Hello, and welcome to the October 7th, 2022 edition of the TriDoc 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. Today is the first ever in-between day for the Ironman world championships in Kailua, Kona, Hawaii. And if you are listening to this on the day that this episode is released, then you know that the women's race took place yesterday and the men's race will happen tomorrow. I can't give you any details on what happened in that women's raised because I'm recording this well in advance of the date of release, because of course. I myself am in Hawaii right now. Well right now on October 7th, preparing for my own Ironman world championships, along with the professional men and several other men's age groups tomorrow. While I am in the Aloha state I plan on speaking to as many people as I can and getting as many interviews or at least soundbites as I can from that event in order to build a soundscape of sorts to share with you all in the next episode. The event in Kona really is such an amazing experience. And I know how fortunate I am to be able to be there, let alone for the second time. So I'm going to do my best to bring back a taste of the experience in sound so that you can get a flavor for it. I have no idea how my day will go tomorrow, but I can assure you that a matter what, I'm going to enjoy myself out there. And if for any reason things don't go as well as I hope it's not going to be from lack of training or effort on I've really worked hard this year to get to this race and to try and perform well. But as I've said, many times, Ironman is a long day and there are only so many things within your control I recently swam at my regular pool in Colorado and in the lane next to me was a woman training for her first ever full Ironman race. We chatted a bit in between our sets and she mentioned how nervous she was along with excited for her day. It got me thinking about how my own Ironman experiences have changed over the years from extreme nervousness over the competition itself to supreme, calm from the familiarity of having done enough of them to a new nervousness now rooted in wanting to perform well. We all have an arc that we follow through this sport and that arc can take us along varying paths to all kinds of different possibilities. But at the end of the day, we all share that common purpose of wanting to achieve that dream of reaching the finish. For some that means getting there as fast as possible while for others, it means just getting there before the time cutoffs. But for all of us, it means sharing the common bond that we have in our love of multi-sport and our desire to feel so completely alive. Control what you can control. Take the first steps and keep moving forward because your finished line is waiting. On the show today, I'm going to review a paper that is to be published a little later on this fall on how air quality impacts the performance of age, groupers and professionals in Ironman triathlons. With climate change impacting races worldwide and drought and wildfires contributing to worsening levels of particulate matter in the air around many of these events. This new research is not only timely, but concerning and what it may say about what we can expect should air quality, continue to deteriorate. I'm also gonna look at some other studies that have been done investigating the effects of common pollutants, emitted by automobiles on runners and cyclists, as well as give some ideas for how to avoid the worst air quality when training and that's coming up shortly. Later I have a conversation with Dave Christen Dave was the former race director of the Boulder 70.3 and Boulder triathlon series. But for the past several years, he has been a regional director for Ironman. And in that role, he is responsible for building new events and managing existing ones. And he gave me a really interesting behind the scenes, look at what goes on and finding new venues for Ironman branded races and bringing them to be. And that conversation was really fascinating, and I know that you're going to enjoy it and it's coming up just a little bit later. In the meantime, I want to take a moment to thank all of my Patrion 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 doing so get access to bonus interviews and other segments that come out about every month. For subscribers at the $10 per month level of support. I also have a special thank you gift. And the form of a pretty cool Boko tri doc podcast, running hat. So visit my Patrion site today and become a supporter so that you too can get access to the bonus content. And maybe this cool gift as well. The URL for more information and where you can sign up is patreon.com/tridocpodcast. And as always, thanks so much in advance just for considering. A couple of years ago now the intergovernmental panel on climate change at the United Nations issued a report that painted a pretty dire picture of where things stand after a century and a half of human impacted climate change. Global warming is dangerously close to spiraling out of control. The world is already certain to face further climate disruptions for decades. If not centuries, to come. In many parts of the world, these changes are unfortunately being seen in the form of prolonged and severe drought, combined with extreme heat in the summer that has led to massive wildfire seasons every year. While wildfires have always been a part of natural renewal, the severity and extent of the fires over the past decade has really been exceptional. And the cost in terms of lives lost and property destroyed has been immense and ever increasing. Another way in which wildfires are having an important impact, even on communities far removed from the fires themselves is through their effects on air quality. Woodsmoke contains many toxic materials in the form of particulate matter and gases that can be dispersed for hundreds and even thousands of miles away from the point of origination. Of course pollutants come from other sources as well among them are the factories and cars that are contributing to climate change that gives rise to those wildfires in the first place. Well, air pollution in all forms is estimated to significantly affect human health. Causing up to 7 million premature deaths annually with an even larger number of hospitalizations and days of sick leave. The actual impact in terms of disease and death is really hard to come by. And these are only estimates, but observational studies have shown that when air quality is poorer, respiratory and cardiac diseases are higher with associated morbidity and mortality. Elite athletes have been shown to have significant impairment in lung function when air quality is poor, including when there is increased smoke in the air, and some athletes have even shown signs of developing asthma, secondary to prolonged exposure to poor quality air. This is because the ultra fine particles emitted by automobile engines as part of the internal combustion process have a habit of making it down into small airways in the lung where they can stimulate an inflammatory response. That is a key component in the development of asthma. Similarly other chemicals commonly found in air pollution, such as ozone sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides can have similar results. A new study to be published this fall in the journal economics and human biology reports on exactly how much air quality impacts the performance of the participants of Ironman triathlons. The authors retrospectively evaluated the results of five Ironman triathlons held in the continental United States. Over a seven-year period and cross-reference them with air quality data. As gathered by monitoring stations operated by the environmental protection agency. As close as possible to each race venue. They then controlled for other conditions like ambient temperature, wind speed, and month of the year though the profile of the course was not considered. To try and ensure that they were only looking at seasoned athletes. The authors excluded anyone who had not participated in at least three Ironman races, leaving them a total subject pool of just under 4,000. Now, this is important because they wanted to try and normalize the data as much as possible. And the best way to do that is to get rid of outliers. So you want to get rid of people who are doing their first Ironman and. That is to be sure that you are avoiding the kinds of people who might Overly skewing the data because they're slower. And we know that newer athletes to Ironman tend to be slower. So you try to only look at athletes who have done three or more Ironmans so that your data will be a little more normalized. So you're getting rid of the variability from outliers that new athletes would incorporate into the subject pool. They then compared how different air pollutants impacted overall times. As well as the times for the individual disciplines of the race among age groupers, professionals, and then across gender men and women. The primary pollutants that the authors were interested in were ozone that is principally emitted by automobiles and factories and particulate matter 2.5 microns or smaller. This matter when present in significant amounts is known to cause haziness in the air and is a common byproduct of wildfires, as well as by factories involved in manufacturing. The results were unsurprising, though some of the vagaries contained within those results are of interest. As air pollution levels rose overall performance times, as well as times for each of the swim bike and run tended to rise. For example, when ozone levels were higher than average, overall times increased by almost 10 minutes, 1.2, 4% or one, and a quarter percent of the average time. For a similar rise in particulate matter, the increase in time was almost five minutes. About 0.6%. Now these differences are similar across men and women. However, professional athletes didn't seem to show any performance decrease as either ozone or particulate matter pollution increased. When looking at the results for the swim bike and run individually, things became more nuanced. For example, ozone concentrations impacted swimming performances for age, groupers and professionals. But women were slightly less affected than men. Particulate matter, had a much higher effect on professional athletes during the bike than it did on age groupers, but they were much less affected during the swim. All of this is to say that it's obviously a very complex and fluid interaction between environment and physiology. Other studies on this subject have showed results that in some instances bolsters these findings and in others run counter, for example. A study at a Florida in 2010, looked at runners who performed in different temperature ranges, and in varying concentrations of ozone. In this paper, heat and not ozone was the major determinant of performance though, heat plus ozone levels together. It seemed to impact performance more than just heat alone. Another study looked at patients with chronic lung disease and compared them to healthy adults and found that the better your lung function was the worse the impact of air pollution on that function. Now, this is obviously not in line with the findings of the Ironman study, where we saw better lung function as seen in professionals tended to protect against the decrease in overall performance. But, to be fair, this particular study was looking at athletes with chronic lung disease and not Ironman athletes and certainly not professional athletes. So hard to know really whether or not this paper bears any relevance to the Ironman paper. Other studies demonstrated that cycling performance and health metrics and cyclists like blood pressure and heart rate variability, are adversely impacted by increasing amounts of particulate, air pollution and ozone concentrations. So air pollution clearly has an impact on athletic performance. And it would seem from across the papers that in general, it's a detrimental one. So the question then becomes. Where is air pollution, the worst. Well, the air quality index, our AQI from the environmental protection agency, measures major air pollutants, including particle pollution, including those particles from ground-level ozone sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, as well as carbon monoxide. And it can be a valuable metric to help determine when and where air pollution is a problem. In fact in 2019. The American fitness index issued a summary report that rated American cities as healthy and fit places to live. And included air quality as an indicator for the first time Unfortunately in that report, they noted that of the hundred largest cities in the United States. Only 62% of the year. Did those hundred cities actually have good air quality. So knowing that triathlon performance is affected by air quality, what can a triathlete do to anticipate the impact of environmental conditions on their potential ability to compete? To assist with this, the AQI can actually be extremely helpful. The AQI is greater than on our 500 point scale with zero to 50 being considered. 300 to 500 being hazardous and various gradations in between corresponding to escalating levels of potential harm Athletes can download the air now. Dot gov app for your smartphone or visit www.airnow.gov, which I will include in the show notes and review the AQI for an enter zip code in order to determine the air quality prior to a training session or a race and many weather apps today also include this information. It used to be that when air quality wasn't anticipated to be poor athletes could simply do their training at times early in the morning or in the evening when the contributions of automobiles were less. And the AQI would be better, but with wildfires and with the way climate change is going on it, this is no longer the case. Now time of day seems to matter less. And geography is a more important predictor of poor air quality, especially during wildfire season. In addition, given that an Ironman will eclipse the better part of an entire day, knowing the worst AQI can best informed the likely impact on an overall performance. You're not necessarily going to be able to train indoors just because the AQI is bad. Now the authors of the paper on Ironman athlete performance. The one that I referenced the most in the segment, uh, are a clear that they don't think their results will or should necessarily discourage anyone from participating in these kinds of events. They recognize the sacrifices that we athletes make in order to get to the start line of an Ironman. And that knowing the AQI erase date is unlikely to deter anyone from participating still. They also acknowledge that Ironman triathlons have a significant amount of participants who don't finish. And they wonder whether or not that number is influenced by AQI. And even if that impacted their results. Since they only looked at those who finished the event, is it possible that a subset, possibly large of those who didn't finish were so negatively impacted by poor air quality that it caused them to drop out and that the results of their study would be even more dramatic. If that was the case. In other words, had they looked at the DNS. With the impact of air pollution, be even greater than the one and a quarter percent that they actually found in their paper. Well, if the impacts of climate change, continue to result in worsening air quality, it's going to be interesting to revisit this question in the future and see if DNF rates are indeed linked to AQI in a meaningful For now, my advice is keep training, but definitely pay attention to the air that you're breathing. Do you have a question for me to consider answering on the podcast? Well, I hope that you will email At T R I underscore D O c@icloud.com or drop me a note in the private Facebook group for the trademark podcast. My guest on the show today is one of the regional directors of Ironman. As part of his role. He is responsible for building new events and managing existing ones within a specific region. Dave, Christen has a long history in the sport. He has been with Ironman for over a decade. And prior to that, worked with U S a T in various capacities. He was also the race director for the Boulder tri series that at one point comprised all of the 70.3. The Boulder peak and the Boulder sprint races. But for now, he's here to give us a look behind the curtain. Just a little bit on what goes on in the vetting of potential sites for new races and to see what happens behind the scenes in the lead up to existing ones. Dave, thank you so much for joining me today on the TRID dock podcast.

You bet, Jeff excited to be here, excited to share some of those, discussion points. It's a fun and exciting thing to build and manage our events and happy to share how that happens.

So first and foremost, when it comes to the development of a new event, one thing I've always been interested in, is it the location that seeks out Ironman or is it Ironman? That's always looking for new locations.

It can be both. I've been parts of both of those scenarios more often than not. We're very strategic and where we're pursuing our events and we're making the initial outreach. but there's a lot of times that communities will just say, Hey, we would love to be, be considered as a potential host community. would you chat with us a little bit and we'll go in we'll have those discussions. We'll take a look at their venues, see how it fits in our overall series portfolio. And and that can happen. But as you can imagine, we're very thoughtful as to where our athletes want to go, where they want to race and what they want to experience and that more often than not is what's driving. Our pursuit for new venues and new locations in, and amongst not just in north America, but globally.

I'm assuming, people have a much better understanding of what's involved. Does it ever happen that a location comes to and hasn't really thought out the venues or are, will they just come and say, Hey, we wanna have one of these races what's involved or do they come with a whole plan?

We're a tricky animal. We impact a community in a number of different ways, not just from the race perspective, but on the accommodation side of things, on the travel side of things. There's a number of logistics that we have to consider. That we work with our local communities early on to say, okay, these are the things that we need. And some of them are surprising to those host communities. Sometimes they aren't aware of the needs that we might. But that's where people like myself and others that have been around for probably entirely too long in the sport to be able to talk them through what's needed. And and those specifics, and, as you can imagine, the largest impact that we have is typically our bike course elements, 56 miles or 112 miles worth of real estate to cover can really impact not just the city, but also their regional partners at the county and state levels. So that's usually the piece that takes the most calories is to certainly build our bike courses. Cuz that's the one that you have a lot of discussions with your regional partners and not just the host community that you've started with.

So give us a sense of the timeline from the idea to the actual realization of a new event, what are the steps that take place and how long does it all take?

I think one of the fun stories we've had lately, and I can just share this one because it's actually quite similar to what our other ones go with is our brand new event at Ironman, Alaska exciting brand new venue for us that we just produced the event just over a week ago now. That from start to finish, my initial outreach really began internally with our organization to say, Hey, I think we need to give Alaska a shot. So internally we start having the conversations to say, okay, is this gonna be a good fit for us? Is this what our customer wants? Is this what our customer wants to experience? And the athletes will they enjoy? So that's really where the conversation begins and that's for Ironman, Alaska, that was right in the middle of what we would all now call the pandemic era in the middle of that timeframe, we started saying, okay, Hey, is this something possible? So 2019, 2020, those ideas started to percolate. Then we make the outreach to our now partners and friends and travel Juno and the city in borough of Juno. And that's about a 12 to 18 month window prior to the event that's happened just a week ago. So this is, a little over a year ago now that we have those initial conversations those first discussions are often very exploratory Hey, who are you? And especially, cuz it's funny in the, in Juno's case, they were like, Hey, like what do you mean you wanna put on triathlon up here? And we had a lot of fun just exploring the idea and using ag lake, which is currently a host of another triathlon there as well. And we started talking about how they only have one highway and it's 28 miles of road. And I said it was meant to be we were supposed to be with you cuz you have just enough asphalt for us to be together on, in an out and back course. And. Then we start bringing in the agency partners to vet it out. So that looks like your state level, your county level, in most cases Gina didn't have that, but their department of transportation partners, and we say, Hey, this is what we want to do. Do you think it's possible? And what we're looking for in those discussions are really just a agreement and principle like, Hey, I think we can make this work. Let's go for it. Barring anything that's really unusual. We'll get the approval for everyone to proceed in good faith. That's when we usually announce an event that people like you've seen us do when we were in Alaska and we announced that event that was shortly after we got the, we looked around the room with all of the permitting partners and said, Hey, do you think we can get this done? They all said, yes. So obviously we still got permits done later, later down the. But in principle, we were ready to do that together and then 12 months of solid planning. And that brings us to what we got experience there. And I would say that's very similar to other marketplaces, Jeff, some of them I've done 'em faster. Salem, Oregon was one that was quite fast. We did that again in the middle of the pandemic phase, but we knew we wanted Oregon and Salem was just one of our bright and shining new partners that we have. And in north America and that, that was done in about seven months from announcement to, race day. So it can be done quickly, but most of the time it's about 12 to 18 months.

and what goes into deciding if the race is a success? I know Alaska is small. I think I saw I was about 800 athletes. I don't know if that was on purpose or if that was just because, okay, so that was a cap.

Yeah, it was on purpose. So we, we strategically know that some of our markets can withstand and have the infrastructure to have certain amounts of people versus others. Ironman, California, on the other end of the spectrum is gonna be the largest Ironman in the history of the sport. This year in 2022, and some communities have the abilities. Sacramento's one of them that has the infrastructure. They have a world class international airport. They have plenty of housing. They've got the width of the roads, the space for us to be able to execute. We're using a stadium there. For our transition area, that's really unique and fun. And that's, that goes into those discussion points on how an event can how an event can be a certain size in Juno. The that's a very unique marketplace. We also know that it's there's logistical things that people have to consider to get up to Alaska, even though interestingly enough, Jeff, it's only a two hour flight from Seattle. It actually takes longer to fly to LA. From Seattle, but the point is that it's a, it's the final frontier. And a lot of people want to get to Alaska from different locations, Texas, Florida, the UK. And it'll take a bit to get up there. So we take all of those things into consideration. Then we start taking a look at, okay, in the series wide calendar, what's the right fit. How many athletes do we wanna put on a race course like that? And Alaska was very strategic for. Just because we know that's a very unique experience and we wanted to create a very unique and intimate experience for our athletes.

And how often will you look at a venue, say a venue approaches you guys, how often will you look at a location or a venue and say, this isn't really gonna work for us.

Yeah, it happens quite a bit. We have a number of new events that we're always working on myself. I've got three or four into the future that I'm working on right now that are probably going to be events. And probably another three or four that. We're not sure yet. We're gonna have to go through the exercise and each of my regional counterparts, there's six regions in north America. Each of my regional counterparts are with the same kind of pursuit. We're looking at the future. Some events come and go. And that's reality of communities changing of our. Desires changing and we make those adjustments. Santa Rosa is a great example. They went through a number. Wildfires and economical issues in their economy that made them an unsustainable host for us for the time being. So that's why we're in Sacramento. Who's a great host for us and like those things happen. So over time we always are looking for events that are either gonna, slot into and fill those demands as is necessary. From our athletes. So that's really always percolating in the distance and we work with those communities. So there's some that are good fits to your previous question of do some people know what they're asking when they come to us and say, Hey, we wanna be a host for Ironman. Usually it starts with, do you have any water that we can swim in? If community that's in a, in an air place, doesn't have any water for us to swim in, it becomes a very quick discussion. But it's usually pretty fun have these discussions and try to figure out what can fit in different areas.

So need to this has been burning in the back of my mind since the announcement came out. I know that Morrow bay looks like a really exciting, interesting event, but the reaction has been At least amongst people I've been talking to. And even among even myself, when I looked at it, I was like, whoa, the water temperature that's below the cutoff where the swim gets canceled. So I'm curious what goes into that kind of thought process where, cuz it seems, I don't, I have no idea how signups have been going, but it just seems to me that that's a perilous choice where you're announcing a water temperature that's below the 52 where a swim gets.

Yep. Yeah. True full disclosure. That was a typo on our website. So if you actually go to the website now it's corrected. So our average water temperature is there. As much as we would like to think that we're Bulletproof and we're perfect and we get these things right. Every time that was an instance of not getting it correct.

See, I didn't sign up because of that. I would've signed up.

Yeah. So trust me, it was it was a quick reaction from everybody internally when we saw that. But anyways, it's we expect water temperatures there to be in the higher fifties much more sustainable, obviously. Above the cutoff. That's not something that we would roll the dice on. As a matter of fact, when we look at Alaska, it's the same discussion. Although we had to shorten the swim there because of water temperatures, typically that body of water is in the low sixties to mid sixties. This time of. That I have 10 years of water data to show that did we get snake bit in 2022? The locals will tell you that it's unreliable. Like we dunno what the water are gonna be, but

know, weather weathers remains the unpredictable. You can't predict an atmospheric river last year in Sacramento either. So I get how weather is totally

Yeah. And it's I seem to have atmospheric rivers following me cuz Sacramento. I was the one that grabbed the microphone and told athletes that we weren't racing that day. And in Alaska, I was the one that says to the group we cannot do 2.4 miles of swimming. And in that instance, one of my colleagues asked a great question. Would you put your 65 year old hundred and 10 pound mother in the water for two hours at 56 degrees. And the answer is no you wouldn't. And that's what we have to ask ourselves. And that's why we made the decision to allow that same person at 65 years old, 110 pounds to do 1.2 miles. Interestingly enough, as I was standing there on the shore, getting everyone was getting out of the water, I noticed one consistent trend amongst everybody, and that was their hands were white. And that to me was confirming that we made the right decision that day. Mor bay will be much warmer Mor bay, sorry, will be much warmer than 51 degrees. That was a, certainly a typo. I believe that's gonna be one of the most exciting destinations that we have. It's just such a cool spot. Early season bay area, north of LA. It's gonna be a great spot for people to to race early on and get ready for either bay area races in Santa Cruz or in Sacramento. Or the stuff in the south whether that be Arizona, Indian Wells, it's just gonna be a great spot for us.

I'm really relieved to hear about that water temperature. Although, like I said I'm disappointed because I signed up for other races now because I saw that water temperature, but I will definitely keep that on my calendar for 24. I do have a question for you. I'm hoping I can get a spoof on the podcast here or not a spoof, a a What's it called when you get a a lead the first one to break a story. Anyways Boulder got moved to June and everybody is speculating that the Ironman's coming back. Are you at Liberty to tell us whether or not that's the case?

Yeah, I am. And it's currently not part of the plan. One of the decisions that we made for Boulder 70.3 to move into June was when we look at the series wide calendar, as we were looking at everybody shifting and you look at things like St. George, you look at COA, you look at how we were adding at events in Oregon and Seattle. And we look at the demos and where people are traveling. We were noticing that weekend, especially with Alaska there, with Ironman Canada shortly thereafter. All of the things that were happening, that we were not properly spaced with that event. It wasn't sitting in the right spot. Then we considered also with just the overall discussion on what's happening with weather patterns in general and heat patterns in general, what's the best fit for our Boulder 70.3 last. If you recall, we had significant smoke from wildfires. It was actually the lowest air quality in the world that day. And we, those are things that we have to consider as the world changes and adjusts. We also have to adjust and June is a better fit. And a number of RA reasons there also back to the previous discussion about our host communities, we work carefully with the Boulder co uh, Boulder the city of boulders convention visitors bureau. And when you look at their overall travel patterns, what's the best fit for them as an economy as well. Whereas the best bang for the buck for the city of Boulder and for the region cuz that those economics spill into Broomfield Louisville. And to, to Longmont, to Denver. So what's the best fit for them as well as we have those discussions and June was a better fit on a number of different fronts as the guy that launched Ironman, Boulder, and and saw that race B as it was I certainly have a love affair with racing long and that, that community, but that's currently not in the.

Yeah. I think that makes total sense. Everything you said makes sense. I've raced it both June and August. There's been very hot days in June as well, but it tends to be more predictably, less hot. And I think the thing I like most about June is showing up at the reservoir at five and the sun's already been up for half an hour, which is nice. What determines if a race is not gonna stay on the calendar? Obviously there. There are issues like communities, like you mentioned earlier we were, we're watching what's going on with lake PLA. We saw Whistler decide they had enough which was great for Penticton. But I'm just curious when a race disappears, like I remember. When I first moved here, I participated in a race in Kansas, which was surprisingly popular. I was always amazed at how many people showed up to that race, given where it was. And it's, it wasn't the most exciting race, but it disappeared, even though it seemed to get a lot of people showing up to it. So I, I'm just curious when a race gets removed from the calendar what are some of the common reasons that happens?

Yeah, the iron, because we're on the topic of Ironman Boulder. I had a, I was giving a tour in our warehouse in Louisville to some, up to a tri club that we were working with. And somebody asked the question as to why Ironman Boulder was going away. And I said you made that decision. Athletes made that decision and that we typically watch the momentum of what our athletes are choosing and where they're going. And that's often an indicator for us, whether or not an event has either a run its course or B as popular enough to continue to be on our calendar. So when you look at all of the ones that you just mentioned there's usually a discussion, both, both from the economical side, the political side. And then the other big one is gonna be athlete demand. And that's typically driving that discussion. Lauren Kansas is an interesting one because you brought that one up. That one is it was popular. There was a lot of athletes that would still go to that. And I think there's a, and this is just we look at a number of factors, not just the total head confidence on our race. What does it cost for us to produce the event? How many calories is it taking for us to get equipment and people there? And is that the best investment for us in Lawrence, Kansas, or is the best investment for us in Salem, Oregon? Not that those were the two that we were weighing against each other, but we have. Hyper successsful event in Oregon. Right now, if we had another event that we were holding that up against, and we said, which one sticks around. We're gonna stick obviously with the one that we think has the longer term future for us. And Lawrence was a beautiful venue for us for a long time. Our teams would camp along with athletes and RVs and all the things. And it was a big religious revival of triathlon in many ways in Kansas. And that is unique much like Byman was much like. Wildflower was, so those things come and go. And that Lawrence was an example of something that was a great time while we had it. And onto the next one.

You mentioned Boulder and it's funny. I am not married to an Ironman in Boulder at all. I, I did the Ironman in Boulder. I thought it was a great event. I, Boulder always faces the issue of altitude and there's this perception that coming to altitude to do an Ironman is somehow impossible, which I always find amazing because it's just not the case. I did think Ironman Boulder, since we're talking about it. I did think Ironman Boulder was hampered by exactly what you mentioned before. It's August date because it tended every year to just be so hot. Except for that last year, when it, they got a free cold snap, but it like, I did the raise, it was like 106 on the run. It was just awful. And the weather was, does tend to be more predictable in June. Although you, then, you sometimes get the afternoon storms. Listen, Boulder's a tough venue for an Ironman, just because mountain weather is so tough. And you're with the altitude. And I, I thought the writing was on the wall for that one, because you could see it was all locals for the most part that were signing up. And there's only so many Ironmen that a local is gonna do. And so it was pretty I think you're right. The athletes chose It was a I still think of all the Ironmans I've done. It's it was one of my favorites because it just is such a beautiful place to do a long course. It's hampered by it. The perception of people who would come here by of altitude. And there's not much you can do about it. I wanna shift gears.

Boulder, 70.3 is one of the fastest 70 point threes Air is thin. Air is fast air and a lot of people will look at altitude and they'll say, oh my goodness, what am I like signing up for? But it really is one of the fastest places on the planet to ride a bike. And I think Ironman Boulder was in my opinion, just because I built it this way was an honest course. Like it was a tough man's bike course. Like especially the first couple of years like those, that course went out way up north way out, we way out east, sorry. That would be where I'd go out and ride hard. If I wanted to get a big day and I would do that. And it was an honest course. So I'm certainly bummed to see that it didn't have as much success as it, as I wanted it to have, but the fact that we raised for five years in Boulder, like that was truly special. And one of what many people consider to be triathlons, one of triathlons homes in Boulder, Colorado.

The best part about the Ironman was that the run course had shade as opposed to that 70.3 course, which is just relentless. I wanna shift gears just a little bit and talk about the the days leading up. To a, an existing event. We watch on Facebook. We see the notifications, oh, the trucks are here and everybody starts to get excited as they're, nervously as age groupers, packing up their stuff, doing their final prep. So what goes on in the days leading up? Obviously we know there's some infrastructure stuff but give us a peak behind the curtain to see what are, what is going on amongst the Ironman staff to, to get a course ready for, you know,

Yeah, we each, market's a little bit different if it's a new market we're in there earlier than we are in other markets, like a Colene or lake Placid where we've been for a very long time, we can usually show up to those markets a little bit later, brand new markets, cuz we're on that topic. We'll typically have our race directors in at least one, if not two weeks prior to actual race. And they'll be doing kind of those final touches, those prepped meetings, making sure our suppliers are good catering to heavy equipment to the infrastructure that goes in our logistics team which actually my brother works on they're responsible for moving our semis around the country and all of that equipment. So those things are usually for our Ironmans in about two weeks prior for our 70 point threes. They're. About a week prior. And those that team comes along with it. And as soon as things start hitting the ground, you start to see our team building throughout the week. I'm going TRO tomorrow for Ironman for Ironman there, we've had. Our race directors been doing work since last week, like heavy work. Whether that be installing like actual equipment, receiving equipment, receiving supplies. And then most of our team is arriving yesterday and today. And then the final pieces are tomorrow and Thursday in terms of our staff members, typically in Ironman. And when we were in Alaska last week, we had about 50 to 60 staff members that are our core group of people that travel around the country. And do this with us, whether that be people that do this as a side gig we have a lot of teachers that in the summer they work with us or retired police officers or veterans that just of dabble with us here and there. And then we have, obviously full-time employees like myself that do this as a full-time job. So it's a good mix of people. And when we show up, it is just, it's a lot of it's muscle memory. The team knows, I always tell our race directors, good luck. You build a plan. And then when our team shows up, they're gonna do whatever they want anyways. And that's a joke that we use to reflect that our team is very experienced and ex and good at taking, the guidelines that our race directors build with our permits and with our local partners, hand that over to our very experienced team. And they're the ones that go and execute and adjust as needed. And get flexible. Yeah, it's a logistical, it's a logistical lift. It's project management at its finance with one day to get it right. You only have one day. We told athletes on August 7th and 2022, we were gonna put on a race in Alaska and they booked flights and they booked hotels and they plan their family's experiences around that. But we don't get to say, oh, you know what, we're gonna be a week late. We don't get to say, Hey, we're gonna miss it by a day. And a. We have to be right on one day. So that's that's the sharp end of the spear to keep us keep us focused.

What are the typical pinch points that can cause hiccups at the last minute?

The ebb and flow. In my time here sometimes right now it's certainly around supply chain. I think that's a global issue that everybody's hyper aware of. So we're certainly tracking that one carefully. So what we do there is we adjust obviously our lead times and staging equipment ahead of time, as opposed to receiving it in real time, et cetera, et cetera. Sometimes it's sometimes it's related to the environment of how the triathlon industry is evolving, whether that be demand, increasing demand, slowing sometimes it's related around certain venues have different restraints. I keep, we keep talking about Alaska's just because it's there, but that's a landlocked island. So those are. Unique elements for us to get equipment up there and manage that. Whereas in Sacramento, our challenges, there are, how do we manage the farm movements on the river Delta that's south of town. So how do we manage those groups and make sure that they're operational on Sundays in October, as well as our race on that same day. So what, one of the greatest things about what we do is our problems and our challenges are the, are different everywhere we go. And it creates this level of creativity and flexibility. That is PR in many ways, unlike any other industry, cuz we can, we get to think about how do we do things differently. I always tell people our learning curve is really shallow cuz we do. Every other week, if not every week, somewhere else in a different market. And when we learn something in one market, we get to then trickle that into our other marketplaces much faster than some other event companies that only have one event a year or two events a year. And they have to wait 360 to try again.

So like an athlete, where we're stressed out, leading up to the moment we start. And then once you start, you just go into, autopilot is the most stressful part for you guys, the lead up or is the day itself the most stressful part?

For certainly the lead up. If you see any of our staff running around on race day it's cuz we didn't do our job six months. And I truly believe that. And I push on our team really hard when I see that. And I observe that on race week and I see our team trying to struggle with something that they're trying to fix. I always ask the questions. Where was this? Three months ago? Where was this? Six months ago. Some of them are unpredictable when you're in new markets. You don't know what you don't know until you see it. But when you're in cour d'Alene and you see an issue show up when we've been there for north of 15 years, Where was this? Six months ago, mean somebody wasn't doing their job. And that's okay. That's every business, every industry. But those are the things that we can learn on and get better. So on race day, we certainly are. We're very alert. We're very aware, but what I like to think is that we've accomplished what our job needed to be, so that we can then focus on the important things on race day, which is keeping you guys safe which is keeping the experience high managing our community relationships well because if you're chasing the things that you should have been chasing three months ago, you don't have time to fix the safety and the the relational stuff that you wanna fix.

And I imagine, you've got so much experience at this point. The past informs the present, which informs the future. And there's lots of checklists and, I'm sure it's in a lot of ways it's probably wrote I'm curious as an athlete who always fills out those post race surveys, how much do they get looked at and how much do they inform what happens in the.

Tons. Tons it is our chief metric number one metric. I would say at my level gosh, I probably spend. On each race at least a full working week, post race, digesting what the athletes are saying at least a full week. It might not be like full five straight days, but I'm consuming that information on flights to wherever and I'm sitting there and I'm trying to pour over the athlete comments. As they come in, so we have two different things that come at us. So there's there. The first thing that comes at us is the simple data that comes back of I'm satisfied or I'm unsatisfied. So those are numbers. We call that like that's just the real data that comes back. And then there's a different set of information that comes that we call the verbatim, which is basically your words, which is the words that come, that are literally written on the keyboard in the survey to us. And that. Pages upon pages of comments per event. And to me, I tell our team this quite a bit. If you see something show up more than 15 times in your verbatim, it's a problem that means 15 different people experienced it in a similar way. Which means we now need to identify that as a key metric or a key, milestone for us to accomplish, some people are gonna have very unique, one off experiences. My parking experience was this, so that we're gonna use the Boulder reservoir, cuz that might be part of your audience. One person might get parked in a position at the Boulder reservoir. That's tricky. And if you know that reservoir for your listeners you have to bear with me as someone that's done that. 15 years. It feels like it's difficult to park you all at the reservoir. And sometimes we get it right. And sometimes we get it 90%. But that one person might have had that specific experience. So we have to carefully look at that response versus the trends that we see in verbatim. And when we start seeing trends, like I didn't like this and the same person says it similarly, and another person says it similar. All of a sudden, those are the things that we're looking for. So to answer your question, a ton, it's a mandate from the top, from Andrew Messick himself our top of the food chain. He spends a lot of time in them and that's how we get better. There's no other tool that we have other than word of mouth and that can be pretty unreliable. So

That's great to know. Is there a high response rate to those

yeah, we actually have one of the highest response rates in the industry when other like third parties look. Our consumer responses it's unprecedented in many ways.

triathletes are nothing. If not extremely passionate and willing to give feedback,

I'm glad you said it. I was gonna say it very similarly. So yeah, I think that's one of the greatest things I like about our industry is that our athletes have the desire to see things done a certain way. And they're willing to share that with you. Gosh, can you imagine if you were trying to develop a business model on people that didn't communicate to you? The running industry is very much like this cuz we also do running races and you don't get nearly as much feedback as you do on the triathlon side of the. Athletes provide very specific, very detailed information. But what's really interesting is there's often always a suggestion that goes with it. It's not a parking was garbage and that's it. It's parking was poorly done. What if you did this? That's the piece that's really interesting. And you can find those in our verbatims, which I referenced before where athletes are giving you very specifics, cuz like you've been to the reservoir enough times. You get it and you understand what if we did this? And those are ideas, are those things I'd find and I'm like, let's go, let's try that.

Yeah. All right. I have one final question. It harkens back to something you mentioned earlier, which is when you look at race venues, you consider things like ability of the community to host the number of participants. I know that you're not involved with world championships, and I know that you can't answer this question completely, but. Kona. Kona's a big problem now. I've heard this from tons and tons of people. I know for myself this year with the two day event accommodations are through the roof. It's discouraging a lot of people from participating. I know that there's an ongoing debate about what to do about Kona because of the affinity and the history St. George was hugely successful. Is that going to factor into a decision about whether or not to rotate the race out of Kona? Either permanently or on a rolling or rotating basis, because accommodations are clearly an issue.

Yeah you raised some really great points that we talk about internally a lot. And I do spend a good bit of time with our world championships team. As you guys know it, our 70.3 world championship event does rotate. So a lot of us are involved in okay. Where, when is that coming back to for, in my case, and my area of influence. When is that coming back to the United States, after it's in LATI and so on and so forth. So we're already down the road looking at those those discussion points. And with our Ironman world championship it's a magical place. And everybody knows specifically why Conna is incredibly successful because spiritually it is part of our sport. It became a, an important place for everyone to spend time and race at and a place that everybody wants to get to our efforts. As you see us manage that discussion point are to try to create that unique experience, that magical experience for as many people as we possibly can. But it is a world championship. It needs to be it needs to be something that's a challenge to get into. It needs to be something that is hard if it's not a world championship, what else is it? And I'm proud of our team and managing that discussion. It's our success is in St. George are certainly ones that are learning and they're gonna build into our learning curve there and decisions that we make for our world championships in the future. And Kona as we, we go back there in October. Will be nothing short of amazing. And I think as we continue to learn and educate ourselves internally that you'll see decisions based on good quality data. Good quality experiences from our athlete surveys referenced before. And those are things that we're gonna take seriously.

Yeah, and I wanna be clear. I, 100% support the two day format. I think the women deserve their own day. I mentioned this when I talked to Heather fur, I think it would be brilliant to actually split the race in two, have the men's race. One year, the men's races in Kona, the women's race is somewhere else. It doesn't have to be on the same day. Sorry. It obviously wouldn't be on the same day, but it doesn't have to be on the same weekend. And that would release the burden on the accommodations in Kona. And it would allow everybody to still rotate through Kona because you would alternate years. So the men in Kona one year, the women in Kona the next year and you would have that rotating aspect of the race going to other really exciting destinations St. George Neese, whatever.

I think that's the, I think that's the point, right? Is the group is watching carefully. What is happening. Our team is very aware of many of the things that you discussed. And and I think those are those all build into, as we talked about earlier with other events, those are the things that build into the discussion point on what we do with our events. So the, the message needs to be to our athletes is that those things. Are not lost on our group and continue to provide that feedback through either the, or listen carefully to those things.

Yeah, I'm nothing. If not if completely impressed with Ironman events at both 70.3 and full, it doesn't matter if it's the first time an event is put on or the millions time you get a quality product. And I know that there's a lot of people out there who will. Find something to complain about. And, the recent thing to complain about is entry costs, but entry costs are clearly supporting our very high quality event. And so thank you to you and your team for doing the ongoing work. And thank you so much, Dave, for being here to talk to me about it. I really appreciate it was a very informative conversation and I personally learned quite a lot.

Absolutely happy to share and look forward to seeing other people at the start line. And we'll continue to try to get better. You can count on that from us.

And that's it for another episode, the TRID doc podcast is produced and edited by me. Jeff Sanko along with my interns. I'm agent Johnson. This is special agent Johnson. Oh, how you doing no relation? I'm uh, I'm Jeff Sanko uh, the, the TRID doc. I'm in charge here. Not anymore. Those interns are Ian Johnson and Ben Johnson. You can find the show notes for everything discussed on the show today, as well as archives of previous episodes@triddocpodcast.com. Do you have questions about any of the issues discussed on this episode? Or do you have a question that you'd like for me to consider answering on a future episode? Send me an email attri underscore doz icloud.com or join the private tri doc podcast. Facebook. On Facebook and you can submit your questions there. If you're interested in coaching services, please visit tri do coaching.com or life sport, coaching.com, where you can find a lot of information about me and the services that I provide. You can also follow me on the tri podcast, Facebook page, tri dot coaching on Instagram and the tri dot coaching YouTube channel. If you enjoyed this podcast, I hope that you'll consider leaving me a rating and a review as well as subscribe to the show, wherever you download it. And of course, there's always the option of becoming a supporter of the podcast at patreon.com/try doc podcast. The music heard at the beginning and the end of the show is radio by empty hours and is used with permission, this song, and many others, like it can be found@reverbnation.com, where I hope that you'll visit and give small independent bands a chance. The tri doc podcast will be back again soon with another medical question for me to answer and another interview with someone in the world of Multisport until then remember 1121 and train hard, train healthy.