TriDot Podcast .144

Mark Allen: Why the GOAT Chose the DOT

Intro: This is the TriDot podcast. TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile, combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries. Our podcast is here to educate, inspire, and entertain. We’ll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests. Join the conversation and let’s improve together.

Andrew Harley: Hey folks! Welcome to the show. Now, I am always excited to take to the mic and talk swim, bike and run with the awesome guests that come on our show, but I am extra fired up today for this episode that we are calling “Why the GOAT Chose the DOT” which will make a lot more sense as we make our way through the episode. In what will probably be the coolest intro I ever give on the show, today we are joined by triathlon legend Mark Allen. Mark Allen is the most successful triathlete of all time, having won the Ironman Triathlon World Championships six times, the Nice International Triathlon ten times, and the first recognized Olympic Distance Triathlon Championship. He went undefeated in twenty-one straight races for an astounding two year winning streak from late 1988 to 1990. He’s been inducted into the Halls of Fame for Ironman, USA Triathlon, and the International Triathlon Union. ESPN named Mark as The Greatest Endurance Athlete of All Time. Mark has been coaching triathletes for over twenty five years, along the way he has discovered the power of TriDot and now uses TriDot training to coach his athletes and Mark I’m not gonna lie it’s pretty cool to be introducing you on our podcast as a TriDot coach. So Mark for the first time, welcome to the TriDot Podcast.

Mark Allen: Yeah, well thanks for having me on. That was quite an intro.

Andrew: Well thank you sir, thank you. I might be the GOAT at doing intros. Who knows, it’s a skill set so, also joining us today is Coach John Mayfield. John is a USAT Level II and Ironman U certified coach who leads TriDot’s athlete services, ambassador, and coaching programs. He has coached hundreds of athletes ranging from first-timers to Kona qualifiers and professional triathletes. John has been using TriDot since 2010 and coaching with TriDot since 2012. John thanks for joining Mark Allen and I on the podcast today.

John Mayfield: My introduction wasn’t quite as impressive as Mark’s, and honestly I’m not quite sure what I’m doing here. But I’m just going to sit and listen to Mark for about the next 60 minutes.

Andrew: Nothing wrong with that. I'm Andrew the Average Triathlete, Voice of the People and Captain of the Middle of the Pack. As always we'll roll through our warm up question, settle in for our main set conversation, and then wind things down with our cool down. Lots of good stuff, let's get to it!

Warm up theme: Time to warm up! Let’s get moving.

Andrew: Across the wide world of sports there are plenty of intense rivalries that stoke the competitive fire of athletes and fans just to another level. In triathlon the greatest rivalry is widely considered to be that of Mark Allen and Dave Scott which headlined the sport through the 80’s. We’ll hear about some of that today with Mark, but first as our warm up question today, what non-triathlon rivalry would you consider to be the greatest rivalry in sports history? So Mark, I’m taking you and Dave off the table you can’t answer yourself. What would you say is the greatest rivalry in sports history?

Mark: Oh jeez, um maybe we can come back to that, I’d have to think about it. I’m actually not a– it’s funny I love sports obviously. I am a sport participant. I don’t actually watch a lot of sports.

Andrew: Okay.

Mark: The sports that I watch though are the things at the very top, like I love watching the Olympics. I love watching NBA finals. I love watching Super Bowl. You know, anything where it’s really on the line and you can see how people turn things around. Maybe they were the game changed or in an event where it looked like they were behind, they were going to lose, and all of a sudden they’re winning.

Andrew: Yeah

Mark: Actually I’d have to think about that as far as rivalries.

Andrew: We can go to John to give you a second.

Mark: Yeah.

Andrew: If you want to just marinade on that question.

Mark: Yeah! Go to John, what's he got?

John: So I’ve always been a big boxing fan and in boxing it is Frazier/Ali. Give or take whose side you’re on. Also I’ve talked a lot on podcasts about being a golfer in a past life, so that one is always Palmer and Nicklaus and who is it there. But I think probably the greatest sports rivalry is one that I’m not really into all that much being baseball. I think for just the sheer longevity of it and the extreme rivalry that it is. That it’s been going for decades and decades, I’m going to go with the Yankees/Red Sox.

Andrew: Okay!

John: So not a baseball fan, but if I see a Red Sox Yankee game on I’ll check it out and see who pulls off the win.

Andrew: Very interesting to hear you say that, just being a friend of yours. We don’t talk baseball very often when we’re together. So to hear you mention that one is interesting. I will say when you reference Nicklaus and Palmer, Arnold Palmer has a drink named after him, so to me you gotta give the edge in that rivalry to him just for that alone if nothing else. So Mark, did I give you a second to kind of identify your rivalry?

Mark: Yeah, one of the coolest rivalries that I thought was Chrissy Evert and Martina Navratilova.

Andrew: Yes!

Mark: They had an amazing rivalry, they were so competitive, they were such different people. But now they can be together, they can hang out together, they can have a conversation, they can laugh about it, they can joke about it, they can talk about it, they can reflect on it. And I think ultimately a really good rivalry, a truly good rivalry, is one where you wanna beat that person with everything you’ve got, but at the same time you want to beat them because they, in your eyes, represent the best the sport has.

Andrew: Wow.

Mark: And so it elevates you to another level, that you would have never gotten to without that other person. So in a sense you have to almost thank them for your career as opposed to bash them because they were your rival.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: An unhealthy rivalry is one where you want to beat the person because you think they’re a jerk.

Andrew: Like the Yankees and Red Sox.

Mark: Yeah there you go! Which one’s the jerk, I’m not sure. But you know, those two women had a very intense rivalry but at the same time they had a respect for each other and out of that I think that’s where you have the most healthy competition and competitive juice and fire that you possibly can. And you know, I actually saw a 30 for 30 with them.

Andrew: Yep yep, I’ve seen it to.

Mark: It was a very very cool look back on their career and their battles together.

Andrew: And they were great ambassadors for the sport. My answer here I’m going to have to show my tennis fan bias and our podcast listeners have heard me talk about playing tennis growing up. My mom grew up loving tennis and so I just it kinda grew on me and so I’m familiar with Navratilova and Evert and for me when I think greatest rivalries in sports, I’m going with the three headed rivalry of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic. In tennis they are simply known as “The Big Three” and so from the time that Roger Federer first won Wimbledon in 2003, all the way to the Australian Open of 2022, the year we’re recording this podcast, the three of them have won 61 of the last 74 Grand Slams. That is 82% of the biggest titles in the sport for 20 years going to the same three guys. The domination between those three guys for a generation, and we talk about you and Dave, how you put the sport on the map with your rivalry just a few decades ago and there are some great guys in the sport now. In tennis the young guns who are coming up in the sport keep losing to Roger, Rafael, and Novak. I mena, then these kids are in their 20’s and they’re phenomenal players, but they can’t beat those three guys.

John: I was kind of regretting not going with the tennis answer but now I stand by.

Mark: Well and great rivalries are not one race they’re competitions that evolve over time.

Andrew: Sure.

Mark: And as the athletes evolve over time, they’re so close and on any given day you’re holding your breath because you just don’t know which one is going to come out on top.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Mark: It could be a rivalry like Dave and I had where it was basically a seven year run of competitions where I could be in the lead but he would end up winning and I could be in the lead and he’d win again.

Andrew: Yeah!

Mark: It was kind of like the neverending story, but it obviously it switched in 1989.

Andrew: Well guys we’re gonna throw this question out to you as we always do. You got three good answers here from Mark, John, and I, and I’m excited to hear what our audience has to say. So make sure that you’re a part of the I AM TriDot Facebook group. Every Monday when the new podcast episode comes out we throw this question out to you, our audience. So go find the post asking you what you think the great– outside of triathlon of course– what you think the greatest sports rivalry of all time is?

Main set theme: On to the main set. Going in 3…2…1…

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Andrew: You don’t become the greatest triathlete of all time without accumulating a career full of stories to tell. So today we’ll hear from Mark himself on how he became a triathlete, how he ascended to the top of the sport, how he conquered Kona, and how he is writing the next chapter of his legacy through coaching. Now Mark, you were an All American Swimmer at UC San Diego during your college years, and unlike now triathlon was still very much a young budding sport, as you were winding down your collegiate swim career, so how did you make the jump from collegiate swimmer to triathlon?

Mark: Yeah, well l have to back up and qualify that All American status.

Andrew: Okay.

Mark: It was– UC Santa Cruise was an NAIA school. NAIA you know small college schools.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: And so the level of swimming for NAIA was well below what NCAA was at. I don’t even know if we would have been on par with the NCAA Division III.

Andrew: So you were an All American in the lower tier of collegiates.

Mark: I was an All American in the lowest possible swim category you could be. Just to put into perspective, because I never as a swimmer– I swam from the time I was 10 to all the way through university, 22 years old, but I could never even come close to qualifying, let’s say for Olympic trials. Definitely wasn’t going to make it to the Olympics. Couldn’t even make it to Olympic trials. Never even made it to any of the top level swim meets that you had to actually have qualifying times for. So you have to understand as a swimmer, yes I swam 12 years and I had that All American status, but on the big picture of swimming I was pretty mediocre.

Andrew: Okay.

Mark: Which actually taught me some skills that I think served me well in triathlon, because I knew I would never be the guy who was newsworthy, you know. Micheal Phelps, he’s gonna be in the Olympics and he’s gonna win gold.

Andrew: Yeah, we’ve heard of him. Yeah, we’ve heard of him.

Mark: Yeah you know, more than one person has seen him on TV right. Nobody is going to see me on TV for swimming. Nobody was gonna write about me in the newspaper for the times I did. But, because of that, my fulfillment was just purely personal. You know if I could get a tenth or two– tenth or two of a sec– a tenth of a second or two faster... Dang that’s hard to say!

John: Right.

Mark: A tenth or two faster like in let’s say in the 100 backstroke, I was ecstatic.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: And it was fulfilling, and personally satisfying. So I came into sport from a standpoint of not necessarily trying to be the best ever out there, but to be the best that I could be. I think that’s an important distinction for people to keep in mind that, you know, basically there’s always going to be somebody faster than you, you know. So if your goal is to be faster than everybody else, maybe one day you might be that person, but on another day there’s gonna be ten who are faster or even maybe 1,000 who are faster. So where is your journey bringing you personal fulfillment? And I think people saw that a lot during COVID you know.

Andrew: Sure.

Mark: When races were knocked off the calendar all of a sudden people having to ask themselves “Why am I doing all of this training? I shouldn't– what’s it going for? I can’t even race.” And the people that I coach, I said “Hey, hold on here. Hold on all y’all! How do you feel when you go out and you do that bike ride?” “Actually it makes me feel kind of good.” “How about that run on the trail that you did yesterday morning?” “Man did that help me destress and just to clear my mind.” And all of a sudden people really saw  that what they’re gaining from this sport is not necessarily–

Andrew: So much more than that race-day finish line.

Mark: It’s so much more than that race day. It’s the day in and the day out where they’re continually perfecting themselves, that they’re taking control of their health, they’re helping their mental health by getting out there and just being in nature or maybe it’s a group ride on stationary trainers. Whatever it is, you're just moving your body.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: And you’re doing something positive for yourself. And that in itself is so worthwhile and so fulfilling. So it actually, for a lot of the athletes that I coach, it really broadened what is important for them through this journey that they’re on in triathlon.

Andrew: Kind of regrounded their why.

Mark: Absolutely.

Andrew: Why they do this sport.

Mark: So anyway to get to that question that you asked me like 427 minutes ago.

Andrew: Sure. Yeah.

Mark: In 1982 I had been out of college for two years and I saw the Ironman on television. It was February 1982. It was the famous finish where Julie Moss was crawling and Kathleen McCartney passed her literally like, you know, five feet from the finish line as she’s crawling on the ground, and as I was watching this show and in the very early moments of it and Jim McKay was saying “It’s a 2.4 mile swim and a 112 mile bike, and a 26.2 mile marathon” and I’m thinking these people are freaking nuts. Like how many days is it gonna take them and he said “They start at 7 in the morning and the last finisher has to come in by midnight 17 hours later.” And I thought “There’s no way a human body can do that. There’s no way!” But obviously as I’m watching these seemingly ordinary looking people cross that extraordinary finish line, it just did something to me inside and about two weeks later I just felt this calling like, I have to go there and see if I can be an Ironman finisher. You know, back in 1982 it was not the quite same process to get in. You know, you called up the Ironman office, they sent you an entry form, you sent it back with a check and a headshot, and you were in. There were about 1,000 of us that year.

Andrew: Okay.

Mark: It was gonna be a one time race, one time shot at trying to see if I was gonna be a finisher and my– Shh, shh, don’t tell nobody, but I was hoping to be one of the top 100 in that race that year.

Andrew: Out of that thousand. Okay.

Mark: I didn’t tell a soul that secret goal. But anyway you know. So that was my goal, my secret goal, and I thought you know I’d never really biked before, I’d never really run before, but those two sports came so naturally for me and in retrospect I can look back and I realize my levers are designed to bike and to run. My levers are not designed to be a great swimmer. But I had this cardiovascular engine built from all the years swimming.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely.

Mark: So the other two sports came pretty quickly and I started to see right away like wow I can actually, I feel pretty comfortable doing this.

John: So I was actually going to ask, what your– because we talked about swimming– I was going to ask what your experience with cycling and running was. And it’s just, I was not aware of that. As much as I know of your story and all I did not know. And I’m thinking that you’re just struck by the fact that you took up cycling and running at 22 years old, as you were heading into your first triathlon. And to kind of, spoiler alert, to go in to achieve what you have achieved in the decades since,that’s just amazing. Because so many athletes start their career so early on. You know, to think of it like Tiger Woods on the Tonight Show at like three years old and he’s hitting golf balls. No wonder he went on to be one of the greatest golfers of all time, but for you to start your, not even to participate in your sport that you have dominated for decades until you were largely into your mid 20’s. That’s extremely unique. That’s amazing to hear.

Mark: Well I think it just shows that there are so many different aspects of being a triathlete, and part of that is having that cardiovascular engine, and that had been built to those 12 years as a competitive swimmer. So I came into it with, you know, a big heart and big lungs and the ability to handle lactate and all of those kinds of things. The second thing that swimming did was it really gave me a base of how to train consistently and do things that some people might look at and go “That is the most freaking boring thing that I can imagine doing. How can you go up that one side of the pool, do a flip turn, come back to the other side. In about 35 seconds you have seen the entire swim course you’re going to be doing day in and day out for the next 100,000 years.” You know, and but for me I just knew that simple mundane ordinary back and forth over and over and over, that consistency, is what builds great performances. It’s never built on one workout. It’s never built on one secret training technique. It’s built on these very basic fundamental blocks of gaining fitness and gaining strength and gaining proficiency and efficiency. You know, the ideal training plan does– Life does not follow the ideal training plan. You know, we have families, we have jobs, we have days where we don’t feel so good or maybe we get sick or something. And to have that ability or that willingness to sort of adjust as you go you know, adjust, adjust, adjust, adjust. It’s kind of like you know, how do you ride a bike? You fall to the left, you fall to the right, but you’re adjusting every second that you are on that bike so that you stay in a straight line.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: So it’s the same way with the coaching and training. And I saw that as a swimmer that when I was too regimented my results were terrible. But when I– in the few times as a swimmer, when listened to my body and backed off when I was saying I’m too tired, that’s when I actually got the really good results.

Andrew: It’s interesting to me, you know, John talks about now knowing that part of your story; that you weren’t already a good cyclist and runner. What’s interesting to me is knowing so much about your backstory, I didn't realize that the famous Julie Moss crawl is what inspired you to start triathlon. Because Ironman obviously tells that story over and over again. It's a fascinating story. It was a dramatic turning point for the sport and we know that so many triathletes that raced back in that era flocked to the sport because of that singular event and I didn’t know that you were one of them. That’s fascinating to me. So from that moment where you saw that on the TV screen, was that Kona race the following year your very first triathlon or did you race a shorter event prior to or what was your first one? I guess.

Mark: Yeah that, I saw that in February of 1982.

Andrew: Okay.

Mark: And that year, 1982, Ironman held two World Championships; one in February and then they moved it to October. A lot of that was the logistics of the Island of Hawaii. In February it’s super crowded; there’s cruise ships and it was hard to host a world class event right at the time when the hotels were filled. So anyway, they moved it to October which actually was, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, kind of nice because that gave us all summer long to train…

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: …as opposed to trying to train through the winter and show up in the tropics in February and have it be just, you know, boiling hot and you’re just coming from snow. So anyway, I did a– my first triathlon was in June of that year. It was an Olympic distance race, it was in San Diego, it was part of a newly born series called United States Triathlon Series USTS. San Diego was the first event of that series that year and it went to a number of cities, same race format in each city, and I ended up– it was a pivotal race for me in the sense, and it probably may not be anything that you’ve heard about, but as a swimmer if somebody got even like a half a stroke ahead of me I was done.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: Like ahh, they’re a point away, they’re going to win, I can’t pull it back. Everything would get tight, my breathing and everything and they would win. It was this tape that would just got reinforced.

Andrew: And that’s an enormous distance in the pool.

Mark: Yeah, well and it was just that tape like I could just never come behind if somebody’s pulling away. So anyway, I came off the bike at that race in fourth place which was surprising to me like “Wow, I’m in fourth place in this event!” But then in the first mile this guy passed me his name was Dale Basescu and he started to pull away and so my swimmer tape started to go and play and it’s going “Oh, that guys pulling away from me, he’s gonna be fourth and I’m gonna to end up fifth and probably more people are gonna pass me.” Then there was like this just aha moment that took place and I just kind of stepped back out of my experience in that moment for just a moment and I said to myself, “Maybe it’s not written in stone?”

Andrew: Wow.

Mark: The race is not over yet.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: “Maybe I can turn this around. Maybe he won’t beat me. Maybe I can move back up into fourth.” And I could just feel this ease come over me, like that negative self-talk, that negative tape, was cut and all of a sudden it was replaced with possibility, and hope, and sort of like an exploration like “Let me see what I can do here.” You know my shoulders came down, my breathing relaxed, my stride opened back up, my arm swing just got a little bit easier, and all of a sudden I wasn’t worried about anything other than just seeing what could happen. And all of a sudden Dale’s not pulling away from me anymore, and then next thing I know I’m coming up behind him, and the next thing I know I pass him. And I moved back into fourth place. This would have never happened in a swimming race for me.

Andrew: Wow.

Mark: And then I went on and I finished in fourth place. First place was Dave Scott.

Andrew: Yep. Heard of him.

Mark: He was this Ironman dude, won that race six times. Can you believe that? Anyway he won. Second place was Scott Molina who in the 80’s was called “The Terminator” and one of the most dominant Olympic distance athletes ever, ever, ever. He won Ironman in 1988. Third place was Scott Tinley, who during his career won Ironman two times and broke the course record in both of those victories. And in fourth place was the newcomer named, uh what’s his name, Mark…

Andrew: What is it, yeah?

Mark: …Mark Allen. So everybody is like “Ooo who’s this dude who is right behind the three best guys in the world?” you know, and so on the surface it looked like the biggest thing of the day was that I came in right behind who, at that time, were the three best guys in the sport. Dave Scott, Scott Molina, and Scott Tinley. But for me personally the biggest news of that day was that if I could get my mind to be quiet, if I could just relax and open up and just stay engaged in whatever was going on, that I might be able to turn a race around when it looked impossible to achieve something that I’d hoped for. And that was just such a huge personal victory and a huge turning point for me and the  moment when I realized, athletics is indeed about how you train, how fit you are, but it is also about how you manage yourself not only in a race but on a day to day basis. So that was really when I also embarked on trying to figure out how do I, how do I strengthen this thing called my inner character? How do I strengthen that thing called my mind? How do I find a way to hopefully stay in a more positive space or if I can’t find positive at least get into a quiet space where there’s not that little voice going “Dude, you got passed again! He’s gonna win, you’re not gonna win!” You know– there’s that quiet. Now that’s the powerful place.

John: So I love trivia and so far I learned the first trivia. I've got another trivia tidbit out of here. So correct me if I’m wrong, but your first triathlon effectively created what would go on to become “The Big Four”.

Mark: Yes.

John: So for those unaware back in the early days of triathlon “The Big Four” was a group of men that competed and it was those four; your top four in your first triathlon being that group. So that’s just amazing that literally from your first race...

Andrew: It was a new era in the sport.

John: …in essence…

Andrew: Yeah. A new era.

John: In essence, it created what would go on to become this collection and this era of triathlon dominated by those four guys. Who in your first triathlon just happened to be numbers one through four. So again another really cool tidbit that I'm already pulling out here is just early on. So we’ve talked about rivalries and obviously in the sport of triathlon, the rivalry that existed between you and Dave Scott another member of “The Big Four” really you could call it “The Big Two” being that the two of you guys, your connection with Dave is part of your career legacy and you very much apart of his. Tell us how that rivalry began and also I want to hear about something you mentioned in the very beginning we were talking about rivalries how those great rivalries, it’s not necessarily a personal thing, it’s not a vendetta. It’s really about having a rivalry with that person because they are the best and they are going to extract the best out of you. Tell us about how the rivalry with Dave Scott started and how perhaps Dave being there, being the best in the sport for a number of years, as you mentioned six time world champion, how did he extract that out of you so that you could then become that six time Ironman World Champion and then tells us also a little bit about the personal dynamic outside of sport between you guys.

Mark: That’s way too many questions, sir.

Andrew: This is a five in one.

John: Hey, you are the greatest endurance athlete of all time, you can answer three questions.

Mark: How long is this podcast? Six and a half hours? That’s awesome.

Andrew: This is basically talk about Dave. Talk about you and Dave.

Mark: Okay yeah. So you know, so much of what took place in the early years of this sport for me was almost cosmic in a sense. I mean just the fact that I happened to turn on Wide World of Sports that one day when Jim McKay was talking about Ironman, and Julie did that finish and I was inspired and I felt this calling, like I said, to go there. It was undeniable, and it was one of those turning points in my life where, you know, some things you sort of feel like you’ve planned it out, you know? Like you go to college and then you do an interview at a job and you get a job and you feel like it’s planned. Well, seeing the Ironman on TV and just thinking, “I’ve gotta go do that.” with no logical reason and no ultimate motive other than just to see if I could do it, that was a turning point that was illogical. There was no– I wasn’t doing it for any benefit, any material benefit. It was just like I have to do that. Then to go my very first triathlon and finish one, two, three, four with, you know, the four of us ultimately becoming “The Big Four” and I think from 19– well, you know, pretty much any race we went to, one of us was going to win it for a good decade. And so just the fact that that happened that very first race when we all came together was kind of cosmic too. And then, in October of that year, my first Ironman, you know, Dave was there he was– he’d won Ironman once and he was hoping to win his second title. And you know, he’s like one of those guys who’s just, he’s so dedicated to doing everything he can to get ready for it. But I wasn’t, I wasn’t thinking I’m gonna be competitive. So anyway, the swim was brutal, absolutely brutal. I'd never experienced that amount of physical contact in a water sport other than water polo, and this was even worse than water polo, because in water polo there’s only however many, you got six on the other team, well there's a thousand triathletes in the water.

Andrew: Yeah. All starting at the same time.

Mark: All freaked out. All going “I’ve gotta get next to that line of orange buoys” you know, and I was getting poked and jabbed and held under the water. I’m like “I’m gonna freaking die in the opening moments of this stupid sport, what am I doing here?” You know, I thought this is the dumbest decision I have ever made in my life. So I panicked completely and I started sprinting because it’s like, you know, well sprinting is not the best way to pace the opening moments of an Ironman, but you go with what you can come up with. So finally kinda when I got to the turn around boat I was finally able to get into a little, there was and open spot kind of right along the line of buoys and there was this guy that seemed to be going a pretty steady pace and I got in his feet and I’m like “Okay just freaking relax this is the only time you’re going to do this stupid event.”

Andrew: We all say that, yeah.

Mark: Yeah, you know, and so I made the turn, and I’m headed back, and I’m kinda thinking “Wow I wonder where the leaders are?” you know and I wasn’t really in that big of a hurry and so I just stopped for a sec and treaded water and all I could see was this guy that I was following. I thought “Man those top guys are so far ahead I can’t even see them”. When I came out of the water still on the feet of this guy I looked up at the timing clock and it had, the timing clock had your time and then your position when you crossed underneath it. And the number next to my time was number two.

Andrew: Okay.

Mark: So I’m thinking “I’m on the freaking feat of the leader of the Ironman.'' I'm thinking “This is a good sport!” You know, and so I ran– I’m kinda like “I wonder who that is”, I ran up and I looked over and it was Dave Scott. The best guy in the world, and I’m thinking “Well maybe because I was a swimmer, maybe triathletes aren’t that good in the water.” I didn’t know. Halfway through, you know, when we made it to the turnaround at Hawi, I’m still with Dave. We have a five minute lead on the next group of guys. We make the turn, it’s this howling tailwind all the way down and then finally the tailwind stops and then we start to slow. I had never actually talked to Dave before so I figured huh, you know, perfect time for–

Andrew: Let me say “Hey!”

Mark: –perfect time for an introduction. Yeah. So I pull next to him and I go “Hey Dave, when we’re done with the bike do you wanna go for a run?” and he’s like “Who are you?” You know, and so anyway, and I said “Well my name is Mark Allen” and he goes “I think I’ve heard your name” and he clicked his bike up into a big gear and he just took off. And so I thought alright.

Andrew: He’s done chatting.

Mark: He did not get into that conversation one bit. And so I guess he had something busier he had something else...

Andrew: Sure.

Mark: …he was trying to do.

Andrew: He had somewhere to be.

Mark: So anyway I clicked my bike to go catch him and I hear this big clanking, screeching sound and I looked down and my derailleur had snapped off my bike. So I was faced with, you know, almost 50 miles of having my chain in the biggest gear there was no way– it would’ve blown my kneecaps off. And so I didn’t achieve that dream of crossing the finish line. I didn’t even make that first goal, but I had been with the best guy in the world for a few hours of racing.

Andrew: Yeah!

Mark: And so that was when that dream was born, like maybe I can be the champion of this great race. So that too was almost cosmic in the sense that, you know, here I’m in this position where I have a goal, but I don’t achieve the goal, but something greater comes out of it even though the first goal wasn’t achieved and it was with Dave Scott and he ended up winning that year and I didn’t even finish. It seemed to be like a foreshadowing of things to come, you know, where he and I would be together or we would be racing each other and we would be in the front of it and he would end up winning. And that’s what kept happening year after year after year after year.

Andrew: And then your rivalry famously peaked at the Ironman World Championships in Kona of 1989. It’s the greatest race our sport has ever seen to date. I don’t think anybody argues against that. It is the most talked about race in the history of our sport to this day. You know, walk us through that breakthrough 1989 World Championship race.

Mark: To set the stage I should just back up a little bit. You know, I had competed in Kona at that point six times. I had finished second twice, third once, fifth twice.

Andrew: A little bit safely in the top 100.

Mark: Yeah, other than the DNF the first year, I was top five every one of the other years. I could be– I could race it hard and be in the lead, but then I would blow up, or I could race it conservatively and never be ultimately challenging for the lead and I couldn’t find that middle ground where I'm racing hard, but I’m not bowing up. After the sixth, if you want to call it loss, not being able to win I’m like, maybe I’m not cut out for this race because I was winning everywhere else, I was beating Dave in other races, other places. And my family and friends were like “you know what you’re not, there's something about it. Maybe the Island doesn’t like you. Maybe you're just not cut out for that distance. Maybe it's the combo of the heat and the wind and everything. Just go where you know you can do it!” and I was–

Andrew: Yeah go win everything else and just let Dave have the Island.

Mark: Exactly, right! At some point you do have to ask yourself “Maybe my dream, or my vision, or my goal is not achievable.” And so if it’s not I have two options: I can either walk away or I can go back with a different goal. In reflecting before I started training in ‘89 in January I realized I have to go back there another time, but the goal is not going to be to win. The goal is to find that perfect race where I swim strong, I bike strong, I run strong and I don’t blow up. It truly became a personal goal once again, you know. Get that extra tenth or two off your time, off your 100 back. Get that extra little bit out of yourself in Kona and don't worry about everybody else. You can use them to help you get that extra, but it doesn’t matter where you finish. And so floating in Kailua Bay just before 7:00 I just felt this ease that I had never felt there before. Like there was pressure, yes, but the pressure wasn’t to win. The pressure was to just put it together.

Andrew: It was just that different mindset.

Mark: Totally different.

Andrew: It changed everything.

Mark: And it was the first year that when I was floating in the water I actually looked around and I saw, you know, the beauty of the– you know there's the kind of like the ridge line of the mountains right there, and you know the sun’s coming up, and when the sun comes up there’s this– you know, when everybody started at 7 you know, the water has this just deep blue color, and I was noticing that. And it was like the first time that I actually noticed where I was at the start line. Which is crazy to say.

Andrew: You didn’t stop and smell the roses, but while racing you smelled the roses basically.

Mark: Exactly. So I spotted Dave and I just stayed on his feet the whole swim and I just thought you know, “I’m gonna to just follow the guy as much as I can today. I’m not going to do any heroics. I’m not going to go out the front.” He knows how to pace it, I don’t and I’m going to try and learn from the best! And there were a lot of points on the bike where I really felt good and I was ready to pull away, and I’m like “Don’t be a dummy, dummy.” You know? “Be a smarty, you smart ass”, you know. Just suck it up, stay in here, see what he does, see how he does it. You’re feeling good, that's fine. Keep waiting. Keep waiting. Keep waiting. We came off the bike together and running through town the way the course was back then, you had a 10K straight all along Alii Drive staring at the very south end of it and coming up all the way till you get to Palani Road then you get up that hill to get out of town. Then at that point we ran ten miles straight out from town past the airport, which if you’ve– the only way to describe it is that it’s you feel like you have run so far from the town of Kona that you’re going to run off the edge of the earth. You’re so far away that you don’t have any kind of mental safety net like “I’m going to make it back somehow.” Even when you get to the turn around you’re like “I don’t know how I’m going make these ten miles all the way back”.

Andrew: Because it’s so far to go.

Mark: A ten mile straight stretch is just, it’s mind boggling. And on the way out to see the turn around there’s this gigantic inflatable Budwizer can because Bud...

Andrew: Sure, yeah, of course.

Mark: …they were the sponsor. And so you can see this giant inflatable for what seems to be forever and your running, and your running, and your running and it doesn't seem like it’s getting any closer, you know. But then finally you do get to it. But anyway Dave and I were running together and he set a pace through town that was just absolutely blistering. We were going somewhere a 5:40 pace and, you know, I had never run that fast before in Kona and I thought “Well if I blow up at least I’m going to go down with the best guy in the world.” right. And he had actually had the birth of his first child, or well he didn’t have the birth his wife birthed their first child; he was involved in the process I’m sure, but anyway you know, and so anyway. She all of a sudden, we’re running along Alii Drive and you know everybody’s cheering and this whole stretch is just lined and mobbed with people and all of a sudden, Anna his wife at the time, jumps out of the crowd and she’s got this newborn baby and she’s holding it up like this and she’s running along the side of us and she’s going “Go Dave, go Dave, go Dave!” and I’m looking at her and my first thought is, first of all how is this woman running a 5:40 pace holding a baby?

Andrew: Incredible.

Mark: She should be running with us!

Andrew: What an athlete!

Mark: I’m like “Holy guacamole Batman!”

Andrew: It’s funny that like, that’s what you had the presence of mind to think about in that moment.

Mark: Yeah! And then I’m thinking wait a minute and it’s the only thing I said to Dave that whole day, I turned to him and I go “That’s not fair” because I knew that he was getting pumped up seeing his son you know. Anyway so then we made it Palani Road and then we headed out onto the Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway and finally he kinda slowed his pace down and it got a little more like sane. I’m like “Okay” and we’re side by side and nobody’s with us as far as athletes, you know. At about ten or twelve miles, I think it was about twelve miles, we passed the last person who had been ahead of us. We were on a pace that was going to shatter his previous world record and one of us was going to be the champ. And it was the latest in the marathon where we actually were running together. I had been in the lead with ten miles to go in the marathon, I’d been in the lead with three miles to go in the marathon, but it wasn’t like we were running together. In those races I was falling apart and Dave just passed me like I was standing still. So we’re together and we’re on this highway there’s all the room in the world and we keep bumping into each other.

Andrew: Un-huh, sure.

Mark: Because neither of us wanted to give an inch, neither of us wanted to give a second, and you know people ask me “Well, what did you guys talk about?” and I go like.

Andrew: Nothing.

Mark: What am I going to say “Dave can I get you another Gatorade at the next aid station? How about a massage buddy, looking a little tight up there.” You know, but the thing is when you’re in a race like that you are in such an altered state, such a different state, and you sense things so differently than you do normally. And I felt like I was so sensitive on a certain level, like I could just feel when he was strong, I could feel when he was wavering mentally, I could feel when he was trying to figure out how he was going to do it. So I didn’t need to ask him, and it was like he was broadcasting it and I was the antenna picking it up.

Andrew: Wow.

Mark: Finally I could tell he was getting impatient because he started to surge, and then he’d back off, and he’d surge, and then he’d back off, and each time he did it it got harder and harder and harder to stay with him and finally this one surge that he did, he didn’t back off and I’m like– it’s close to six minute pace– and I’m like “He’s going to hold this for the rest of this marathon.” And it completely blew my mind because nobody had gone that fast ever before in the marathon and then you know that little zen mind just left and it’s like “Oh no, Dave Scott is going to win! My legs are killing me! I got blisters! There’s blood in my shoes! I can’t do this! I should have done different training! I should have never come back to this thing!” you know like “Waa waa waa!” I was whining! I’m whining! In the middle of the marathon, to myself. And finally it got so hard to stay up with him that I couldn’t even hold onto the negative thoughts anymore. And my mind went quiet and literally in the instant when my mind went quiet, I recalled an ad that I had seen in a magazine two days before the race and it was an ad for a workshop that was going to take place in Mexico teaching about a traditional way of life from one of the traditional peoples that lives in central Mexico the Huichol People. They live a very traditional lifestyle. They don’t have electricity, they don’t have running water, but they have a very deep spiritual tradition where they really value developing a relationship with nature. And as a human being, being outside and feeling good and honoring the sunrise and sunset and they have– I would later learn that they value the ability to quiet your mind. They say when you stop thinking and you just are quiet, then you can hear the answers to the big questions in life. And I would also learn that they have a saying that says “It’s never over until it’s over” meaning no matter how impossible something looks right in this moment, take that next step, trust, keep going, because it can turn around just like that. But anyway, in this ad were photos of the two Shamans or medicine men that were going to lead this workshop, one was 110 year old Huichol Shaman Don Jose Matsuwa the other was his adopted grandson Brant Secunda and they had this look on their face that was the most amazing combination of being peaceful, but also powerful. As an athlete that’s the space that you’re really, you’re trying to find to have your best event, your best performance to pull it out. When you have a sense of peace or sense of steadiness where you’re not being swayed back and forth by whether you’re feeling good or not good. You just have this peace that’s very steady, but at the same time you sense your strength. You sense that you're going to find the answer. You're going to get to the finish line. You're going to overcome this moment where it feels so challenging you don’t know if you can keep going. You're going to find the answer. You have the strength within you somewhere. Bring it out. And I’d had sort of that strength feel before in Kona and I had the peace feel, but I had never had them both together.

Andrew: They are never both together at mile 145.

Mark: They were never together in the Big Island of Hawaii. And so anyway Dave’s surging, my mind goes quiet, and in that moment of quiet Don Jose’s image came back to me and it’s like, it was almost like I could see him just floating right up there, you know. This 110 year old Huichol medicine man Shaman. I mean, somebody who lives to be 110 years old, they’re doing something right, okay. So anyway and I could just, I could feel that peace and that power that sense almost like just pure life force coming into me from that memory that image. And I just felt this ease wash over me and I could feel myself enter that sort of champion’s mindset state. That place where all of a sudden you’re aware that the finish line is way down the road, you’re aware that there’s a lot of miles to cover, but your energy is right here. It’s in this moment, it’s taking this step, it’s taking the next one, it’s breathing, it’s letting go, it’s relaxing, and it’s feeling confidence that has nothing to do with the result, but just more the confidence that I’m going to stay 100% present and embraced and engaged in this experience no matter how it goes. And all of a sudden it got easy to stay with Dave.

Andrew: Wow.

Mark: And about a mile later we’re running together and I’m like “Oh my God. I can win this. I can win this!”.

Andrew: I’m still with him.

Mark: I’m still with him.

Andrew: And I feel good.

Mark: But my legs were killing me and I had blisters that had popped on the arches of my foot.

Andrew: Oh very fun.

Mark: And it was so painful that I didn’t know if I could take another step. So now I’m having this battle with myself. I know I can win, but I don’t know if I can keep going. I know can, but I don’t know if I can take another step. Just because we know we can do something we still have to do it. We still have to put in the 3,427 steps or whatever's left in this marathon…

Andrew: Yep.

Mark: …to do it. So we stayed together mile after mile after mile and it did start to get faster and faster and faster and finally– you know, kind of another illogical thing that was random that happened, as we were approaching the last long uphill toward town, right before you dropped right back down that steep hill Palani Road to go then the last little loop to the finish line, we knew that the las uphill was going to be the breaking point. The rest of the course was rolling up and down, but it wasn’t enough for either of us to break the other one. We were both too strong. I was stronger on the uphills, he was stronger on the downhills. It was just clear, we both knew this, and we both knew that that hill was where it was going to have to take place. At the bottom of the hill was this aid station and you know conventional wisdom, the “smart thing” to do is to get one last little glass of something because you’re running on fumes at that point.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: And so even if you can get in ten or fifteen calories something absorbs, it might make the difference between walking and winning.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: And so we had also– both of us had seen that the first one of us that got to the aid station got what they wanted and the aid station volunteers, because we were so close, would get jumbled a little bit and the second person may not get everything they wanted. So Dave hustled his way to the front. He threw out his hand to get one last glass of whatever he was drinking and I started to come in behind him and right as I went to reach I hear this (clap) and something just said (clap) “GO!” and it was like it came out of the universe and I pulled my hand back and I just started sprinting.

John: As best as you can at the end of an Ironman.

Mark: Right.

Andrew: With all you had in that moment.

Mark: Not very impressive I guarantee you. I started sprinting and literally in the three or four seconds it took for Dave to reach over, grab his glass, and look back I had put about, almost two meters on him. And you could see it in the footage when he looks back and he sees that gap that had opened up, it completely blew his mind. He was the best from hour six onward in that race, but now all of a sudden here we are at eight hours and somebody is pulling away from him in his zip code, in the place where he’s shown historically every single race…

Andrew: He'd never seen it happen before.

Mark: …he’s the strongest. He’d never seen that happen.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: And so he starts to rock. His shoulders come up. His breathing is up instead of down in his stomach. I mean everything that could go wrong was going wrong with his form. And I made it to the top of the hill before him. I raced down to the bottom– I knew I had to get to the bottom of the hill before him because he was so fast on the downhills. I got to the bottom, I looked back, I couldn’t see him, and then I knew I had him.

Andrew: And then you knew.

Mark: I made that last loop to the finish line and the last stretch on Alii Drive and there were thousands of people, you know just cheering and I could tell that they were cheering because they were not only happy to see me win, but they were happy because they knew that it wasn’t just this race. This was a journey of seven years that it had taken to get me to this point and they were cheating for that journey as well. I won. I crossed the finish line. Dave had his best Ironman that year ever in his career. He broke his previous world record by almost 18 minutes and I did my best time to that date by nearly 30. And the difference in our times was very, very small. A mere 58 seconds.

Andrew: After all day of racing. I know you’ve told the story many times over the years and it’s fun to hear you tell it, you tell it well, you tell it like it just happened. For you, are these moments– you talk about the moment on the hill, the moment where you first said “Hi” to Dave in that first Hawaii race you did and he didn’t know who you were– like when you recall these stories are they still vivid memories for you? I mean are you still picturing what it was like to be in those moments, or is it just kind of the tales of old that you know how to tell?

Mark: Naw, it feels like it had just happened, you know, a few weeks ago.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: And it’s funny because I asked my son, my son was born in November of 1993, my last Ironman was 1995, and he was at the finish line of the Ironman in 95 and there’s footage of him and you know I cross the line and I give him a little hug and a kiss. So he was right about two years old when that race took place, and I asked him, I said “Do you remember that moment?” and he goes “Well I kinda do, but I don’t know if it's because I remember or because I’ve seen the video so many times.”

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: And so anyway, it’s probably a little bit like that for me you know. I have told these stories many times over the years and I remember a number of years ago my mom asked me she goes “Are you going to be telling those stories when you’re 60 years old?” and I was like I don’t know 45 or something, so I was like “I hope not” But now.

Andrew: Here we are.

Mark: And here I am, I’m 64 and I– but I still love telling those stories, because I think they’re timeless and they’re– Yes they took place in the arena of sport but they’re human stories. And you know I think a lot of times people see the one moment where you succeeded and they forget that you had many moments were you didn’t and they forget that you had thousands and thousands of hours that were put into preparing for that one moment. Ultimately very few people actually know that I went there that year, not really with the goal to win, but the goal to perfect myself to the point that I could have my best race. And that’s such a human story because ultimately that’s what we’re all trying to do, is to have our best performance.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Mark: And it’s certainly okay to use your competition to pull that out of you. Had Dave not had the race he had that year, I would not have had the race that I did. There’s no way I could’ve gone 8:09.15 or 14 or whatever it was, by myself.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Mark: There’s no way I could’ve done it. Third place was three miles behind us, at the end of that marathon, Greg Welsh.

Andrew: So Mark, there was a lot more to your career than winning Kona in 1989, and in fact you have a saying “One, six, 21, infinity” which very stylishly and very succinctly gives a nod to your most meaningful accomplishments in this sport. What do each of those numbers stand for?

Mark: Yeah “one, six, 21, infinity” the CEO of Mark Allen Sports, Scott Zagarmino, he’s the one who’s really helped me revive my career in coaching and presence in social media and you know develop partnerships like with TriDot and one day he emails me and he said “What do these number mean? One, six, 21, infinity.” and I'm looking at it and I’m thinking “I don't know, is it some math equation for the end of the earth or something?” you know. I couldn’t figure it out and he goes “That’s your biography.”

Andrew: Wow.

Mark: “That’s your biography.” And I go.

Andrew: That’s it?

Mark: Yeah, and so the “One” is you know the first ever ITU Olympic Distance World Champion. The “Six” is the six Ironman victories, six wins and six starts. The “21” is a 21 race winning streak that started the end of 1988 and went all the way through the end of 1990. Then the “Infinity” is The Greatest Endurance Athlete Of All Time, that’ll never be taken away.

Andrew: And that’s not subjective. That is an objective title where you were declared and John you know, you were actually reading about this and telling me about it, that ESPN did a formal thing where they very objectively looked at all the different athletes from over the years and looked at their careers, looked at their accomplishments, and declared you to be the greatest endurance athlete of all time. Right?

Mark: Yep, something like that.

Andrew: Was that a pretty cool title to receive?

Mark: I was shocked when I even heard that– somebody called up and said “Hey ESPN they’re trying to figure out who the greatest athlete of all time.” They've got 16 categories, one of them is the greatest endurance athlete of all time. There’s five athletes who are being voted on in each category and you’re in the category one of the five in the category of the greatest endurance athlete. And the voting was taking place, it was, you know, a world wide pole. I actually hadn’t gotten the results yet and I was on a plane down to Chili– sorry Argentina– Brant Secunda, who I spoke about was in that magazine article, he and I were teaching a workshop down there. They had a training camp called “Fit Soul Fit Body” and we got off the plane and I turned on my phone and I looked and there it was “Mark Allen won Greatest Endurance Athlete of All Time.”

Andrew: Where?

Mark: And I looked over at Brant and I go “I won” and he’s like “No way!” You know, because he was so integral in helping me in the years– I met him shortly after that first Ironman win and he really helped me work on that human side of racing and helped me to be able to go to The Big Island and not be intimidated by the intensity of that land. I mean you know how it is like some places you go you kinda just feel like “Ahh, this is so nice and peaceful and calm” and you go to Hawaii, The Big Island of Hawaii and you get off the plane and you just go “Wow! This is intense”.

Andrew: You feel the humidity in the air, you feel the heat just radiating off of everything.

Mark: Yeah, and you just feel the intensity of that place and it took me a lot of time and a lot of work to be able to go there and not feel like I was shrinking and wanting to hide from it, but to be able to just feel like, “Wow! Let me put my arms around this and embrace it”. And ultimately that was what was such a huge part of my success in all of those wins.

John: So once you were named The Greatest Endurance Athlete of All Time by ESPN, which is obviously one of the leading authorities in sport– In fact I think they declare themselves the authority.

Andrew: “The worldwide leader in sports” is the title there.

John: So it became like a bracket-style competition and just the company that you kept in this bracket-style tournament– Micheal Jordan, Tiger Woods, Micheal Phelps, Muhammad Ali, of course Mark Allen on the list and Bo Jackson who would go on to be named The Greatest Athlete– Roger Federer, Pele, Tony Hawk, Carl Lewis, Wayne Gretzky– the greatest of the greatest. Then in this bracket-style tournament you went up against someone who referred to themselves as the Greatest and someone who, I’ve loved to study him and his career and I’ve got to say of you’re going to be beat by anyone what a– fortunately I’ve got to say you’re probably the only person to ever have been beaten by Muhammad Ali that walked away without a bruise. So yeah. Joe Fraziur and George Foreman and all those guys, they took it a lot worse than you did. So if you’re going to lose to anyone, obviously Muhammad Ali is a good one to be taken out by.

Mark: Yeah, as we were talking there were 16 categories of athletics. You know the greatest boxer, the greatest– you know different categories. And once each category had its winner then we were put in a person-to-person matchup. So there were eight matchups in the next round. So it was, you know, me against the greatest of all time, Muhammad Ali and when I saw that I was pitted against Muhammad Ali in the next round on who’s better of these two. I was like “This is one competition that I do not want to win. I do not want to be voted ahead of Muhammad Ali.” You know because I, first of all, I totally respect the guy. He’s an amazing athlete, but maybe even much more amazing as a person and so anyway when that voting came through and Muhammad Ali went on to the round of four I was like “Phew, thank God!” you know it was one competition that I was glad that I lost.

John: That’s beautiful humility and respect. That’s impressive.

Andrew: And there’s a couple of other things in that “One, six, 21, infinity” I want to point out because, for anybody who follows the professional scene today, I mean people don’t, on the men or women’s side, whether you’re talking ITU or whether you’re talking Super League Triathlon or you're talking Ironman events, nobody is winning 21 events in a row over a two year span. You know, those pro’s are so close. You know you’ll have, I think just back to this past race season, you know Lionel will beat Sam Long at one event and they race each other a month later in Coeur d’ Alene and then Sam Long beats Lionel and just the back and forth nature of it. It's so hard to win a couple races in a row against the top level competition, nonetheless 21. So for you to just essentially go on a two year tear where no one could beat you at any distance at any event it didn’t matter where you were, that's incredible to me. And the one and the six you know where we get into that one was you winning the very, very first Olympic distance championship race. This was before this was an Olympic sport. There was no Olympic gold medal for you to win. So you won that in the same time span you were winning Ironman. We see the pro’s today, a majority of them take the route where they race short course and as they develop their engine, they get a little bit older, they make the transition to long course. People don’t race these days short course and long course at the same time and be good at both. And you were dominating both distances, the Olympic distance and the full Ironman distance at the same time. The only thing I can think of, John, that’s even remotely comparable is for people who follow the pro scene today, Kristian Blummenfelt a year or so ago won the Gold Medal at the Olympic distance and then just recently won the Ironman world championship in St. George and that was what John like a year apart?

John: Uh-huh. Yeah it was close to– well it was from the Olympics the delay being last summer in July to Ironman World Championships being held in May. So about ten months with a season in between there. So that’s something to consider as well, is there was recovery, there was additional build, there was adjustment to go from that Olympic strategy, that Olympic fitness, to then be able to prepare specifically for competing at that mark. Your competitions were much closer than that to where you were effectively having that fitness to go with the short course and the long course at the same time without that luxury of recovering from one and then building back up as kind of switching gears to that. So it was what, just a couple months in between those two victories?

Mark: Yeah the ITU World Championship, it was in Avignon, France and I had a lot of great races in France so it was really special for me to win that. We didn’t have the opportunity to win an Olympic medal because it was not in the Olympics yet, that didn’t take place until Sydney in 2000. That ITU World Championship in 1989 was the first big cornerstone foundational piece that then propelled triathlon to be in the Olympic process. That was like the thing that they had to do to start really getting the process going to get into the Olympics. So it was a pivotal race for the sport to have that world championship. But that was in August and Ironman was in October three months later. So, you know, in sort of relative terms my career and what we had– and that race had more competitors than the Olympics do simply because just the way they opened it up. It was still you were racing for your nation, you had to qualify, all these different things, but it was a huge field and it was the first time ever that every single top level Olympic distance athlete had gotten together and competed. So it was a real honor to win that. ITU Olympic distance done, the next day we started into Ironman training, literally the next day, the next day.

John: Since retiring from racing in 1997, you have been coaching in triathlon which is something a lot of professional athletes do after their racing days come to the end. But there’s something that’s quite interesting, another interesting bit of trivia, is that you aren’t the one who instigated your coaching career. Tell us about that, how you got into coaching.

Mark: Yeah, it was last year that I was competing, I was contacted by a triathlete in Chicago and he said, “Hey would you like to coach me? I’m looking for a coach.” and I’m thinking I’ve never coached anybody, but I thought “Well, hey this will be fun.” So I coached that guy that year and it was training plans that were sent to him on an Excel spreadsheet, you know that was high tech back then.

Andrew: Sure was!

Mark: That was as techy as you could get, you know. I didn’t, I think I might have actually printed them out at first, you know.

Andrew: Okay.

Mark: And then finally I started sending the file. But so one person turned into three, turned into five, turned into ten, and it became clear very quickly that if I was going to be coaching people by putting together Excel spreadsheets that I wouldn’t be able to coach enough people to make a living at it. So I knew there had to be– it took a while to figure out how I was going to do it in a way that was sort of a little more scalable, you know, so that one I could coach more people one without killing me and two so that I would actually have time to service them as a coach not just give them training plans.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: And anyway the short version of that quest turned into having a software program put together that launched in 2001 where the training was actually generated through software. And you know I had a programmer kind of basically download my brain and turn it into you know code, and that worked for quite a while, but you know as everything things evolve.

Andrew: Sure.

Mark: And technology increased and all of a sudden I couldn't put enough bells and whistles in there to keep up with the data that people were tracking and wanting me to look at, and to analyze, and to utilize, and to modify their training plans with. So I moved over to another platform for a while and then eventually now you know launching on TriDot, utilizing what it’s been, you know, 15, 17 years of truly data driven development and understanding how data from yesterday will enable you to tell someone what’s the best thing to do tomorrow.

Andrew: You’ve been coaching for over 25 years now and so basically you're bringing the legendary experience of the GOAT, to the data driven technology training of the DOT and so for the athletes that you’re currently working with and for any athletes you add on you know, what excited you the most in what you’re going to be able to offer them as Coach Mark coaching them through TriDot?

Mark: What happens a lot of times with coaching is you put a training plan in place and people start going through it and subtle things are going on that maybe you don’t notice or they don’t notice that are little tiny red flags that are saying “Oops this is a little too much, or their going to hard, or thor going to long, or not getting enough recovery.” TriDot sees that and it subtly changes the future so that you keep from going off that cliff.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: Well normally people start to go off the cliff before they comment to me or I notice what’s going on in their training and at that point you have to back them way down to pull them back up out of the ravine...

Andrew: Yeah totally get it, yeah.

Mark: …to then finally be able to relaunch and to build back into where they should be. That’s going to be something that is definitely– that will not happen if at all very rarely with you know with TriDot because of the way their software looks at things. That’s going to be huge for me. Secondly, they’re going to be given advice on how to do what their doing based on, like I said weather you know which I could say “Well it’s hot, you’re going to have to go slower, you know your pace won’t be as fast.” But that’s very general. TriDot’s going to give them more specific like pacing, so that it’s just going to be easier for the athlete to not have to think about stuff.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: You know and just to go and do it and to execute. Then also what I’ve seen with the few things that I’ve done with the TriDot community is, it’s just a fun community and people are excited about it.

Andrew: We sure think so.

Mark: Yeah you know, the GOAT and the DOT.How can it get any better than that? Kind of thing right?

Andrew: It can’t, yeah it absolutely can’t. And what I think is really cool, Mark, in hearing your career, hearing your accomplishments, hearing you talk about Kona and reliving some of those stories, you’ve set a lot of big goals for your career and you accomplished a lot of great things through your career. Now you’re helping other athletes do the same for them. Is the sense of fulfillment any different? Like what is it like for you as a coach, to help somebody else attain their dream and their goal?

Mark: Let me just say that at the races I’m way more nervous than I ever was when I competed.

Andrew: Yeah!

Mark: You know as a coach when the gun goes off there is nothing you can do to help that athlete out. And so as a coach you have to help them with everything you possibly can before the gun goes off. You know as an athlete competing you’re in essence in total control of what’s going on out there, even if you're falling apart at least you can manage it and deal with it, you’re figuring it out. But as a coach all you can do is just watch and like fret and hope, you know. So it’s way more stressful on race day being a coach than it was to be an athlete. But it's also super fulfilling to take people, especially, you know, if they’ve had some problems in the past. Maybe they got injured a bunch, or maybe they said they trained really well, but then they had lousy races and you know the dots weren’t being connected right. To bring them into you know your coaching, change the things that aren’t working, which usually aren’t many things with an age group athlete, it’s usually only like one or two things that they’re really wrong.

Andrew: And it makes all the difference in the world if they fix it.

Mark: It makes all the difference in the world and so and then all of a sudden to see them you know to get those notes from them in the comments saying “Hey,” you know “I’m seeing, I’m finally seeing improvement here!” you know “I’m not burned out,” you know, “My injuries have gone away, I’m sleeping better”. You know and then to get one of those race reports like “I just had the best half Ironman in my life!” You know “I beat my PR and my PR I did seven years ago!”

Andrew: That’s so cool.

Mark: Now that kind of a thing.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: And so taking the things that I know and blending that and melting that and mixing that with the knowledge base that TriDot has put together over such a long period of time with so many athletes and seeing what actually really works and having you know a computer do a lot these long term thinking, complex thinking things, that I don’t know if any human beings brain could actually do.

Andrew: Mine doesn’t.

Mark: Yeah you know, to get up in the morning that’s a big complex task for me. So and I hear you like to sleep in too, so.

Andrew: I sure do!

Mark: Brother!

Andrew: Yep, you’ve heard it, yep Mark and I are, I’ve found another triathlete who is not a morning person, and it is Mark Allen. So I feel validated. So Mark for our listeners who have heard this conversation and listened to you talk, they’ve heard of you, they know your story, they know who you are. Are there spots on Team Mark Allen for someone to be a TriDot athlete who’s coached by you? Are you taking new athletes right now?

Mark: I am taking new athletes! I am excited to take new athletes, and you know I coach only age group athletes. I don’t coach pro’s. I love working with age group athletes. Age group athletes will actually kind of mostly do what you suggest that they do and they get the results, you know.

Andrew: Sure.

Mark: Pro’s often come to me and they want me to give them that secret sauce but they don’t change anything. And you know, you don’t change anything, you're just going to get more of what you already have.

Andrew: Those stubborn pro’s.

Mark: Yeah, and so anyway I coach only age group athletes. I love working with age groupers. I coach athletes of all ages and all abilities; from people who are just getting into the sport to people who’ve been in it for 20 years and they’re feeling like they just need some guidance. They’ve been doing it on their own and maybe they don’t even want to think about it anymore, they just want somebody to say “What do I do Tuesday? What do I do Wednesday?” and a lot of athletes just love that.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: Because it takes the thinking out. Their sport is something where they can get away from having to think, and plan, and process you know.

Andrew: That’s a great point.

Mark: That’s what the rest of their life is, you know. They have maybe a high-pressure job where they have to plan and think and you know stay on top of everything and then just as TriDot is doing with all of the technology. You’re the ones thinking “What can be added in that will, behind the scenes, help the athlete get better training? How can the coach utilize this to help support their athletes better?” So anyway, yeah I coach. You know, so just because I won six Ironman titles a lot of people go “Oh I can’t be coached by him, he’s too top level.” I coach everybody of every level and it’s really fun, of all ages. You know young, old, experienced, novices, it’s all fun.

Cool down theme: Great set everyone! Let’s cool down.

Andrew: I like doing this the first time a new guest comes on the show. Mark, this is our way of getting to know you just a little bit better. We’ll run through ten random questions for our audience to learn Marks’ favorite things in the sport of triathlon. So Mark, are you game to answer some quick hitting rapid fire questions about yourself?

Mark: I have a feeling these are not random questions. You have thought well and deep and long about them sir.

Andrew: Probably way too much, yes. But in my defense that’s what I’m paid to do so.

Mark: Alright let’s do it.

Andrew: Here we go, question number one. Mark, what is your favorite swim course that you’ve raced on?

Mark: My favorite swim course that I have raced on, I love the swim in Kona. It’s the only place that I love doing open water swimming. It’s beautiful, it’s warm, there’s turtles, there’s dolphins, there’s coral. For me that’s THE swim course.

John: Favorite bike course?

Mark: Favorite bike course is Nice, France; love that course. It's challenging, there’s climbing, there’s technical descents. I’m a terrible descender, I’ll admit. Ladies and gentlemen I am a terrible descender! Did you all hear that out there on the sidewalk? I don’t have good bike handling skills, but the descents in Niece are so technical that you can’t actually go that fast.

Andrew: Wow.

Mark: So a good cyclist doesn't really go that much faster on the downhills. You know those long sweeping curves where you’re either going 40 miles an hour or 65 miles an hour. Those are the ones that scare the heck out of me. So Nice, France.

John: How triathlete of you, to have bad cycling skills.

Andrew: Mark you probably see where this is going for number three. But favorite run course?

Mark: My favorite run course, I’ll go back to Kona. And the reason that it’s my favorite run course is that it’s so challenging. It’s so hard to get that day right so that you actually have a good marathon. You know to have a good marathon, you’ve got to come off the bike fresh. To have a good bike ride, you’ve got to come out of the water fresh. You can’t burn all your matches before you take that first step. And so it’s very hard to get that right. But if I was going to go with my favorite run course in terms of something that probably that none of you have ever heard, there was a triathlon in Guatemala called Hombre De Miaz.

John: Wow.

Andrew: Ohhh!

Mark: Man of Corn.

John: That’s what I was thinking. I was like, is my translation correct?

Mark: Hombre De Miaz and it was this lake Lake Flores and you know, beautiful and warm and tropical. And then the bike ride came into this one area where they have these ruins, but you're not at the ruins yet because they’re way up on this sort of mountain top. So the marathon goes a little bit on the flat, then you climb up and the finish line you’re going through the jungle on this trail and you are going up and up and up. It’s that light where you know when light comes through trees it’s almost like a strobe light you know it’s like shadow, light, shadow, light. And so you’re coming and you’re kind of disoriented and then the last whatever 20 yards is you come out into the open and this open grass plaza area with these two ancient pyramid ruins on either side. It was just like “Ha! Oh my God!”.

Andrew: That is very cool.

Mark: It was the coolest finish line ever!

John: So Kona, Nice, and Corn Man.

Mark: Yeah. Hombre De Miaz sounds a little better than Corn Man.

John: It does. So favorite things, what is your favorite hobby that has nothing to do with triathlon?

Mark: Surfing!

John: That’s what I thought we were going to go into.

Andrew: That one had to come up. Favorite current male and female pro’s to root for? Do you have them? Can you say that? Can you answer this?

Mark: Oh I root for a lot of them. You know, I root for Sam Long because he’s a real thinker you know. He’s got some deep thoughts. He seems like kind of– he can seem like he’s just kind of like a brash.

John: Yo! Yo! Yo!

Mark: Yo! Yo! Yo! But he really thinks about stuff.

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: I like him. I like Lionel Sanders. I like Gustav Iden, you know, he’s a pretty quiet guy. I have to say, I was pretty impressed with Kristian Blummenfelt’s Ironman. Just an incredible performance by a guy that doesn’t look like he should be able to go that fast.

Andrew: You are absolutely right.

Mark: You know and for the women I love Lara Philip and what she’s doing with figuring out how to train as a woman with a menstrual cycle and talking about it and showing us that you can get amazing results when you actually apply some principles that are designed to help a women get fit and healthy based on her cycle. Instead of, you know, like Stacy Sims says “We are not small men.” you know what I mean? So she’s someone that I cheer for. Lucy’s amazing too, you know, to see her last fall in St. George win that 70.3.

Andrew: Just a great race.

Mark: Absolutely dominating and finally running the way that I always thought she could run. But then I have to say one of the coolest things was seeing Daniela Ryf come back and just dominate.

Andrew: I didn’t know she had it in her!

Mark: She turned it around and that’s a very hard thing to do, and it was really impressive, and I was really happy for her.

Andrew: What is one thing that modern pro triathletes have that you wish had been around while you were racing?

Mark: Maurten gels.

Andrew: Maurten gels.

John: So if you’re headed out the door for a good bike ride after this interview, what bike are you riding?

Mark: I’m ridding my Beach Cruiser dude! Come on!

John: I thought that would be it too.

Mark: What the heck you ask me that question for? You know, I probably have the most expensive bike on a trainer of anybody. I’ve got my Ventum bike on the trainer. But my Beach Cruiser is the one that’s outside and ready to go on a ride any time.

John: Get a lot of miles.

Andrew: What is your favorite food item to make yourself?

Mark: Guacamole.

John: Guacamole! See this has been so nice getting to know Mark Allen. I can actually anticipate some some of this. I’m like–

Andrew: Are you and Mark best friends?

Mark: John’s going to answer that for me.

John: I think we are!

Andrew: Last one, John.

John: Top training tips for athletes looking to make the leap to Ironman?

Mark: Get a coach.

Andrew: Well that’s it for today folks. I want to thank TriDot coaches Mark Allen and John Mayfield for joining us for today's conversation and shout out to deltaG for partnering with us on the episode today. Remember you can go to deltaGketones.com and book a free 15 minute consultation, to learn how you can use ketone drinks to supercharge your training and racing. Remember to use code TRIDOT20 at check out for 20% off your first order. We’ll have a new show coming your way soon. Until then, Happy Training!

Outro: Thanks for joining us. Make sure to subscribe and share the TriDot podcast with your triathlon crew. For more great tri content and community, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Ready to optimize your training? Head to tridot.com and start your free trial today! TriDot – the obvious and automatic choice for triathlon training.

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