September 10, 2024 • 38 mins
Tom and Kenny catch up after a bit of a break and get a recap of Tom's Ironman Lake Placid race. They cover the importance of realistic goal-setting, training with power, and adapting to course changes. The conversation also touches on the pressure of being a coach while racing and the importance of transparency in coaching.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
Music.
Narrator (00:10):
Welcome to the athletes in motion podcast from
race to recovery with your hostsTom regal and Kenny Bailey. You
Kenny Bailey
(00:29):
Hey, Tom, how are you?
Tom Regal (00:30):
I'm fantastic. Kenny, how are you? I
Kenny Bailey
(00:31):
am fantastic as well. This is going to be a
fun episode today, because ourguest today is the one Tom regal
so well, first we're
Tom Regal (00:40):
going to talk about the fact that we we've been
missing for a few weeks. Yeah,because life got in the way.
Yes, we got crazy busy. Yes,Kenny is now the the man in
charge at lifetime. Yes,Franklin, so the general
manager. So Kenny's got a realgig.
Kenny Bailey
(00:54):
I got a real job now. It's
Tom Regal (00:55):
nice, so that's good.
We're super excited for him. Sotrying to get through all of
that, plus life in general, forme, got crazy as well, racing
and all of that we're gonna talka little bit about. But yeah,
we're here. We're back. Sorryabout that. So yeah, took a
little
Kenny Bailey
(01:08):
pause. Had to get thanks. So thanks for still
checking in and speaking away.
So if you are checking in, makesure you like and subscribe down
below. Please do it that alwayshelps our algorithm and also
just gives you an opportunity toknow when our new shows are
coming up. So especially
Tom Regal (01:23):
if you take another break,
Kenny Bailey
(01:26):
but excited to talk about this today, because
you not only do you coach folksin bike fit and just basically
live the triathlon lifestyle,but you also race as well, and
you had your Iron Man LakePlacid. Yep, this year, that was
your race. That was my race.
That was my egg race. Yeah. Andlove so want to talk about your
race. Want to talk about sort ofhow you're prepped for it, but
(01:47):
also you have another kind ofinteresting thing in the fact
that you've got the label ofcoach above your head. So how
you know, today we're going totry to talk about, sort of how
that additional pressure, what,what that thought is, as you're
trying to coach other peoplecoach yourself, and those
expectations that you put onyourself, or those feelings that
you know, like, hey, what's mycoach doing? Why can't he figure
(02:08):
this out?
Tom Regal (02:11):
You know, it turns out terrible athletes. We're
horrible athletes to comeespecially when we're coaching
ourselves. That's really bad. Sothat we when you hate your
coach. When you're out there,you get that bad workout, and
you hate your coach, and you'rejust kind of like kind of angry
at him, yeah, yeah, it's kind of
Kenny Bailey
(02:26):
weird. Yeah, he's suffering the same fate
too. So yeah, we go throughthat. So you decided, what made
you decide to do Lake Placidthis year?
Tom Regal (02:32):
So I had done Lake Placid as my very first Iron Man
back in 2014 so it's been a fewyears, 2014 2010 Yeah, 2010
because it was 14 years ago. Soback in 2010 that was my very
first Ironman. I had been in thesport for a few years already. I
(02:53):
kind of worked my way up tothat. So that's always a special
one. I grew up in New York, wentto school in upstate New York,
spent some time in theAdirondacks. Love it up there.
That's why I chose that as myfirst one. Had some family and
some friends come over, sodecided to go back and do that
again. I don't know, for somereason I felt like it was time
to go back and try to beat thattime. I wanted to see as as the
(03:15):
years go past, it was like, Ibetter go now, because I'm
probably not going to be fasteror better than I was. So once
again, family and friends came.
We rented a nice place, and itwas, go back. Let's see what I
can do with that. So I focused alot on short course the whole
year, and got my training in andeverything. But that was our
main our main focus was to getup there and have some fun and
(03:36):
see what I could do. Yeah.
Kenny Bailey
(03:38):
And the interesting part about that to
your point when you're younger,in your journey, your career,
right? You're, like your firstcouple, there's this sort of,
sort of sine wave that happens,right? You're not very good at
the beginning. You're kind offumbling around, but you did
great, you had fun, and you gotthe bug. And then you sort of
increase your skill level, andyou decrease your speed and
(04:01):
those kind of things. And thenyou start getting older to your
point, and you're like, Well,you know, I've got a lot of
knowledge now built up. I have alot of education built up. And I
can tell probably a year ago,two years ago, you were starting
to get that itch, right? You'relike, Hey, I mean, I got some
juice in the tank. Yeah, right.
There's a little bit there. I'm,you know, can I beat what I, you
know, 14 year old, smarter thanI was,
Tom Regal (04:24):
yeah, 14 years ago, especially in this sport, maybe
not anything else, but in thissport, for sure, okay, that was
and that was the key, and I knewI was gonna have to be really
smart on the race, yeah.
Kenny Bailey
(04:35):
And so your goal was to, is it? Was it to
get the overall time? Was it getto split times? There was
Tom Regal (04:40):
a couple. There's a couple different different
pieces to it. So overall, it wasto finish. That's always my my
goal is always to finish. So thesecond goal was to beat my time.
My third my time was 1341 so 13hours, 41 minutes. So the beat
the overall time would have beenkey. And then, of course, I
wanted to see each componentswim by, to run eight. End
transitions. I wanted to see ifI could actually be faster on
(05:03):
those. So the last two years, Ihad focused. I was coming back
from injury. I think we'vetalked about this on another
podcast, and I focused a lot onrunning. Yeah, I didn't. I did
mainly running. I did minimalcycling, especially for me, 1000
miles maybe a year. Incomparative terms, folks, that's
(05:23):
normally it's five. So it wasone. So I knew, starting back
November, when I really gottraining for this, that was my
weak link, and I didn't know howmuch of that I was going to get
back, yeah, because it doesn'talways come back. So I had a
try. It really worked on a planto build up my we look at watts
(05:43):
per kilogram for power output. Inever quite got back to where I
was a couple of years ago. Itjust, I just didn't have enough
time. I had nine months. Ididn't have enough time to get
there. Isn't it funny, ninemonths, nine months isn't enough
time to point at
Kenny Bailey
(05:57):
that. And that's the thing. Full Ironmans
are no joke, right? You don'thide from a full Ironman. No,
it, if you sort of phoned it inon a certain part of it, it's
going to reveal itself duringthe title of the race, and not
just itself in that particularlike, like you said, if, if you
just kind of not that you didthis, but if you phoned it in on
the bike, yeah, you're not onlygoing to suffer on the bike, but
that runs going to be just anightmare, yeah. So, yeah. So
(06:20):
you know your bike was but yourbike was good. It just wasn't
where you wanted to be. Yeah,
Tom Regal (06:24):
it was, it was strong. I knew where it was. So
this, this time, this timearound, I was training with
power, which I didn't do backthen in 2010 because, yeah, most
of those power meters weren'taround. Yeah, it wasn't as much
as, as prevalent as it is now.
Yeah, and easy to do. So I knewI had to train like I had to
train smarter, right? I had to,had to work. So I knew a week
(06:44):
out from the race is where Iknow exactly what numbers I can
hit. Yeah, that's, that's,there's no magical answer to
doing better than that. I knewwhat my targets were. I knew if
I had the absolute perfect day,everything went to plan. If not
better, I would get 12 and ahalf hours. That was probably
the best I could do. Yeah, withswim, the bike, the run, all of
(07:07):
those pieces all fallingtogether. Is
Kenny Bailey
(07:11):
that an important thing? That's a
really, that's an interestingway to look at it, right? Which
is, you know, no know what yourrealm is like. You're not going
to bust it in, you know, nineand a half, you're not going to
bust it in 11.
Tom Regal (07:23):
It's realistic. It's the only way to set realistic
goals when you're going intoraces like this, because you're
never going to, no one's goingto step up and all of a sudden,
you know, come to the forefront.
I've like, if you're running afour and a half hour marathon,
you're not automatically goingto be able to run a three and a
half hour it's just, it's notgoing to happen. It's whatever
you're doing in your training isthat it is. So it's always
interesting when someone startstalking about what they want to
(07:44):
hit, yeah, you can have goalsand say, Yeah, I want to go sub
12 on my on my Ironman. But asthe as the week go by, and as
you get closer, if you're nottraining at those levels, you're
not going to hit it. Yes, it'snot the race. It's going to get
you a magical tailwind that'sgoing to come that's going to
come and all of a sudden you'retwo miles an hour faster on the
(08:04):
bike. Yeah? It's just not goingto happen. So add to that that
they had changed the course alittle bit, which they always
do, right? So we just kind of,they added this little segment
in it that probably added closeto 1000 feet of gain. So we're
at close to 7500 feet nice ofelevation just on the bike. So
you're gonna earn that, yeah? Soit's, it's like, okay,
realistically, that is critical,especially in this race for the
(08:26):
run, yeah, are you gonna blow upcompletely trying to hammer the
bike to the numbers that you didon the flatlands? Yeah? To, you
know, not have anythingavailable in the tank for the
for the run. So, so
Kenny Bailey
(08:41):
when you decided to do this, and you said
it out loud to your clients,yeah, what is you do? You have a
concern to that point, are youtrying to set a precedence?
Because everyone, you know,everyone's going to look at you,
right? You're, oh, coach isracing this one. Oh, coach is
racing this one. So, you know,that kind of thing. How do you
(09:01):
set up that expectation level?
Or do you feel like you have to?
Tom Regal (09:04):
It was interesting, because I'm up to this point
like being out here. I've beenout here for about four years
now, right? I usually don'tshare much in my training and my
racing. Everyone will find outabout it afterwards, right? I'll
post up about it. Hey, I'm atthe race or something like that,
and there's not that much thisone was kind of odd, because the
(09:26):
amount of people that werewatching, and even that I didn't
know we're watching, that Italked to afterwards, that's
kind of kind of wild. It's likepeople that I just met once,
they were like, Yeah, I followedyou. I watched you on the video
finish. Like, wow. Okay, no,that that's amazing. Yeah, that
blows my mind. So I like I havea Strava account. I have
followers. I've never postedanything on it, right? I don't
(09:48):
share my workouts because Idon't think they relate to how
your workouts would be. And Iknow some people like to do
that. That's fine, but I don'twant you to compare about what
I'm doing, because what I'mdoing, it works for me, not for
you. It's different that way. SoI'm very I'm very cautious and
shy when I shared training andall this. So it was kind of
weird when I started talking topeople about it, and people got
(10:09):
excited and they remembered. Soas it was getting closer to race
day, they were just kind oflike, Oh, you got your race
coming up. We're so excited.
We're gonna be following you.
They're like, like, not used tothat, yeah. So that was a new
realm for me to go into. So Idid. I had to work really hard
about not focusing on that,yeah. And I had to go back to my
race plan. Nice, because Ifigured if they're watching, the
(10:31):
one thing that I've gottenreally good over the years is
setting up a good race plan.
Yeah, it's worked for the 100milers. It's worked for
everything. All of this sets up,and that's, that's the thing
that I said, Well, I have tofocus on that, because if I
don't have a good race plan andI blow up, then that's going to
look worse than if I just goslow, yeah, if that's a race
plan, yeah?
Kenny Bailey
(10:54):
Or if you're trying to hit a time and you
don't hit, it, like, if youdon't hit there's 100 reasons
why you can't hit a time, yeah,but if it's because you
fundamentally broke your ownrule, it's like, that's
Tom Regal (11:05):
the part that I was like, Okay, so that's what I and
I had to self talk myself a fewtimes on it. I had to sit back
and go, no, no, no, let's, youknow, focus, come bring this
back. This, this is the plan. Wehave to go with the plan. The
plan is what I have to do. Andfun. Funny thing was that my
wife, Wendy, were were up at thehouse. Our friends had come in,
(11:26):
they went off and did somestuff, and I checked the bike
and I did wherever, and then I'msitting there watching the tour
on the couch, like, you know,I'd set everything up. And since
she was like, are you okay? AndI'm like, yeah, why? You know,
she goes, you're really calm.
I'm like, Well, I've done thisbefore. Yeah, I knew exactly
what I needed. My transitionbags have very little in them,
yeah, because I just need, youknow, I need shoes and a helmet.
(11:47):
Just my transitions have gottenI don't bring extra stuff. I had
my calorie count laid out. I hadexactly what I was going to do
was all laid out. It was alldone. I repacked the bags a
couple times and then took him,checked in, took the bike, and
then, and then, just watched TV.
Yeah, it's
Kenny Bailey
(12:03):
like the first race you bring in Santa Claus
back, right? Well, just in case,I need armor. So what if I need,
Tom Regal (12:08):
what about, what
Kenny Bailey
(12:09):
if I have an expert, socks? I know
Tom Regal (12:10):
I don't need all of that. Yeah, I've that's good,
got all of that covered, um, youknow, and I'm confident that if
it doesn't go right, yeah, I'llbe okay. I'll be able to figure
it out. Sure.
Kenny Bailey
(12:20):
So race day shows up. You know, the weather,
hopefully was cooperating foryou.
Tom Regal (12:26):
Yeah, the weather was, it was super hot the two
weeks before, just like it wasjust about everywhere in the
country, right? Watertemperature got up to 78
degrees, which it never does,yeah, up there. So it was almost
not wetsuit legal. It droppeddown to 75 that morning. So it
got down. So we were wetsuit,nice, great, which is fine. I
(12:46):
was prepared to go either way.
It was fine, so I seated myselfand this is, this is a bone I
have to pick with everybody thatsees themselves improperly. This
is in these problems, becausethis was, this was a major
problem for this. This is twoloops. Everyone stacked up. I
got in the one hour 10 minute toone hour 20 minute zone, because
that's what I can do. Yeah? Iknow I can do that. My my
(13:08):
fastest swim was a 105 Yeah. Iusually sit in the 110 range. So
I walked myself up, which wasnot easy to do. Kind of work
scored my way, ended up at thefront of that group. So I'm at
the front of the one the 110group, the one hour to 110 is in
front of us, and then the subone hours up in front of them,
and the pros, whatever up there,there, they've got us lined up,
(13:31):
so five at a time, every fiveseconds. Yeah, that should work
fine. Yep, it's two loops. Youshouldn't run into traffic until
the second loop, I swam overprobably 50 people in the first
200 yards. It was ridiculous.
Yeah, and they were swimmingsideways. They were going all
different directions. I gotkicked in the throat twice. Wow.
(13:52):
I got kicked in the chest. I gotpunched in the head. It was like
people weren't even caring ifthey touched you. They didn't
back off. They just hit youharder. Yeah, it was like,
everyone just like, was it wasmayhem, yeah. And that first
1000 yards was brutal, and itdidn't get any better the rest
of the rest of the time. So,yeah, those
Kenny Bailey
(14:11):
two loopers, it's interesting. And I think
that's the, I think the partthat you can't practice very
well, yeah, is, is that right?
Which is, you know, you've doneopen water, you've done your
pool swims. You're feelinghealthy, you're feeling good.
Yeah, you know, getting smackedin the throat. I don't think, as
a coach, you practice smackingyour clients in a
Tom Regal (14:29):
throat. I try not, you know, they frown upon. I've
learned a couple new tricks thatwe're going to use in the open
water test coming up becausewith a noodle and so, yeah, oh,
I was, yeah, it was, it wasbrutal. And around the top part
of the course, I got hit with afist, with a fist. This was not
a hand. This was a fist right inthe hamstring that just locked
(14:49):
the hamstring. I was sinking. Itwent so dead leg on me that I
was sinking around and had tocome back from that. Had that
happen with the other leg on thesecond loop. So it was brutal.
Brutal I come out of the swim.
Survived that at a 119 right? Iwas still in my 110 to 120
right? Yeah. So not spectacular,but faster than my first
(15:10):
triathlon, yeah, my firstIronman. So I was, I was still,
I was still ahead of the game atthat point. Yeah, yeah.
Kenny Bailey
(15:17):
Did you feel like you were so you were doing
your plan, that you thought youwere doing your plan, get on the
bike. The bike, same thing.
Tom Regal (15:23):
I had a great t1 I had a great t1 I was really
happy with that flew out ofthere, got on the bike. The bike
is a quick downhill to startnice, and then it goes uphill.
So the first 12 miles, you're1000 feet of climbing. So it's,
it's fast, very steep descentright out of transition, with
some hard turns. And some peoplewere flying down that thing and
(15:46):
were almost wrecking Yeah. Sothen it was just getting into a
mode. I knew my power numbers. Ihad my my Watts Up above, and I
was staying just below the powernumbers for the first for the
first loop, about 35 excuse me,about 35 miles in. So I cramped
on the swim. I cramped. My abswere cramping in transition, and
then I cramped on the bike about35 miles in. So that was the
(16:08):
part where I was like, Okay,let's take a look at this. So I
started taking in moreelectrolyte mix, the mortal
hydration that they have, whichwas fine. I didn't have any
issues with it. I had trainedwith it before and tested it out
and got through that was still alittle nervous about that, so
wasn't feeling 100% on the bike.
So on the second loop, I backedoff a little bit more. So I went
(16:29):
under my power numbers. I knew Icouldn't go over, because I knew
if I went over at this point Iwas screwed. So that's
Kenny Bailey
(16:38):
14 years of experience on that one, right?
So 14 year ago, you would havedone
Tom Regal (16:43):
pushed, pushed. Just kept pushing, yeah. And did
well, yeah. And so I thinkthat's,
Kenny Bailey
(16:49):
that's the difference between you can be
older, yeah, you know, you canhave a plan. You know, it's
older. It's better to be sort ofolder and have a plan than it is
young, unless you can get awaywith it, which rarely you can,
yeah, but that's, that's thedifference, right? Is that okay?
I know now, yeah, that if I pushit, it's not only going to
affect my bike, but it's goingto affect that run moving
(17:10):
forward. So did you stick toyour nutrition plan?
Tom Regal (17:12):
You think I had to adjust the nutrition plan
because I tried to take in moremore electrolytes, okay? I tried
to take in a lot more mortalhydration, because I was trying
to stay ahead of what I thoughtwas cramping coming through. So
that switched me a little bit.
So my nutrition was very liquidto begin with, with tailwind,
yeah, and a couple bottles oftailwind I was taking. I was set
(17:32):
to take in between 90 and 100grams of carbides per hour. I
brought enough whole real foodwith me as well, because I
wanted to be prepared for thatas well. Ended up switching more
to real food than I did, becausethe mortal hydration just filled
me up. Yep, it just I wasliquid. I had to stop and take a
long, long pee break on thesecond loop of the bike,
(17:53):
everything sat within thenumbers. I said, Great. If I
have the perfect day. I'm reallygoing to be a 615 on the bike.
If it goes the way I think it'sgoing to go, it's going to be
six and a half hours on thebike. I ended up being 640
something. I was like, 648 orsomething like that. It was
like, as long as I was sub sevenhours, I was happy with the
(18:15):
climbing, because I was reallyfocused on the run. Yeah, like,
I've been working on the run.
The Run was good. The run issolid. It's like, really, like,
I was going to come out and havea really solid run. Had a killer
t2 four minutes, good. Justracked it. Just racked the bike.
Ran through, grab my stuff. Iwas out on the run. That's
awesome. And then the shit hitthe fan. What his sort of, so
(18:41):
the run is downhill, slightlydownhill, omega, you hit an
intersection, and then it's ahard right, and then it's a
really steep downhill. I wastrying to slow myself down, and
my whole body cramped. I mean,everything, I think, my eyelids
cramped, everything went intolock mode. And I was like, I was
still trying to test myself. Iwas still trying to slow my pace
(19:02):
down, because I didn't want tocome out of the box 830 I always
coach everybody. I tell you all,to take it nice and easy, go
nice and slow that first mile,that first two miles, get into
it. And I saw I was trying to goalong. That was my, my plan. And
then I realized that I had twooptions. I could send it and
just go, because holding myselfback was making things worse.
(19:23):
Yeah? So I'd either land flat onmy face and be carted off, or
somehow I'd make it to thebottom of the hill, the long
hill, and then I would, like,sort things out. Yeah, walk.
Figure it out. I couldn't stopmyself to walk, yeah? Like,
literally, I could not slowmyself down to walk, because
everything just went absolutelynuts and bonkers. Had similar
(19:47):
issues in the past, right? Hadoccasionally would get something
like that, not usually a fullbody, yeah? So that was kind of
weird. So I sent it. I justabsolutely sent it, must. I wish
somebody had video. Somebody hasvideo of me going down that
first. Hill. It's got to lookthe goofiest thing. Arms all
over the place, just the body,just me screaming. It was just
all the way down to the bottom.
When I got to the bottom, thingsloosened
Kenny Bailey
(20:09):
up a little bit. They're looking for the
Hornet's Nest behind you, withthe bears.
Tom Regal (20:13):
It was crazy. So, yeah. So I made it to the bottom
of the long hill, and there's athey. They changed the course on
the run as well, kept it more intown, added a little more
elevation, so I think totalelevation on it was close to
1000 feet, if not a little over.
So for a marathon, you've gottwo loops, there's a lot of
hills. You're going down, you'reflat, and then you're coming all
(20:35):
the way back into town. There'ssome work to do. So I was just
trying to sort things out, but Iwas able to manage my paces. I
was sitting in the mid nine,915, 920, per mile, which is
what I was planning on doing. Itwas going along, but I just
didn't feel right. Yeah, Ididn't feel right. I felt off. I
felt like I was about to crampany minute. So I managed to push
through that till mile 11. Andthen mile 11, I said I had to
(20:58):
stop and do something. Yeah,like I was drinking lots more
mortal hydration. I thought,like, electrolytes,
electrolytes, electrolytes. Itturns out I needed salt. Okay, I
needed more. And there's notenough electrolyte. There's not
enough salt anymore. At leastthe more than that, they were
mortal hydration that they wereusing. And that's fine, I get
it. They can't give that muchsalt to everybody. That's no big
(21:19):
deal. I didn't. The one thing Ididn't bring with me was Little
salt tabs. Yeah, right. Shouldhave known better on that. I
usually have some salt tabs insome place, but yeah, so I
slowed down, walked stopped, atea lot of chips and and stuff for
the first,
Unknown (21:35):
yeah, that little
Tom Regal (21:38):
for the for probably three or four miles after that,
I made sure I dropped down to, Ithink one of them was a 15
minute mile, and then I was downin the elevens, elevens and
twelves for a little bit. Is
Kenny Bailey
(21:49):
that the part when, at what point when you're
doing that? Was there a coachinglike, oh my gosh, my the people
are watching me. I mean, is itall external, or do you always
just remove that price when I'm
Tom Regal (22:00):
in the race, I'm I'm good with that. There was a,
there was a there was a fewtimes I was thinking about that
on the bike, but I was able toput that away, because I have a
that's what I love about racing,yeah, like, I can have that
singular focus. Finally,normally, I'm add, I'm all over
the place. I'm just, like,thinking about too many things,
as you can tell, right now,right? But for for the race, I'm
(22:21):
locked in, I'm going, Okay, Ijust need to just keep going. So
for me, it's constantly checkinghow my body feels, like, okay,
my feet, okay, good. Ankles,knees, everything feels good.
You just That's my constant runthrough while I'm running is to
make sure it's all good. Andthen I was sitting here trying
to figure out exactly what waswrong, right? I was trying to
go, Okay, this isn't working.
Let me try Plan B. Let me try.
(22:42):
And then it was just like, Youknow what? I'm gonna stop and
eat a whole thing of potatochips. Like, salt. I need salt.
I need salt. And literally, Iwas stopping to make sure that I
ate all of the chips. And thenfrom there it was drink some
coke, which I was gonna be atthe second half of the race.
Anyway, elixir, yeah. Aboutthree or four miles later, it
was like, I could feel my wholebody just coming back to life
(23:03):
again. So then it was like, so Imanaged some, you know, some 10
and a half to 11 and a halfminute miles as I was going
through, because I was walkingparts and going up the hills,
and then everything came back tolife. So the last six miles, I'm
flying, I'm doing 830s now, andI'm just like, this is, this is
where I yeah, this is where Icould have been had I, had I
kind of managed this a littlebit quicker, but I'm still good
(23:26):
with it, yeah? And
Kenny Bailey
(23:27):
it goes back to that experience, right? It
goes knowing that, okay, if mybody is doing this, then I must
do this, right? And you're notgonna get it. I mean, 100% 100%
of the time, but you, you know,like, oh, it's salt, okay,
that's okay. That result inthere, and then all of a sudden,
and with the Coke, it's justsort of breaks the dam and not
and all of a sudden you're,yeah, popped it on, popped it
on, right? So, yeah, I think, Ithink sometimes I know, you
(23:48):
know, I have friends andcolleagues that are watching the
Ironman tracker, right, andtheir senior split times, and I
know when I'm walking, I'm like,Oh, they're gonna look at the
split times and go, What else,yeah, and so on your when you're
on the opposite end, you justdon't know. You're like, Oh,
he's doing great. Oh, he's doinggreat. Oh, yeah, he's back, you
know? So it's a
Tom Regal (24:04):
when I'm watching as a coach now, and I know the
course I it's like, going alongis like, Oh, he's flying. He's
doing great. He's doing great.
Oh, he hit the hilly section.
Okay, here he is. He's okay.
He's doing good, about a littlehot. Yeah, maybe
Kenny Bailey
(24:17):
she shouldn't come out. Slow
Tom Regal (24:19):
down, slow down, slow down, that type of thing. So,
Kenny Bailey
(24:22):
yeah, so as you know, as other coaches,
right? If you're coachingcoaches, the idea of of the idea
of having to perform, by theway, what was your time
Tom Regal (24:33):
when you got 1303?
Well, there you go. So, so I hadthree minutes you missed by
three minutes. That was my extrapee break at mile 11, because it
was more than three minutes. Ibeat my swim time, my bike time,
my two transitions were faster,my run was slower. Is that
ironic, or what that's it'shilarious. The one thing you
wanted to do because I had GIissues. I had GI issues on the
(24:54):
run, yeah, on the first one,yeah. And that's when I
discovered. That soy and I don'tmix, but I still had a faster
run back then I was, yeah, I wasyounger, and that's my only
disappointment, was the factthat I really wanted to nail the
run. Yeah, and I, I did good onthe run. I'm not, I'm not upset
(25:16):
with it. It was within what Ithought I could do, right? It's
still within that window of theplan. Yeah, was still
Kenny Bailey
(25:23):
there. And you had, you were staring at 12 to
right. The number 12 like
Tom Regal (25:27):
that would have been so sweet. And the thing was, the
last half of the of the run, Iwasn't looking at my watch. I
wasn't worried. I was justtrying to get to the finish. I
was just trying to sort myselfout and go. And I don't think I
could have run any faster.
Really, I couldn't have, becauseI was running fast. If I had
was, like, sort of sloshingalong on that last bit and,
like, took it easy and was justlike, I'll just get the
finished. I'll be fine. Yeah?
And then coming to winter 13,that's right, I would have
(25:48):
pissed, yeah,
Kenny Bailey
(25:49):
I think there's a, you know, I preach
this a lot, right? You want to.
It's, it's not a time issue, orit's not a quality issue. You
just want to reach yourcapability, yeah, right, if you
felt like I didn't give mycapability, like, I didn't live
up to capability that I couldhave done on that race. Yeah,
that's what bugs the crap out ofyes, yeah, right. So the back
half the raise, you were like,Oh, I'm running to the speed I
should be running. You know,you're not thrilled because of
(26:12):
GI issues and other issues upfront, or because, you know, the
salt didn't kick in, but youlived up to the capability that
you were looking to do, right?
Yeah, that's what it becomes. It
Tom Regal (26:21):
was in a number, yeah, like I said, if I had
nailed everything perfect, andthe, you know, all the
conditions are great, it wouldhave been 12 and a half hours,
yeah. The worst case it wasgoing to be was 13 and a half
hours, yeah. And to come inright at 13 hours is like,
what's there? I did what I knewI was capable of doing. I was
very, very satisfied with that.
I was, I was exhausted at theend. I mean, I put everything
out, and that's
Kenny Bailey
(26:42):
great, right?
Because, again, if, if weatherhits, you know, terrible
weather, or, you know, when Idid California, the wind was
ridiculous, so you just kind ofadjust. You're like, that's
outside of my capability change,of course, right? You see that
stuff? Because now you're, nowyou're living whatever
capability you can within that,within that weather thing,
that's what makes these races sofun. Yeah, mechanical certainly
pisses you off, right? Becauseit's like, I want someone to
(27:04):
control but, but it's like, itjust robbed me of finding my
capability. Yeah, right, yeah.
It's those ones where you screwup, you do a dumb mistake, you
know, you tell yourself, I'mgonna go buy this plan. I'm
gonna eat this kind of stuff.
It's
Tom Regal (27:19):
when you start racing the other people on the corner,
yeah? You're just like, well,that guy's up a front and he's
really flying up that hill. I'mjust gonna go catch him, yeah?
Or worse
Kenny Bailey
(27:27):
for me is, I don't think that person should
be in front of me. That guyshouldn't be Yeah, exactly,
yeah. There's no one guy shouldnot be in front of me. That guy.
Tom Regal (27:35):
You can have a healthy dose of that to keep
yourself going, Yeah, but youhave to, like, once again, you
have to look at some metrics andsay, Yeah, I'm really outside my
zone on this one. And I thinkthat's, that's a big thing with
racing with power. I thinkthat's where a benefit comes in.
If you can stay to those numbersand look at that, yeah. And
Kenny Bailey
(27:52):
the hard part for me to your point is, you may
have you settle in on a group ofpeople, right? You know, these
races are long enough where youjust have this sort of cadre of,
you know, a dozen people, you'reall around the same effort, and
suddenly you're doing the sameeffort. And then you feel a
little bit like you're fading alittle bit. And then all of a
sudden, they're still not, youknow, they're not fading. And
then that's, yeah, yeah. Andthat's when you're like, I don't
want to break the rubber band onthis thing. And then all of a
(28:14):
sudden you're like, Okay, Igotta, I gotta put my pride away
and go ahead. That person'sstrong, yeah,
Tom Regal (28:18):
let them do that.
Catch them on the run. Yeah,last words, yeah.
Kenny Bailey
(28:23):
So as other coaches that are, that are, what
would you tell the coaches aboutthat? Because I know you guys
talk about that, right? It'slike, you know, I don't know if
I should be public about myraces. I don't know the
expectations of my clients. Youknow, was there a myth? We get
Tom Regal (28:38):
mixed messages. I get more mixed, mixed messages from
people who try to help coaches.
So there's there's consultantsand people out there that help
help us coaches like so if weneeded some help, some mentoring
and some other stuff. And halfof them are like, You need to
put up good results, and theother half of them where you
don't need to worry about theresults. Yeah, I tend to think
that it's not about the results.
(28:58):
But that being said, that's thething that pops to our heads, is
that that's the thing that weworry about the most, is that we
want to put up good results.
Because we see comments wherepeople put up is like, Wow, he's
really he's he's practicing whathe preaches, yeah, from someone
that doesn't even know you.
Yeah, all right, just puttingthis up there, and just because
they saw the result that youdid, yeah, and it's like, oh, so
(29:21):
there is that out there. Yeah, Idon't know how much of, how much
you put weight into it, whetherit's, you know, 60% or 20% of
what's out there, but it'sthere. And I think that's
something we just need to notfocus on and not dwell on it,
yeah, and just, once again, dothe best we can. But it's
something that that's it's outthere, it's prevalent, and it
pops into our heads every oncein a
Kenny Bailey
(29:43):
while. I think, to your point, well, and
I also there's a differencebetween 35 and 55 right? I mean,
if you're a 35 year old racerand coach, right? You know you
have a better capability to dosomething, but, but I think you
hit it earlier. I think it'saround what, what is your game
plan? And if you preach. Aparticular game plan, or you
preach a particular way ofapproaching a raise, yeah? And
(30:04):
then you yourself don't do that.
Yeah? I think it's that gap thatcauses people to be concerned.
It's like, yeah, I stuck to myplan. Things what, you know,
people know things go awry. Theyknow that, you know, nutrition,
I was trying, you know, I had anutrition plan that's gonna,
that's gonna appear, yeah? Imean, that's
Tom Regal (30:21):
the fun part of the race, yeah, it's never a
straightforward thing, yeah? SoI think
Kenny Bailey
(30:26):
more coaches should focus on that. To your
point, it's not a time thing.
It's a hey, I stuck to them theown the same plan I gave you is
the same plan I used for myself.
Yeah, the results were what Iwas hoping it to be. You know,
you did beat your time for 14years, yeah? Yeah. So that's
fantastic, right? I mean, 14years ago, you were racing, and
now, you know, 14 years later,we're the best of your time.
(30:47):
It's
Tom Regal (30:47):
and it's hard to judge year from year, because it
changes in course, changing thetemperature, where all of that
stuff goes into it, I wonder.
And I actually played with thisin my mind. I do. I share my
race plan before I go and racethat's interesting to say, Hey,
this is what I'm planning ondoing. This is the time I think
I can hit for the swim. I'mgoing to try to do this for all
(31:09):
of that. I give that to Wendybecause she's watching so she
knows when things go awry orwhen things are good. But I
didn't share that with anybodyelse, and I did think about it.
That would
Kenny Bailey
(31:21):
be an interesting thing to do, to your
point, because I think, as aclient, if you guys are looking
for coaches, I think, you know,pure time, it may not be the
your coach could be a phenom,yeah, right, and well, but if
they stuck to their plan, right?
That's interesting. So I thinkit would be almost better to do
that, to say, hey, here's,here's, you know, here's the
plan I have, and when, if theplan didn't go awry, you discuss
(31:42):
that with your clients, right?
Like, Hey, okay, and here's whathappened. You know, the
nutrition didn't hit like Ithought it was gonna hit or,
yeah, I hit the number it was,it was rough, but I got within
the range I wanted to get. Yeah,right? And here's my build up to
what I've
Tom Regal (31:56):
done. So if I don't share it ahead of time, to come
back and we talk about itafterwards, does it sound like
I'm making excuses because Ididn't do right? It was like,
Well, I had some issues. I hadto back off on the bike, but
then I did this, but you didn'tknow what my target was to begin
with. If I told you my targetwas to begin with, and then I
came back, and I had to adjust,but I still stayed within my
target. Is that better? I knowif I looked at a coach and I saw
(32:20):
them race, and I knew how theycoached, and I saw them do
everything wrong or everythingopposite of what you said, I
would have less respect for thatcoach. That's my point. Yeah,
seeing their seeing the resultswouldn't matter at that point,
because it's just kind of like,well, your your chain fell off
because you didn't take care ofit. You didn't have your bike
(32:41):
tuned and ready to go in, youdidn't have this you weren't
prepared for everything. And asa coach, I expect you to be more
prepared for things to go wrong,and then watch you adjust for
them. And whether it works ornot doesn't matter. Well, I
Kenny Bailey
(32:56):
think there's also Yeah. So I think, you know,
if you're asking my opinion, Ithink the fact you said, Look,
I'm between 110 and 120 I mightswim. I got 119 there was, you
know, there was some, it wasn'teasy getting to the 119 Yeah, my
bike corner between X and Y,yeah, like, and then, you know,
my, if it goes worse than Iexpect, it's going to be down
(33:16):
here, yeah, and you stay withinthat. But it's sort of like
golf, right? I mean, to me,it's, it's, I know there's a
weird analogy, but, like, whatmakes the difference between a
pro and a duffer, right? Prosalways make mistakes. They're in
sand. They hit in the in rough,yeah, they're all over the
place. How they get out of it,right? Yeah. I mean, the wedge
shots that these guys are doing,you know, off of a rough on,
(33:39):
just like, right onto the green.
Yeah, you know, look inhuman,yeah, right. Us mortals can't do
that, and that's why they'recashing in the checks, right? I
think that to your point, if Ihave a problem where I have
cramps or other things, I I, Icombated it this way, and then
it fixed it, and now I ran.
Yeah? That's to me, like, ofcourse, you're not going to have
a perfect race, no. And ofcourse, something's gonna go
(34:01):
wrong. It's how you correctedit. Like, oh, I realized into
myself, this is what I did. SoI'm sharing that lesson with you
now clients that you know, andif you noticed, like, you know,
I didn't have an assault. Irealized that I corrected it,
and now I'm busting an 830 onthe back six miles, right? That,
to me, is, I think, a muchbetter thing to talk about.
Then, to your point, you know,I'm gonna do a, I'm gonna do a
(34:24):
59 minute swim, and you do abuck 20, and it's like, yeah,
Tom Regal (34:28):
exactly. Like, really, yeah, yeah. Well,
because I knew, well, there's
Kenny Bailey
(34:32):
a lot of people like, okay, you know
that. You as a coach, you shouldknow that. So I think that's,
that's kind of the big takeaway,right? Is just, maybe, just be
honest with your your folks, andso
Tom Regal (34:43):
I'll admit to everybody that sharing even even
on this podcast, is difficultfor me. I am really an
introvert, and introverts don'tjust hide. We actually need
energy. So I like grouptraining. I like being out at
the swims. I like. Being all ofthat stuff, I get a lot of
energy from everybody, and Iappreciate all that energy that
(35:04):
you give me. And then I need togo recuperate. Yeah, did swim
training camp, and I needed,like, four days just like, be by
myself and my thoughts and getthrough all of that. So I'm not
comfortable sharing all of thisinformation. I'm getting over
that this is my therapy, yeah,this is my end of the therapy,
Kenny Bailey
(35:21):
yeah? And I've been on the other end of that
where I've shared, you know, mywhole journey, and then I
absolutely imploded, yeah,where? And it's not fun, yeah,
right. You're like, oh, well,then why don't you shut my mouth
and race next time? Yeah, youknow. So you have to make that
sort of balance, like,
Tom Regal (35:34):
I still appreciate that sharing, even if you
implode on it. Yeah, I wouldrather see that, because I think
we learn more from it. Yeah, Ithink we certainly learn more
from it. So that's the thingsI'm going to try to do going
forward. I don't know what racesI'm going to do next. I don't
really have anything elseplanned I'm going to do. Let's
see what is that gulf coastsprint. Try nice coming up in a
(35:57):
week and a half, a week, weekand a half. This should come out
before that, just before thatrace. That's my that'll be my
fourth sprint for the for theyear. And I don't know what I'm
doing after that. I'll do somerunning races. I'll figure out
what kind of relax. Yeah, we'vegot too many other athletes
racing, some big stuff. We gotarmor, Iron Man chat, new coming
up in a month, and that'sawesome. They'll be fun. That's
(36:19):
gonna be some good stuff. Coolopening there. So it's been fun.
It's been a good journey.
Kenny Bailey
(36:23):
Well, Tom, thank you for sharing. I know,
like you said, it's difficult toshare, but I think it's
important not as a not just asan athlete, but also as a coach,
as kind of people learning,right people? You know, this is
the whole point of this podcast,is to kind of share information,
share ways of like, Hey, how canI get better? What can I do?
What can I look for in a coach?
How? What expectations of acoach should I? Should I put
away? Versus, you know,
Tom Regal (36:45):
hopefully it gives you some additional questions to
ask when you're looking for acoach, yeah, the answer to
should I get a coach is alwaysyes. At what level you need that
Coach, how much you need thatcoach? What you need that coach
to do is, is different foreverybody, but just asking the
right questions. Just don't takea coach, yeah, right. You need
to make sure the personality isbound up, their philosophy, how
(37:07):
they how they go through things.
There's a lot of really goodcoaches out there, and it's just
finding the right one for you.
Yep, is the key. So cool. ThanksTom, there you go. Thanks
everybody. Thumbs up. Starssubscribe. We said that the
beginning. We're gonna do itagain. So next time we'll we'll
be back with the triathletesjourney. We'll be bringing some
(37:27):
of those episodes. Absolutely.
Thanks everybody. Keep thecomments coming, and we'll catch
you on the next
Unknown (37:42):
one. You
Music.
Narrator (00:10):
Welcome to the athletes in motion podcast from
race to recovery with your hostsTom regal and Kenny Bailey. You
Kenny Bailey
(00:29):
Hey, Tom, how are you?
Tom Regal (00:30):
I'm fantastic. Kenny, how are you? I
Kenny Bailey
(00:31):
am fantastic as well. This is going to be a
fun episode today, because ourguest today is the one Tom regal
so well, first we're
Tom Regal (00:40):
going to talk about the fact that we we've been
missing for a few weeks. Yeah,because life got in the way.
Yes, we got crazy busy. Yes,Kenny is now the the man in
charge at lifetime. Yes,Franklin, so the general
manager. So Kenny's got a realgig.
Kenny Bailey
(00:54):
I got a real job now. It's
Tom Regal (00:55):
nice, so that's good.
We're super excited for him. Sotrying to get through all of
that, plus life in general, forme, got crazy as well, racing
and all of that we're gonna talka little bit about. But yeah,
we're here. We're back. Sorryabout that. So yeah, took a
little
Kenny Bailey
(01:08):
pause. Had to get thanks. So thanks for still
checking in and speaking away.
So if you are checking in, makesure you like and subscribe down
below. Please do it that alwayshelps our algorithm and also
just gives you an opportunity toknow when our new shows are
coming up. So especially
Tom Regal (01:23):
if you take another break,
Kenny Bailey
(01:26):
but excited to talk about this today, because
you not only do you coach folksin bike fit and just basically
live the triathlon lifestyle,but you also race as well, and
you had your Iron Man LakePlacid. Yep, this year, that was
your race. That was my race.
That was my egg race. Yeah. Andlove so want to talk about your
race. Want to talk about sort ofhow you're prepped for it, but
(01:47):
also you have another kind ofinteresting thing in the fact
that you've got the label ofcoach above your head. So how
you know, today we're going totry to talk about, sort of how
that additional pressure, what,what that thought is, as you're
trying to coach other peoplecoach yourself, and those
expectations that you put onyourself, or those feelings that
you know, like, hey, what's mycoach doing? Why can't he figure
(02:08):
this out?
Tom Regal (02:11):
You know, it turns out terrible athletes. We're
horrible athletes to comeespecially when we're coaching
ourselves. That's really bad. Sothat we when you hate your
coach. When you're out there,you get that bad workout, and
you hate your coach, and you'rejust kind of like kind of angry
at him, yeah, yeah, it's kind of
Kenny Bailey
(02:26):
weird. Yeah, he's suffering the same fate
too. So yeah, we go throughthat. So you decided, what made
you decide to do Lake Placidthis year?
Tom Regal (02:32):
So I had done Lake Placid as my very first Iron Man
back in 2014 so it's been a fewyears, 2014 2010 Yeah, 2010
because it was 14 years ago. Soback in 2010 that was my very
first Ironman. I had been in thesport for a few years already. I
(02:53):
kind of worked my way up tothat. So that's always a special
one. I grew up in New York, wentto school in upstate New York,
spent some time in theAdirondacks. Love it up there.
That's why I chose that as myfirst one. Had some family and
some friends come over, sodecided to go back and do that
again. I don't know, for somereason I felt like it was time
to go back and try to beat thattime. I wanted to see as as the
(03:15):
years go past, it was like, Ibetter go now, because I'm
probably not going to be fasteror better than I was. So once
again, family and friends came.
We rented a nice place, and itwas, go back. Let's see what I
can do with that. So I focused alot on short course the whole
year, and got my training in andeverything. But that was our
main our main focus was to getup there and have some fun and
(03:36):
see what I could do. Yeah.
Kenny Bailey
(03:38):
And the interesting part about that to
your point when you're younger,in your journey, your career,
right? You're, like your firstcouple, there's this sort of,
sort of sine wave that happens,right? You're not very good at
the beginning. You're kind offumbling around, but you did
great, you had fun, and you gotthe bug. And then you sort of
increase your skill level, andyou decrease your speed and
(04:01):
those kind of things. And thenyou start getting older to your
point, and you're like, Well,you know, I've got a lot of
knowledge now built up. I have alot of education built up. And I
can tell probably a year ago,two years ago, you were starting
to get that itch, right? You'relike, Hey, I mean, I got some
juice in the tank. Yeah, right.
There's a little bit there. I'm,you know, can I beat what I, you
know, 14 year old, smarter thanI was,
Tom Regal (04:24):
yeah, 14 years ago, especially in this sport, maybe
not anything else, but in thissport, for sure, okay, that was
and that was the key, and I knewI was gonna have to be really
smart on the race, yeah.
Kenny Bailey
(04:35):
And so your goal was to, is it? Was it to
get the overall time? Was it getto split times? There was
Tom Regal (04:40):
a couple. There's a couple different different
pieces to it. So overall, it wasto finish. That's always my my
goal is always to finish. So thesecond goal was to beat my time.
My third my time was 1341 so 13hours, 41 minutes. So the beat
the overall time would have beenkey. And then, of course, I
wanted to see each componentswim by, to run eight. End
transitions. I wanted to see ifI could actually be faster on
(05:03):
those. So the last two years, Ihad focused. I was coming back
from injury. I think we'vetalked about this on another
podcast, and I focused a lot onrunning. Yeah, I didn't. I did
mainly running. I did minimalcycling, especially for me, 1000
miles maybe a year. Incomparative terms, folks, that's
(05:23):
normally it's five. So it wasone. So I knew, starting back
November, when I really gottraining for this, that was my
weak link, and I didn't know howmuch of that I was going to get
back, yeah, because it doesn'talways come back. So I had a
try. It really worked on a planto build up my we look at watts
(05:43):
per kilogram for power output. Inever quite got back to where I
was a couple of years ago. Itjust, I just didn't have enough
time. I had nine months. Ididn't have enough time to get
there. Isn't it funny, ninemonths, nine months isn't enough
time to point at
Kenny Bailey
(05:57):
that. And that's the thing. Full Ironmans
are no joke, right? You don'thide from a full Ironman. No,
it, if you sort of phoned it inon a certain part of it, it's
going to reveal itself duringthe title of the race, and not
just itself in that particularlike, like you said, if, if you
just kind of not that you didthis, but if you phoned it in on
the bike, yeah, you're not onlygoing to suffer on the bike, but
that runs going to be just anightmare, yeah. So, yeah. So
(06:20):
you know your bike was but yourbike was good. It just wasn't
where you wanted to be. Yeah,
Tom Regal (06:24):
it was, it was strong. I knew where it was. So
this, this time, this timearound, I was training with
power, which I didn't do backthen in 2010 because, yeah, most
of those power meters weren'taround. Yeah, it wasn't as much
as, as prevalent as it is now.
Yeah, and easy to do. So I knewI had to train like I had to
train smarter, right? I had to,had to work. So I knew a week
(06:44):
out from the race is where Iknow exactly what numbers I can
hit. Yeah, that's, that's,there's no magical answer to
doing better than that. I knewwhat my targets were. I knew if
I had the absolute perfect day,everything went to plan. If not
better, I would get 12 and ahalf hours. That was probably
the best I could do. Yeah, withswim, the bike, the run, all of
(07:07):
those pieces all fallingtogether. Is
Kenny Bailey
(07:11):
that an important thing? That's a
really, that's an interestingway to look at it, right? Which
is, you know, no know what yourrealm is like. You're not going
to bust it in, you know, nineand a half, you're not going to
bust it in 11.
Tom Regal (07:23):
It's realistic. It's the only way to set realistic
goals when you're going intoraces like this, because you're
never going to, no one's goingto step up and all of a sudden,
you know, come to the forefront.
I've like, if you're running afour and a half hour marathon,
you're not automatically goingto be able to run a three and a
half hour it's just, it's notgoing to happen. It's whatever
you're doing in your training isthat it is. So it's always
interesting when someone startstalking about what they want to
(07:44):
hit, yeah, you can have goalsand say, Yeah, I want to go sub
12 on my on my Ironman. But asthe as the week go by, and as
you get closer, if you're nottraining at those levels, you're
not going to hit it. Yes, it'snot the race. It's going to get
you a magical tailwind that'sgoing to come that's going to
come and all of a sudden you'retwo miles an hour faster on the
(08:04):
bike. Yeah? It's just not goingto happen. So add to that that
they had changed the course alittle bit, which they always
do, right? So we just kind of,they added this little segment
in it that probably added closeto 1000 feet of gain. So we're
at close to 7500 feet nice ofelevation just on the bike. So
you're gonna earn that, yeah? Soit's, it's like, okay,
realistically, that is critical,especially in this race for the
(08:26):
run, yeah, are you gonna blow upcompletely trying to hammer the
bike to the numbers that you didon the flatlands? Yeah? To, you
know, not have anythingavailable in the tank for the
for the run. So, so
Kenny Bailey
(08:41):
when you decided to do this, and you said
it out loud to your clients,yeah, what is you do? You have a
concern to that point, are youtrying to set a precedence?
Because everyone, you know,everyone's going to look at you,
right? You're, oh, coach isracing this one. Oh, coach is
racing this one. So, you know,that kind of thing. How do you
(09:01):
set up that expectation level?
Or do you feel like you have to?
Tom Regal (09:04):
It was interesting, because I'm up to this point
like being out here. I've beenout here for about four years
now, right? I usually don'tshare much in my training and my
racing. Everyone will find outabout it afterwards, right? I'll
post up about it. Hey, I'm atthe race or something like that,
and there's not that much thisone was kind of odd, because the
(09:26):
amount of people that werewatching, and even that I didn't
know we're watching, that Italked to afterwards, that's
kind of kind of wild. It's likepeople that I just met once,
they were like, Yeah, I followedyou. I watched you on the video
finish. Like, wow. Okay, no,that that's amazing. Yeah, that
blows my mind. So I like I havea Strava account. I have
followers. I've never postedanything on it, right? I don't
(09:48):
share my workouts because Idon't think they relate to how
your workouts would be. And Iknow some people like to do
that. That's fine, but I don'twant you to compare about what
I'm doing, because what I'mdoing, it works for me, not for
you. It's different that way. SoI'm very I'm very cautious and
shy when I shared training andall this. So it was kind of
weird when I started talking topeople about it, and people got
(10:09):
excited and they remembered. Soas it was getting closer to race
day, they were just kind oflike, Oh, you got your race
coming up. We're so excited.
We're gonna be following you.
They're like, like, not used tothat, yeah. So that was a new
realm for me to go into. So Idid. I had to work really hard
about not focusing on that,yeah. And I had to go back to my
race plan. Nice, because Ifigured if they're watching, the
(10:31):
one thing that I've gottenreally good over the years is
setting up a good race plan.
Yeah, it's worked for the 100milers. It's worked for
everything. All of this sets up,and that's, that's the thing
that I said, Well, I have tofocus on that, because if I
don't have a good race plan andI blow up, then that's going to
look worse than if I just goslow, yeah, if that's a race
plan, yeah?
Kenny Bailey
(10:54):
Or if you're trying to hit a time and you
don't hit, it, like, if youdon't hit there's 100 reasons
why you can't hit a time, yeah,but if it's because you
fundamentally broke your ownrule, it's like, that's
Tom Regal (11:05):
the part that I was like, Okay, so that's what I and
I had to self talk myself a fewtimes on it. I had to sit back
and go, no, no, no, let's, youknow, focus, come bring this
back. This, this is the plan. Wehave to go with the plan. The
plan is what I have to do. Andfun. Funny thing was that my
wife, Wendy, were were up at thehouse. Our friends had come in,
(11:26):
they went off and did somestuff, and I checked the bike
and I did wherever, and then I'msitting there watching the tour
on the couch, like, you know,I'd set everything up. And since
she was like, are you okay? AndI'm like, yeah, why? You know,
she goes, you're really calm.
I'm like, Well, I've done thisbefore. Yeah, I knew exactly
what I needed. My transitionbags have very little in them,
yeah, because I just need, youknow, I need shoes and a helmet.
(11:47):
Just my transitions have gottenI don't bring extra stuff. I had
my calorie count laid out. I hadexactly what I was going to do
was all laid out. It was alldone. I repacked the bags a
couple times and then took him,checked in, took the bike, and
then, and then, just watched TV.
Yeah, it's
Kenny Bailey
(12:03):
like the first race you bring in Santa Claus
back, right? Well, just in case,I need armor. So what if I need,
Tom Regal (12:08):
what about, what
Kenny Bailey
(12:09):
if I have an expert, socks? I know
Tom Regal (12:10):
I don't need all of that. Yeah, I've that's good,
got all of that covered, um, youknow, and I'm confident that if
it doesn't go right, yeah, I'llbe okay. I'll be able to figure
it out. Sure.
Kenny Bailey
(12:20):
So race day shows up. You know, the weather,
hopefully was cooperating foryou.
Tom Regal (12:26):
Yeah, the weather was, it was super hot the two
weeks before, just like it wasjust about everywhere in the
country, right? Watertemperature got up to 78
degrees, which it never does,yeah, up there. So it was almost
not wetsuit legal. It droppeddown to 75 that morning. So it
got down. So we were wetsuit,nice, great, which is fine. I
(12:46):
was prepared to go either way.
It was fine, so I seated myselfand this is, this is a bone I
have to pick with everybody thatsees themselves improperly. This
is in these problems, becausethis was, this was a major
problem for this. This is twoloops. Everyone stacked up. I
got in the one hour 10 minute toone hour 20 minute zone, because
that's what I can do. Yeah? Iknow I can do that. My my
(13:08):
fastest swim was a 105 Yeah. Iusually sit in the 110 range. So
I walked myself up, which wasnot easy to do. Kind of work
scored my way, ended up at thefront of that group. So I'm at
the front of the one the 110group, the one hour to 110 is in
front of us, and then the subone hours up in front of them,
and the pros, whatever up there,there, they've got us lined up,
(13:31):
so five at a time, every fiveseconds. Yeah, that should work
fine. Yep, it's two loops. Youshouldn't run into traffic until
the second loop, I swam overprobably 50 people in the first
200 yards. It was ridiculous.
Yeah, and they were swimmingsideways. They were going all
different directions. I gotkicked in the throat twice. Wow.
(13:52):
I got kicked in the chest. I gotpunched in the head. It was like
people weren't even caring ifthey touched you. They didn't
back off. They just hit youharder. Yeah, it was like,
everyone just like, was it wasmayhem, yeah. And that first
1000 yards was brutal, and itdidn't get any better the rest
of the rest of the time. So,yeah, those
Kenny Bailey
(14:11):
two loopers, it's interesting. And I think
that's the, I think the partthat you can't practice very
well, yeah, is, is that right?
Which is, you know, you've doneopen water, you've done your
pool swims. You're feelinghealthy, you're feeling good.
Yeah, you know, getting smackedin the throat. I don't think, as
a coach, you practice smackingyour clients in a
Tom Regal (14:29):
throat. I try not, you know, they frown upon. I've
learned a couple new tricks thatwe're going to use in the open
water test coming up becausewith a noodle and so, yeah, oh,
I was, yeah, it was, it wasbrutal. And around the top part
of the course, I got hit with afist, with a fist. This was not
a hand. This was a fist right inthe hamstring that just locked
(14:49):
the hamstring. I was sinking. Itwent so dead leg on me that I
was sinking around and had tocome back from that. Had that
happen with the other leg on thesecond loop. So it was brutal.
Brutal I come out of the swim.
Survived that at a 119 right? Iwas still in my 110 to 120
right? Yeah. So not spectacular,but faster than my first
(15:10):
triathlon, yeah, my firstIronman. So I was, I was still,
I was still ahead of the game atthat point. Yeah, yeah.
Kenny Bailey
(15:17):
Did you feel like you were so you were doing
your plan, that you thought youwere doing your plan, get on the
bike. The bike, same thing.
Tom Regal (15:23):
I had a great t1 I had a great t1 I was really
happy with that flew out ofthere, got on the bike. The bike
is a quick downhill to startnice, and then it goes uphill.
So the first 12 miles, you're1000 feet of climbing. So it's,
it's fast, very steep descentright out of transition, with
some hard turns. And some peoplewere flying down that thing and
(15:46):
were almost wrecking Yeah. Sothen it was just getting into a
mode. I knew my power numbers. Ihad my my Watts Up above, and I
was staying just below the powernumbers for the first for the
first loop, about 35 excuse me,about 35 miles in. So I cramped
on the swim. I cramped. My abswere cramping in transition, and
then I cramped on the bike about35 miles in. So that was the
(16:08):
part where I was like, Okay,let's take a look at this. So I
started taking in moreelectrolyte mix, the mortal
hydration that they have, whichwas fine. I didn't have any
issues with it. I had trainedwith it before and tested it out
and got through that was still alittle nervous about that, so
wasn't feeling 100% on the bike.
So on the second loop, I backedoff a little bit more. So I went
(16:29):
under my power numbers. I knew Icouldn't go over, because I knew
if I went over at this point Iwas screwed. So that's
Kenny Bailey
(16:38):
14 years of experience on that one, right?
So 14 year ago, you would havedone
Tom Regal (16:43):
pushed, pushed. Just kept pushing, yeah. And did
well, yeah. And so I thinkthat's,
Kenny Bailey
(16:49):
that's the difference between you can be
older, yeah, you know, you canhave a plan. You know, it's
older. It's better to be sort ofolder and have a plan than it is
young, unless you can get awaywith it, which rarely you can,
yeah, but that's, that's thedifference, right? Is that okay?
I know now, yeah, that if I pushit, it's not only going to
affect my bike, but it's goingto affect that run moving
(17:10):
forward. So did you stick toyour nutrition plan?
Tom Regal (17:12):
You think I had to adjust the nutrition plan
because I tried to take in moremore electrolytes, okay? I tried
to take in a lot more mortalhydration, because I was trying
to stay ahead of what I thoughtwas cramping coming through. So
that switched me a little bit.
So my nutrition was very liquidto begin with, with tailwind,
yeah, and a couple bottles oftailwind I was taking. I was set
(17:32):
to take in between 90 and 100grams of carbides per hour. I
brought enough whole real foodwith me as well, because I
wanted to be prepared for thatas well. Ended up switching more
to real food than I did, becausethe mortal hydration just filled
me up. Yep, it just I wasliquid. I had to stop and take a
long, long pee break on thesecond loop of the bike,
(17:53):
everything sat within thenumbers. I said, Great. If I
have the perfect day. I'm reallygoing to be a 615 on the bike.
If it goes the way I think it'sgoing to go, it's going to be
six and a half hours on thebike. I ended up being 640
something. I was like, 648 orsomething like that. It was
like, as long as I was sub sevenhours, I was happy with the
(18:15):
climbing, because I was reallyfocused on the run. Yeah, like,
I've been working on the run.
The Run was good. The run issolid. It's like, really, like,
I was going to come out and havea really solid run. Had a killer
t2 four minutes, good. Justracked it. Just racked the bike.
Ran through, grab my stuff. Iwas out on the run. That's
awesome. And then the shit hitthe fan. What his sort of, so
(18:41):
the run is downhill, slightlydownhill, omega, you hit an
intersection, and then it's ahard right, and then it's a
really steep downhill. I wastrying to slow myself down, and
my whole body cramped. I mean,everything, I think, my eyelids
cramped, everything went intolock mode. And I was like, I was
still trying to test myself. Iwas still trying to slow my pace
(19:02):
down, because I didn't want tocome out of the box 830 I always
coach everybody. I tell you all,to take it nice and easy, go
nice and slow that first mile,that first two miles, get into
it. And I saw I was trying to goalong. That was my, my plan. And
then I realized that I had twooptions. I could send it and
just go, because holding myselfback was making things worse.
(19:23):
Yeah? So I'd either land flat onmy face and be carted off, or
somehow I'd make it to thebottom of the hill, the long
hill, and then I would, like,sort things out. Yeah, walk.
Figure it out. I couldn't stopmyself to walk, yeah? Like,
literally, I could not slowmyself down to walk, because
everything just went absolutelynuts and bonkers. Had similar
(19:47):
issues in the past, right? Hadoccasionally would get something
like that, not usually a fullbody, yeah? So that was kind of
weird. So I sent it. I justabsolutely sent it, must. I wish
somebody had video. Somebody hasvideo of me going down that
first. Hill. It's got to lookthe goofiest thing. Arms all
over the place, just the body,just me screaming. It was just
all the way down to the bottom.
When I got to the bottom, thingsloosened
Kenny Bailey
(20:09):
up a little bit. They're looking for the
Hornet's Nest behind you, withthe bears.
Tom Regal (20:13):
It was crazy. So, yeah. So I made it to the bottom
of the long hill, and there's athey. They changed the course on
the run as well, kept it more intown, added a little more
elevation, so I think totalelevation on it was close to
1000 feet, if not a little over.
So for a marathon, you've gottwo loops, there's a lot of
hills. You're going down, you'reflat, and then you're coming all
(20:35):
the way back into town. There'ssome work to do. So I was just
trying to sort things out, but Iwas able to manage my paces. I
was sitting in the mid nine,915, 920, per mile, which is
what I was planning on doing. Itwas going along, but I just
didn't feel right. Yeah, Ididn't feel right. I felt off. I
felt like I was about to crampany minute. So I managed to push
through that till mile 11. Andthen mile 11, I said I had to
(20:58):
stop and do something. Yeah,like I was drinking lots more
mortal hydration. I thought,like, electrolytes,
electrolytes, electrolytes. Itturns out I needed salt. Okay, I
needed more. And there's notenough electrolyte. There's not
enough salt anymore. At leastthe more than that, they were
mortal hydration that they wereusing. And that's fine, I get
it. They can't give that muchsalt to everybody. That's no big
(21:19):
deal. I didn't. The one thing Ididn't bring with me was Little
salt tabs. Yeah, right. Shouldhave known better on that. I
usually have some salt tabs insome place, but yeah, so I
slowed down, walked stopped, atea lot of chips and and stuff for
the first,
Unknown (21:35):
yeah, that little
Tom Regal (21:38):
for the for probably three or four miles after that,
I made sure I dropped down to, Ithink one of them was a 15
minute mile, and then I was downin the elevens, elevens and
twelves for a little bit. Is
Kenny Bailey
(21:49):
that the part when, at what point when you're
doing that? Was there a coachinglike, oh my gosh, my the people
are watching me. I mean, is itall external, or do you always
just remove that price when I'm
Tom Regal (22:00):
in the race, I'm I'm good with that. There was a,
there was a there was a fewtimes I was thinking about that
on the bike, but I was able toput that away, because I have a
that's what I love about racing,yeah, like, I can have that
singular focus. Finally,normally, I'm add, I'm all over
the place. I'm just, like,thinking about too many things,
as you can tell, right now,right? But for for the race, I'm
(22:21):
locked in, I'm going, Okay, Ijust need to just keep going. So
for me, it's constantly checkinghow my body feels, like, okay,
my feet, okay, good. Ankles,knees, everything feels good.
You just That's my constant runthrough while I'm running is to
make sure it's all good. Andthen I was sitting here trying
to figure out exactly what waswrong, right? I was trying to
go, Okay, this isn't working.
Let me try Plan B. Let me try.
(22:42):
And then it was just like, Youknow what? I'm gonna stop and
eat a whole thing of potatochips. Like, salt. I need salt.
I need salt. And literally, Iwas stopping to make sure that I
ate all of the chips. And thenfrom there it was drink some
coke, which I was gonna be atthe second half of the race.
Anyway, elixir, yeah. Aboutthree or four miles later, it
was like, I could feel my wholebody just coming back to life
(23:03):
again. So then it was like, so Imanaged some, you know, some 10
and a half to 11 and a halfminute miles as I was going
through, because I was walkingparts and going up the hills,
and then everything came back tolife. So the last six miles, I'm
flying, I'm doing 830s now, andI'm just like, this is, this is
where I yeah, this is where Icould have been had I, had I
kind of managed this a littlebit quicker, but I'm still good
(23:26):
with it, yeah? And
Kenny Bailey
(23:27):
it goes back to that experience, right? It
goes knowing that, okay, if mybody is doing this, then I must
do this, right? And you're notgonna get it. I mean, 100% 100%
of the time, but you, you know,like, oh, it's salt, okay,
that's okay. That result inthere, and then all of a sudden,
and with the Coke, it's justsort of breaks the dam and not
and all of a sudden you're,yeah, popped it on, popped it
on, right? So, yeah, I think, Ithink sometimes I know, you
(23:48):
know, I have friends andcolleagues that are watching the
Ironman tracker, right, andtheir senior split times, and I
know when I'm walking, I'm like,Oh, they're gonna look at the
split times and go, What else,yeah, and so on your when you're
on the opposite end, you justdon't know. You're like, Oh,
he's doing great. Oh, he's doinggreat. Oh, yeah, he's back, you
know? So it's a
Tom Regal (24:04):
when I'm watching as a coach now, and I know the
course I it's like, going alongis like, Oh, he's flying. He's
doing great. He's doing great.
Oh, he hit the hilly section.
Okay, here he is. He's okay.
He's doing good, about a littlehot. Yeah, maybe
Kenny Bailey
(24:17):
she shouldn't come out. Slow
Tom Regal (24:19):
down, slow down, slow down, that type of thing. So,
Kenny Bailey
(24:22):
yeah, so as you know, as other coaches,
right? If you're coachingcoaches, the idea of of the idea
of having to perform, by theway, what was your time
Tom Regal (24:33):
when you got 1303?
Well, there you go. So, so I hadthree minutes you missed by
three minutes. That was my extrapee break at mile 11, because it
was more than three minutes. Ibeat my swim time, my bike time,
my two transitions were faster,my run was slower. Is that
ironic, or what that's it'shilarious. The one thing you
wanted to do because I had GIissues. I had GI issues on the
(24:54):
run, yeah, on the first one,yeah. And that's when I
discovered. That soy and I don'tmix, but I still had a faster
run back then I was, yeah, I wasyounger, and that's my only
disappointment, was the factthat I really wanted to nail the
run. Yeah, and I, I did good onthe run. I'm not, I'm not upset
(25:16):
with it. It was within what Ithought I could do, right? It's
still within that window of theplan. Yeah, was still
Kenny Bailey
(25:23):
there. And you had, you were staring at 12 to
right. The number 12 like
Tom Regal (25:27):
that would have been so sweet. And the thing was, the
last half of the of the run, Iwasn't looking at my watch. I
wasn't worried. I was justtrying to get to the finish. I
was just trying to sort myselfout and go. And I don't think I
could have run any faster.
Really, I couldn't have, becauseI was running fast. If I had
was, like, sort of sloshingalong on that last bit and,
like, took it easy and was justlike, I'll just get the
finished. I'll be fine. Yeah?
And then coming to winter 13,that's right, I would have
(25:48):
pissed, yeah,
Kenny Bailey
(25:49):
I think there's a, you know, I preach
this a lot, right? You want to.
It's, it's not a time issue, orit's not a quality issue. You
just want to reach yourcapability, yeah, right, if you
felt like I didn't give mycapability, like, I didn't live
up to capability that I couldhave done on that race. Yeah,
that's what bugs the crap out ofyes, yeah, right. So the back
half the raise, you were like,Oh, I'm running to the speed I
should be running. You know,you're not thrilled because of
(26:12):
GI issues and other issues upfront, or because, you know, the
salt didn't kick in, but youlived up to the capability that
you were looking to do, right?
Yeah, that's what it becomes. It
Tom Regal (26:21):
was in a number, yeah, like I said, if I had
nailed everything perfect, andthe, you know, all the
conditions are great, it wouldhave been 12 and a half hours,
yeah. The worst case it wasgoing to be was 13 and a half
hours, yeah. And to come inright at 13 hours is like,
what's there? I did what I knewI was capable of doing. I was
very, very satisfied with that.
I was, I was exhausted at theend. I mean, I put everything
out, and that's
Kenny Bailey
(26:42):
great, right?
Because, again, if, if weatherhits, you know, terrible
weather, or, you know, when Idid California, the wind was
ridiculous, so you just kind ofadjust. You're like, that's
outside of my capability change,of course, right? You see that
stuff? Because now you're, nowyou're living whatever
capability you can within that,within that weather thing,
that's what makes these races sofun. Yeah, mechanical certainly
pisses you off, right? Becauseit's like, I want someone to
(27:04):
control but, but it's like, itjust robbed me of finding my
capability. Yeah, right, yeah.
It's those ones where you screwup, you do a dumb mistake, you
know, you tell yourself, I'mgonna go buy this plan. I'm
gonna eat this kind of stuff.
It's
Tom Regal (27:19):
when you start racing the other people on the corner,
yeah? You're just like, well,that guy's up a front and he's
really flying up that hill. I'mjust gonna go catch him, yeah?
Or worse
Kenny Bailey
(27:27):
for me is, I don't think that person should
be in front of me. That guyshouldn't be Yeah, exactly,
yeah. There's no one guy shouldnot be in front of me. That guy.
Tom Regal (27:35):
You can have a healthy dose of that to keep
yourself going, Yeah, but youhave to, like, once again, you
have to look at some metrics andsay, Yeah, I'm really outside my
zone on this one. And I thinkthat's, that's a big thing with
racing with power. I thinkthat's where a benefit comes in.
If you can stay to those numbersand look at that, yeah. And
Kenny Bailey
(27:52):
the hard part for me to your point is, you may
have you settle in on a group ofpeople, right? You know, these
races are long enough where youjust have this sort of cadre of,
you know, a dozen people, you'reall around the same effort, and
suddenly you're doing the sameeffort. And then you feel a
little bit like you're fading alittle bit. And then all of a
sudden, they're still not, youknow, they're not fading. And
then that's, yeah, yeah. Andthat's when you're like, I don't
want to break the rubber band onthis thing. And then all of a
(28:14):
sudden you're like, Okay, Igotta, I gotta put my pride away
and go ahead. That person'sstrong, yeah,
Tom Regal (28:18):
let them do that.
Catch them on the run. Yeah,last words, yeah.
Kenny Bailey
(28:23):
So as other coaches that are, that are, what
would you tell the coaches aboutthat? Because I know you guys
talk about that, right? It'slike, you know, I don't know if
I should be public about myraces. I don't know the
expectations of my clients. Youknow, was there a myth? We get
Tom Regal (28:38):
mixed messages. I get more mixed, mixed messages from
people who try to help coaches.
So there's there's consultantsand people out there that help
help us coaches like so if weneeded some help, some mentoring
and some other stuff. And halfof them are like, You need to
put up good results, and theother half of them where you
don't need to worry about theresults. Yeah, I tend to think
that it's not about the results.
(28:58):
But that being said, that's thething that pops to our heads, is
that that's the thing that weworry about the most, is that we
want to put up good results.
Because we see comments wherepeople put up is like, Wow, he's
really he's he's practicing whathe preaches, yeah, from someone
that doesn't even know you.
Yeah, all right, just puttingthis up there, and just because
they saw the result that youdid, yeah, and it's like, oh, so
(29:21):
there is that out there. Yeah, Idon't know how much of, how much
you put weight into it, whetherit's, you know, 60% or 20% of
what's out there, but it'sthere. And I think that's
something we just need to notfocus on and not dwell on it,
yeah, and just, once again, dothe best we can. But it's
something that that's it's outthere, it's prevalent, and it
pops into our heads every oncein a
Kenny Bailey
(29:43):
while. I think, to your point, well, and
I also there's a differencebetween 35 and 55 right? I mean,
if you're a 35 year old racerand coach, right? You know you
have a better capability to dosomething, but, but I think you
hit it earlier. I think it'saround what, what is your game
plan? And if you preach. Aparticular game plan, or you
preach a particular way ofapproaching a raise, yeah? And
(30:04):
then you yourself don't do that.
Yeah? I think it's that gap thatcauses people to be concerned.
It's like, yeah, I stuck to myplan. Things what, you know,
people know things go awry. Theyknow that, you know, nutrition,
I was trying, you know, I had anutrition plan that's gonna,
that's gonna appear, yeah? Imean, that's
Tom Regal (30:21):
the fun part of the race, yeah, it's never a
straightforward thing, yeah? SoI think
Kenny Bailey
(30:26):
more coaches should focus on that. To your
point, it's not a time thing.
It's a hey, I stuck to them theown the same plan I gave you is
the same plan I used for myself.
Yeah, the results were what Iwas hoping it to be. You know,
you did beat your time for 14years, yeah? Yeah. So that's
fantastic, right? I mean, 14years ago, you were racing, and
now, you know, 14 years later,we're the best of your time.
(30:47):
It's
Tom Regal (30:47):
and it's hard to judge year from year, because it
changes in course, changing thetemperature, where all of that
stuff goes into it, I wonder.
And I actually played with thisin my mind. I do. I share my
race plan before I go and racethat's interesting to say, Hey,
this is what I'm planning ondoing. This is the time I think
I can hit for the swim. I'mgoing to try to do this for all
(31:09):
of that. I give that to Wendybecause she's watching so she
knows when things go awry orwhen things are good. But I
didn't share that with anybodyelse, and I did think about it.
That would
Kenny Bailey
(31:21):
be an interesting thing to do, to your
point, because I think, as aclient, if you guys are looking
for coaches, I think, you know,pure time, it may not be the
your coach could be a phenom,yeah, right, and well, but if
they stuck to their plan, right?
That's interesting. So I thinkit would be almost better to do
that, to say, hey, here's,here's, you know, here's the
plan I have, and when, if theplan didn't go awry, you discuss
(31:42):
that with your clients, right?
Like, Hey, okay, and here's whathappened. You know, the
nutrition didn't hit like Ithought it was gonna hit or,
yeah, I hit the number it was,it was rough, but I got within
the range I wanted to get. Yeah,right? And here's my build up to
what I've
Tom Regal (31:56):
done. So if I don't share it ahead of time, to come
back and we talk about itafterwards, does it sound like
I'm making excuses because Ididn't do right? It was like,
Well, I had some issues. I hadto back off on the bike, but
then I did this, but you didn'tknow what my target was to begin
with. If I told you my targetwas to begin with, and then I
came back, and I had to adjust,but I still stayed within my
target. Is that better? I knowif I looked at a coach and I saw
(32:20):
them race, and I knew how theycoached, and I saw them do
everything wrong or everythingopposite of what you said, I
would have less respect for thatcoach. That's my point. Yeah,
seeing their seeing the resultswouldn't matter at that point,
because it's just kind of like,well, your your chain fell off
because you didn't take care ofit. You didn't have your bike
(32:41):
tuned and ready to go in, youdidn't have this you weren't
prepared for everything. And asa coach, I expect you to be more
prepared for things to go wrong,and then watch you adjust for
them. And whether it works ornot doesn't matter. Well, I
Kenny Bailey
(32:56):
think there's also Yeah. So I think, you know,
if you're asking my opinion, Ithink the fact you said, Look,
I'm between 110 and 120 I mightswim. I got 119 there was, you
know, there was some, it wasn'teasy getting to the 119 Yeah, my
bike corner between X and Y,yeah, like, and then, you know,
my, if it goes worse than Iexpect, it's going to be down
(33:16):
here, yeah, and you stay withinthat. But it's sort of like
golf, right? I mean, to me,it's, it's, I know there's a
weird analogy, but, like, whatmakes the difference between a
pro and a duffer, right? Prosalways make mistakes. They're in
sand. They hit in the in rough,yeah, they're all over the
place. How they get out of it,right? Yeah. I mean, the wedge
shots that these guys are doing,you know, off of a rough on,
(33:39):
just like, right onto the green.
Yeah, you know, look inhuman,yeah, right. Us mortals can't do
that, and that's why they'recashing in the checks, right? I
think that to your point, if Ihave a problem where I have
cramps or other things, I I, Icombated it this way, and then
it fixed it, and now I ran.
Yeah? That's to me, like, ofcourse, you're not going to have
a perfect race, no. And ofcourse, something's gonna go
(34:01):
wrong. It's how you correctedit. Like, oh, I realized into
myself, this is what I did. SoI'm sharing that lesson with you
now clients that you know, andif you noticed, like, you know,
I didn't have an assault. Irealized that I corrected it,
and now I'm busting an 830 onthe back six miles, right? That,
to me, is, I think, a muchbetter thing to talk about.
Then, to your point, you know,I'm gonna do a, I'm gonna do a
(34:24):
59 minute swim, and you do abuck 20, and it's like, yeah,
Tom Regal (34:28):
exactly. Like, really, yeah, yeah. Well,
because I knew, well, there's
Kenny Bailey
(34:32):
a lot of people like, okay, you know
that. You as a coach, you shouldknow that. So I think that's,
that's kind of the big takeaway,right? Is just, maybe, just be
honest with your your folks, andso
Tom Regal (34:43):
I'll admit to everybody that sharing even even
on this podcast, is difficultfor me. I am really an
introvert, and introverts don'tjust hide. We actually need
energy. So I like grouptraining. I like being out at
the swims. I like. Being all ofthat stuff, I get a lot of
energy from everybody, and Iappreciate all that energy that
(35:04):
you give me. And then I need togo recuperate. Yeah, did swim
training camp, and I needed,like, four days just like, be by
myself and my thoughts and getthrough all of that. So I'm not
comfortable sharing all of thisinformation. I'm getting over
that this is my therapy, yeah,this is my end of the therapy,
Kenny Bailey
(35:21):
yeah? And I've been on the other end of that
where I've shared, you know, mywhole journey, and then I
absolutely imploded, yeah,where? And it's not fun, yeah,
right. You're like, oh, well,then why don't you shut my mouth
and race next time? Yeah, youknow. So you have to make that
sort of balance, like,
Tom Regal (35:34):
I still appreciate that sharing, even if you
implode on it. Yeah, I wouldrather see that, because I think
we learn more from it. Yeah, Ithink we certainly learn more
from it. So that's the thingsI'm going to try to do going
forward. I don't know what racesI'm going to do next. I don't
really have anything elseplanned I'm going to do. Let's
see what is that gulf coastsprint. Try nice coming up in a
(35:57):
week and a half, a week, weekand a half. This should come out
before that, just before thatrace. That's my that'll be my
fourth sprint for the for theyear. And I don't know what I'm
doing after that. I'll do somerunning races. I'll figure out
what kind of relax. Yeah, we'vegot too many other athletes
racing, some big stuff. We gotarmor, Iron Man chat, new coming
up in a month, and that'sawesome. They'll be fun. That's
(36:19):
gonna be some good stuff. Coolopening there. So it's been fun.
It's been a good journey.
Kenny Bailey
(36:23):
Well, Tom, thank you for sharing. I know,
like you said, it's difficult toshare, but I think it's
important not as a not just asan athlete, but also as a coach,
as kind of people learning,right people? You know, this is
the whole point of this podcast,is to kind of share information,
share ways of like, Hey, how canI get better? What can I do?
What can I look for in a coach?
How? What expectations of acoach should I? Should I put
away? Versus, you know,
Tom Regal (36:45):
hopefully it gives you some additional questions to
ask when you're looking for acoach, yeah, the answer to
should I get a coach is alwaysyes. At what level you need that
Coach, how much you need thatcoach? What you need that coach
to do is, is different foreverybody, but just asking the
right questions. Just don't takea coach, yeah, right. You need
to make sure the personality isbound up, their philosophy, how
(37:07):
they how they go through things.
There's a lot of really goodcoaches out there, and it's just
finding the right one for you.
Yep, is the key. So cool. ThanksTom, there you go. Thanks
everybody. Thumbs up. Starssubscribe. We said that the
beginning. We're gonna do itagain. So next time we'll we'll
be back with the triathletesjourney. We'll be bringing some
(37:27):
of those episodes. Absolutely.
Thanks everybody. Keep thecomments coming, and we'll catch
you on the next
Unknown (37:42):
one. You
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