.
[1:29:48] SPEAKER_02: We're on a platform called Substack.
[1:29:52] SPEAKER_02: And in Substack, it's sort of like uh where you can actually park a lot of written content.
[1:29:59] SPEAKER_02: And and I think that's something that people are coming back to, like a photo or a video that you're just consuming as opposed to something that you read.
[1:30:08] SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, when you read it, um you're creating pictures in your mind.
[1:30:14] SPEAKER_02: So it's it's actually like a creative process for you.
[1:30:17] SPEAKER_02: You read a book, you read an article, you're creating pictures of what you're about what you're reading.
[1:30:22] SPEAKER_02: And that's that's actually sort of creative.
[1:30:24] SPEAKER_02: And I think that this is sort of an indirect way of getting that um daydreaming part of your brain.
[1:30:33] SPEAKER_01: Mark, thanks so much for a great chat.
[1:30:35] SPEAKER_01: That was awesome.
[1:30:36] SPEAKER_01: It wasn't long enough, though.
[1:30:37] SPEAKER_01: I've I've stopped trying to like I used to do some two to four hour podcasts, but I've stopped that.
[1:30:41] SPEAKER_01: This is one where we truly could have gone for four hours because you've got probably probably 10 more hours of triathlon stories left.
[1:30:48] SPEAKER_01: So uh this is one where I'm definitely going to hit you up to do a do a part two so that I can go a little bit deeper on a lot of things.
[1:30:54] SPEAKER_01: But that was awesome.
[1:30:55] SPEAKER_01: Thank you for the for the the chat and and and the time.
[1:30:58] SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate it.
[1:30:59] SPEAKER_01: Uh have a lot of respect for you.
[1:31:01] SPEAKER_01: Um, really appreciate everything you've done for the sport as well.
[1:31:04] SPEAKER_01: And and the fact that you're still in the sport, like you said, 45 years later.
[1:31:08] SPEAKER_01: Uh there's there's not many like you.
[1:31:09] SPEAKER_01: So thank you, mate.
[1:31:11] SPEAKER_01: Uh, I really appreciate it.
[1:31:13] SPEAKER_02: You're welcome.
[1:31:14] SPEAKER_02: You know, if people want to find me for coaching, I'm on tryitart.com.
[1:31:18] SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, my Instagram, Mark Allen Grip, and then you can you can find me on Substack.
[1:31:23] SPEAKER_02: Just search Marc Allen in uh Trathlon or Mark Allen Grip and and you'll you'll see it.
[1:31:29] SPEAKER_02: Cool stuff.
[1:31:30] SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me on, Jack.
[1:31:32] SPEAKER_02: I appreciate it.
[1:31:32] SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Mark.
[1:31:33] SPEAKER_01: Have a good night.

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