So the first one, like, how to set your goals.

You guys have got to be realistic, right?

You can't.

Like, I wouldn't just go out and say I want to win and then that's at the end of the race because it totally depends on who's there.

So I, I definitely look at it more of I want to swim between this time, I want to bike between this time, or like, hold this power or something like that.

You want to have realistic and achievable goals, but they don't want to be easy because if, if it's just an easy goal, then you don't get any satisfaction from.

From achieving the goal.

Hello and welcome to the January 24, 2025 edition of the Tridock Podcast.

I'm your host, Jeff Sankoff, the tridoc, an emergency physician, triathlon coach, and multiple Ironman finisher coming to you from beautiful, sunny Denver, Colorado.

I don't know what it's been like where you live, but it's holy smokes, has it been cold here in Colorado?

I'm talking like Montreal cold.

I had to bust out my Canuck coat that I brought with me from the Great White north, and thank goodness that I did bring it.

I might not have to wear it that often, but this past week, when temperatures hit south of minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit, I was very glad to have it secured in its big poofy comfort.

I was ready to brave any conditions, though, to be honest, I have spent most of my time indoors.

I was not willingly going to venture out there and take on those temperatures and that wind chill voluntarily if I didn't have to.

The boy, of course, remained undeterred.

He was out there skiing on the weekend and then running every other day.

In his words, it has to be colder and darker than this for me to run on the treadmill.

End quote.

I remain endlessly impressed at his youthful enthusiasm and apparently also his ability to maintain his core temperature at a higher level than mine.

What about you?

If you were afflicted by this arctic blast, how have you managed?

Did you retreat to the comforts of your pain cave, or did you forsake the furnace and head outside in spite of the wind chill?

Let me know by leaving a comment in the Facebook group for the podcast.

I know that I won't be the only one who's interested in hearing how you survived.

On the last episode, I mentioned in the monologue the impact that a certain coaching company with a name that sounds a lot like this podcast has been having on triathlon coaching businesses I opined at the time that I felt that while artificial intelligence is an emerging technology with a lot of promise, I remained skeptical of its ability to replace a real, live, emotionally intelligent coach.

And it turns out that many of you agree.

I put a poll in the private Facebook group and 19 of 20 who answered agreed that they prefer a human coach to a program scripted by an AI model.

The lone dissenter felt that AI could do the job for most beginners, but that more accomplished triathletes would probably benefit from a more human coach.

I have since had some interesting conversations with a couple of my own athletes, both of whom work in the AI space in different capacities.

Both believe that AI offers some potentially incredible assets for coaching, but both of them also agree that it's not really there yet.

And given that both work with me, they clearly feel that the intangibles that I provide outweighs whatever it is that AI may or may not be able to do better at this time.

Whatever the future holds, I remain convinced that human coaches will remain an integral part of making triathletes better at multisport.

No AI program is going to be able to displace what we bring to the table as mentors, educators and supporters for our athletes.

So if you're looking for that human touch backed by 20 plus years in the sport, five in coaching, and a lifetime of education in science and medicine, I hope that you'll think about the tridoc.

That's tridoc like Dr.

And not an inanimate spot for your coaching needs.

I'd love to chat with you about it if you like.

Feel free to reach out anytime.

On the show today, Juliette Hochman and I look at the science behind the claims that quercetin may be able to keep you healthier during this cold and flu season.

Is this natural flavonoid a panacea or yet another false hope?

We answered the question on the Medical Mailbag and that's coming right up later.

I am joined by former modern pentathlete and current age group phenom Luke Tasker.

Luke has found astonishing success in triathlon in a very short time and he tells me all about how he got so good so fast and what comes next.

And that's coming up just a little bit later.

Before we get to all of that, I want to of course take my customary moment to thank all of my Patreon supporters of this podcast who have decided that for about the price of a cup of coffee per month, they could sign up to support this program and in so doing get access to bonus interviews and other segments that come out about every month or so.

One of those is overdue and will be coming out in the next week or two, I promise.

Those bonus episodes are available on a private feed for all of my subscribers.

Plus for North American subscribers who sign up at the $10 per month level of support, they receive a special thank you gift in the form of a pretty cool BOCO Tridock Podcast Running hat being displayed right now on the YouTube video.

If you are watching there.

If you're listening, I hope you'll head over and check out the YouTube videos.

They have been enjoyed by many.

In any case, if you're interested, I hope that you'll visit my patreon site today.

Patreon.com tridockpodcast See what's involved in becoming a supporter.

Maybe sign up and get access to this pretty cool gift as well.

As always, thank you in advance just for considering.

And before I go and get started with the Medical Mailbag, a reminder for those of you who are listening to the podcast, please, please, please do consider leaving a rating and a review wherever you download.

I promise those are incredibly helpful to getting the news about this podcast out and engaging with new listeners.

And if you're watching here on YouTube, please smack the little like thumbs up button and also subscribe to the channel so you can be made aware when new videos come out at any time.

It's time for another episode of the Medical Mailbag.

And that means I'm joined by my friend, my colleague, Juliet Hockman.

How are you today, Juliet?

I am so great.

How are you?

I am trying to stay warm like you.

I know we are both embraced in the very chilly frozen tendrils of what is the Arctic.

What are they calling it?

The Arctic Blast.

The Arctic Blast that has come down from the Great White north, my homeland and embracing us all on this chilly January day.

It is a great time of year for hot tea and dry firewood.

Yeah, and unfortunately everybody's going to be training on their treadmills like I was yesterday for a long run indoors and of course trying to avoid the dreaded illnesses of winter.

Which is timely because we're going to be talking about something that can help with that.

I know the question that was sent in through the Tridoc Podcast Facebook group.

For this question could not be better timed.

And it comes to us from Daniel Frings, who is part of the Tridoc Facebook group and he says that he received an email from training geeks that included strategies to help against athlete sickness during the Winter.

And this article featured prominently the use of quercetin and claimed evidence for the prevention of respiratory illness without citing specific sources.

And it's almost as if training Peaks knew you were going to pick this up with your deep dive with your research fellows into this product.

So tell us about quercetin.

What is it?

Does it work?

What do we know about it?

Has it been tested?

What do you think?

Yeah, I saw the question immediately.

My eyebrow was raised in its usual skepticism.

And we dug into it.

And I have to give a call out, as always, to my intern for this episode.

Nina Takeshima did a great job in finding the research on this.

And I think we should begin first with just a discussion of what quercetin actually is.

It's not a derived chemical of any type.

In fact, it is a flavonoid compound.

It's found in.

Sorry, I'm peering at my other.

For those of you watching on YouTube, you're gonna see me leaning over.

It's because I've got the print kind of small.

Let's see if I can make it bigger on my other monitor.

But it is a flavonoid compound.

It is found in different kinds of fruits and vegetables.

You can find quercetin in onions and asparagus.

It's also found in red leaf lettuce.

I had some red leaf lettuce in my spring mix yesterday as part of my salad.

And also in broccoli and green peppers and peas and even more importantly for the people in my household.

And some fruits as well.

Apples, cherries, some berries.

Yep.

Yeah.

Now, can you just pause for a second and spell quercetin for us?

Because I think that people listening to this, if they don't check the show notes, they're going to spell it with a kw.

And let's just start there.

So it's Q, U, E, R, C, E, T, I, N.

So quercetin and.

And we're pronouncing it the way we think it's.

It is.

I didn't actually look in to see how it should be phonetically pronounced, but quercetin seems right.

So flavonoid compounds are something we have discussed before when we've talked about derivatives from different kinds of fruits, tart, cherry juice, the blackcurrant from New Zealand, as well as even the.

I'm trying to remember what the pine extract was.

But all of these things contain these chemicals called flavonoids.

And flavonoids are an organic compound, lots of double bonds.

They tend to be free, radical scavengers.

Et Cetera.

But this particular flavonoid, quercetin, is also got some interesting properties in test tube tests.

Not sure exactly what led to these kind of in vitro studies, but when they've looked at in vitro studies using different kind of upper respiratory type of viruses, like adenovirus, as well as herpes simplex virus, HSV1, they were able to show that the use of flavonoids, quercetin in particular, in very large concentrations, actually inhibited the ability of these viral particles to gain access to cells in like an agar kind of media.

And what that suggests is that the flavonoid seems to, apart from any immune enhancing properties, seems to work on its own to block entry of these viral particles into a cell.

Now, just to get into the weeds just a tiny little bit, as human beings, we can be infected by basically three different types of pathogens.

There's viruses, bacteria, and fungi.

We talked about fungi recently.

We talked about cordyceps, right.

And I haven't been able to forget it, huh?

Yeah, that's right.

Fungi are the most dangerous things that infect us because we don't have a lot of ways to beat them off, both biologically, but also we don't have a lot of good agents to use chemical agents like antifungal agents.

Bacteria are the ones that have been around the longest and do cause a lot of problems, but we have developed antibiotics and we have had some success in being able to fight off infection with those viruses are the unique among the three kinds of pathogens in that viruses are the one kind of particle that is not meet, that does not meet the definition of being alive.

That is to say, a virus cannot do anything on its own.

It can't replicate on its own.

It can't do anything unless it gains access to one of our cell, because what it does is it gains access to our cells and then it hijacks the mechanisms of the cells in order to commandeer the cell from doing what it normally does and instead dedicate itself to just making more viral particles.

And eventually the cell dies because it ruptures and just releases billions of these viral particles, which can then go on and infect other cells.

So viruses need a host.

Bacteria and fungus do not.

They all need hosts.

But the difference is that bacteria and virus, fungi can live on their own, but then if they get into a host organism, the medium tends to be such that they do even better, and they tend to replicate very dramatically and they actually feed off of the host they're in, whereas a virus can do nothing until it gains access to a host cell, where it then does a lot of damage.

Exciting.

So quercetin is a chemical that seems to block entry of the viral particle to cells and therefore blocks infection.

And that is a big deal.

So this led scientists and researchers to then take the next step and say, that's super interesting.

Is it possible then that we can use quercetin in animals?

Because you first look at things in a test tube or on an agar plate, but the second thing you need to do is then look at it in animals and say, okay, what happens when we use quercetin in doses and then we infect them with something?

Does the quercetin help in any way?

So we found a study.

It's quercetin reduces susceptibility to influenza infection following stressful exercise.

Now, this is of particular interest to us because you will recall, and this goes back to, gosh, a really early episode of this podcast where I looked at the evidence that said, hey, when we go and perform at a race where we are really putting out for four hours for a half Ironman or 12 to 15 hours for an ironman, that exertion, that level of exertion depresses the immune system and makes us susceptible to infection for a period of about 24 to 48 hours afterwards.

So when we get on a plane after an ironman or a half ironman and we are surrounded by people who may be infectious, we are at much greater risk because our immune system has been shown to be significantly impaired.

So there's this window, and in this study, they actually put again the mice on the little treadmill, and they had them exert themselves to a significant amount, almost to exhaustion.

And then they actually.

So let me back it up.

What they did is they put their mice into four different categories.

They had a non exercising group.

So half the mice were not exercising, half the mice were exercising.

And then within each group exercising and not exercising, they split the groups again into half.

Half got placebo, half got quercetin.

So you had four groups.

You had exercising with placebo, exercising with quercetin.

Gotcha.

Not exercising with placebo, not exercising with quercetin.

And basically.

But they all got inoculated with the influenza.

And this study was not so much to determine whether or not quercetin could block influenza infection because they were all inoculated with such high amounts of influenza, they were all going to get it.

That was not the view of this study.

What this study was looking at was, did the quercetin decrease the symptoms?

Did it decrease the mortality and did it decrease or did it prolong the onset to symptom development?

And it did.

It.

It really did.

And the exercise, we saw that in the mice that exercised without quercetin, they did particularly badly.

They had.

I didn't.

Now, I don't know what it is about influenza now I'm not familiar with.

We know that influenza is a bad illness in humans.

It is particularly bad, sure.

It carries a higher mortality than most viral respiratory illnesses, to the point that that's why we recommend vaccination against flu shots.

You don't want old people to get flu.

Exactly.

It's not so much that the vaccine is so effective because we know it's not always that effective, but what it does do is it dramatically decreases mortality, it dramatically decreases infectivity, and it slows the spread.

But the mortality, even, even amongst the elderly and the very young, where it's the highest, is only around 5, I think 5%, maybe 10% in the worst years.

Let me guess, all the mice died.

It's pretty bad in mice who exercised and got placebo.

It was like 30% of the mice.

Sorry, 70% of the mice died.

It was pretty awful.

And even in the mice who were protected somehow, mice who didn't exercise or whatever it was, still the survival rate was only like 50%.

Oh, no, I apologize.

80%.

You still had a 20% mortality depending on which group you were in.

Influenza clearly very bad for mice.

So mice, if you're listening, get your flu shot now.

Right.

Okay, let's pull out of the weeds here.

So let me guess, let me guess.

We want.

We don't want to be a non exercising, placebo receiving mouse.

We want to be an exercising mouse.

Take it from there.

Who you want to be, you want to be getting quercetin and you want to be.

It doesn't matter if you're exercising or not, because if you were.

If you were in the control group and got quercetin, you did the best.

If you were exercising and got quercetin, you did the second best.

The placebo groups, whether they were not exercising or exercising, did the worst.

They did the worst in terms of mortality, they did the worst in terms of onset of symptoms, and they did the worst in terms of the severity of symptoms.

Although it wasn't totally clear to us.

It was funny, they scored the symptoms in the mice, but I'm not really sure how they.

It's not like you can have mice do a questionnaire, so I.

They obviously had a way, they must have had a way of doing that.

But it wasn't clear to us how they did it.

But the long and the short of it was that quercetin had some pretty impressive effects on doing what it did.

Now, I mentioned before that in vitro studies, so test tube studies showed that quercetin blocked virus entry, but clearly that wasn't the case here because all of the mice were getting infected.

So there must have been, the researchers posited, there must also be some direct antiviral activities once the virus actually infects the cells, which is an additional property of quercetin, which is pretty interesting.

So let's move on to another study.

This one is quercetin reduces illness, but not immune perturbations after intensive exercise.

So this is a study on people, cyclists.

And what they did is they gave them three weeks of 1,000 milligrams of Quercetin.

They compared these cyclists to people who got placebo and they looked at how often they didn't inoculate them.

They just, they were doing this during the high respiratory illness season, February to March, and they looked how often did they get sick.

And if they got sick, they, they measured their blood tests to see what was going on in their blood.

And they found a couple of really interesting things.

The first thing is that the rates of illness were dramatically different.

5% in those who received Quercetin, 45% during those who did not.

And that's astonishing.

That's a huge.

Now, and this is all viral infections, like anything these people might have come across.

Okay, yeah, anything that might.

And this is generally just a cold.

So a dramatic decrease in a cold because of a significant protective effect of quercetin.

And then the other thing they found is that their immune function, as measured by various different metrics in the bloodstream, didn't change.

So the quercetin seemed to be having that previously commented upon effect of just blocking entry of the virus into the cells and then doing something, if the virus did get into the cell, doing something to decrease the ability of the virus to do anything, which is again, super, super interesting.

And then the last of the studies that I wanted to comment on, because this was particularly interesting, this was quercetin supplementation and upper respiratory tract infection, a randomized community clinical trial.

Now this was a very well designed trial in that it was double blinded, randomized, which means they had a large number of people, nobody knew what they were getting, neither the researchers nor the people involved.

And what they found was they gave Quercetib in 500 or 1,000 milligram per day over 12 weeks.

And they supplemented as well with vitamin C or niacin.

And I'm just gonna come right out and say just quickly, the previous studies have never shown vitamin C or niacin to be effective.

And this study also found that the addition of vitamin C or niacin had no impact.

So all of you vitamin C users, you can stop.

It's not doing anything, at least for colds.

It will help you get scurvy against getting scurvy, though.

So arrangement.

I digress again.

Yes.

So the long and the short of this study, because I don't want to get into the real nitty gritty of it, was they found that quercetin again was helpful, but only for those people in this study who self identified as physically fit.

Isn't that interesting?

Yeah, I'm not 100% sure what's going on here.

It's very interesting though.

But it suggests to me that we know that the immune system is depressed when we do extensive or intense exercise.

And quercetin seems to have some impact on blocking viral particle entry.

But why doesn't it work in people who are not depressing their immune system and when they exercise?

That I can't answer.

So there must be some kind of synergistic kind of activity that's going on here that when you exercise you are doing something that quercetin then comes in and seems to help.

I think that the point here is that, look, quercetin is not going to hurt anybody.

There's no downsides to taking quercetin, but the benefits, for whatever reason, seem to be restricted to those people who are athletic and are exerting themselves at a high level during upper respiratory tract infection season, which I find fascinating and I don't have a great explanation for and we could not find any explanation for.

Shannon, a couple of follow up questions here which may be relevant for our age group athlete audience.

So it seems, and maybe I'm splitting hairs here, it's not so much that quercetin is the bricks and mortar that is making a healthier immune system.

It's not building a bigger wall.

It's more like quercetin is this big burly guy at the gate with a shield who's fighting off infections or diminishes and almost like wounding the infection, sorry, wounding the virus before it can enter.

Is that right?

Is that sort of a good metaphor?

I think?

Yeah, I think it's a good metaphor.

You could also think of it as a moat or something just preventing the virus from getting across the moat.

But the Thing that I can't explain is why it only seems to be efficacious for athletes and not so much for non athletes.

But given that our audience is mostly athletes, this is helpful.

And then I guess my second question, follow up question is you have children who are in the school system and they are bringing home bugs, right?

That's the nature of the beast.

And if you have even younger children who are in daycare, it's triply worse, right?

Because they're bringing home all these bugs that you haven't seen in ages.

So everybody's getting ill.

I unfortunately rarely get ill.

Can't remember the last time I was ill, except for maybe Covid.

Knock on wood.

And is this supplement that is worth for you, worth giving it to your kids if they pass on things to you, worth you taking it?

For someone like me who is fortunate not to be in that situation and not as exposed to bugs, is it worth it for me to take, do you think?

That's a great question.

As always, it comes a little bit down to cost benefit.

This is not a particularly expensive supplement.

We did a search online.

We found that quercetin is widely available.

You do have to be a little bit careful about where you get it in terms of what the dose is.

For example, I was on a website that is very well known to listeners who that markets itself as the one stop shop for athletes.

They have.

I'm not going to name it, but I think you know what I'm talking about.

They have a single supplement of quercetin on their website which retails at about $40 for 60 capsules.

But it only contains 250mg of Quercetin per capsule.

And the recommended dose in all of the studies we found is about a thousand milligrams.

So you need to be taking.

That would mean you'd need to take four of those capsules.

So for 40 bucks you're only going to get through about 10 days.

Okay, now most of the places.

Yep, yep, go ahead.

I'm looking at Amazon right now and there's four pages of course done on Amazon.

There's so many different brands and most of these come in in 500 milligram capsules and they, they do range in price a little bit.

But a lot of them contain something called bro.

Hold on a second, I just saw it.

Bromelain.

A lot of them have bromelain.

A lot of them are also doubling up with, as you said, vitamin C, niacin, zinc.

Do you know anything about if we should be buying this As a compound or does it not matter as long.

As I don't know that it matters?

I didn't look at any of the other stuff.

Honestly, the only thing I'm interested in is the quercetin.

And you want to be taking a thousand milligrams a day if you are going to take it.

Which gets to the other part of your question, which is should we be taking it now?

At 500 milligram capsule, about $40 for 60 capsules, that means you're spending $40 a month to get a thousand milligrams a day.

That, that's not so bad.

At least I don't think it's so bad.

Especially if it means that I'm significantly less likely to get a cold.

Now, you mentioned the situation you're in and whether or not this applies to everybody or not, you know, catching a cold at this time, the respiratory tract infection season is going to be very much dependent on your living situation and for work, et cetera, et cetera.

We know that the reason we get more colds in the wintertime is because we spend more time indoors in close proximity to other people.

And so there's just a higher likelihood of infectiousness.

And if you have school age kids, they're getting colds at school because they're in close proximity, the windows are all closed, everybody's touching things.

And so you're just going to be surrounded by viruses the entire winter.

So yeah, I think it does depend a little bit on your situation.

Clearly for you, you're not exposed a lot.

The benefit of this is not going to be nearly as much as it is for me with two high schoolers who are constantly bringing home stuff.

I will say I'm thinking about this for my high schoolers.

They're both athletes, they're both working at very high level pretty much all week long.

They both hate getting cold, they are continuously washing their hands, they're hand sanitizing all day long because they hate being sick because it puts them out of.

They're pro, they don't like it.

And so I'm going to start giving them the option to take this stuff and I will probably start taking it as well because I don't want to get sick and I generally tend to get less sick because I've been exposed to so much throughout my career.

But still I don't want to catch anything if I don't have to.

So this might be something.

Now, my wife is not as much athletic as we are, so she's unlikely to benefit from this.

Like we are.

So for her, it might not make sense.

Again, not gonna hurt.

So if she wants to take it, I'm not gonna stop her.

And I think then it becomes a.

Like you said, I think it's a question for everybody to consider whether or not it's appropriate for them.

I don't think it's inappropriate for anybody.

It's, it's a natural compound.

It's not gonna do any harm.

It's just a question of the cost.

I wouldn't take this all year long because your risk of upper respiratory tract infections is highest generally between October and March.

Outside of those months, it falls way off.

Are you going to get sick outside of those months?

Sure.

But it's much, much less common.

And for people within October and March, then they need to consider if you, Juliet, you tend to almost never catch anything because you're just not exposed.

You don't have kids in the house, your husband works at home, you work from home.

Probably not as important, but for someone who's in a situation like mine, their kids are in school, they're bringing home things, might be something to consider.

And I certainly would say that this is something that I would recommend at this point for people in that situation.

Yeah.

And I would really encourage you to get on over to Amazon because it's, it's really affordable.

Looking just at these prices right here at thousand gram capsules, 240 capsules, $30.

Yeah.

Jeff will be really interested if you do start to give this to your kids and possibly take it yourself if you see any benefit in the next, what, 60 days, I guess, that we have left in this particularly heightened viral season.

And we will have to get a report back from you on whether you thought it was effective.

Yeah, it's always hard with anecdote, but still, anecdote does count for something.

I sure do wanna, I do wanna finish with just one last thing because we've talked about flavonoids in tart cherry juice, we've talked about it in other things.

And when we talked about tart cherry juice, we did not talk about its potential in this regard in terms of stopping viral infections, but we did talk about its other actions.

Anti inflammatory.

Exactly.

So there is a study here, Quercetin in Sports and Exercise Review, that looks at whether or not quercetin has been shown to possess any of these antioxidant things, any of these recovery or performance enhancing kinds of properties.

And it did not.

The studies that have been done suggest that quercetin does not help with recovery or performance.

But Prevents you from getting ill, therefore is going to have.

It is pro performance.

Exactly.

Is going to have those indirect effects.

We're going to add this to the list.

It's a growing list.

The list does four.

No, I think we're up to more than four at this point.

I.

I really do think there are a host of things that we have said.

There's not great scientific evidence for proven benefit, but there's psychological benefit.

And so that includes things like the Normatex or the massage guns, things like that.

But we have a list of things.

They're almost all biological agents.

Caffeine, beetroot juice, spirulina tart, cherry juice.

Now this asleep tapering.

Those are all things that we found evidence that are really beneficial.

And so this is gonna get added to the list.

And I'm excited.

I love that we can find something that has evidence that shows it works.

So that really brings me joy.

I think we need to do, in the not too distant future, a little summary of.

Here are the seven things that are approved by the Tridoc in terms of really are effective for performance.

And here are some things that we're not really sure about, but they're not going to hurt you.

So if you want to have at it, or as you said, the psychological benefits like the Normatec and the massage gun and the foam rolling and all that.

So I think we should do an episode or two on those so we can bring it all together.

I'm going to consider that Juliet's contribution to the listener questions and mark that down.

You know what, Juliet?

We are not far from episode 200, let's say.

Yeah, episode 200, that's exactly what we'll do.

We will put together a review of the things that we absolutely recommend as working some of those things that are on the fringes.

And we'll stay away from the things that we don't recommend because I think that'll be self evident.

Juliet, another great episode and one in which I think that we both feel like, hey, we got something that we, we definitely want you to think about as potentially incorporating into your daily routine.

If you have a question like Daniel did that you would like for us to answer on the medical mailbag, I hope that you will consider sending it in.

You can send me an email@triodocloud.com you could drop it into the private Facebook group.

What's that?

You're not a member.

How's that possible?

Please do go to Facebook.

Search for the Tridoc podcast.

Answer the very easy questions.

I will grant you admittance.

You can join the conversation and submit your questions there until the next episode.

Juliet, thank you so much for joining me.

This was a great conversation.

I look forward to chatting with you again next time.

And keep warm.

Thank you, Jeff.

Yep, stay warm out there.

My guest on the podcast today is top age group competitor Luke Tasker.

Luke originally hails from the United Kingdom where he competed in modern pentathlon professionally for six years.

That's the first time I've ever said that about a guest on this program.

Before.

He took up rowing and he did this not in the way you might expect, but rather he rode around the United Kingdom for charity with three friends, raising almost $50,000.

He then went to Canada for a ski season, which turned into multiple ski seasons mixed with tree planting seasons, where he met his future, now current wife.

They settled in Vancouver where he now works full time as a firefighter for the city of Vancouver.

And he took up triathlon in September of 2023 when he went on to win his first 70.3 distance event and then continued with his winning ways, winning three Ironman 70.3 events.

And when I say he won, I don't mean he won his age group.

I mean he won as the overall age group winner for men.

In fact, the overall age group winner, in fact, the overall winner when there was no pro field at a couple races that I was at over the 2024 season and then finished his first full distance event in Arizona with a time of 8.35-finishing fourth overall.

He's now decided to up his game because before he was just playing around.

He's got himself a new coach in the form of my own coach, Lance Watson, of course, the Ironman master coach, Olympic coach for Simon Whitfield.

But right now, Luke has slowed down just enough to join me here on the Tridoc podcast and talk about all of those things as well as what he has ahead in 2025.

Luke, thank you so much for being here.

Well, thanks for that great introduction.

Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about all these things.

Now, first I'm going to get this wrong, but I'm going to give it a stab.

I know that modern pentathlon was an event that was introduced into the Olympics by Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern day Olympics.

And he did this because he felt that the Olympics should have a event that represented everything that it took to be a soldier.

Let's see if I can get this right.

I know that there is a question and I Believe it is the cross country equestrian.

Correct.

Show jumping.

No, it is actually show jumping.

Okay, I'm correct, but wrong.

There's fencing.

Fa.

Yep.

Pistol shooting.

Yep.

Okay.

I'm three.

I know.

There's a running event.

Yeah.

So the run and shoot are combined kind of like the ski biafel there where you.

You run, shoot, run, shoot, run, shoot.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, you're shooting, but you're shooting a pistol.

You're not shooting a rifle.

That pistol.

Yeah.

Okay, so we'll get there.

So that's three events.

I'm gonna get the other two rocks.

There's a jumping event, right?

Oh, that's.

That's four events.

So riding, fencing, running, shooting, and then swimming as well.

Ah, swimming.

Okay, so let's go through them.

And I want to know at what age you.

Someone said to you, hey, Luke, you'd be a really good pentathlete.

Like, how did that ever come to pass?

Yeah, I.

So I was actually a national swimmer.

I was swimming 12, 14 times a week, just like preschool and then after school as well.

And it was getting pretty tedious.

I was in, like, three different clubs, like, at the same time.

I decided, like, I need to do something else.

I'm starting to get a bit fed up of staring at that black line the whole time.

And it was totally by chance one of the girls.

I think I was expressing my, like, fatigue with swimming.

And she was, oh, you should try pentathlon.

My dad organizes the local ones.

And I was, oh, whatever.

And there was a race, like, in two weeks.

So I was like, I'll give it a go.

And when you start as a junior.

Wait, hey, wait, hang on.

Horseback riding is not something you can just do.

Totally.

So especially show as a junior.

You just do.

You run, shoot and swim, and then you start adding sports in as you move up.

I think I was only 12 or something when I tried it first.

And you did know how to fire a pistol.

I went to.

So her dad organized practices.

So I went to a couple practices.

Pretty.

But before that, no.

Okay.

And I shot terribly in the competition, but I was a really good swimmer and, you know, good runner.

So I.

I won the.

The local thing.

It was very small and I was, oh, this is all right.

This is a bit different, you know.

And then that was it.

Really hooked from there.

All right, this conversation is going to go for a while longer because I'm fascinated.

What is the swim distance that you have to do?

200 meter.

200 meters.

That's it.

Oh, I thought for sure, this would be longer.

Okay.

And are most pentathletes good swimmers or is it.

Is that the one when you watch the decathlon, like those guys are.

They're good.

But like, when you watch them do the running events, it's hilarious because they're clearly so slow.

What is the weak link for pentathletes?

It honestly varies country to country.

The British guys often came from swimming.

Either swimming or pony club is a common one.

So horse riding, but yeah, and it's also changed so much over the years.

Like swimming used to be so important.

Like the points you got for each event has changed a ton.

So when I started, you got a lot of points if you're a good swimmer, and that absolutely helped me.

But.

And what was the hardest for you to learn?

Fencing or show jump?

Fencing.

Funnily enough.

I grew up on a farm and we actually had a horse.

I hated riding and I never rode.

But we did have a horse and I have some friends whose kids show jump.

Would they look at what a pentathlete does for show jumping and think, oh, that's easy, or is it legit, like, pretty tough show jumping?

A bit of both.

It is easier because it's smaller.

It's a lot smaller than like proper show jumping.

But you only get 15 minutes and four jumps.

It's a random horse.

It's not your horse.

Oh, okay.

So you just draw a horse for like, it's luck of the draw in to some aspect, you know, like sometimes you get a good rider on a, on a rough horse and it can be an interesting round.

And other times you get a bad rider on a really good horse that just carries them through.

So I think they would look at it and think, so what do you mean?

What do you mean?

You have 15 minutes and four jumps.

So you literally draw a horse and they're like, okay, look, this is your horse.

So then you have a warm up of fifth, like a time lot of 15 minutes and you can do four jumps in that 15 minutes.

And that is all you're allowed to do to get to know the horse before you have to go down the course of 12.

Wow.

Oh, I see.

Oh, wow.

That's.

Wow.

Okay.

And then explain the running and shooting.

You said they're combined.

So what's going on again?

When I first started.

What are you doing?

It used to be just like precision.

There was 20 shots and you just got a score.

And then as I moved on, it became a combined event to make it more spectator friendly, which it really is.

So yeah, you.

You run a short distance, shoot five shots, then it's 800.

Five shots on five targets.

So it could be obviously more than five shots, but 800.

So there's four shoots, four, eight hundreds.

So it's a little over 3200 running.

And then.

And is it similar to biathlon where if you miss, you have to do a penalty loop of something or they just.

No penalty loop.

You just stay there.

Yeah.

Oh, you have to get the time limitations, but if you shoot in 50.

Seconds, you're out of it anyway.

You know, the.

The best guys are shooting in seven to 10 seconds.

Wow.

And how far is the distance you're shooting?

10 meters.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it's.

I.

I don't have any experience with firearms.

Is that.

Is that a reasonable distance for a handgun?

It's far enough.

Far enough to mess a lot for me, for sure.

All right.

And then fencing, it's epis.

It's that very fast, like, clack, clack, and it's done.

And I'm always, like, whenever I watch fencing, I'm expecting to see something from the old movies of fencing, and it always ends up disappointing me because it's.

I didn't even see anything happen.

Yeah, the FFA is like, you actually have to.

There's a little compressible tip on the end of the sword that has to go, like, into the person.

Whereas, you know, foil and saber is more of like a slashing motion.

So it's has to be like a forward jab, but anywhere on the body counts.

And the way it's done in pentathlon is you fence everybody in the competition just for one hit.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow, that's fascinating.

So you said you were a professional, so what does that mean?

You were earning your keep doing this?

Yeah, yeah, I was paid, so it's.

I was Team gb.

It's not like any real professional sport where you're living a luxurious life.

I was.

I was making a bare minimum, but it was a great life nonetheless.

You know, you get to travel a.

Lot and were you ever an Olympic contender or.

I.

No, I didn't make the Games.

I was the Olympic training partner for the guys in.

Would that be Rio, though?

I did the training camp with them pre games and stuff, but after that I stepped away.

All right, so help orient us here.

How old are you now, Luke?

I'm 30.

Okay, so a youngster.

But you've accomplished quite a bit in those 30 years, because the rowing.

Tell me about that.

Yeah, kind of random.

It was so one of the girls who went to the Olympics, it was her husband, good friend of mine.

He's like, I've got this idea and I think you might be interested.

And I was, I'd already explained all I'm thinking of stock and bentoff and I was like, well, I can just dive fully into this.

It stops that.

Like, oh, what should I do with my life?

And yeah, so we, we started preparing and we bought a boat and started like raising money and doing all these events and training and yeah, it was.

Now this was not like a river rowing boat.

This was an ocean rowing type of situation.

Yeah.

So it was a nine meter boat, like carbon fiber and fiberglass mix, probably a meter and a bit wide.

It was a sizable boat.

And yeah, we had all of our food supplies and we had a water maker on board and, and everything because.

Oh, so you didn't stay on shore, you actually stayed on the boat?

Yeah, we couldn't go to shore was one of the things.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So how.

Who were you raising this money for?

This is called the new Vasive Spine Foundation.

They're.

They do essentially go to third world countries, train people to be like surgeons and doctors and then also bring them back here and train them more and, and provide surgeries for them.

That's fantastic.

Wow.

And what happened to the boat?

Well, post, when we finished it, you just.

We just sold it to another crew who were hoping to do the same sort of thing.

I think they were doing an Atlantic crossing rather than around the uk, but.

Yeah.

Huh.

That's awesome.

That's great.

All right, so.

Well, fast.

And you did that when was that rowing?

Just before I came to Canada.

It's 2018, mainly 2017.

So pre pandemic.

Pre pandemic, yeah, pre pandemic.

And so we'll fast forward six years and it's 2023.

And what got you to multisport?

You'd been doing a form of multisport, but what got you to specifically triathlon?

Multisport, you know.

Yeah, I was.

I've got a border collie, so I, I run anyway.

I've always ran.

I still like it.

How to bike.

So I was casually biking and then every summer here in Vancouver, you know, second beach pool opens.

It's hard not to go and swim when it's outside and it's sunshine.

And I was doing some.

We, me and a friend of mine, Matt, who I work with, we were essentially doing triathlon, but we just hadn't entered anything.

And he's like, oh, we should do an iron man.

And then it was like, yeah, okay, so we entered Victoria but it was like a year away until Victoria.

So then we decided to enter Cultus Lake and I'm not very good at like half assing things so I, it's like if I'm going to do something, I'm going hard.

And then it was like, oh, let's try and win Victoria.

And he, he's like, that's not really what I had in mind but okay, let's go.

And we did Coltus Lake just to sort of as a tester see, see where it was at.

And, and that went pretty well.

And then it then I decided to get a coach post Cultus Lake and commit pretty hard and it's been full commit since then.

Now most people when they do their first 70.3 don't go into it.

Okay, I'm going to go win.

That takes a certain amount of hubris.

Now clearly you're coming from a background that gives you the abil.

Or the, I guess you can say the confidence to be able to say you, you could but you had no idea what you were getting into.

How, how could you possibly go in with that attitude?

Totally.

It's, it's not that.

Yeah, I, I definitely have an advantage coming from having done sport my entire life.

Like I, I know how to train.

I've done a lot of it.

I had an idea of, of how fast I could swim 2k.

I knew how fast roughly I'd be able to run.

Obviously I didn't know how I'd be off the bike but you know, I think I'd ran pre, pre Victoria, something like a 1:17 flat half marathon.

So I was like, okay, it's in the realm of fast enough.

And then the bike was the big unknown.

It was just, you know, kind of go hard and sort of see what happens.

So yeah, I understand.

It's definitely a weird thing.

And I spend my, you know, you go on the results and you go on try calculator.

It's one of my most used apps.

And you're like, I, I think if I can do this, like it should be winnable.

And I didn't know.

Am I delusional?

Is this realistic?

I, I definitely had those same thoughts.

But yeah, I guess it panned out.

So.

Yeah, it did.

What would you have done if you hadn't won?

If it had gone.

I work with athletes and I have athletes who come to me for their first triathlon and they're like, oh, I'm going to do X.

And I'm like, yeah, that's a really nice goal, but maybe we might want to temper the enthusiasm until you've done one and see what it's all about.

Yeah.

What would have happened, do you think, if.

If it had been maybe a little harder than you, you ended up having it be.

Well, I guess I did.

Colter's leg was like my Tesla.

And, you know, the run.

The run was super hard in Colter.

Like, I.

My legs were dead after the bike.

I still managed to hold on.

It's a much lower standard.

Obviously.

There's only like 30 people or something in it, but.

So I.

I had an idea of where I'd be able to do if I hadn't have worn out.

It had just been, you know, like, I.

I just did Arizona and came forth and couldn't be less satisfied.

Right.

Like, it just leaves a hole.

You want.

You want to go harder.

So he would have just.

It would have just been, okay, I need to do this or I need to run faster.

I need to put more power down on the bike, whatever it would be.

Did you take a slot for Nice?

I did not.

I haven't taken any of my slots.

You did not?

No.

Oh, you haven't got taken any.

You're.

You're just content to.

To.

To win and be done at that level for now.

I was.

I'm now gung ho on.

On Marbella at the end of the year.

I just need to get my.

Okay.

I need to get my slot in Oceanside.

Okay.

All right.

Tell me about the 2024 season, because we met at a couple events.

You were.

I.

I think you were at Oregon.

I was.

Yeah, that's.

Yeah, we met at Oregon and we met at Tri Cities.

But tell me, like, when you went into 2024 after your success in 2023, did you come in with not different expectations?

Because clearly you had the same expectations.

But you must have learned something at Victoria.

So how.

What was your approach, and how are things any different for 24?

Victoria was 2024.

Oh, I apologize.

So I did Cultist Lake was the local ones in 2023.

Honestly, it wasn't that I had expectations to win.

It's just.

It is.

I knew that it was possible.

You never know who's going to show up at these events.

You know, you see some of the.

The.

The more popular events, and the times are ridiculous, and I knew that those ones you wouldn't win.

It's just like.

So there's definitely.

Yeah, it's more just.

I know it's possible, and then when I'm there and you're checking in and you see all these fit looking guys with super nice, like 10, 12, 15 grand bikes.

I remember leaving especially Oregon because Victoria compared to Oregon is like half the size.

So we were driving back to the hotel after checking in and I was saying to my wife, you know, top five would be fine.

And obviously in my head I'm like, oh, I'd be disappointed.

But I was trying to convince myself that it was okay because you've got all these guys and yeah, it's super intimidating.

Right.

You've seen everybody push.

I'm glad to hear.

I'm glad to hear you're affected by the same thing that the regular types like us are affected by.

And we look around and psych ourselves up by what we see.

It's all, it's all.

You show up at registration to intimidate everybody else by how you look, but then when you actually perf, it's how you perform that really matters.

Totally.

When I set off, I'm much more confident because it's just like all that's left to do now is work hard.

Right.

That part's easy.

Rather than just like the mind games.

Even though no one's playing mind games, it's just you're looking at these people and you're like, oh, how am I going to be in this?

Dude, he's on.

You play them in your own head, right?

You play them on yourself.

Yeah, yeah.

And it definitely eats at me, but I think that the 2024 season was just a lot more structured.

Like, I had a coach, Josiah.

We were just, you know, I think my bike went from being okay at Cultus Lake to being pretty strong.

Like, I put a lot of time in on the bike.

And that being the sport that I hadn't previously trained for properly, I saw like pretty quick improvements.

And, you know, I think I'm.

I'm still seeing those now.

So that was the big.

The big gain.

The swim was never really a focus.

It was always just, you know, you know what to do in the swim, don't work too hard and just.

I actually fell off on the bike in Victoria super early.

And then I just lost all my confidence because it was.

It was pouring rain.

So it became a pretty miserable bike.

And then I picked up a small injury after Victoria, so I didn't actually run very much before Oregon, but I did a ton of biking.

So on the Oregon race day, it was just like, I'm going to go all out on the bike and just try and hang on.

And I Actually saw, I was in the pain cave pretty bad at about 15k and I saw Juliet on course and I asked her what my gap was and she was, I'm not on the right page.

And I was like, okay, whatever, it doesn't matter, I'll just keep running.

I hadn't seen, I hadn't heard any time gaps the whole race and I must be at least 100 meters further away and I just hear Juliet screaming.

5.

That's Juliet for you.

She's very helpful out there.

Oh yeah, yeah.

And then I think Washington was probably the most straightforward because I'd had a really good solid build and, and no, no setbacks.

So yeah, the down river swims definitely are my preference.

But I had two of them last year.

It takes away a bit of my advantage there.

But I managed to come out front and Washington as well and then just, yes, stayed ahead, stay controlled on the bike.

And then the run was definitely my best run to date off the bike, which was nice.

That's great.

So you mentioned Oceanside is coming up for you.

Ocean swim and then a much more challenging bike than you've had to deal with up until now.

Yeah.

What other races are you looking at for this year?

Well, you know, there's talks of T100 coming to Vancouver.

That would be super nice.

I'm hoping that does happen because then I'll enter that one.

So I'll do Oceanside T100 van if it happens.

Vancouver Triathlon and then just Marbella.

Trying to, trying to keep it a bit cheaper to be honest this year.

Yeah.

And obviously Ironman was a big step up.

How did, what was that experience like?

Did you find it?

Because a lot of people when they go from 70.3 to Ironman, they're not always prepared for that big jump in the training volume.

And on race day too, it can be quite different.

Obviously you didn't have any problems, but how did you find the step up?

Yeah, it was, it was something I really wanted to do.

Like, you know, you do want half iron.

And then everybody, everybody at work was asking me, oh, you're going to do a full now you're going to do a full.

And I'd wanted to do a fall.

I wanted to see where I was at.

I, I've had some friends in the UK that have done falls and so I, it was like pretty high on my radar wanting to do.

And I, I didn't.

The amount of training I did wasn't actually that much more and I think that was part of the reason it didn't go as successfully as it could have.

Well, so I.

Yeah, totally.

I think maybe we might want to recal.

Remember who you're talking to.

You're.

My listeners don't all have the same level of success as you.

Yeah, it's not.

I think they would be thrilled.

It's not that I, I wasn't thrilled.

You know, I just broke it down into, into, into goals and, and my run fell apart pretty good.

Like I was.

I was running slower than I even warm up on a regular run.

Like I was doing 5:15.

Well, I, I think what you're saying is really important.

And I tell my athletes and I'm the same way after a race.

Is it.

No matter how a race ends up, I always look for things that I can be happy about, but I'm continually looking for things that I can improve on.

And I understand what you mean by you weren't thrilled.

And I'm just kidding with you when I say, listen, if I finished fourth overall in an Ironman, I'd be super happy.

But I also understand if your goal is to win and you finish fourth, that is a disappointment.

And I guess what I want to ask you, as somebody who obviously is coming from a very successful background as an athlete at very high levels, not most of my listeners are not competing at that level.

What's your advice to age groupers who clearly most are not going to be competing at your level, but they all want to achieve things.

They all want to.

They all have their own goals.

What would you tell.

What would you tell people who maybe don't have aspirations necessarily to win?

But I'm sure you can relate to the average age grouper who's still has these lofty goals in their own mind.

Again, they're not going to be.

To win necessarily, but they can be lofty in their own sense.

So what are, what is your sort of best advice for people?

Number one, how to set those goals.

Number two, how to reach them.

And number three, how to deal with them when they don't necessarily get what they want.

Yeah.

So I guess there's a couple of questions there.

So the first one, like how to set your goals.

You guys have got to be realistic, right?

You can't.

Like, I wouldn't just go out and say I want to win and then that's the end of the race because it totally depends on who's there.

So I definitely think look at it more of I want to swim between this time, I want to bike between this time or like hold this power or Something like that.

You want to have realistic and achievable goals, but they don't want to be easy, because if.

If it's just an easy goal, then you don't get any satisfaction from.

From achieving the goal.

What was the question, too?

So how to.

The second question was, is I said, let's see, how do you set them?

What do you do when you can't reach it?

Yeah, that was another.

And I think I forgot the third part.

But what do you do when you don't achieve that goal?

Yeah, you got to break it down, right?

Like, what.

What was it that you didn't achieve?

Like, what was the specific goal?

And what.

What do you feel like you didn't achieve with that goal?

And then you break that down into what could I have done differently?

What did I do well?

And how can I change that for next time?

Like, there's.

There's never.

It's never.

Oh, it's very unlikely.

I think it's gonna be one pinpoint something that's like, this is why I didn't achieve it.

It's normally, you know, I didn't get enough nutrition in.

And then whatever it.

I.

I started to cram for something on the run and didn't deal with it soon enough.

That's a nice easy one.

Or if it's.

If it's something like, you know, you.

You went away for two weeks and didn't get any training, and it's tough.

It's realistic.

It's life.

So you've gotta have a good life still.

But I think the big one is, you know, you gotta enjoy training, because if you don't enjoy it, it's gonna be hard to motivate yourself to do but break it.

If you break it all down, why you feel like you didn't achieve it and what you feel like would have helped you achieve it.

That's the.

I guess the.

The good one to set your next goal for next time and motivate you to the next race.

Yeah.

And when you look at Arizona, which was the one that you felt like your run wasn't up to, where your par.

What would you.

Analyzing that.

How would you address that for next time?

Yeah, analyzing it for sure is like.

So the swim was.

Was really controlled for me as I got on some.

Some good feet.

I wish I'd had a bit more confidence and back myself to set off in the first wave.

I think I set off maybe 10, but I was with.

With Corey Mayfield, who I knew was a good swimmer, and I was like, okay, if I can sit with this guy.

This is, this is ideal.

But I think had I set off in the first wave, I could probably have sat with the first guy, but it was too, too much to bridge the gap to get onto him.

So overall, super pleased and didn't expend too much energy on the swim.

The bike, this was the huge unknown.

I think my biggest bike before Arizona was like 125km, so I'd never even biked this far.

So I knew like, I'd spoke to like Rachel McBride, who's a pro triathlete in Vancouver.

They, they train around here.

So I really wanted to, I, I picked her brain and she said the first hour has got to be easy on the bike.

So that was honestly, my main goal was push enough power to be hard to catch.

But don't, don't expend yourself in this first hour because you've got 180km to ride.

So the, the ride, honestly, overall, like, I have nothing, nothing to complain about.

It was pretty much as good as I could have asked for.

I struggled a bit with nutrition.

I, I was on antibiotics because I had strep throat the week before, but I, yeah, that, that's nothing that, you know, again, that's just life.

It just happened.

That's a big one, though.

I've talked on this podcast about how antibiotics can really impact your microbiome and can really affect your ability to take in nutrition and affects your ability to perform in endurance.

So that, that alone could have been an explanation for why you didn't run as well as you hoped.

Yeah, I could not stop peeing on the bike.

I couldn't keep my liquids in and that, that, that was new to me.

Could have been the heat of Arizona, could have been the antibiotics, but either way, you know, the bike was, was solid.

I was, I was super pleased with, with how I biked.

And again, I don't think I expelled too much energy.

Obviously you're working super hard and you're tired, but I think I was at a nice point of control.

And then I came off on, on the run and I was surprised how, how okay I felt setting off and I was like, I had my goal pace of 405 and I set off at 4 or 5.

Didn't feel too hard and I was like, great, just sit here if you get caught.

Like, I knew Corey's as a lightning fast runner and Zach was already five or six minutes ahead, so I didn't think I was going to catch him, but it was just like, hold the Pace and just you know, make your way through the marathon.

And then it was maybe 12k in or something.

It was like 4 or 5, 415 but no change in heart rate.

It just felt harder.

Then 4 30s again no change in heart rate.

Then 4 45s, 5 minutes, 5 15s.

I was just, yeah, deep in the pain caves.

Wow, you sound like a lot of first time Ironman runners who struggle with that.

And I should qua, I should clarify for listeners.

He's talking about minutes per kilometer.

When he says 405.

He's talking about minutes per kilometer which is about a seven.

I think that's 6:50 pace I think.

No it's, it's six.

Yeah, it's around seven minutes per mile.

Yeah, yeah.

And so it just, it, it pretty quickly went down and then you know I, I, I had my, so my wife was there and my, my parents in law were there and I got pretty emotional.

I'm letting everyone down.

They're all here like and I said this to my wife during the run and she like jugged alongside me for like maybe two minutes and I was like no you, you're doing great.

We're all so proud.

And, and then the one thing I was really pleased with is like the last 6k I managed to pull myself back out of the hole a little bit and I, I went from running like five minutes back down to sort of four 30s.

So, so there is positives for sure.

I think nutrition is huge.

I, I actually started walking every aid station after I, my pace went to out the window.

So I was like I'm just gonna walk every aid station, take on as much as I possibly can and that definitely helped.

I would maybe walk every other one from the start or something if I was to do another one because I think you just have to get so much nutrition in.

Right.

It's craziness.

Yeah, you just, you know what that you, you're the poster child for adapting to dealing with what the day gave you and just making changes on the go and making sure that you got through.

And listen, 8:35 is nothing to sneeze at and I'm super delicious.

All those aid stations.

Yeah, that's pretty am amazing.

That's incredible.

Luke, do you think you'll go back and do another Ironman?

I definitely want to do another one.

Probably not next year just because the focus is heavily on Marbella, but probably the year afterwards I might even put my full focus into justice.

All right, I'll look forward to seeing you compete in Oceanside and hopefully get to race with you again in Marbella because I've got my slot so I will watch you qualify in Oceanside so we can and race together in Marbella.

That'll be awesome.

Yeah.

Luke, I can't thank you enough for your time today.

This was a fascinating conversation.

Speaking to someone with such an interesting background who's come to triathlon and is doing as well as you are right from the get go.

It's really pretty amazing and I look forward to watching your career.

Do you think you have any aspirations to going pro?

Yeah.

So I think this year, you know, focus with Lance, get, not get as you out of the way but like sort of.

I want to really put a lot of focus in this year.

I think there's a lot of improvements to be made and my training is very different.

It's a lot more volume and then I think 2026 season will probably go pro.

Awesome.

We will be very excited to see your progress and have you back and hear about what it's like being a professional triathlete coming out of the age group ranks with the success that you've had.

Luke, I can't thank you enough for being here today.

Thanks again for joining me on the tridarc podcast.

It's been a great conversation.

Thanks very much.

Appreciate you see the top of my lungs.

Hi, my name is Justin Rayfield and I'm a proud Patreon supporter of the Tridock Podcast, the only show that's more addictive than carbs before a long workout.

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