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: Well folks there is a new way to race endurance sport events and we’re going to talk all about it today. It’s not in person racing. It’s not virtual racing. It’s RemoteRacing; a totally fun, totally fair, new way to race anyone, anywhere in any sanctioned remote race. I’ve got two heavy hitters in the tri industry with us today to talk all about it. First up is TriDot founder and CEO, Jeff Booher. Jeff is the chief architect behind TriDot’s insight optimization technology that powers TriDot training. He’s a multiple time Ironman finisher and has been coaching since 2003 from the Olympic level to more than a dozen pro triathletes, multiple national champions and literally hundreds of amazing age group athletes. Jeff, welcome back to the show!

Jeff Booher: Awe thanks! It’s great to be here.

Andrew: Also joining us today is Victoria Brumfield. She was hired as USA Triathlon’s first chief of staff in March of 2018 and was the first female to join the executive leadership team. In her role as chief of staff, Brumfield is responsible for directing strategic planning and managing and streamlining the organization’s operational plan. Her role expanded to chief development officer in the year 2020 to lead organizational revenue growth. Brumfield has worked in the endurance sports industry for more than 20 years. She is an avid endurance athlete herself having just finished her first full length Ironman just two weeks ago. So Victoria, welcome to the TriDot podcast and huge congrats on your IRONMAN Chattanooga finish.

Victoria Brumfield: Thank you! I’m in good company, Jeff, with your multiple IRONMANs. I’m working my way up one at a time.

Jeff: Yep, you’re well on your way.

Andrew: You’ll catch him. Yep, you’ll catch him. I believe it. Well 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.

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

Andrew: When bringing a new family pet into the household there are many directions you can go with your new family member’s name. You can go with a classic like Lassie, Spot, Fluffy, or Rover. You can give it a human name like Charlie, Furgeson, or something excessive like the Arch Duke of Wellington. Or you can lean hard into a theme naming your pet after a favorite food, location, or celebrity. Shout out to my cat named Pancake. For our warm up question today, if you were adding a new pet to the family and you wanted to give it a triathlon themed name, what kind of pet are you adopting and what are you naming it? Jeff, what pet would you bring into the Booher family home? And we have to give a shout out to your cats Binks…

Jeff: …and OB.  Themes named after Star Wars. Jar Jar Binks and Obi-Wan Kenobi. So yeah, those are my cats.

Victoria: Oh my God, Jeff! If you’re a Star Wars fan you have to name your next pet RUT2.

Jeff: RUT2! Ooo, that’s awesome.

Andrew: Wooow!

Jeff: Did you just come up with that?

Victoria: Yeah.

Andrew: That’s triathlon themed and Star Wars themed.

Victoria: I mean, if you’re a Star Wars fan, right?

Jeff: That’s awesome.

Andrew: I mean that’s your answer there Jeff. We can just move on right?

Jeff: Let me throw one out. I had a– actually a friend has a dog and they named him Kona. I think there probably a thousand triathletes maybe with that name. I had a friend a long time ago who had a three legged dog and they called him Tripod. So I thought that was kind of cool. Maybe go to a rescue and see if there’s any dog to rescue and maybe call it Tripod.

Andrew: Do you guys have any three legged dogs? Three legged is what I want.

Jeff: But he was cool. It was a really cool dog. Anyway, I thought that would be fun. Just name him Tri.

Andrew: Alright, yeah. That would totally work.

Jeff: RUT2 though I think that’s better.

Andrew: So Vic, if you were bringing a new family pet into your home what kind of animal are you going with and what are you naming it?

Victoria: Yeah and well this is a good question because I’m one of those people who collected animals over COVID. So I already have a dog and then I acquired two COVID cats, but they have all their legs Jeff so I can’t use…

Andrew: Too bad.

Victoria: …so far. So I think I would do a nod back to my very first triathlon experience. I didn’t race it, but the first race I ever worked was the 2001, first ever, New York City Triathlon and it was ironically a USA Triathlon National Championship.

Andrew: Okay.

Victoria: Not ironically. That’s actually why it happened and they swim in the Hudson River. So I ended up swimming in the Hudson River and being involved in that race for many, many years. So I feel like, like the Hudson animals are mostly clean, but sometimes really gross. So it would be appropriate to name it Hudson.

Jeff: That’s cool.

Andrew: I love it. I love it. It has meaning. It’s connected to the sport.

Jeff: Mystery, history.

Andrew: It has history. I love that it’s not an obvious connection to triathlon. Like you have to hear the story to get the connection to triathlon there which is great.

Jeff: Once you hear it you don’t forget it.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. So I– for mine, I’m going with– I’m not like…I don’t dislike pets. I’m not a huge pet guy. Our cat that we have was a birthday present to my wife right after we got married and I like our cat. Our cat is great. It’s a great cat. I’m not the guy who’s like “Oh, let’s get a new cat or a new dog!” That’s just not me. When I was a bachelor, before I got married, I had two fish in a fish bowl in my apartment and I named those fish Moby and Dick. So you see the theme I went with there, leaned hard into the book. Little tiny fish Moby and Dick. I loved them. So I think it would be fun to do the same thing, get two fish, put them in a little aquarium maybe in the pain cave even and name them Lucy and Josh. If you follow the pro triathlete scene you know at the Ironman level the unquestioned kings of the swim leg are Lucy Charles Barclay and Josh Amberger. Any race they are in they are the first ones out of the water every single time so I think it would be hilarious to have Lucy and Josh right there in my pain cave as I am training for my own events.

Victoria: If you had a quote too, it would be “I think we’re going to need a bigger fish bowl.”

Andrew: Yep. Put that on the poster right behind the fish tank and just spin my heart out on my trainer and hang out with Lucy and Josh.

Hey guys! We’re going to throw this question out to y’all our podcast audience. Every single Monday when a new show comes out go to the I Am TriDot Facebook group. If you’re not in that group be sure to join that group. You’re going to see my post asking y’all this question. I think this is– in the 106 episodes of the podcast I think this is one of my better warm up questions. So I am very excited to see what you guys have to say about what you would name a new pet if you were giving it a triathlon themed name?

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

Andrew: Since the creation of the triathlon the only way to test your fitness against another athlete was to sign up for the same race on the same day and get out there to duke it out to the finish line. As technology has improved and race directors have become more creative, things like virtual races and online training platforms have started to bridge the gap between the in person and the at home experience. But there has never truly been a way to take athletes in different locations with different weather, different courses, competing on different days and level the playing field to have a fair and true race. But now thanks to the creation of RemoteRacing this is not only possible, but it’s coming to a race calendar near you very, very, very soon. So Jeff, talk to us about this. What sparked the idea for RemoteRacing and how did the platform get developed?

Jeff: Well, great question. Actually last year kind of right after the pandemic started everyone was kind of trying to find substitutes for races being canceled. How can we keep people engaged? You know they want to have fun, want to have something to do which was awesome.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff: Kudos to everybody. I mean jumped through hoops, kind of made do with the current reality at the time. We started to see that there’s a lot of problems with the way that those were being run and the technology limited what we could do. We already had a lot of technology in place with TriDot and RaceX to overcome almost all of those issues that people were complaining about, a lot of the environment normalization, localization, a lot of the simulation stuff we could already do it and were doing it with RaceX. We were doing it with training in TriDot, but we just needed to repurpose it. So we started kind of exploring. We amended some of our patent applications. Just did all that kind of stuff last July and then started working on more than just a hasty fix, on something that would do in lieu of a real event, but something that would just be kind of playing the long game. You know, this is a cool emerging technology, some way that we can add value for a long period of time and really enhance people’s race schedule and provide a lot of new opportunities for people to engage in the sport. So that’s kind of where it came to be, repurposing existing technology. So RemoteRacing is powered by RaceX. So it’s the RaceX engine behind it that makes that work.

Andrew: Very cool. Yeah and I know when the virtual races came out, I mean all of us were navigating the pandemic and trying to stay active and then trying to have– You know, it’s fun. The training in and of itself is all well and good, but you like to take that training and apply that fitness towards something. Just from my observational, anecdotal experience I saw that there was almost three different kinds of athletes when it came to the virtual racing last year. There were athletes that were all in, they loved it, they did as many as they could. It actually gave them a reason to stay active. There were some that started doing them at first and kind of had fun with them, but the novelty wore off and they kind of slowly stopped doing them throughout the year. Then there were some like me and I just was never super fully interested in it and honestly it was because of a lot of the reasons that you’re alluding to. You know, it didn’t necessarily feel like a real race. It didn’t necessarily feel like it was something that was fair and you know, I was just happy to keep training and not do them myself personally. I know a lot of athletes enjoyed it. A lot of our listeners enjoyed them. So yeah, very cool to hear that I mean here we are a full year later on, really almost two years from the time virtual races started happening to RemoteRacing launching. So it really shows, really reinforces, this is not a band-aid fix. This is not just a light way to keep people involved. Like this is something for athletes to really dive into and enjoy for years and years to come isn’t that right?

Jeff: Absolutely. Just like you said earlier. You know a lot of people went to the virtual racing for different purposes. For just community, for social, for engagement, for fun, for completion, the challenge. A lot of them were challenges and you know different things raising awareness. A lot of them had a philanthropic component where you were raising money for a cause. So all of that’s great…

Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff: …but as far as meaningful, legit racing, that piece– I want to be able to do all of those other things, you know the fun, the social, all that’s great also, but also add this meaningful results component where whether you’re competing against other people or yourself you want to have a time that’s significant and it means something and you can try to improve. You can not just do it at hock, “Hey let’s do one this weekend.” You know, it’s something you put on your training calendar to get ready for. The drama, the buildup, the training and all of that stuff the same as you would for an on-site event.

Andrew: Yeah, so you mentioned in there that RemoteRacing is powered by RaceX. I want to just, real quickly. A lot of our listeners have probably heard our RaceX podcast episode where we just dove into for an entire hour what RaceX is, how it works and why it’s a great tool for athletes. But just for folks who maybe haven’t caught that, haven’t heard that, haven’t used or experienced RaceX before; just real quick in 60 seconds what’s the 60 second version of what RaceX is if you can fit it into 60 seconds Jeff.

Jeff: Alright, I will do it in 59 or faster.

Andrew: Challenge accepted.

Jeff: So we have two primary triathlon apps; TriDot and RaceX. TriDot optimizes your training, gives you the most available fitness within the amount of available training time. RaceX is the opposite. Same technology, 80 to 90% of the same technology, but it does the opposite. It helps you get the most or the shortest training time, fastest finish time with your available fitness. So again it’s like a maximization optimization. Here’s how much fitness I have going in today, so what is the fastest time that I can get. It’ll optimize your paces, what percent of your FTP should you go. How do you environment normalize that for the venue? Are you going from high altitude to low altitude? Heat and humidity to dry? You know, whatever that climate, it’s looking at doing advanced simulations over the different courses, the hilliness, and it gives you a power and you can export that power to your bike and know exactly what watts to hit going uphill, downhill, based the incline, the duration, how long it’s going to take you. It’s doing stuff with your CDA and your drag based on what wind direction is and your drag profile and your yaw angle. You’re going to be heading this way at this time of day with this wind and it just maximizes all of that to help you have the best bike profile, the best power plan, the best run off the bike. How much can you increase your bike to have it not impact your run? So it does all that kind of analysis for you to help you have the best race execution on race day and achieve all of your potential. Was that 59?

Andrew: I didn’t time it while you were talking right now. I can look it up when I’m editing this episode and be like, “Oh, Jeff went 66 seconds. He took too long.” But yeah, I’m excited to use RaceX for IRONMAN Waco coming up and I’ve already kind of practiced with that power file and that power plan and for that 112 mile bike course having my Garmin beep at me and tell me what power to hold throughout every portion of the race is super cool.

Jeff: Because everybody’s doing– everybody at a full IRONMAN, everybody’s doing 112.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff: You know, but for some people that’s seven hours. For some people that’s four hours. It’s a big, different effort in how you do that on the hills, your power to weight ratio. I also want to mention I’ve been thrilled this past almost year plus being the official race execution app of USA Triathlon. So I’ve just been thrilled working and getting feedback concepts. Just the partnership has been great. It’s much beyond “Hey what do you do?” But it’s like what can be done, and vision, and hey where do you see the sport going, and how can we add value to that. So we’re playing the long game. You know, hearing that and going, “Okay, here’s where we want our research time and energy to go.” for things that are planned in the future that will be on future podcasts. But that’s just been a joy to work with them as well.

Victoria: And I’ll just pop in there too. Back when we were talking, Jeff, about the original partnership it was– I think that was one of the most exciting pieces is though at the time it wasn’t developed yet, the vision that you had for the future of virtual and how it could impact performance for athletes and how it could add value for race directors and all these things that I’m sure we’ll talk about at some point. We just had so much confidence in you and your organization and it’s been really cool for us to be a part of that and see that evolution.

Jeff: Yeah, thank you.

Andrew: I’ll say this. I know we’ve camped out on RaceX a little longer than we intended, but if you want even more of a dose of RaceX that’s podcast episode 65. It’s all about optimizing your race execution. So go check out that full episode. So Vic, I know that Jeff and his team, you know, we’ve talked about it. They’ve been working with USA Triathlon now for more than a year to take this from concept to reality for athletes to be able to race remotely, real racing, fair racing. What excites you the most about this platform and how do you see it increasing triathlon participation?

Victoria: Yeah, there’s a lot that we’re excited about. I think it has untapped potential not only now in this iteration that we’re going to be doing this fall with the Remote National Championships, but also for the future like Jeff talked about. But you know it’s interesting. It really just piggybacks on what you were talking about earlier about how there was this huge influx of participation in virtual racing this past year and a half.

Andrew: Yeah.

Victoria: And we’ve really seen it die down and it’s probably for a few reasons. You know, there’s probably some fatigue. Maybe lack of interest just because the product hasn’t evolved as much. Also, in-person racing has started back up which is incredible.

Andrew: Yeah.

Victoria: We love that and that speaks to the health and the future of the sport. So that’s the good news. But I think what is really compelling about this product is that it really fills the gap of people who enjoyed participating in these virtual challenges and experiences, but longed for that sense of competition.

Andrew: Yeah.

Victoria: Knowing how you stack up with others because you don’t get a sense of that participating alone, right? Like it’s the difference between going out for a jog on your own and going out for a jog with a group and you really get to get a sense of how you place within the larger community. So I think that’s really cool. I’m also– I think it’s great for participation. You know, you had mentioned that I just did my first Ironman and we were talking about this a little bit before that Ironman is something that I had always placed up on a pedestal as a distance and a competition that was never for me. I didn’t have the time. I didn’t have the capability. I didn’t have the talent. I didn’t have the genes. Like whatever it was…

Andrew: That’s for elite athletes.

Victoria: Right, right.

Andrew: That’s for fast people..

Victoria: That’s for the Jeff Boohers and the people he trains and people who just have ample talent.

Andrew: Yeah.

Victoria: And so what I think is really interesting about this as well is it gives people an opportunity at any distance. I used Ironman as an example, but it could be for a sprint distance; something shorter to be able to go out and participate in each discipline and actually see that you can do it and you can be, for lack of better term, competitive. You can participate within the group of people who are doing these distances and be fine and I think that that’s really exciting and I think it will hopefully build confidence and increase participation and give people the confidence they need to go out and do in-person racing as well.

Andrew: Yep absolutely and something that I hadn’t considered is, you know athletes who listen will know I’m from the Dallas, Fort Worth area. In the Dallas Fort Worth area I mean, you can do an in-person, on-site sprint or Olympic almost every weekend of the year. Once March kicks in, March through October there are so many options to do a local race and I forget that not everybody has that. Not everybody has that triathlon community in their hometown. Not everybody has race production companies based in their hometown. Even last night– so at the time we’re recording this podcast I’m in the Woodlands Texas and Ironman Texas is coming up. We’re hanging out with TriDot athletes here. John Mayfield and Elizabeth James and Jeff Raines and a lot of our TriDot coaches are really great with TriDot at the races with making sure all of our athletes are ready to rock and roll for their Ironman events. So we’re here on site and just last night having dinner, meeting some athletes. One athlete that we were having dinner with was from central Illinois, small town and she does not have a local sprint or Olympic to go sign up for and race in person. She has to travel for any particular race and there’s probably a ton of people listening to this podcast right now that they may have one local sprint annually and the rest of the year they have to travel if they’re going to race. So this is just going to give so many people an opportunity to go to RemoteRacing.com, sign up for a remote race and rock and roll and have a good time and be a part of something without the expenses of travel, without the logistics of traveling. So I’m excited to see people get to race more because the training is great, but I think we can all agree that there’s something magical about race day. There’s something magical about race weekend and so many more people are going to get to experience that.

Victoria: And Andrew, just further to that I know that we’ve talked a lot at USA Triathlon about race local, complete national and we’re all about supporting local races. Like, you have to go out there and support your local triathlons just like you would support local businesses.

Andrew: Very true.

Victoria: We feel very strongly about that, but then this also gives you the opportunity to get that national experience as well. So I think they complement each other really well and I think that that’s something that we’re excited about.

Andrew: Yep that’s great. That’s a great point Vic, and it’s one that…like I’ve told athletes that are friends of mine like after years of training for my first Ironman and Vic you know you’ve just finished your first Ironman, you know the pressure that you feel and the intensity you feel and I’m excited next year to do more local sprints and Olympics because I feel like I’ve gotten away from that. It’s kind of a return to probably most people’s first experience with the sport is their local sprint and Olympic and when you start doing Ironman you get away from that for a little bit. So I’m excited next year to do more of that and to do RemoteRacing and to have fun with the sport instead of just having Ironman hanging over my head.

Victoria: And Andrew too, like it’s an ecosystem, right? Like it’s not just about one discipline or race production company or one geographic location. Multi-sport is a community.

Andrew: Yes.

Victoria: And I think that it’s really important to make sure that you’re experiencing sport at every level.

Andrew: Yeah.

Victoria: You talk about Ironman. Ironman is the peak, right, of distance and competition and it’s not just Ironman. There’s a lot of race producers out there with long distance races. Sorry Jeff.

Jeff: Yeah, I’d argue with you. You say it’s the peak of distance…

Andrew: Yes.

Victoria: Yes the peak of distance.

Jeff: …but not of competition.

Victoria: No, no. Not of competition. But distance and I think that the sport is about competition, participation, and experience at every distance in every environment and that’s the incredible thing about our sport is nothing showcases a community more than a multi-sport event, right?

Andrew: Absolutely.

Victoria: You get to experience the community in a way that you never would in just a single discipline sport and that’s what I love about triathlon and what this does is it gives you the opportunity to test other events without having to travel to them. Or it gives you the opportunity to test them before competing in them. So it just adds to the whole ecosystem of the multi-sport community and I think that’s a really exciting thing.

Andrew: Yep, that’s a great perspective and the first remote race it’s going to be an amazing one. Like, literally, people do not miss the first ever remote race. Be a part of it. Take part in it because there’s not going to be a second first remote race. The first one is going to be the 2021 USA Triathlon Remote National Championship. It’s a race modeled after the USA Team Nationals where athletes will execute their remote race and they’re going to be able to see how they stack up versus the performances put out in August at the on-site event in Milwaukee. So Vic, share with us just your excitement about the first ever remote race being associated with USA Triathlon’s flagship event.

Victoria: Yeah, so Age Group National Championships is– it’s the pinnacle race of the year for us. It’s where athletes who work all year long to qualify and compete and travel to wherever the national championship is and this past year it was in Milwaukee which is an incredible venue. Really great course. We actually had the largest Age Group National Championship ever in the history of USA Triathlon.

Andrew: That’s awesome. So cool.

Victoria: It was huge! Yeah and there was incredible excitement around it. People were excited about the venue because Milwaukee we’ve actually been there before. It’s an incredible place to host an event like this. The course is spectacular, it’s challenging and it’s legitimate, but it’s also fun. And we just wanted to capitalize on the energy coming off of Milwaukee and coming off of all that great participation in the off season to say, “Hey, if you competed in Milwaukee how’s your fitness? How are you doing?”

Andrew: Yeah!

Victoria: But also for people who are thinking about challenging themselves to qualify for Age Group Nationals next year it’s a really cool way for them to dip their toe in and test their metal against other athletes.

Andrew: Sure.

Victoria: The association is that it’s on the Milwaukee course. It’s normalized to all the conditions of race day which, you know, Jeff can talk about all the technology behind it and how it actually works.

Andrew: Yeah, and how that works.

Victoria: But it’s really cool because then someone like me who I live in Colorado Springs and we’re at altitude and it’s surprisingly hilly here. I guess it’s, you know, the Rocky Mountains so that would make sense.

Andrew: It’s the mountains.

Victoria: Yeah, but that way I can do this race right alongside somebody who’s participating in Panama City, Florida and we can both do the Milwaukee course and it can take the conditions of where we’re competing and it’s going to be different; humidity and altitude and all those things and bring it down to this one singular experience. So that’s really exciting for me that Age Group Nationals can be the showcase event for this inaugural remote race.

Andrew: Yeah and again in hanging out with our Ironman Texas athletes here in the Woodlands I was talking with another athlete last night who he was joking with me because like his two races planned for this year were 70.3 Galveston in Galveston, Texas and Ironman Texas in the Woodlands and he ended up racing three extra races this year because he qualified for USAT National Championships in Milwaukee and he was like, “I don’t want to miss that. I have to go. I want to go. I qualified.” and he was so excited. So he went and raced the sprint and Olympic there. He ended up qualifying for 70.3 Worlds in St. George, went and raced there and so I know, because I’ve qualified for USAT Nationals myself and when you qualify it’s like, “Oh, that’s super exciting. I want to go!” So if people maybe they qualified and they weren’t able to go. Maybe they wanted to qualify, but didn’t have a chance to do a local on-site race this past year, hey, you can do the Milwaukee course. You can race the Milwaukee course and it’s going to be wherever you are, wherever you’re located. Me in Dallas, Vic you in Colorado Springs, an athlete in Florida, an athlete in New York State, an athlete up in Canada.

Victoria: Just to be clear too. I know that we state this in the rules, but this does not qualify you for nationals. This is an open race and an open experience so actually everyone, everyone is welcome to participate.

Andrew: Yep, absolutely love that. And Jeff, we’ve talked a little bit about I mean people are familiar with virtual racing. They’ve heard the term virtual racing. We’ve talked about kind of how that was a great thing to get through the pandemic to stay active, and so a lot of our athletes and listeners are going to have some level of familiarity with virtual racing. There were several put on by different production companies over the past year or two. Jeff, this is not virtual racing. How is this different?

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. This is not virtual racing; RemoteRacing. It’s different in a lot of ways. Primarily it’s the technology behind it. A lot of the virtual racing technology’s platforms were for participation challenges, brand awareness, social, you know those kind of functions and they’re great. Those are great. I mean those are great activities and for all the reasons people want to participate in those. This is different in the sense of the technology that we’ve been developing for the last ten years to be able to make those results normalized, localized to specific venues like you mentioned. There’s a lot of technology. We look at it in three different categories. We want to make the event comparable to on-site races, practical for mass participation, and then fair. Those kind of reverse priority of order. So fair for competition, practical for mass participation, and then comparable to on-site racing. So not individual, stand alone swim, bike, run time trials. But there’s different things you have to adjust to make it practical for people to compete in and then fair.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff: So some of the biggest ones are the environment and terrain normalization. So Vic had mentioned several with the Colorado, Texas, Florida temperature, humidity, elevation, hilliness of the course; if you’re on a hilly course, a flat course. Swimming pool differences; some people are in short course, long course and pushing off more, it’s meters, yards, normalizing for that. Bike sensors is another area; different ones have different accuracy levels. So with a lot of the races we had seen last year if you didn’t have a high end one you couldn’t participate or if you were in a separate division. So we’ve made it to where everybody can participate and then we normalize and adjust for those different accuracy variances. So that’s a pretty big deal. Then from a results standpoint, participants can– they’ll connect their training and they’ll actually verify that against their potential and look for that kind of thing to make it– umm, the fairness aspect, the verification we have weight verification protocols, identity verification, just a number of different things that we put in there very visible and obvious and then other things are kind of running behind the system to highlight those things. But again, the objective is to make it as comparable as possible, but practical for everyone to participate at all levels and there’s more scrutiny at the top of the performance ladder. You know, if you’re up there it’s going to be more scrutinized than someone in the lower level of participation and then most of all is just fairness for everybody. Then there’s additional benefits that are not exactly comparable to virtual racing and with the localization itself, the equalization and some of those factors that we’re happy to introduce as well.

Andrew: Yeah, I remember when the virtual races were happening– like I said, I personally never felt the drive to participate in one, but there was a local athlete that lives in my suburb who just posted on Facebook because she didn’t have the latest and greatest smart trainer. She didn’t have the high tech equipment, but she wanted to try qualifying for 70.3 Worlds through virtual racing and so she just threw out a post and was like, “Does anybody have a smart trainer I can borrow so I can participate in this virtual race to try to qualify?” I just happened to see it and saw that, “Oh, she lives near me.” So she came and borrowed my trainer and was able to do the race and I love that the team has taken so many measures to make sure that whoever you are, if you have the bare minimum of multi-sport tracking devices you can RemoteRace. Jeff, what is kind of the minimum somebody needs to participate in these events?

Jeff: Really just a smart watch with a GPS; GPS, heart rate– the most basics.

Andrew: Great.

Jeff: You know, at the higher level we have a couple of groups; group 1 and a group 2 that we put you in. It’s kind of like that 50th percentile. So on that lower percentile the bare minimum; GPS, heart rate. You can ride indoor or outdoors, with or without power so we’ve accommodated that. But as you get more and more– your performance is higher and higher you need to be racing with power and there’s other things that we need for the verification.

Andrew: Yeah, and you also mentioned that there’s some steps in the process and we’ll talk about this in a little bit, but there’s some steps in the process to ensure that it’s fair to ensure that it’s a real race and one of them is verifying your weight. I just want to throw it out there. If you are on the RemoteRacing website…

Jeff: I know where you’re going.

Andrew: …and you’re looking for the example video on how to verify your weight, I am the athlete in the RemoteRacing website video. So you’ll see me in my TriDot kit in my pain cave weighing myself. I think I did a bang up job on that one so…

Jeff: We describe it as a 60 second weigh in.

Andrew: It took me 64 seconds.

Jeff: Yeah 64, you’re just barely over.

Andrew: I was slow. So the goal of RemoteRacing is not at all to replace on-site racing and Vic, I love how you talked about just adding to the ecosystem of the triathlon, the multisport experience. The goal is to complement on-site racing. Jeff, Vic why should athletes add a few remote races to their schedule?

Victoria: Yeah, I can start. I mean, we’ve talked a little bit about how I’ve had a big training load year and I think like a lot of races that I had an A race and a B race and a C race that was definitely racing local, but I also had just a lot of long bouts of training that were monotonous and I think that having something like this would have added a little more dynamic experience to my training…

Andrew: Yeah.

Victoria: …umm, giving me something to work toward and think about and get excited about so that it wasn’t just another monotonous, long day out swimming, biking and running.

Andrew: I feel ya, Vic! I feel ya!

Victoria: Yeah. So personally I think that I’m looking forward to that. Professionally, at USA Triathlon, we think every day about how do we add value to the race director and to the athlete community and that was really the driver behind us trying to find a way to work together with Predictive Fitness on this. And the reason is because you know, you think about a big race coming up. For an athlete to be able to set a time to participate on the same course that they’re going to be racing on as a target event that they’re going to be traveling to or participating in and it’s something they’re working toward, that can completely change the way they’re thinking about how they’re preparing leading up to the race. Seeing how they perform in those conditions. So I think that for athletes it’s a huge benefit and then for race directors it’s another potential revenue stream and so I think that this is really potentially a big value to them as well. So we’re looking forward to digging into that and experiencing this first Remote National Racing experience together to figure out how do we optimize it for both athletes and race directors in that way.

Andrew: Yeah, and Vic you and I are in the same place. We’re both– you just finished Chattanooga. I’m hoping to finish Waco here very shortly and you know we’re both ready to kick the long distance training to the curb for a little bit and have fun racing locally. I miss the racing local events. I haven’t done a local sprint/Olympic in a few years now and that’s how I started in the sport. That’s how a lot of us started in the sport and I’m excited to get back to that next year as well and RemoteRacing is just going to complement that. It’s just going to make the race calendar and the race schedule just a lot more– it’s going to add some variety to the experience so I can’t wait as well.

Victoria: I will say, Andrew, I was one of the lucky few. There were some local races that happened in 2020 so it was really cool.

Andrew: Outstanding:

Victoria: Yeah, I did get to participate in some local races last year and even this summer. It’s so fun to have them back and the energy and vibe, it’s just unbeatable.

Jeff: I’m with you Andrew. Welcome back to the short course. I’m at easily ten a year and just love that. But one of the things that I’ve been excited about is getting the feedback from athletes is not only preparing for those destination races and being able to race and have, you know, results localized. That’s great and that’s a huge piece of it, but so many people that don’t have a race near them and they’re looking at a race schedule and they only have one race a year or two races a year and the ability– and a lot of times they stop participating in the sport. Well if I only get to race once a year this brings a season that can put together a season throughout the year where it’s a blend of on-site and remote races. Just to add that fun. You always have a goal that’s kind of on the near-term horizon, two to three months out that you’re working for, that you’re focused on and you can progress from race to race to race. So that’s been huge to see.

Andrew: So let’s talk a little bit because a lot of people they’ve listened to us kind of establish what RemoteRacing is and kind of built the buzz. So how is this going to work? Let’s kind of talk through the logistics of a remote race. Walk us through, Jeff, just how a typical remote race event will flow.

Jeff: Okay, this is another one I think I can do it in 59 seconds. So we’ll see. It’s really simple. So you go to RemoteRacing.com, register for the race. If you already have a RaceX account it’s simple. Just log in, otherwise set up one for free. You’re just going to connect your training devices. You select the race that you just registered for and then kind of you’re off to the races. You’re going to do the swim, bike, run in specified order. The swims are all done in standard length swimming pools and I discussed the reasoning for that; just accessibility. Not everyone has access to open water and such. The swim to bike transition time is not regulated. Again, some people can’t– there’s not a safe place to bike an adequate route close to where they swim or due to swim hours they can only get pools available at certain times and such and really there’s less crossover there. Swim to bike transition is not near as important as the bike to run transition so that time is unregulated so you can do this whenever you want. Then the bike can be done indoors or outdoors, smart trainer or the GPS device outside. The run needs to be done 10 minutes after finishing your bike. So you need to start your run within 10 minutes of completing the bike and that’s pretty much it. So it’s definitely a bike run standard time between– unregulated between the swim and the bike.

Andrew: So for athletes doing a remote race, what are the options going to be available to athletes in the future? I mean, are these going to be sprint all the way to Ironman? I mean the inaugural one is the Olympic course in Milwaukee, but as we move forward are these always going to be swim, bike, and run? Are these going to be individual competitions? Are there going to be team based competitions? Just kind of talk to us about what race formats we see here in the future for RemoteRacing.

Jeff: Well I’ll tell you what we see. The other thing that we do see is that things come up that we don’t see. So we’re going to go wherever the opportunity and the value drivers are. What kind of response do we get from athletes, race directors. Wherever we can go with the technology is where we’re going to go. We’re going to meet the need and focus on the value. Right now what we see is the frist, the Milwaukee is going to be sprint and Olympic.

Andrew: Okay.

Jeff: We will have this year sprints, Olympic, and half. The Milwaukee USAT Remote National Championship will have swim, bike, run and then bike, run only. So if you want to just the bike, run or swim, bike, run then you can do that. The formats are really cool and all this is available on the RemoteRacing site. We’re going to have the individual as you would expect where everything is– by overall, gender, age group. Then we’re going to have equalized by age and gender as well and then team competitions. So that will be really cool where it’s on a point scoring system that accounts for age and gender and all that so it’s not just the young whippersnappers that are scoring all the points for the team. It’s equal to every age and it’s relative to your age and gender. So everybody gets to meaningfully contribute to their team’s points. So we’re really, really excited about that too. So we’ll have that team cloak competition, equalized by age and gender results. So I’m very excited and curious to see who wins, you know.

Andrew: Yeah, because it might not be who you expect.

Jeff: Yeah. 25 year old dude getting smoked by a 68 year old woman you know. We’ll just have to see. Throw out some challenges.

Andrew: And Jeff let me say this, Jeff because I think I’m excited about the equalizer for a very different reason than most athletes. Most athletes will hear that and be like, “Oh, that’s going to be super cool to see where I stack up against the entire field.” We’re used to seeing how we stack up against our own age group, but with the equalizer we’re going to be able to see how we stack up against everybody and I’m excited about that specifically because I think, I’m anticipating being able to prove how middle of the pack I am because our athletes give me so much crap about, “Oh, I think you’re a little faster than middle of the pack.” Okay, overall results at a standard race yes. I’m usually in the top ⅓, but in my age group I’m always in the middle of the pack. And I think, I expect when my results are equalized against everybody in the field that I will be right smack dab in the middle of the pack. I know there’s some fasties out there.

Victoria: Okay, Andrew. That is exactly why we are not posting times.

Andrew: Okay.

Victoria: Because there’s this window, right, that you can participate. And if we posted times people like you might say like, “Okay, middle of the pack is this time.” And then you would go…

Andrew: That’s what I need to hit.

Victoria: …and you don’t have to change your name. But you’ll only see where you sit as you participate in this like dynamic, ever changing group of results. So it’ll be interesting. You can’t work this system. What are you going to do if you’re not middle of the pack?

Andrew: I gotta change the tag line. I gotta be a man of my word, right? I’ve got to announce where I’m at. So I’d have to declare somebody else the captain of the middle of the pack and I’d have to figure that one out.

Jeff: Captain of the 42nd percentile.

Andrew: Yeah. I would have some soul searching to do at that point for sure. So something I’m excited about when we do this inaugural event, I am actually going to travel around the country. I’m going to book a couple one-way flights.  It’s going to be a lot of fun and I’m going to visit some tri clubs that are doing the inaugural event and get them on camera doing the inaugural event and just kind of document what it’s like as a tri club going through this process. You know, Vic, how do you envision tri clubs and the collegiate level using RemoteRacing to just enjoy doing a race together?

Victoria: Yeah, I mean clubs are the heart and soul of the sport, right.

Andrew: Yeah.

Victoria: Multisport is about community and it’s about connection and I think that’s where clubs bring people together in a local way. So they’re core to the sport and I know that clubs have been struggling the last year and a half. A lot of them haven’t had an opportunity to get together.

Andrew: Yeah, sure.

Victoria: So I think this will be a really cool experience for those who are getting together, like the ones you’re meeting with, to have a celebration and all participate and see how they’re doing one against another. That’ll be fun, but I also think it’s an interesting opportunity for clubs who haven’t had compelling engagement tools for their club members to connect to one another during these times where they’re just not meeting in person. I think that’s been a long awaited experience that they’ve been looking for. So I think this will kind of scratch the itch of a lot of different clubs and situations that they’re in and it’s super easy because clubs don’t have to officially go sign up to the club. If you’re a member of the USAT club all you do is go to the dropdown and pick your club and even at the collegiate level we have collegiate clubs in there so it’ll be really interesting to be able to slice and dice results as we get people of different clubs whether it’s university or just a local club that you’re a part of to participate, and I just want to say if you are listening to this and you want to make friends, start a club.  Call me, we’ll get you set up.

Andrew: Call Vic personally. She’ll get you set up.

Victoria: Yes!

Andrew: We tell athletes all the time with TriDot, like we believe in local clubs, we love local clubs. I mean I learned how to be a triathlete by participating in local club rides on Saturday mornings. A lot of us got started that way and we tell athletes if you don’t have a local club you’re plugged in with–

Jeff: Start one!

Andrew: –make TriDot your local club, start a local club, but we prefer– we love to see athletes use TriDot for your training, but plug into your local club to really make that community connection because we believe in it so much as well.  So Jeff, we’ve talked about these races being fair and, you know, there’s the normalizer that’s normalizing wherever you’re racing to the actual course. There’s the equalizer that’s just equalizing, leveling the playing field for everybody regardless of your age and gender. So there’s a lot of really, really cool technology things happening here. You did a lot of studying, Jeff Booher, to figure all that out and to make sure it was fair. We didn’t just throw arbitrary numbers into an algorithm and say it works. Like, you fleshed out all this technology.  What was that process like? What were you finding as you were kind of researching how a 35-year-old male compared to a 65-year-old female in all of that?

Jeff: There’s quite a bit of things. We already had a bunch of the data in our machine, learning, and stuff. That’s how we train people. We train people at 60 different– you’d expect different results, you know. And the likelihood of further training gains diminishes as you get higher so you have to know what those limits are based on gender, based on age, all that kind of stuff. So a lot of that was already there, but when I started looking at it here and like how are we actually scoring in points and all that for individuals? There’s a lot of interesting things. One is in the age groups themselves, you’ve probably thought about this before, but even competing there if I’m 52– so I’m at an advantage competing with someone that’s 54, but you could have as much as 5 year differences. In some age groups it doesn’t matter that much, but other age groups that’s a big deal.

Andrew: Interesting.

Jeff: If you’re five years older or younger even within your age group you’re at a big disadvantage. So to be able to get that age normalization down to the day…

Andrew: That’s why every triathlete famously we all deep down we enjoy aging up. It puts you a year older and also…

Jeff: Right. Yeah, this year I’m going to do it right when I turn 45, 55, whatever, 65.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff: So that goes away. So even in the same year your race age will have a lot of– I’ve coached a junior team for the last 12 years and those that are born in January are a year older than those that are born in December and it’s a big deal when you’re 14, 15. You know, so they’re competing and they have– you know, anyway. But be able to normalize that to the day so it is very accurate. So that’s been cool. Some of the things that we’ve seen with the different performance levels when we’re looking at like over distances is one of the things. Like, the longer that you go the delta between males and females shrinks. So longer races, there’s less difference between the two. In an ultra-distance there’s even now– we don’t have as much data on this just because the numbers aren’t as big, but the ultra ultra racing there’s women outperforming men. Just flat out. No adjustments necessary.

Andrew: And fans of the ultra-running pro sport, like people who enjoy that discipline, they already know that. They see it when the pros race.

Jeff: Absolutely.

Andrew: And sometimes your overall winner is a female athlete for sure.

Jeff: So that’s cool. And then being able in that equalization that it does change what– your peak age is, changes by discipline. Swim, bike and run are different. They change by age. It’s not a simple, straight percentage or relationship. It changes over the years as you age. Also by performance level is one of the fascinating things. The difference between males and females. At high end is not as great as it is at low end. So if you have a very beginner male and a female, the male is very much stronger than the novice female. But as they both start training, that gap narrows significantly. So it’s like an out of shape male or female. The male is just naturally, genetically stronger. But as they both train, trainability wise they both get up and get a lot closer. So it’s just really fascinating to see those things when you’re analyzing it in this context. So it’s been interesting.

Andrew: We’ve got to take a day, you know, one of these podcasts and just really unpack just the biology and the physical implications and the distance implications of just who you are and what your physiology is because it’s the science. The science of it is just really, really cool.

Jeff: Can we get the whole genetics and all that? Because training time, how much you increase from week to week, your injury predisposition, all of those things factor in so much.

Andrew: My injury predisposition is high. So thanks for asking about that. So Jeff, we know that– we talked about how the results are going to be localized. We’ve talked about now being equalized, but beyond that what measures will help ensure that RemoteRacing is fair, that there’s going to be no foul play? That was famously kind of one of the slight things with virtual racing is that there just wasn’t a way to make sure they were fair. So what just in regard to weight and times and all that are we doing to make sure these races are truly fair?

Jeff: There’s a lot of things. We’re not going to disclose everything. Just don’t want people gaming the system or trying to–

Andrew: Sure.

Jeff: Just don’t want to put the temptations out there. It’s kind of like trying to figure our Goggle’s algorithms or something.

Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff: But there’s a lot of things that are clear. No one’s registering with anonymous screen names. We have an identity verification process in there. The weight verification is really simple. Everybody is doing that.

Andrew: It takes 64 seconds.

Jeff: 64 seconds. Yeah, BJ on our team did it in 52. So just saying.

Andrew: I think Matt Bach did it in like 47, 48 so he was proud of because we’re triathletes. He was proud that he was the fastest one so far to verify his weight.

Jeff: Yeah, but we provide a bunch of different things on the device, connecting the training, being able– Other technologies can’t do that because they can’t account for differences in environment. So when we’re able to look at all of those things we know what your training will support. We know what kind of performance level it should support or will support. Then one of the big– our mentality toward this is everybody wants a fair training environment and that’s for the benefit of everybody. So we don’t approach it from primarily it’s not our job to catch people who are cheating. We put the mechanisms in place that it’s everyone's job to prove that they’re not cheating. There’s easy steps to do to be very forthcoming with who you are, how much you weigh, connect your training, do all of those things that you should normally do anyway and I believe the vast, vast, vast majority of people are going to do the right thing. They’re true competitors and will honor the spirit and the ethics of USA Triathlon and we’re really counting on people to do that. To do their part and you know we’ll do ours. It’s actually, when we’re comparing looking at virtual racing, RemoteRacing, on-site racing, we’re looking and it’s actually more fair than on-site racing all things considered.

Andrew: So racing remotely, you’ve dove into the numbers and it’s more fair to an on-site race. How does that work?

Jeff: More fair than an on-site race. I’ll be clear that this is not a preference over on-site racing. If you can on-site race do that. That is the number one thing. Everyone wants to be in person, in the elements with the other people face to face, mono a mono.

Andrew: That’s why we do this.

Jeff: Yes. Exactly. But when it comes to just fairness we weren’t comparing. Like there’s no such thing as a perfectly fair anything. I mean we have a 100 meter dash where everyone runs a straight line, but as soon as you do a 200 there’s a curve. Someone’s on the inside, someone’s– you know it’s not fair. Like with triathlon you’ve got people that start their race two hours after other people. So they’re racing in 10 degree hotter, warmer weather, more humidity, the wind changes, all the conditions and it’s substantial. If you’re a faster swimmer and you’re starting in the fourth or fifth wave you’re having to swim through people. If you’re a fast swimmer starting in the first wave you have clean water. I mean that can make minutes of difference. Same thing on the bike. You could be in a draft fest if you start further back or if you’re up front you’re doing it solo all day and it could be not only a benefit, it could be a detriment. You can get blocked. You’re trying to play by the rules and you just can’t get around people. There’s a big pack, they won’t break up and you’re stuck there you know for stretches that are narrow on the course. So there’s a number of things that are technically unfair.

Andrew: Yeah, that reminds me very specifically of any of our athletes that raced 70.3 Worlds in St. George just a little ways back. Ironman started all the men age groups first. They started the women all afterwards and so we had some athletes, some TriDot athletes, who were in the very last women’s age group to go and a storm brought– literally a lightening and hail storm broke out in the middle of the race. Well all the men were on the bike already and a lot of the women were on the bike already and you had a few age groups of the women who literally were in the middle of the swim when that hail storm broke out. So they had jetskis out there puling women out of the water and one of our TriDot coaches she swam through it all and finished the swim course while some of the other women in her age group were pulled out of the water and then allowed to continue on the bike. So their races just became totally different. Then deeper into that race, the men all started earlier in the day, but some of the women’s waves were starting hours later; I was out there with my camera taking some pictures and video of our TriDot athletes and right when the weather was getting really hot most of the men were done and it was all women out there on course. So yeah. If you were a woman that started that race at 9:00 am versus one of the men who started at 7:00 am, you had a very different race experience. So Jeff that’s super interesting.

Victoria: Well, it’s a good thing we’re tougher!

Andrew: I agree with that 100%. I agree wholeheartedly. So Jeff, Vic, the hype has been built and that hype is very, very real. I’m excited to participate in a few remote races throughout the year and into next year. So when do we start doing this? When and how can athletes find and register for their very first remote race?

Victoria: Oh it’s happening like right now.

Jeff: Right now.

Andrew: Like right now?

Victoria: Yeah. It’s on! At least registration.

Jeff: It’s open.

Andrew: So where do we go? How do we find it? How do we sign up?

Jeff: RemoteRacing.com. RemoteRacing.com. There’ll be a link on there to see the races. Invite your friends, club members. If you don’t have any friends, this is a good opportunity to go make friends so that you get connected.

Victoria: Start a club.

Jeff: That’s right. A tri club. Make some friends. Invite them and let’s go.

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

Andrew: To cool us down from all this talk about RemoteRacing let’s talk even more about racing. Vic, we mentioned your recent triumph in Chattanooga and I just love hearing about people’s races. I mean, like in some ways everyone’s races are the same, but then in other ways they are very different and no matter what they’re always meaningful and I just love to hear about it. So Vic, to cool us down today, tell us all about your race in Chattanooga.

Victoria: It was, Andrew, it was such a cool experience. I’m so excited for you to do your first. I mean, this was my first Ironman and it’s interesting. It’s something– even before I really knew what triathlon was I remember I had been– I must have watched it on TV or something because I knew about it when I was in high school and I remember daydreaming about being the kind of person that got up at 4:00 in the morning and did all these crazy things. To me that just was like daydreaming about being a super hero.

Andrew: Yeah.

Victoria: It was something that– it wasn’t even fathomable, but in my gut I knew it was something that ignited me and got me really excited and when I was older and I moved to New York right out of college I was really lucky to work with this amazing person that was an endurance athlete and be surrounded by endurance athletes being connected to the New York City Triathlon and it was something I always aspired to. I did a lot of other things, right? Like I did short distance triathlons and I did marathons and I’m always slow. I remember my first marathon my boss said, “Wow, Vic I’m so impressed. I can’t believe that you did a marathon in 5-½ hours.” And I was like, “You do it in two.  Why is that impressive?” And he was like, “Well, I just can’t imagine moving for that long.” So you know, like it’s all relative and it was so cool to finally make the decision that I was going to just sign up and I was going to do it. The wild thing about it was the training wasn’t that dramatically different than what I was already doing.

Andrew: Yeah.

Victoria: But in my mind I had like doubled everything that everything was going to be exponentially more time.

Jeff: Yeah and you’re always training.

Victoria: Yeah. The only thing that was more was my eating, which is my favorite! So like I was stoked about that.

Andrew: If you want to eat more, sign up for an IRONMAN.

Victoria: Yeah! Yeah! It was just, it was such an incredible experience and the whole operations of the event, the community from start to finish. It was just a magical experience and I loved every minute and it doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard, right? There were some definitely some dark moments, but it was never hard enough that I thought I couldn’t do it.

Andrew: Great. That’s good to hear for me.

Victoria: It was just hard and I knew I was going to get through it and that was the cool part about it.

Andrew: From your actual race day, you’re out there on course, you had the downriver swim which actually ironically just a week ago on the podcast we had Pro Triathlete Elizabeth James tell us about her Chattanooga experience and how her race went. So for you, you had that downriver swim, rolling hills on the bike course, challenging run course. What were just a couple of the moments that just really stuck out for you as those are the moments you’re going to remember years and years and years to come?

Victoria: So every key moment of going into the swim it was this like mantra of gratitude of “I’m in it and I’m doing it.” Then coming out of the water being like super grateful that it was a good experience and I’m done. I’m a third of the way through the event if you think about it by discipline. Then going out on the bike course, I love cycling; which Chattanooga is extra long. It’s 116 miles. And 116 miles is no– like that’s far. I don’t care if the course is downhill, it’s a long time to be on a bike and it wasn’t downhill. It was super hilly and on the bike course it was that moment of gratitude with every milestone which was completing the first lap, completing the second lap, getting back to transition, getting off the bike and being able to stand up straight. In my mind I was wondering if I would even be able to stand up or would I be like a little praying mantis for the run. And I was able to stand up and I felt great. Then on the run course it’s incredible. Like your body is just a machine. I am not fast at all, but the fact that like my body just kept moving. I made a plan going in that I would not let myself walk other than every aid station I would walk and I would eat and drink every aid station. Other than that I would do my little chugg and I did it.  The only time I broke that plan was on the final, there’s this huge hill. To me it was like a San Francisco style. Maybe like if I weren’t in the middle of an Ironman I’d be like, “Oh, is that– is it–”

Andrew: You wouldn’t notice. Yeah.

Victoria: But in the moment it’s just epic and you go up and over it twice and on the way back I had to walk going down just because it’s steep and my knees hurt. But other than that I kept my plan the whole way and I felt great. I ate like ten Uncrustable sandwiches–

Andrew: Sure.

Victoria: –and like ten gels with 100 mg of caffeine in each so I was just like jacked.

Andrew: Just buzzin’.

Victoria: Yeah, but crossing the finish line is magical and it was just– It was such a cool experience and going into it I had said that I wanted to sell my triathlon bike the day I finished because I love gravel, I love off-road, I love riding my road bike and the time trial bike just wasn’t as fun for me. But the next day all I could think about was what am I going to register for next.

Andrew: Hmmm. That’s what I always hear.

Victoria: And I don’t know.

Andrew: That’s what I always hear and I’m scared of that. I don’t want to be that guy, but we’ll see if I become that guy. And I just love Vic, how early in the episode, I mean towards the beginning really you just talked about RemoteRacing adding to the ecosystem of triathlon. It’s another way to race. It’s another thing to experience and that’s what’s so fun about the sport is there’s so many different ways to experience this sport. There’s the local sprint and Olympic which everybody’s got to check out a local race. They’re so worth doing. There’s the 70.3 and full distance IRONMANs which everybody’s got to do an IRONMAN eventually or another race production company doing a long distance event. It’s just another experience of the sport. I just did Alcatraz this year. I think everybody’s got to do Alcatraz at some point because it’s just such a cool, different, unique experience. Everybody should try a swim run… There’s so many cool ways to experience multisport and for somebody who hasn’t done Ironman, now that you’ve kind of rounded that out– added that to your personal triathlete resume– what would you say to somebody who hasn’t considered themselves an IRONMAN candidate, but maybe now that they’ve heard your experience and heard that you didn’t think you could do it but then you did, what would you say to that person considering it?

Victoria: I think probably the same thing I would have said to myself every year of my life going back to when I was a kid– be confident. You deserve to be here and you’re capable and you can do this. You belong with every single other person that’s out there. There is nothing that makes them more special than you and I think that getting out there and participating in the remote nationals will be a great chance to experience that that’s true and anything’s possible if you commit the time and energy and to just point, you stay positive. It is so mental. Your body will suffer if your mind can stay strong and I really believe that. I did the Unbound Gravel 200 earlier this year and that’s another thing I thought I could never do. It’s funny like I was telling you earlier, finishing the Ironman, I finished it five hours earlier than I finished Unbound.

Andrew: That was a short day. It was an easy day.

Victoria: But to me again, that’s proof that anything’s possible if you commit to it. And it’s a commitment over time, right? It’s not a short term commitment. It’s not like you can decide to go do something in three days and feel good, but if you commit it as a lifestyle as something that you do to stay healthy, to stay happy, to stay connected to the world around you because it gets you out into nature and it gets you out with other people, then it’s totally possible for every single person. So I believe that. And just one last thing. I went to a really cool event this past weekend and met a guy kind of like you Jeff. He’s done a million races and I told him I did my first long distance triathlon and I asked him what advice he had for me. He said, “The most important thing I can tell you is don’t let your fitness go.” Don’t be regimented. Enjoy yourself, but don’t lose fitness. So I’m personally looking forward to the Remote Nationals because for me it’s a great way coming down from this big event that I’ve trained for a long time. I’m a little bit in that funk where my body is still tired and I kind of feel like I fell off the bandwagon and all those things. I’m excited to have a milestone to look forward to. So that would be my last piece of advice is set a target. Set something to train toward because nothing makes fitness as a lifestyle stickier than having a goal.

Andrew: Well that’s it for today folks. I want to thank TriDot founder Jeff Booher and Vic Brumfield from USA Triathlon for introducing us to remote racing. Huge thanks to deltaG for partnering with us on this episode. To learn more about the performance boosting benefits of deltaG ketones head to deltagketones.com and use code TRIDOT20 for 20% off your order. On their site you can learn more about fueling with deltaG ketone products, make a stand alone purchase, or subscribe for ongoing deltaG ketone deliveries and book a free 15 minute video consultation with an expert on exogenous ketones to discuss your individual goals and best choice of deltaG drink to exceed those goals. Enjoying the podcast? Have any triathlon questions or topics you want to hear us talk about? Head to TriDot.com/podcast and click on leave us a voicemail to get your voice asking your question on the show. We’ll have a new show coming your way very 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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