Say.

While you're figuring out what you want to be when you grow up, make sure that you are filling your life with powerful memories.

You know, it could be going to Hawaii and competing in the Ironman.

It could be standing on top of a mountain that took all of your courage and energy and bravery to get to the top.

It could be anything.

But make sure that you are marking time with powerful memories so that when so your life will feel full.

Hello and welcome to a Spooky Friday the 13th episode of the TriDog podcast.

It's June 13, 2025.

I'm your host, Jeff Zankoff, the tridoc, an emergency physician, a triathlete, a triathlon coach, and multiple Ironman finisher.

Coming to you as always from beautiful sunny Denver, Colorado.

The voice you heard before mine was that of my guest on this episode, Joe Lavelle.

Joe is not an age group triathlete, but he's done pretty much everything else, including mountaineering and crit racing and just a wide variety of things.

He also is the host of a really incredible podcast called the Wise Athlete, and in that he brings together a lot of voices to speak to what it's like being an aging athlete.

And I think he brings with him to our discussion today a lot of wisdom that he has to impart to age groupers of all ages.

And I think that you'll really enjoy that conversation.

It's coming up in just a short while.

Before that, on the Medical Mailbag, Juliet Hockman and I are going to discuss a little bit of a somber topic.

Last week on Tempo Talks, my sister podcast that I do with my friend and colleague, the professional triathlete Matt Sharp, we had a discussion, at least briefly about the ever increasing numbers of bicycle car interactions that result in fatalities.

An article in the local Colorado area recently showed how data has suggested that pedestrian and cyclist deaths have increased by something like almost 75% or more over the past five to 10 years.

This is incredibly distressing and is one of the many reasons that I, like so many others, spend most of my bike riding in the basement on the trainer.

We talked a little bit about that on Tempo Talks, and if you want to hear that conversation, I think it was a good one.

So I would invite you to take a listen.

And if you're not a subscriber, it's a podcast that comes out every week and has a little bit more of a focus on the professional racing series, given Matt's expertise.

But we also talk every once in a while about a little bit of science so there's a little bit of an overlap with what happens on this show.

And then also we'll talk about things like things that pertain to age groupers, like training issues.

And last week we talked about this specific issue.

On the Medical Mailbag, we're look at the science that has been done on pedestrian, not pedestrian, but really on cyclists and motor vehicle collisions and how fatalities have really shockingly increased over the past several years.

We'll talk about why people think that is happening, some of the things that we as athletes can do to try and mitigate our own risks.

And mostly we want to hear from you.

What are you doing about it?

Are you one of the people who, like me, is pretty sketched out and not particularly interested in riding outside anymore?

Or are you someone who just feels like, hey, we're all going to die sometime and I want to enjoy every minute and I just enjoy being on my bike, whatever it is.

We would love to hear your thoughts.

I hope that you will go over to the Tridoc podcast, private Facebook group.

If you're not a member, please go to that platform.

Search for Tridock podcast, answer the three easy questions.

We'll gain you admittance.

You can join the conversation there.

And we would love to hear your own experiences and thoughts on this somewhat somber topic that we will be discussing on the Medical Mailbag in just a couple of seconds.

It's also a place where you can submit your own questions for the Medical Mailbag.

That can be something related to coaching, it can be something related to injury, it could be something related to the latest gizmo or tech that you've seen, potentially something that is promising otherworldly gains to your health or to your performance.

Let us know.

We would love to do the research for you and get you an answer.

Before I get to that Medical Mailbag, I just want to briefly touch on the fact that now we are into the month of June and we are really seeing the racing season begin in earnest.

Last week we had the Eagleman take place in Maryland.

The week before that we saw the T100 in San Francisco and of course the Ironman in Hamburg, all of which have delivered really some stellar performances and are beginning to show how a lot of the top pros, many of the names that we're familiar with, are already in such incred, incredible form.

In Ironman Hamburg, we saw Kat Matthews and Laura Philipp really duke it out in a reprisal of the race that we saw in Nice last year for the world championship.

And Laura Philipp again came out on top on the strength of just an incredible run.

But the two of them battled for almost the entirety of that race and it was really quite a spectacle.

The two of them are in top form in the T100.

We saw just an absolute stellar bike ride put down by Rico Bogan, the previous 70.3 men's winner just a coup of years ago in Finland.

He managed to hang on through the run and come out on top of Yella Gaines, who was really pulling up hard from behind.

But the bike is turning out to be just an absolute crazy show on the men's side because they are going out there and absolutely shelling each other and then hanging on for the run as best they can.

On the women's side, Taylor Knibb did not win for the first time that I can remember.

Taylor came up short, at least on longer circuits, certainly in the Olympics.

Obviously she didn't come out on top, but at this T100 she finished in second behind Julie Deren of Switzerland, who was the silver medalist in Paris last year.

And as we move to the events of last weekend, where we saw the 70.3 race in Eagle, men Sam Long winning that race and just a blistering time, not surprisingly, given how the course is particularly flat.

And Lucy Charles Barkley showing up on the 70.3 circuit again, we haven't seen her doing that distance in a little while.

She had her usual stellar swim.

She blasted the bike and was able to put enough distance between her and a hard charging Chelsea Sodaro, who outran Lucy by a couple of minutes.

But because Lucy had built enough of a lead off the bike, she was able to hold off Chelsea for the win.

So we're seeing some of these big names come to the fore.

We have another big weekend of racing coming up.

We have the boulder 70.3 for the professionals, and then we also have a race in Happy Valley in Pennsylvania for age groupers.

Are you participating in either of those races?

If you're in Boulder, I will be there.

I am racing myself.

I hope that you will look for me, come and say hi.

I'd love to hear from listeners and we can have a chat about how your day went.

And also I'd love to hear what your thoughts are about the podcast.

All right, that's what I have to say before we begin the show.

Now let's get to it.

Here's the medical mailbag.

We are going to talk cycling and how it's become, unfortunately much more dangerous thanks to the lack of safety on our roads.

That's great.

The Countdown for this segment is on and Juliet says something that just cracks us both up and it's great.

And that I can't think of a better way to start the medical mailbag.

Juliet, welcome.

Thank you.

It's great to be here again.

So we have maybe not the funniest topic that we're going to be talking about today.

It's not a listener question.

It is rather something that Matt Sharp and I discussed on the sister podcast of this one, the Tempo Talks Podcast, a podcast that Matt and I put out on a weekly basis.

We had a conversation last week where we were talking about fatalities and just crashes in general between cyclists and motor vehicles.

And we had a conversation about how that has impacted our own approach to training when it comes to biking.

We got a lot of feedback in the Tempo Talks Facebook group.

There is a private Facebook group for Tempo Talks, just like there is for the Tridoc podcast.

And we got a lot of really interesting and I think provocative, thought provoking feedback there.

So I wanted to bring it here because as when we talk on the Tritiac podcast, we get into a little bit more of the science.

And there is actually quite a bit of science on cyclist and motor vehicle interactions.

And you will notice, Juliet, I think I've told this to you before.

Words matter.

And so I'm very careful to not use the word accident.

And I think I want to just bring that up right at the top here.

The word accident is verboten amongst the injury prevention physicians and researchers.

And the reason for that is because an accident infers randomness.

An accident happens for no real reason.

It's just something that couldn't have been avoided.

It just happened.

And when we think about motor vehicle cyclist interactions, that generally is not the case.

They don't happen for no reason.

There's almost always a preventable cause.

Sometimes it's excessive speed, sometimes it's distracted driving, often it's just the infrastructure as you're going to hear us get into this.

But there's almost always a way that these things could have been prevented.

And so instead of the word accident, we use collision.

So you will hear me speak of bicycle car collisions or bicycle car crashes, and if I use the word accident, slap me on the wrist.

I will.

I do think we also want to preface this a little bit by saying we are not in, it is not in our interest at all to create some sort of rage against drivers.

That is not the intent here.

I know that when I have a women's bike camp every year in Hood River, Oregon, Where I live.

And sometimes I notice when athletes come in from the outside right off the bat, they're super aggressive about drivers and they're yelling at drivers and they're gesturing at drivers.

And I have to give a little talk at the beginning of every bike camp to say, look, we're an agricultural community.

This is my home.

People have the best.

You have to believe that people have the best intent and terrible things can happen, but let's not create an us versus them right out of the gate here.

So I just want to preface it.

With that as well, what I always come back to, and we're going to get to a lot of this, but the animosity between cyclists and drivers is something that I have a really hard time getting my head wrapped around because at the end of the day, I don't know a cyclist who doesn't own a car.

And while there are many drivers who don't ride their bikes, they often, there's a very reductionist kind of approach that they have to this whole problem.

And they say, oh, they don't pay for the roads.

And I'm like, that's garbage.

Of course we do.

We all own cars.

We all pay for exactly the same fees that you do.

So this idea that we can't somehow share the real estate out there, anyways, we're going to get to all of this.

Let's just begin first with the science, which is the, the numbers.

And I have to thank Cosette Rhodes, who was my intern who took a look at this for this week.

She was sobered by what she found.

Basically, she started with the national highway and Transportation Safety Agency that keeps or compiles the statistics on this.

And just to give everybody a sense of what we're talking about, the numbers are not great.

In 2010, according to NHTSA, the fatality and Injury Reporting system tool suggested that there were somewhere around 700 fatalities nationwide.

And by 2022, this number was up to 1200.

Almost double in a pretty short amount of time, 12 years.

Now that is an absolute number.

That is not a rate.

And as I've mentioned in previous discussions we've had on other subjects, a rate is probably more important than a number.

But the problem here is we don't have good data on the denominator.

We have no idea.

And we know, yeah, we know that the number of cyclists has increased pretty dramatically through the and after the pandemic.

So there is that to contend with.

There's another.

No, that's also all cyclists.

Anybody on a two wheeled device Right.

That is correct.

It could be children, it could be triathletes, it's cyclists.

It could be anything.

Have we met?

Have we had this conversation?

Did I prep you in any way?

Yeah, that is.

That's going to come up.

Yep.

Another figure, and if you're watching on the YouTube channel, these figures will show up on the screen.

So if you're just listening to the podcast, you'll have to trust me.

So in another figure that goes even further back, shows that back in 1975, fatalities.

And again, NHTSA's numbers are a little bit.

They're not great.

Right.

They're going to be based on what hospitals are reporting.

And if the hospitals don't report accurately, then these numbers aren't going to be 100%, but they're what we have.

So back in 1975, there were a thousand.

By the time we got to 2010, that number had dipped all the way to 650 per year.

So there was big improvements.

Now, again, we don't know what the rate was.

Was this because cyclists.

Cycling was less popular and less people were doing it, or was there something that happened that just made cycling saf?

And then starting in 2010, we had that dramatic increase.

And so this graph looks very much like a V coming down and then all of a sudden really sharply going up from 2010 to current times.

So why more fatalities Now?

An article that was published on the NPR website and cited many other sources looked at just the infrastructure issue, which is the fact that our roads are designed for cars.

And this is particularly true in certain parts of the country.

Florida is a great example.

Florida has a per capita cyclist fatality rate that is much higher than most other states.

And having been to Florida several times and tried to ride my bike there, I can understand why the roads in Florida tend to be large, very wide avenues, like three lanes on each side.

And when you and science has shown that when you have a very wide road, it encourages higher speeds amongst the vehicles.

And even though many of those roads do have a dedicated lane for cyclists, just the nature of the fact that the cars are driving at such high speed is going to make the likelihood of a cyclist car interaction much higher.

And when those interactions happen, the likelihood of the cyclist only sustaining injuries becomes much less.

In addition, many roads in Florida don't have dedicated lanes and are really just made for cars.

So the more you have roads that are putting cyclists and cars in close proximity and at higher speeds for the cars, then the more likely you are to have problems.

And when we had Cycling become much more popular.

Beginning around 2019, 2020, the infrastructure didn't change.

So you ended up throwing all these cyclists onto roads that were clearly designed for cars.

There was an effort by the U.S.

department of Transportation back in 2022 to actually address this.

This was through what was called the safe system model.

And there was a national road safety strategy implemented.

And this wasn't just to emphasize cyclist safety, but also pedestrian safety.

There was a program here in Denver called the Project Zero where they were trying to reduce fatalities of pedestrians and cyclists.

That has obviously not happened, but there was a bunch of infrastructure programs that were brought in.

And unfortunately, we've seen just in the last year that a lot of these infrastructure things are disappearing.

Like, for example, in Denver, there was a lot of investment into dedicated bike lanes.

So separating cyclists from cars.

And this goes to your question, Juliet, about how much of this is commuters.

And I'll get to some of the numbers in a second, but a lot of deaths happen in urban environments, and they involve people commuting to and from work.

And when you could separate cyclists with a dedicated lane that has a barrier between the cyclists and the cars, it's been shown that you will radically improve cyclist safety.

But drivers have complained about this, and drivers tend to have larger numbers, and that ends up with a lot of these cycling lanes being taken down.

And that's what's happening in Denver, and it's happening in a lot of other cities across the country as well, which has been really unfortunate.

We have seen that who is getting killed in these interactions?

The highest peak in terms of age group is unfortunately, those who are 10 to 14 years old.

So children riding their bikes, often just on their own street, getting struck by commuters in a rush.

We know that 80% of crashes happen in urban areas, with about 20% happening in rural areas.

But that 20% in rural areas, that's crashes account for 25% of the fatalities.

And the fact that 25% of fatalities and 20% of crashes are happening on our rural roads does not track with the number of cyclists.

Right.

We have way more.

We probably have more than 90% of our cyclists within urban areas.

So we have a disproportionate number of crashes and a disproportionate number of fatalities happening on our rural roads.

And let's face it, you and I were talking just before we came on that riding on rural roads we perceive as being safer.

I know, me personally, I like to go out and ride some of the roads up in the mountains here, which Are rural thinking believing them to be safer because cars are driving more slowly for the most part, but there's no shoulder.

They tend to be winding roads.

Vehicles will come around a corner and not expect to be seeing a cyclist, and it can cause problems.

Now, there's no question there are ways to get around this, right?

You and I have talked about this before.

What do you do?

Yeah, so we talked about this because certainly Jeff and I both have athletes who just won't ride outside.

They don't feel safe.

They live in an urban area.

If they do ride outside, they have to put their bike in their car, perhaps drive an hour to get to a place that feels safe.

There's a number of reasons, but mostly it's car versus biker safety that they're nervous about.

And when it comes to racing, of course, our races are outside.

And so there comes a point at which you really do want to take the athlete off the trainer and have them train in real race circumstances so they know how to apply that trainer.

What they learn on the trainer.

All winter, you can, first of all, course bike lights right on the rear and on the front so that a driver might see something before they see or hit you.

Riding in packs is also great.

More than one cyclist out there, you can be seen more easily.

You can draw.

You can put your bike in the car and drive to a different place.

These are all good ideas.

You might pick the time of day.

Obviously pick the time of day where there are fewer cars out there.

When I'm on rural roads, I actually take the lane so I don't scoot way over to the side where I'm perhaps less seen, particularly in the shadows of the.

Whatever trees I'm going by.

I'll go ahead and ride in the middle of the lane and I'll keep my ears open for cars coming behind me.

And they'll see me.

Hopefully they'll see me because I look like more like a car from the middle of the lane.

So there are strategies.

Certainly, if an athlete has had a bad experience or knows somebody who has been hit, that's even harder.

But it.

Oh, gravel.

That was the other thing we talked about.

If you can.

If you have the opportunity to have more than one bike and you live in an area where there's good gravel riding.

Gravel's great.

I can ride for four hours on gravel and not see a car.

Everything you've said is a great suggestion.

Making yourself, of course, more visible.

We know that bright yellow is a major deal, right?

The Garmin or the.

I can't remember who somebody else now makes a rear radar type of device that lets you know that a vehicle is coming.

I find that exceptionally helpful.

It doesn't prevent anything, but it at least makes you more aware.

And I know myself, when I'm riding, I often will put myself a little bit more in the middle of the lane.

And you can't hear very well when you're riding at any kind of speed.

And so having your device alert you that a car is approaching is really helpful to then start to move out of the way so that the car can go by.

And I think that idea of riding more in the middle of the road is a great one, because, number one, you're more visible.

Number two, when you do ride on the side of the road, it tends to cause cars to try and pass you very quickly.

And that, we know, tends to result in problems because they may misjudge how close they are to you.

They'll clip you.

They may come in back into the lane too quickly, and if you're in the middle of the road, then they're forced to wait a little bit, which causes our other problem, which is this huge animosity between drivers and cyclists.

And I don't pretend to have an answer for that.

I'm not even going to try.

I think it's really unfortunate.

I think that some of the comments that we see from drivers whenever a cyclist is struck and killed is just reprehensible and vile, and I'm not going to even go there.

But it just.

It reminds me how this is a divide that we're not going to successfully bridge anytime soon.

And we have to remember that there are a lot of drivers out there who do bear us ill will.

So you can make yourself as visible as you want, but if you're riding on a road, you are definitely.

You're inviting that to a degree.

And Adam and I rode last week on a nice rural road, and the only person who gave us grief was some old guy driving the other way who we were not impeding, who we were not causing any problems, but he felt the need to blare his horn and make a hand gesture at us.

And I'm like, really?

Yeah.

Certainly.

Where I live, there's usually every few rides, there's couple a.

There's someone in a pickup truck who.

They've rigged up that thing where they can blow black smoke.

And so they come by you and they gun and they blow the black smoke.

Exactly.

And I guess what I've.

I used to get angry and annoyed about that, and I guess what I try to do now more and more and maybe it's just the environment that we live in now.

It sounds so trite, but it makes me feel better.

I just keep trying to send love out there.

I will stop at an intersection when I used to blow through it and let the other person go.

I would wave to somebody if they gave me time and space to pass, I would.

I don't know, I would.

I just try to be super friendly out there and just hope that it's gonna come back to me in spades.

That's the only thing I can think of.

Because to get angry, it's just not.

Doesn't help.

It doesn't help me, doesn't help them.

And it also doesn't help when they're driving a 2,000 pound vehicle and have the upper hand.

So I.

I know people who get really angry and will throw things and will gesticulate and I'm like, what are you doing?

Just be thankful that they're gone and don't invite any more interaction.

Right.

So as much as it's hard to bite your tongue and be the better person and not respond, I think that you really have to.

Because anybody who's willing to roll coal or do any of these things like brush by you is they're potentially willing to do worse and it's not worth inviting that.

I want to go back to something you said, which was this idea that we have athletes, because I know I do, who do a great job of doing great work on the trainer and become incredibly strong in terms of their numbers.

But then because they haven't ridden outside, they go outside and they're terrified, not because of being struck by a car, but they're terrified because they can't handle a bike.

And so they can't corner well, they can't descend well.

And so all of the great numbers that they've generated through their tremendous amount of training is wasted because they end up riding the brakes and not doing what they're capable of.

So how, how do you handle that?

I know I encourage people to try and find a way to get out there and do some practice, but I'm also chastened by the knowledge that if I tell them to go right outside and something bad happens.

I know, yeah, I think there's a bunch of things, right.

Because it's not only that they can't handle their bike, they can't eat on the bike because they can't take one hand off the handlebars, they can't reach for nutrition, they can't reach into their back pocke.

They can't remove gloves.

They can't.

You have to, sometimes you have to do fiddling on the bike and you have to be comfortable doing that.

And then not only that, but of course there's the practical application of all of that power that they have built up by using a smart trainer.

And they go outside and all of a sudden they find that their FTP is practically worthless outside because they simply can't hold the percentages of that that they can hold inside.

I think that what I try to encourage my athletes to do and everybody's a little bit different, of course, and everybody has a different comfort level.

You can start on the trainer and if we just talk about that power application P first I would say take it off erg mode.

If I give you this 70.3 set with a bunch of longer tempo pieces, take it off erg mode and ride zwift or whatever platform you're using inside off erg mode.

So at least you have to be forced to reach that power target on your own rather than having your smart trainer hold you there.

So that's one place I also some of my athletes even have trouble clipping in, clipping out.

And so I will tell them to practice stopping suddenly in the middle of a trainer ride.

Clip in, clip out, and then also going up and down from your tri bars right down, up, down, up so that they one hand hands, et cetera.

Practice feeding with your right hand, practice feeding with your left hand.

All of these on the trainer first, then going outside.

Just start on your neighborhood street and practice cornering.

Practice turning in a really tight circle.

Practice taking things out of your pockets in both hands.

Practice feeding from both sides.

Practice the up, down with the if you're on a TT bike so that you begin to feel more and more comfortable.

There's so many bike skills drills you can do in a safe parking lot somewhere where there's no cars on the Go to a church parking lot any day by Sunday, they're often empty and use the lines, use the parking spaces.

See if you can do a figure eight in four parking spaces, then three parking spaces and two, there's so many things you can do but you but we do have to practice these and we do see you and I see athletes out there at 70.3 races all the time and you think, oh my God, help that person.

They're going to get through this ride without an incident.

They look so unsteady on their bike.

So yeah, I think that parking lot comment the parking lot comment is a invaluable.

I think people don't recognize how important it can be just to take your bike out to a school parking lot or a shopping mall parking lot and just ride those figure eights.

Just ride, you know, bigger and bigger figure eights, like around the light standards and just do all kinds of things because it just gets you used to this idea of turning.

And the nice thing about a big parking lot is that you can do it at speed and you can start to learn how to really corner and push yourself to do some things that you're not generally comfortable with.

You can easily practice the nutrition getting the bottle.

You can easily practice the clipping and unclipping.

All of that is brilliant advice and I echo everything you said.

The descending is hard.

The descending is hard because that requires a place that you can do it and a place that you can obviously feel safe doing it at increasing amounts of speed.

That's not always easy.

There are some places where I live where actually the Boulder 70.3 race takes place on a terrible road, Route 36.

But off of Route 36, there are these roads that we have.

People who live here are going to recognize these roads.

But if you ride from 36, down St.

Frayne, down Nelson, down Hygiene, those are big descents where you can actually see most of the way.

You have a really good long look at the road.

And so you can get used to descending at varying amounts of speed.

And there is even some little corners and you could start practicing on those roads and get a sense of learning how to descend and being more comfortable.

But.

And the best thing you can do on that is follow someone who's a good descender and follow their exact line.

And so when they start to turn, you start to turn.

Watch how far they are from the yellow line.

How closely did they cut it?

When do they start their turn?

What are they doing with their hands on the brakes?

Right, two, one, none.

Are they.

How you know, when do they start pedaling again?

Coming out of that corner, I think that I learned to descend well by following fast, strong guys down a hill and yelling courage to myself.

When we did our bike camp last year, that was one the of one of the most.

I thought amazing things was to video three different women going down that hill.

And I'm going to name her Megan.

I hope Megan.

I don't know if Megan listens.

She's going to have to listen to this one.

She'll have to listen to this one.

Megan was just one of the most astonishing Descenders.

She just did such a wonderful job and being able to show the video of her descending to a couple of the other women.

And those women, you could see, they had light bulbs go off and just be like, oh, I see.

If only all of us could be semi professional roller derby.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

The courage part.

The courage part was taken care of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Megan, you get better soon so that we could see you back on your bike descending.

Megan's nursing a bad knee injury, so she.

She won't be doing that anytime soon, but she will be back and we look forward to it.

The gravel riding, also a huge, hugely important.

I know for me, I have found my rediscovered my love of going out on my bike by gravel riding.

There is no question there's some pluses and minuses there as well.

The plus is you are 95% of the time unmolested because you are all by yourself.

True.

The negative is that for that other 5%, it's 50.

50.

Whether or not that pickup truck driver is gonna like, really buzz you or be nice.

Oh, I haven't had that experience.

Oh, that's been mine.

Here in Colorado, they're not particularly nice, but it's still infinitely safer.

The negative is, of course, you're not riding your tri bike, and so therefore you can't practice being an aero.

You can't practice doing all those other things.

That being said, if you want all winter.

Yeah, all winter.

Winter is not.

It's not open for us.

Yeah, not in Colorado, but in the Pacific Northwest.

All winter early spring gravel racing is fantastic for skill development in the spring.

We also have some in the fall, you know, and it's also, for me anyway, always being wedded to a power meter.

Just going out and riding my gravel bike and learning to judge effort by heart rate and just RPE rather than staring at a bloody number the whole time.

And also, yeah, bike skills, descending.

Yeah, it's a big fan.

Also, you say unmolested and it's wonderful.

Yeah, it's really wonderful.

I just, I'm huge fan.

The negative for me, of course, not being where you are, is that I have to drive a long way to find gravel routes, which is.

Listen, let's face it.

The trainer I was talking to about this with Matt, the trainer is just so efficient.

Right, I know it is.

And for someone who's time poor like I am, I just zip downstairs, do my ride, and I'm done.

And there's no extra time on each end.

And that is for a lot of Time, poor age group athletes.

That's a big, big deal.

Percent agree.

Yep.

No, it's true.

For me, if I had to do this sport just using the trainer, I wouldn't do the sport.

I think that's true for a lot of people who don't want to be cyclists because the idea of being on the trainer is not interesting to them.

There's no question.

A lot of these platforms have made it much better.

Oh, and to be clear, I'm on it a lot.

Yeah, yeah, I'm on it a lot, as are my athletes.

But it's really nice to have the choice, that's for sure.

We want to hear what you think about all of this.

We know this isn't the most uplifting subject, but it is something that affects all of us.

As I used to finish the podcast by saying, Remember 1121.

That was a testament to a friend of mine, Courtney, who was struck and killed while riding her bike in Florida.

And that is a tragedy that sticks with me.

And it is something that is in my mind whenever I get on my bike to ride outside.

And I'm sure it is probably, if not Courtney, then someone, you know has a similar story.

They were struck, they were injured, they were killed.

And that probably resonates with, with you.

We had a lot of interesting conversation on the talktempo Talks Facebook group.

We would love to hear what you think and what you do to try and manage your anxieties.

Or maybe you don't have anxieties.

I know that on talktempotalks people mentioned riding on bike paths.

I had some thoughts about that.

What are your thoughts, Juliette, about bike paths?

So it totally depends on the bike path.

Some bike paths are heavily populated by baby joggers and strollers and scooters and children on tricycles and the whole thing.

And you can use them to get from A to B, but you can't really use them for efforts.

But for example, if you're like on the goose up in Victoria and you get just a little bit out of Victoria Central, you can put down some effort on that bike path.

It's completely.

It's open, there's plenty of space.

You're not going to hit anybody.

So I think that, yeah, using bike paths is great if you know it and you're not going to come around the corner and be the one causing the accident.

Couple of things there that I echo because we have some good bike paths here.

We have the Chat Cherry Creek Trail.

We have the Platte River Trail.

The problem with them is they're frequently just overrun by dog walkers with their leashes across the trail.

We have to deal with snakes sunning themselves in the summer.

That's always it's not a branch.

That's not a branch.

And then the other thing is a lot of the trails do these very sharp turns across bridges and stuff, so it's hard to open it up and ride.

That being said, it's better than nothing.

So if that's where you feel safest, then by all means.

But.

But what do you do to mitigate your anxiety about this?

Let us know.

Get into the Facebook group.

We're going to put a post after this podcast come out and we definitely want to hear from you.

Juliet, thanks so much for being here.

If you have a question also, we want to hear that put that in the Facebook group.

You can also email me tridocloud.com we definitely would like to hear what questions you would like for us to answer on the Medical Mailbag on upcoming episodes.

Juliet, thanks so much for being here.

I look forward to chatting with you on another episode soon.

Thank you, Jeff.

My guest on the podcast today is Joe Lavelle.

Joe is a lifelong athlete with a love of adventure and the feeling of being close to the edge.

And he does that by way of being a rock climber, a mountaineer, a track and a crit racer.

He moved to Colorado in the 1990s to take every opportunity to adventure in the mountain mountains here in rock climbing, mountaineering, cycling, skiing, along with the occasional trip to get some of his cherished goals in Wyoming and California as well as in Europe and South America.

He now resides in the Smoky Mountains where he is the host of the Wise Athletes Podcast for older athletes who seek longevity in sport.

He has done 165 episodes of that podcast and that marks a five year personal exploration of the ways and means to fight off the declines and in his physical capabilities and to allow him to continue enjoying the pleasures of being alive and collecting powerful memories and enable him to contribute to similar efforts of his fellow older, wise athletes.

Joe, thank you so much for taking some time from your clearly very active schedule to join me here on the Tridoc podcast today.

It's a real pleasure to talk to you.

Well, thank you.

My pleasure and thanks for inviting me.

So tell me just a little bit about your background as an athlete.

How did athletics inform your adulthood?

Yeah, I've been athletic since I was a little kid and playing flag football and T ball and all of the other things.

I guess I would say I was never the best.

And I always hated that.

And so I've always been driven to try to get better.

The other thing that I think scarred me, let's say it that way, was that I was a skinny kid.

I was tall, and I didn't look very muscular.

I looked nothing like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who I wanted to be just like.

And I have always had this drive to put some muscle on my body.

And so that stays with me through now.

I work very hard at that.

And when you were here in Colorado, you mentioned in your bio that I read from to start these cherished goals in Wyoming, California, Europe and South America.

What were some of those?

Oh, gosh.

The only thing that sort of.

That you're referring to, that falls into the category of a goal was I wanted to climb all the 14ers in Colorado.

And that took me 10 years, but I managed to get all of those done.

About half of them I had to do solo, just because who wants to do that?

Sleeping by myself under the stars, get an early start.

That changed me.

And the close calls that I had every other weekend also changed me.

And at one point, eventually, it pushed me out of the sport as I.

I decided I wanted to live and be around for my children.

But the other thing of the trips to do, the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc and some of the other big mountains in South America, they just.

Opportunities came and I just took them.

People would say, hey, we're going to go do this thing.

You want to go?

The answer was yes.

Whatever the question was, the answer was yes.

So it was really mountaineering that was driving you at that time?

I guess I always had a sense that I wanted.

I felt like I had accomplished something.

If I could look on a map and see a name of something, a mountain, and say, I stood on the top of that, and anytime I had a chance to go climb on a mountain that was a name on a map and get to the top, I would do that.

So climbing to the top, building your physical stature and appearance, those are things that have motivated you, that continues to motivate you now and building your strength.

What else is your internal motivation and how is it tied to athletics?

I guess maybe I'll start to arc this back toward why am I doing a podcast, which is a tremendous amount of work, which you would know all too well, and pays very, very badly.

So you're not doing it for the money or the pleasure of being busy.

You do it because you have a passion for it.

And so.

So for me, it started off as I moved out of the mountaineering, rock climbing, skiing stuff, I started doing.

Sorry.

I started doing cycling.

My wife had always tried to get me to do cycling.

And I said, oh my God, how boring.

That could be the worst thing that anybody could do, maybe next to swimming.

But I started doing it and found I loved it.

It was magnificent.

I can't even really describe it.

It allowed me to push myself right to as hard as I wanted.

I could suffer just the right amount.

And I had sort of some.

All of the other things that I had done gave me some strength for that.

So I was good at it right away.

Maybe not skillful, but I was powerful.

I could put out a lot of power.

And so I was in racing and all of that.

And I wanted to get better still because I wasn't winning.

You know, it was just one of the good ones, but not the best one.

And so I was hunting for information and you're reading cycling magazines and talking to your buddy and God knows if he knows anything.

And I started listening to podcasts, one of the ones that you've been on multiple times.

I used to listen to that all the time, fast talk and.

And the thing about the.

Really that and then others that just aggravated me was they were talking about young people and what should a person who 25 or maybe 30 would be an old person, how could they train?

How could they recover better?

I'm like, hey, what about me?

What about people like me?

That sort of got me down this path of just this journey of figuring out how to be as good an athlete as I can.

And then I started also.

I was in my 50s when that started, so I started on that natural decline where things just weren't.

I wasn't like sick or anything, but just things.

I wasn't what I was.

I could tell.

And my compensations, which had gotten me to.

There.

Weren'T enough.

And so the journey of how to be the best athlete I could be turned into how to be the healthiest person I can be, who can be the best athletes I can be.

And that have all come together into a focus around longevity.

You know, as you said, longevity in sport.

Me being a good athlete and capable of taking on adventures, that's important to me.

That's how this all comes together into why do I do so much for nothing?

It's clearly for something you're educating yourself by virtue of speaking to different guests that come onto your program.

If you were to list 3, 4, 5 things that you've learned over 165 episodes, what would Be some of the things that have left an indelible sort of mark and things that you've learned that you've actually incorporated into your own life or training.

Yeah, that is the greatest question.

I was smarter.

I have a really great answer for it.

But here are some things.

The first thing I've learned is knowing what to do and doing it are not nearly the same thing.

I imagine that you as a coach, you know that I don't know what the split is, but I would guess that something like 75% of the benefit of having a coach is accountability.

Somebody to get you to do the thing that you know you should do so that you can have results that you want.

Well, it's the same thing for health and longevity.

All the same stuff.

Everybody really knows what to do, at least the basic blocking and tackling.

They just can't get themselves to do it.

And so a lot of what I have learned is how to negotiate with myself and how to get control of myself and how to make it easy to be the person that I want to be.

But in terms of tips, I would say for stress management, I would say you always be working on stress management.

Find your moments of relaxation everywhere you can.

So here's a tip.

Drive the speed limit.

You can relax while you're driving if you just drive the speed limit.

You're not looking for the cops who are going to give you a ticket.

You're not worried about, you know, you're not zooming in and out and worrying about, you know, what terrible thing could happen to you.

You're just casual.

So relax.

Don't take your cell phone into the toilet.

I mean, give yourself a break, really.

And how important could that email be that you can't even relax while you're going to the toilet?

You know, simple things like that?

I think so Lifestyle things, I guess maybe is the key.

So when I started, I was a supplement hound.

I was, you know, I was a magic bullet hound.

It was, this thing is going to make all the difference, okay?

And then eventually it was, these 30 things will add up.

Marginal gains, man, marginal gains.

I'm going to be four times better human being because I got all of these chemicals that I'm taking, okay?

All right?

So here I'm here to tell you, five years into this thing that is totally wrong, that there are no magic bullets.

Consistency, good lifestyle habits, being able to do what you say day after day, that is where it is.

And all this other stuff is excuses.

It's just giving you emotional cover for not doing the things that you know you should do that would make you feel bad if you thought about it.

Well, don't feel bad, just do it.

I'm just going to give a pause for dramatic effect because that's pretty much what we preach on this program week in and week out.

So the question is, the whole reason I have a program is because there are so many companies out there marketing these magic bullets and there are so many people out there wishing that there was a magic bullet because let's face it, it's a lot harder to be consistent.

It's a lot harder to force yourself to do these things.

I think that you and I fit into the wise athlete demographic in that we are both in that age range where I think people look at us and think, oh, what a wise athlete.

They probably think something else behind wise, but that's okay.

So what have you learned about how to hold yourself accountable?

About how to actually make yourself do those things that you know you should be doing?

How do you make yourself drive the speed limit?

Okay, I don't always drive the speed limit.

I try to always drive the speed limit.

Until the last few years, I never drove the speed limit.

Never.

So I'm just.

So let's just say this, don't worry about doing it just exactly right.

Don't be trying to be perfect, don't be wondering what optimal is and try to go right there, just get better.

Look for the low hanging fruit, that's easy and you can make progress.

And if you've been doing nothing right, then you can make a lot of progress really easily, I think.

But it does all come back to being consistent.

So trying to do too much, even of the easy things to do, trying to do too much too fast and doing it as an add on to your life.

I'm going to do my life it the way I like it, but I'm going to add on all the stuff to it that isn't gonna work.

So you gotta do such a small amount that you never give up on.

And when that becomes like unconscious, you're just doing that without thinking, then you can add more.

And over time your life will evolve into this healthful life.

You will have given up the things that gave you all the pleasure that you had in your life and suddenly you're not even doing those things anymore.

And why is that?

Because the pursuit of pleasure is not the same thing as the pursuit of happiness.

All of the pleasurable things is like eating potato chips.

You feel great for half a second and then you got to have Another potato chip.

And then when the bag is empty, you're miserable.

Yes, seeking pleasure is not the answer, but you can't just give it up.

You have to slowly become that person that you really want to be.

Even if you don't know what you do know.

You want the end result, and that's how you get it.

You got to have that healthful life that you can do because you're not even thinking about it.

This is just how I do it.

So much of what you're saying resonates with me.

Obviously, I think we're on the same page in a lot of ways.

And I think when people sit down and really think about it, I think it would resonate with them as well.

But.

But in my experience, the hardest part is for people to define the end goal of where they want to be.

I think that when you look at an athletic endeavor and you say triathlon or say a bike race or mountaineering, oh, I want to summit this peak, or, oh, I want to finish a certain ride in this amount of time.

I want to be the KOM on this segment.

I want to go sub 5 and a 70.3, whatever.

Those are all measurable kinds of metric types of goals.

But when we think about our life in general, those are a little bit harder to define.

And I think being able to sit down and actually come up with those definitions and a timeline in which to achieve them, that's hard.

And that takes work and that takes some real insight and introspection that not everybody is prepared to lay the groundwork for.

And I think that is unfortunate because not doing that leads to a lot of unhappiness, because you find yourself casting about at some point going, why am I not happy?

That's why we seek these little pleasures, because we need to fill that bag of happiness.

And we're not sure why it is we're not happy.

So we just look for a substitute in these little pleasure bites.

I think that's a really apt metaphor that you get gave with the potato chips.

Not even a metaphor, but an example.

How do you think people can find the means to identify what it is that they need to do to actually make themselves happy in the long run?

Because achieving an athletic goal is wonderful, but it's not the end all to be all.

It's just part of life's journey.

Yeah.

Another incredibly important question, and I wish I had a better answer, but I have two answers, such as they are.

I would say while you're figuring out what you want to be when you grow up.

Make sure that you are filling your life with powerful memories.

You know, could be going to Hawaii and competing in the Ironman.

It could be standing on top of a mountain that took all of your courage and energy and bravery to get to the top.

It could be anything.

But make sure that you are marking time with powerful memories so that when so your life will feel full.

And then the second thing I would say is, and this just to help with how to figure out what you really want to be when you grow up.

Think of what an incredible blessing it is to be alive.

Of all of the possible eggs and sperm that could have ever gotten together and survived to whatever age you are at now, you're one of really a small percentage of the ones that did it.

And that's just an amazing gift.

So what are you going to do with that gift?

It's going to end at some point, there's no doubt about that.

So what are you going to do with that?

The time that you have between now and whatever that is, is it, you know, when you're 85 or 105 or 125 or 155?

I don't know what it's going to be, but it is going to end.

And what are you going to do with it?

I think that's the question that person has to ask.

And maybe an add on to that is you don't have to get the right answer.

Just get in the ballpark and start heading in that direction.

It'll be easy to change directions when you get better information.

Maybe you'll always be getting better information so you'll always be changing your mind a little bit.

But start heading in the right direction as soon as possible.

I like both of those answers that you gave.

The first one to me smacks of this notion of think forward but don't lose sight of seize the day.

Like you want to be planning ahead but don't ever wish for time to just move too quickly.

I find myself very much in that kind of realm right now where just a couple years away from retiring, envisioning what that retirement life is going to look like but at the same time being very conscious of the fact that like you said in the second part of your answer, life is brief.

We don't only have so much time to enjoy and I don't want to fast forward and just skip past all of these experiences that I'm having on a day to day experience right now and enjoying very much.

I think we can look ahead and plan for the future while still Very much enjoying what we're doing in the moment.

And I think we have to find that balance to be able to do those things.

And a lot of what you're saying, a lot of what you're talking about in terms of being thoughtful, being forward thinking, has to do with just slowing down and just drive the speed limit.

Don't unplug yourself when you go to the loo.

All of these things are.

A lot of it is just slow down.

Life is moving pretty fast.

It's like Ferris Bueller said, right?

Life moves pretty fast.

If you don't stop and take a look around, you just might miss something.

It's.

It was true then and it's true today.

And I think we're just having a whole run here of displaying our wisdom and making, demonstrating we really are wise athletes.

Good, good on you there, Joe.

I like that.

What do you do now as a wise athlete, someone who is doing this podcast, someone who has this background in athletics and athleticism.

You mentioned your continued desire to be strong and to look a certain way.

What are the things that you do now, keeping in mind this idea that you're trying to fill your bucket and trying to continue to move forward?

So how do you do that now?

I'll say two things.

One is that I, I am, I'm pushing.

This is based on a assumption that I feel confident in, but I don't really know that it's right.

But I don't know what else to do except take drugs and look for gene therapies, which don't exist.

So what I believe, my assumption is that my body has within it the capability to be more like it was when I was younger, more resilient, stronger.

And all I have to do to make my body be more like that version of Joe is to signal to it that it needs to be like that.

So I am working as hard as I can to give the stimulus to my body to remake itself into that higher functioning version of Joe.

You know, whereas five or even more so 10 years ago, I would really focus on one sport and I would just try to get as good as I could at that and I would let everything else go to hell.

I even remember one time somebody saying, oh yeah, cyclists get thin bones.

They don't get enough impact on their bones.

And I thought, oh, my bones will be lighter, so I'll be later on the bike.

That's a good thing.

Right?

Right.

All right, so that just how crazy I was.

So now I try to be very well rounded.

I, I lift weights now.

I only lift weights twice a week because going as lifting as hard as I can two times a week, that's all that I can do.

That's all that I can do and recover and be ready for the the next workout at the same, sometimes on the same day I do cardiovascular work.

And then one day a week I do have a boot camp of a bodyweight crossfit type of a thing, which is something that is a new thing for me.

I've been hoping to find a way to do it.

I found that.

But it doesn't end just with exercise.

In fact, I would say that if I could, I would do no exercise.

I would just play outside, using my body in every way my body can be used until I was tired and then I would give myself enough time to recover.

But beyond exercise or physical activity, I also do things to provide stimulus to my body to get better at other things, like tolerating heat or tolerating cold, or tolerating high levels of CO2.

You know that so different fuels, right?

I have to live on fat for a while or I have a lot of carbohydrates so that I can do high intensity work anyway.

I try to push on the boundaries of what my body's homeostasis can tolerate so that I am more youthful, because I could do that when I was younger.

And I'm training myself to be able to do it at my current age.

But I want my biological age to be smaller.

I have lived for a long time with the idea or the notion that age is a state of mind and that that a lot of how old we are is based on how old we think we are.

I have come to recognize as I've gotten older, that's only true to a point.

I unfortunately have come to realize that no, in fact, your chronologic age does actually have some bearing on reality.

But I do think that there is something to be said for thinking youthful thinking and behaving youthful, because it really does translate to a lot in terms of your ability to enjoy life as a more youthful person and to take advantage of a lot of the things that we used to do and we still want to be able to do in the means that we once did.

And I think that you're a great example of that.

I hope my children think I'm a good example of it as well.

And so hopefully I am.

But I think, I think that everything that you're doing with your podcast and how you're living out the learned experiences you're getting from that is just a testament to that idea.

And I think that I've spoken with other hosts of podcasts who've been here.

Dr.

Bobby is another one who hosts a similar kind of podcast where he talks a lot about the science of aging and the ways that we can forestall a lot of of the physical things and the mental things that cause us to slow down.

And I think that there's a growing number of us who all believe that it's not a matter of what you take.

It's not a matter of any kind of magic bullet, but it's rather a matter of how you live, how you approach your life, how you think about things that really has an outsized impact on who you are and how you can enjoy these years.

I have a good friend who has just retired and she talks about we have to take advantage of the Go Go years before we get to the slow go years and then eventually to the no go years.

And we have to hope that the Go Go and the slow go are much longer than the no go.

And I think that we're all doing what we can to do that.

And you are contributing, I think, in a great way with your Wise Athletes podcast.

So thank you for doing that and keep up the great work.

Any final.

Yeah.

Any final comments, Joe, for the listeners, anything you want for them to take away from this conversation that you haven't already imparted, Because I think you've given them a lot of things to think about.

I know my audience spans a large age kind of range.

There are older athletes.

There are a lot of them who are much younger.

And I think it's really important for them to hear this from an older athlete who has seen a lot of the world and seen a lot of things and is continuing to look for ways to be as youthful as he can be.

Do you have any final sort of thoughts?

I'll just say the old Teddy Roosevelt quote, which I can't even remember exactly, but just start from where you are with what you have and just do what you can.

And don't look for perfect information.

It's not out there.

Nobody knows everything.

Probably nobody knows anything, knows everything about anything.

When it comes to the human body, it's very complicated.

The science has come a long way, I think, recently, but still I don't.

Anyway, my opinion is that nobody knows everything about any part of how the human body works.

So don't be looking for perfect information.

Everybody pretty much already knows what to do.

You just got to start.

And don't try to take too big of a bite because then you can't keep it up.

But start.

Great advice.

Start somewhere and just make it a point of following through.

I love it.

Joe Lavelle is a longtime athlete.

He's the producer of the Wise Athlete Podcast.

He lives in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.

I had the great pleasure of being a guest on his podcast recently.

I hope that you will take a look look for it.

I will put the link to where you could find it in the show notes.

Joe, A real pleasure to chat with you today.

Best of luck with all of your future training and recording episodes and I look forward to chatting with you again in the future.

Me too.

Had a blast.

Thanks.

Hi, my name is Rebecca Adamson and I am a proud Patreon supporter of the Tridoc Podcast.

The Tridoc Podcast is produced and edited by Jeff Sankoff, along with his amazing interns Cosette Rhodes and Nina Takashima.

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