#188 - Dirk Friel, Founder of Training Peaks - Stupid Questions with Seth Hill

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello and welcome back to the Stupid Questions podcast.
Today on the pod we're going to be talking with Dirk for real.
He is the Co founder of TrainingPeaks.
I'm sure that most of you who are in my audience have heard of
this amazing platform before. If you haven't, go check it out.
If you are anything in the coaching world, Dirk is really
awesome guy, obviously very smart, very dedicated.
Been doing this for literally a quarter of a century, 25 one on

(00:22):
26 years, started back in the late 90s.
Yeah, it's an entrepreneurial story.
It's a family story, it's a leadership story and it's a
really good one. So thank you so much for being
here. Really quick before we get into
the show though, make sure to check out the show notes.
Episode 200 is coming and I would love to get your feedback
and ideas on what something whatthat episode should be.
There's a few options and thingsthat I've laid out, but if you

(00:44):
also have another idea, throw itin there.
Check out the show notes for anyof the training peak stuff and
then ways to support the podcast.
All right, I will let myself nowbe exited out of making this
intro. And without further ado, I want
to introduce you to Dirk for real.
October we got here. So it's almost a year now.
It's crazy. Time goes by super fast.

(01:05):
I used to race around there way back, way back in the 90s.
Yeah. The real, the real days of
racing. Yeah, we used to.
I was like all of March. We were in California, like city
to city every weekend, one in the next, you know, all the way
through Redlands. And one year I did tour of
Malaysia in February and we flewto Redlands from Malaysia.

(01:26):
Oh wow. Yeah, it's like a real deal back
then. Yeah, so Redlands is a little
different reading you have. Been No, I know.
Yeah, OK, OK. We we do like Northern all the
way down South and yeah, Merced and kind of everything in in
between and yeah, like where Levi Levi's grand fondo is.

(01:47):
We start racing up around there again, like March, April time
frame. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
Good times. How many how many years did you
partake in the professional cycling scene?
Oh man, I was like 12 years, so turn pro in 92.
I was in Belgium for five years,and that was my third season in

(02:10):
Belgium when I turned pro. Yeah, so good, good number of
years, but a whole whole different style of racing and
didn't have the Internet and didn't have cell phones.
And I called home once a month and my mom just cried on the pay
phone from Belgium, you know? So yeah, it was different,
different times. Yeah, no kidding.

(02:30):
I just, I've gotten to know PhilGuymon over the years and asked
similar to his story and he was,he's just sharing very similar
things. Call home once a month, kind of
go around and sleeping on surfing couches and stuff like
that. Very different time.
You're more of an athlete than Iguess less social media focused.
Yeah, yeah, actually living likea monk, like a true monk.

(02:51):
That's. Awesome.
Yeah. Well, cool.
Dirk. Is that how I pronounce your
name? Is it Dirk?
Yeah, Dirk. Dirk OK, awesome.
How do I say your last name? Freel.
Friel, Dirk Friel. And is it Danish?
Is that correct? I mean, it was O frial, you
know, a little more Irish, I guess, Scottish, you know, they

(03:14):
took the O off and then then Dirk, you know, Scandinavian
too. So there's a lot of Dirks in
Belgium. But the farther N you go, the
more Dirks you run into. So definitely in Belgium, when I
was there for five years, they they'd see my name like Dirk to
Frile, you know, Dirk to Frial. And but I'm like, no, no, no, I
don't speak your language. And they'd add Ade.

(03:37):
Like I don't have a deep Dirk deFreel, but like on results
pages, they would add Ade as if I was like a local.
I always thought that was kind of cool.
Yeah, that's cool. So you've traveled quite a bit,
but where did you grow up? Where?
What's home for you? Yeah, I mean, grew up in Fort
Collins, Co and am am only an hour South now in Boulder, Co So

(04:00):
really grew up on the Front Range between the mountains and
the plains, you know? And every day you can choose
whether to go climb or ride the wind.
So yeah, I grew up right here. Yeah.
Native Colorado. That's awesome.
Did you think when you were younger getting into the sports
world and trying to figure out what life looked like, did you

(04:20):
think that you would always comeback and settle into the Front
Range or in Colorado again? Yeah, it, I don't know.
It was like never a question in my mind.
I never thought of going anywhere else, unlike my
daughter. That's just like, Get Me Out of
here. I'm going to New York City.
So I'm not a big city guy. I'm not really an East Coast
guy. I love racing on the East Coast

(04:41):
and Philly and Tour West Virginia and Tour de Pont and
all that fun stuff back then. But I always gravitated to
coming back to Colorado. See, I just always a natural fit
for me to end up here after, youknow, cycling so many years.
Yeah, yeah, well, it's a beautiful place.

(05:03):
I I grew up in North Carolina, so definitely on the East Coast,
more of the West Virginia type mountains, grew up in right
around Asheville. Sadly, I didn't know even that
the Cycling World existed until I got much older, which is a bit
of a bummer. Well, it's gotten real popular
around there now. You know, it's great cycling,
great community and that whole Greenville and all around there

(05:24):
is just kind of a hot spot, you know for sure.
So it's good to see that that that's evolved.
Yeah, yeah, no kidding. Yeah.
Was born in Brevard. And then years later, after I
had moved out, went to college and stuff, my buddies brought me
back and they're like, oh, this is like mountain biking capital
of the East. I had no idea.
And it's just, I did my first race out there and it was
amazing. Swank 65 if you've ever heard of

(05:46):
it. But yeah, super cool, but cool,
man. Well, Dirk, officially just want
to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on and
looking forward to diving into your story.
I don't know if you know much about this podcast, but the
focus is for me. I just want to get to know the
person on the other side of the table and hopefully ask some
questions that you've never heard before.
So. The first.

(06:07):
Question that I would love to ask you is, from your
perspective, who is Dirk? Oh man, I'm definitely kind of
an adventurer at heart. I mean, you know, when I was 19,
I dropped out of school and got a one way ticket to a country
I'd never been before, which wasBelgium.
But it's all I ever thought of from age 12 on.

(06:29):
So always kind of like the thesevisions of going to far off
places and just taking it on. So I guess adventure continues
through today. You know, I love Backcountry
skiing is kind of six months of my life.
You know, every year is adventuring in the backwoods and
going to far off places, Alaska,Norway, Europe, backyard here in

(06:53):
Colorado, just going for adventure.
So I guess that's in my DNA. I'm just kind of getting out
there and off beaten path and and finding new places.
It's kind of like what drives mefor sure.
I think that leads into trainingpeaks too.
They're just the thing didn't exist.
No such type of service existed.And that just kind of bled into

(07:15):
my, I guess, pursuit in life, you know, on the career side of
things as well. Yeah.
So you said it's in your DNA. Is that the DNA given to you by
your mother and father? Like were they very much the
outdoor type as well? Both as athletes, but also

(07:36):
again, as entrepreneurs. You know, looking back, I was
born in Indiana. But after six months, we just
drove out in the Volkswagen van and made a life in Colorado.
So I'm thankful for that. And then you know how things
have turned out. So I guess that was the first
thing they did. And then just being

(07:56):
entrepreneurs, You know, my father was a high school
teacher, coached football and track, and one day just told me
he quit his job and bought a running store, like the local
running shop in town in in the 80s, which is just like what you
have a running store now. And this is when triathlon was

(08:16):
picking up. So then he became a triathlete.
My mom became a triathlete. And then we had the world's
first triathlon store ever. Like my dad bought a bike shop
next door and tore down the wall.
And it was a triathlon store andway ahead of its time and
probably still shouldn't even exist today.
But, you know, it was a failure,but it was an adventure along

(08:37):
the way. And so my mom left corporate
America, became more of a consultant on the side.
We, we owned races for this business and others.
And, you know, we owned races aswell.
We had a marathon, My dad owned the Rawhide Marathon in Northern
Colorado, which is no longer around.
And at one time we had the worldrecord, the the wheelchair world

(09:03):
record was set on this course because you went from basically
the Wyoming border, a straight line down the frontage Rd. of
I-25 down to Fort Collins, Co. So it was downhill, tailwind
anyway. So yeah, they were definitely
adventurous, doing out of the norm businesses.
And then my dad, you know, decides to become a coach and an

(09:25):
author and basically one of the first, you know, ever, you know,
building a for profit coaching business starting in the 80s,
you know, for cyclists, triathletes and runners and, you
know, taking the leap and leaving the store and selling it
and, you know, taking out a new challenge.
So I guess I didn't see anythingwrong and taking on wild

(09:48):
challenges and just going after,you know, some wild vision.
So I guess that is going back tothe DNA for my parents as well
do. You have siblings or is it just
you? No, no, I'm the only one.
You're the only one. So how do you think that that
influenced obviously not just your future trajectory, but like
your business acumen, your leadership ability, your how

(10:11):
you're now a father and a leaderin, in, in a company like
training Peaks that has has a long tenure.
We'll get into that, but how is it?
How does that influence those areas?
I know I, I, we all have blind spots.
We don't know what we don't know, but I do know that I don't
have that traditional corporate background or the MBA, you know,

(10:32):
hanging on the wall. You know, I have like that real
life experience knowing the customer I think is where my
strong suit is. But I definitely have blind
spots on the business side of things.
So I've always kind of tried to surround myself with other folks
that have those experiences, that have product background,
that have managerial skills. So thankfully along the way, you

(10:55):
know, we, we built a great team within Training Peaks and it's
lasted a long time. So yeah, I think, I guess
knowing that I, we all have those weaknesses and I think
that comes from being a coach aswell.
You know, you analyze an athleteand where they're going and what

(11:17):
goals they have, but yet they have weaknesses and limiters
that are preventing them from reaching those goals.
And certainly in business, you know, I have those.
And so I always say I need to hire people smarter than myself,
right. So I'm no longer the president
of training peaks. I I was once, but yet, you know,
that technical side is not in mybackground.

(11:40):
So it's wonderful having, you know, you know, people that can
fill that gap, starting trainingpeaks.
Certainly I played every role inthe business other than being a
software engineer. But luckily, you know, I had a
Co founder that was. So we played off each other and
we played every role in the business.
And you eventually have to give up what you were the world's

(12:02):
best at. You know, one time I was the
chief marketing officer and no way in hell could I play that
role today, you know? So you have to like swallow your
pride and move on and, and change, evolve, adapt is always
something I guess in my DNA as well that I've always tried to
live by. So you said that your dad
obviously was an entrepreneur. He went from, you know, high

(12:22):
school teacher coaching to, hey,I bought a store.
There's other things it sounds like he tried and did that you
probably haven't even mentioned yet.
For the successes and failures that you were able to witness
from a pretty young age, which of those do you think stand out
to you the most as guiding lights for what you would do and
what you would, who you would become?
Yeah. Oh, Guiding Lights, I guess

(12:45):
being authentic, it's really your why.
It's kind of like if you live your why, you will be authentic.
It will shine through, it will be successful success, whatever
comes with success, hopefully, you know, comes with that.
So I think being authentic first.

(13:06):
So I think I saw that certainly in my father being an endurance
athlete at heart, leading, you know, a steady paycheck and
pursuing his run of passion, which you know, led him to
buying a a store. But then from that, he realized
his authentic, I guess pursuit was really in helping others

(13:29):
reach their goals and their dreams.
And so becoming a coach was the next kind of stage in his life
and evolution of his career. So I think the biggest take away
from me is just staying authentic and living that
day-to-day and then success willcome from that.

(13:53):
So when you started the journey to that would become training
Peaks, obviously like you're a professional cyclist, your dad
was doing some of the coaching. Did you ever intend for what
you're doing now to become the thing that you would do forever?
No, absolutely not. You know, there was just a

(14:14):
simple need at the beginning. There was no business plan,
there is no raising money, there's no debt.
It was literally I was coaching with my father.
I was still racing, coaching on the side with him and just
seeing the the big gaps in the defaults in our communications,
you know, and how we collected data, how we.

(14:37):
Yeah, exactly how we sent out the upcoming weeks training
program via fax machine or e-mail attachment.
You know, at at this time around9597, you know a time frame
you're, you're starting to get workout files from Polar and
Garmin didn't exist, but you hadSRM like you're rich clients

(15:00):
owned SRMS for like $5000 and you would get e-mail
attachments, you know, dot SRM files.
So, you know, we were building abusiness that was very
inefficient to communicate with your customer and, and, and data

(15:20):
fragmented all over the place and not pretty charts and graphs
like we have today, you know, Soit was just that that vision,
the need for our business to become more efficient and
effective and create a better quality service at the end of
the day for our clients. And that was the that was the

(15:42):
ignition that started training peaks just right there at that
moment of like this is horrible.There's a new thing called the
Internet. You know, it's now in 1999.
Let's get with it. But I had no idea how that would
evolve. But we just needed a web-based
planning, tracking, analyzing, you know, plan, you know, some

(16:05):
type of better way of doing things with the calendar,
central calendar. So that's what I started, you
know, pitch the idea to my dad, but then, you know, he couldn't
really take it anywhere. So I just like, who do I know?
And so it just kind of evolved from there.
And luckily just so happened thebest man of my wedding and

(16:25):
teammate and best friend was a web developer, Gear Fisher.
He had a date day job and I pitched it to him and we just
started working on it, you know,late at night, every, every
night, you know, and it was called sweat equity.
You know, the old way of building businesses.
And again, no business plan, no long term plans.

(16:47):
We just need to build something for our for our coaching
business. So one thing I'm really
fascinated with, especially in the business realm is this the
ability to communicate between the technical and non-technical
Co founder. So there is a level of
understanding that engineers have to be able to take the

(17:09):
code. You know, especially with
traditional what he was working with, I don't even know what he
was language he was working with, but to take the ideas of
what you are describing and he kind of understands and then
practically putting that into place.
There's a there's quite a delta of understanding and skills
required, especially with today's technical engineers to
be able to describe what's goingon.
Did you guys already have such atight bond because you were the

(17:31):
best man to be able to have thatcommunication?
And is that communication harderto have today when you were guys
are casting a vision that engineers will now implement?
Oh, well, going back to the beginning, communication was not
an issue. We definitely had great.
We we we saw eye to eye and a lot of product decisions.
I'd say he was definitely a product guy and still is to

(17:53):
today. Gear that is gear Fisher.
I think what's great though, at the very beginning is we we
effectively started with a prototype and we had my father's
books, which just had graphs andcharts in them.
Like, OK, there it is on the piece of paper right there.
Everybody's reading this book like that's that's kind of a
master plan. Let's start from there.

(18:14):
But then luckily along the way before, you know, we had the
web-based app. My dad used a file maker Pro and
just a desktop, you know, software app, which is a
calendar scheduling system. And he created his own workout
menus. So in this file Maker Pro, he
had workout menus and he could click and drag onto Wednesday

(18:37):
and you know, create the week's training and put in the volume
and the notes and then that would spit out a file that he
could then fax. So we basically started with
what he developed that we were using the coaching business in
this file maker Pro app. And then gear just took that as
like, oh, that's the prototype. I can re engineer that into the

(18:59):
web. So that's what kick started it
all. And so I think immediately right
off we had something to replicate.
So it wasn't just a blank piece of paper.
And I had to try and communicateto gear like, well, we we had
these workout menus and you know, blah, blah, blah.
Like gear knew the book. He knew coaching.
He knew as an athlete what our coaching business looked like.

(19:23):
But he also realized on the other side of it was the
athlete. And that's maybe where I was
weak, like what is athlete viewing and how what's their
experience like? So he brought that strength to
our team of like building that athlete interaction, which is a
blind spot for me at the time. But he also realized, hey, you
know, these athletes are using devices now.

(19:46):
You know, Polar and SRM, like I mentioned, were some of the
first few devices that athletes were buying.
So let's figure out a way to upload those files into this
calendar. And I definitely had that as
like a vision, but I didn't realize it was like so close up
hand. It's just nobody had done it
before. Up until we had done it.

(20:07):
We were the very first place youcould ever render and look at a
heart rate file or power file ina web browser.
Like we were the very first. We didn't patent it, you know,
you know, but no one even actually saw the value in it.
It was so funny. We showed.
So like a major device manufacturer, what we did and
their response was nobody looks at their data after they train.

(20:34):
At such a quintessential startup, great golden plaque
story for years to come. Out.
Are you serious? I look at this and luckily we
had coaches on our side and coaches wanted to look at the
data after the person trained and so they got it.
So they would effectively ask ordemand that their athletes, you

(20:57):
know, upload their data, which was very painful.
You know, it wasn't Bluetooth, it wasn't, you know, today you
hit stop and it goes to 10 different websites or apps.
You know, back then you had to plug it in, get your, you know,
it's a whole lot lengthy 8 step process to get it into turning
peaks and actually that the proswere the last to catch on.

(21:22):
The pros were like the last people to actually do it.
You think they would be the first, but it was the age group
athletes that were paying for the coaching and those coaches
demand it. But the pros it was just a
status symbol, then SRM and their handlebars and made them
look cool. Yeah, it's interesting.
Why do you think it was the proslast?
Is it just because they don't, Imean, they're not early adopters

(21:45):
Like what is the what is the thought behind that you think?
Yeah, I mean, they were successful with doing the old
world ways of training. So why try something radical?
You know, I think I'm also referring to cycling for the
most part. I, I wouldn't generalize that on
the triathlon market, the triathletes at the time, there

(22:08):
was no tradition like they were developing the sport, you know,
in the moment. So we definitely early on built
the business on, on the sport oftriathlon.
They were the, the first to really be attracted to it.
The, the pro cyclist definitely,you know, again, this lengthy,
long tradition of how you train and etcetera.

(22:29):
And so they were just looking atthe data during their ride, but
they didn't really mean much to them afterwards.
And at the time they weren't accountable to the team.
At the time, there were no higher performance staff, if you
can believe it, employed by professional cycling teams.

(22:50):
So the athlete would just go home after the race and they
were accountable to themselves. And nobody was asking for how
their training was going or giving them workouts for
tomorrow. They were just, if they had a
workout plan for tomorrow given to them, it was by their their
coach back home. Like there was no connection
back to the team. So I think, you know, cycling

(23:12):
was kind of late to the game, ifyou will.
Triathletes were first. So I'm sure you understand this
even more than I do. So I say it from a almost a
place of ignorance. But I do know that every person
is so radically different in terms of their ability to absorb
training, the methods they use for training.

(23:32):
There's obviously the mental aspect of it for you as a
company that you know you're building out.
Essentially KP is for an individual person to know how
they're doing. How do you, how do you even
begin to tackle that problem andtry to be, you know,
standardized with creating things like TSS or whatever.
Like you guys came up with thesedifferent terms and different

(23:52):
metrics whenever they can potentially be applied to a
person differently. Do you, did you spend spend a
lot of time thinking about like how do we create these things
once everyone is so different tocreate a standard and is that
standard, the right standard like?
Yeah, we never started out to create a mold.

(24:13):
There's there's not one way to train.
From day one till today, we believe in the human.
Each human is unique and different and we believe in the
human coach. We believe technology should
make that coach better, more efficient.
Obviously from day one, that's what we believed in, like
surrounding the coach with technology so they can make

(24:33):
better quality decis, you know, decision in the moment.
So yeah, I absolutely agree withyou that we're not saying this
is the way to train. There's no training peaks
methodology. You can be a high volume coach
or high intensity coach, right? You could be high fat, low fat,
like we're the platform in between.

(24:56):
So I think we've, we've played it, we've played, we've tried to
be agnostic both with devices, third party apps that we sync
with, but as well with training methodology in general, 'cause
you can make an, a great examplefor success story with any
methodology. There's definitely trends that

(25:20):
go along. You know, we all track training
zones. I mean, every coach pretty much
understands now you might have a7 zone system or a three zone
system. That's fine, you know, that
works in training peaks, but yetboth coaches are tracking time
and zone to give them some insights into the training.
But I think there's some other things that have come along in

(25:40):
terms of a little more advanced metrics around normalized power.
You know, we rolled that up intoyour, your training stress
score. Training stress scores, not the
Holy Grail. Our performance management chart
is not everything. It only looks at volume and
intensity. It doesn't know if you had
caffeine or if you had a bad night's sleep or your stress

(26:01):
level or it doesn't know the heat, It doesn't know the
humidity. Like, show me a model that's
perfect. Like, there is not a perfect
model, right? But this is a very good, I
guess, graphical view of that individual.
And I hate when people start comparing, you know their CTL or
their TSS or their PMCI think it's you know you can learn from

(26:24):
comparison. B shouldn't strive to somehow
replicate right? Every person's, every individual
athletes pathway towards successis unique to them.
Even if two athletes weigh the same, have the same threshold
training for the same event, as you mentioned earlier, they have

(26:44):
a different capacity to absorb training on different timelines.
And so that that subjective sideoften times needs to override
the objective side. So if today we had planned to do
5 hours at 300 normalized power,whatever the heck it is, and

(27:07):
you, you have stress, you didn'tsleep well, you're not feeling
great. Your, your left calf is tight.
You know, hey, let's just let's have another rest day.
You know that that should be theoverriding thing, how well the
athlete is absorbing the training.
So it's that, yeah, dynamic, youknow, load is ever changing.

(27:30):
And so a good coach can help manage that along the way.
There's not one training plan for everybody that wants to go a
sub three hour marathon. We'd all love for that to be the
case. Yeah.
Yeah, it doesn't exist like everyone had.
Yeah, I think it's so cool. Like I love Training Peaks.
Obviously I've been using it for, I want to say four years
now since I like got into the sport.

(27:51):
My coach was like, hey, Yep, attached to Training Peaks and
that was awesome, you know, fouryears ago and just to see the
genesis in four years and how you guys have changed in terms
of just from a visual perspective.
But it's been pretty cool. I love the new logo for whatever
that. Counts too.
Wow, Yeah. Thank you so much.
I took months. Yeah, obviously, you know,
rebranding is a big exercise. So yeah, I'm.

(28:11):
I'm psyched it came out well. Yeah, well, from my perspective,
it's it's really awesome. I just want to say that by the
way, I really love it from like a tech perspective, the feel,
the angular like, I don't know, it's kind of like the the way
that it looks like it makes it invokes that feeling of like
this is a technical platform useof the highway.
But what's interesting is I don't know how many users you

(28:33):
guys have. I would assume it's probably
more than 150,000. Is that accurate?
Yeah, definitely a whole lot more, but we don't go into those
numbers, 10. Million like like active users
that are using it, How many do you think would say like per
month that people that are actively using training peaks if
I may ask? Yeah, we're not going to answer

(28:53):
that question, but you know, I mean, definitely, you know,
thousands and thousands of of coaching businesses really, you
know, we we definitely focus a lot on the coach.
So we think of ourselves as B toB to BB to B to C.
So supporting that coach, you know, in your example, a coach
brought you on board to trainingPeaks, you know, and so we we

(29:16):
service that coach again from day one until today.
We haven't flipped or pivoted orany of that.
So supporting endurance coaches and that I think that's
broadened. You know, we were cycling,
triathlon, running, but now we see, you know, great success
stories and all kinds of other sports.
I mean, albinism, you know, people summoning Mount Everest,

(29:38):
they're being coached through training peaks.
So there's all kinds of great individual adventures that
people are taking on where they need expert guidance and
instruction outside of the normal, you know, endurance
sports, if you will. You know, now we're seeing
canoeing and kayaking and Nordicsports and so it's really fun to

(30:00):
see other sports kind of gravitate and find how
structured training can can benefit their their sport.
Yeah. So the reason I asked that too
is from your perspective and your ability to aggregate and
look at the training data of 10sof thousands of people in in
like the endurance sports that you really know, would you say

(30:22):
that people are in the aggregateover training or under training
more? It tends to be overtraining, but
it's more in from what I see it's more about short term gains
via high intensity more so than people overtraining because of

(30:46):
volume. Now obviously as we go into
ultra running that might change.Are we seeing you know, growth
and ultra running? It's not, it's not just about
volume in ultra running that youdo need intensity as well.
But I think majority of endurance athletes tend to what

(31:08):
what happens is they see great gains early on and high
intensity is the fastest way to get those gains.
They continue with the high intensity, for example, racing
every single week indoors on thevirtual platform of your choice.
Hopefully it's turning peaks virtual, but you know, do we

(31:29):
doing weekly racing all winter long, but yet you're a priority
race is next June. Hence, you're going to plateau
come April and not improve and might even be worse come June.
You know, that's the mentality of of an athlete is to get after
it. That's awesome.

(31:49):
That's, you know, what makes us great.
Also, you know, the social side of it, showing up to the virtual
ride or the coffee shop ride, whatever it may be and do the
Wednesday worlds. You know, that happens 12 months
a year. That's great.
That's like motivating, but it'snot the way to continually
improve and gaining fitness is not a linear you know, it goes

(32:11):
in cycles and you kind of have to understand your own personal
cycles and how to work them. And that's where the third you
know that the objective, you know, coach can come into play
that has experience to help you navigate that and give you
confidence to to hold back and not race every single week.
But majority of athletes are just going to go too hard.
They go out on an easy ride withgood intentions that they go

(32:33):
with their buddy and all of a sudden they're, yeah, they're in
zone 3. They're in entire ride, you
know, and they just don't, you know, you got to go easy in
order to go hard. And so the polarization, there's
something there. So that's that, that's kind of
my, my gut feel and what I've seen.

(32:54):
Yeah, so with the lost my train of thought I was going to ask
because that was such a good point.
Oh yeah. So with the amount of people
that are using your platform andthe amount of data that you
have, again, I know that you guys do a lot of emphasis on

(33:14):
making sure that as best as possible, you educate the
coaches and educate the people using training peaks to to stay
within zones kind of around that.
But I mean, it's obviously a broad form of communication you
guys have to have. So I'm curious, what kind of
pressure or what kind of motivation do you guys feel to
let people know when you see or there's a trend that's maybe not

(33:36):
a healthy 1 and you can see it in the data?
Like, are there any of those instances where you start to see
things that maybe people wouldn't see because you have
such a large data set that you then feel the need to
communicate? Yeah.
I mean good question. I mean, I think we try and
highlight in our communication smart training practices, we try

(33:58):
to let our customers speak for themselves.
Again, like going back to diagnostic, you know, there's no
training peaks method, but we'llhave on experts on my podcast or
within our blog, etcetera, that will point out their point of
view and what they're seeing. And so that is therefore
educating our customers that follow that content.

(34:19):
So I, I kind of like to, to leave, you know, the, the
coaching methodology up to our coaches to kind of like debate
amongst themselves. I'd rather have that debate come
through amongst our community ofcoaches rather than stating like
this is the way, because scienceis ever evolving.

(34:39):
We're always seeing new trends, new ideas.
Obviously nutrition is a big thing now, you know, whatever,
100 grams an hour plus, right? We're reading about now that
that's not for everybody. We, I'm not going to come out
and say to all attorney Peach people, hey, Tade Pogatar, we
see, you know, does 150 grams anhour and wins every race he

(35:00):
starts. You should all be doing 150
grams an hour. Like, no, what can we learn from
that? I think that's we try and like
process what we're seeing and how the coaches communicate that
in terms of the lessons learned around nutrition, for example,
and what can we all learn from this?
And yes, we can all bump it up probably from what we were doing

(35:20):
15 years ago, you know, of I wasracing on 40 grams an hour and
definitely should have been, youknow, 2-3 times that.
So lessons learned along the way.
But again, I, you know, I, I like our, our coaches to tell
those stories and to, to spread their experiences.
Good. Answer.
I have one more kind of technical question, then I want

(35:40):
to go back to a little more interpersonal stuff, but I'm
enjoying geeking out on this. Yeah.
But from your experience, how, how do I phrase this?
I might actually come back to that question.
Yeah. So if you were to explain in
kind of one sentence or give a description in one sentence of

(36:02):
your experience in the past 26 years with this company, how
would you, how would you can that?
My experience with training peaks in the last 25 years.
My experience is like it still feels like a startup in a good
way in that I still see product five years out.
You know, in my head you're always striving.

(36:23):
There's always new opportunities, there's new
customer bases, there's new devices.
I mean, I just got a new time Ware device to track, you know,
respiration. You have the core body
temperature. There's always new technology,
new science, new ways of lookingat things.
Now we obviously recycle throughold ideas that come back up, you

(36:47):
know, and but yeah, I guess I would, I would say it's a
motivating way. It still feels like a startup
because it's still just like excited to work everyday, you
know, just, it's just just always fun new stuff to work on.
Yeah. Well, so in a start up,
obviously there's a million different things that you can
work on, but what matters is thethings that you choose to put

(37:09):
energy into. So with a company that has 1000
employees and everybody's got suggestions and the industry
saying to do this, how do you choose to like what vision to
cast and what executive orders to enact?
Yeah. I mean, first it starts with the
the voice of the customer certainly starts there.
Then you start to see the trendsand then you develop the road

(37:33):
map from there. So, yeah, I mean, you obviously
have to say no a lot more than you say yes.
There's always a million other things we could be pursuing, you
know, but like, for whatever reason, voice of customers
saying this, we're seeing these trends, technologies at this

(37:56):
point or whatever, you know, howto, how does that all align?
Business plans? What are people willing to pay
for, not pay for, you know, all that comes into into account
when you develop the road map. And they're not always, you
know, hits, you know, I mean, you know, but you learn from

(38:18):
hopefully producing stuff, getting it out there and getting
feedback and replicate, you know, and refining from there.
Yeah. So along those lines, going back
a little bit to the interpersonal leadership stuff,
you've Co founded this company in the very beginning with your
best friend and then your dad was involved.
So I know just from past experience, partnerships can be

(38:41):
like a marriage and they can make or break and oftentimes
they break. So what were some of the things,
challenges and positives of working with your best friend
and father to grow a company to what it is now?
I mean, 26 years, it's a huge thing.
Yeah, overall, you know, very positive.
I still, you know, gear is no longer a part of training peaks,

(39:02):
but he's a product guy and he had a vision for a whole new
product and it's called on form and it's a wonderful video
analysis, you know, app really popular in golf.
So it was awesome working with him and like staying, I mean,
throughout all the years. It's fun at like it could be fun

(39:24):
at 2:00 in the morning to be like texting back and forth and
be like, dude, can you change that from green to red or this
line to that? And you know, that is like the
fun, the fun days for sure. It's a really positive energy.
I've, you know, I guess like, you know, it's all about the
people though. It's all about, you know,

(39:44):
getting the right people in and working for the product.
So I guess those are always the bigger challenges.
It was crazy. Maybe our fifth person we hired
was somebody we didn't know. Like when you that first hire
and they aren't somebody on yourinner circle of friends that you

(40:06):
ride bikes with, that's actuallyscary, you know, and that's now
more and more. I mean it's both ways, like you
hire people you know already, but you know you got to put the
a wide net and obviously. For the most part, we're hiring
people we don't know, they're not our riding buddies and they
don't even live in Colorado. So I think that's the biggest,
that was one of the biggest challenges is how do we grow

(40:28):
outside of our friends group in terms of staffing.
And that was like, you know, a scary time for sure.
And you, you learn and get better at it, you know?
Is your dad proud of what you'vebuilt?
He said, yeah, I mean, he says definite.
He is still local here and he helps us on the education side.

(40:50):
We have monthly coach networkinggroups that we have here in the
office. And he shows up on those Fridays
and wants to network. And that's what a kid gets him
going is, is, you know, learningfrom other coaches and talking
about, you know, what's going onin the community.
So he's still is involved, you know, and partner of the company

(41:13):
still. So yeah, he's definitely, I
think, still really proud. Yeah.
How has it stretched you in a way that you thought you may not
be able to handle? Yeah.
I mean, obviously when you starta business as an entrepreneur,
you're more of the you're on thetechnical side.

(41:34):
You're not a manager or an entrepreneur really.
So I guess that managerial side was the, the, the blind spot,
you know, managing, hiring, firing, whatever it may be, HR
decision makings, like every single week there's another HR
decision to be made, right. So I think the whole HR side of

(41:56):
things is obviously if you're starting out as a pro cyclist
and you're that, that technicianor that tactician, you know
that, that coach in the moment, you love just coaching, you love
writing, but now you have to hire and, and manage, you know,
teams. That's definitely the the
stretch, you know, And so that'scertainly where I've grown the
most. Yeah.

(42:17):
Do you think you're a good leader?
Oh man, I that's a hard night. I, you know, let others answer
that. I don't know.
I think I definitely am authentic and that's where I try
to live these days. I, I love this business
development, the business dev side of things, you know, the

(42:38):
marketing side of things. I, I hope I hold myself back and
I'm not overburdening. You know, I understand like I've
been there done that, but I alsoknow this is a new, new
generation and there's a new crew of leaders here that are
leading the marketing and visit dev and every other aspect of

(42:58):
the business. And it's theirs to lead and
theirs to win or lose. But me as an advisor along the
way. So I hope I'm more of an advisor
now and not over burdening the teams.
Is that hard to do? I mean, because this is your
baby? Yeah.
This something? Yeah.
You definitely have, you know, Ihave the vision, you know, but
it can't, it's not obviously it's not going to play out like

(43:21):
that. You know, it's just that's how,
how things go. So it's like balancing all the
needs of everybody plus the customers saying something
completely opposite of what I believe, you know, So it, you
know, I've definitely learned along the way, like my way is
not that, you know, shouldn't bethe highway.
How old is your daughter? And you have just one daughter,

(43:41):
right? Yeah, she's 23 in New York City,
high fashion person, school design.
Yeah. So she's living that that life.
And that's awesome to learn fromwhat what she's experiencing in
in the big city. Yeah.
So the reason I ask that, I'm soglad that she's 23 because it's
like your age of your company isrelatively similar to the age of

(44:02):
your daughter. So you know, you're talking
about this area of life where you're trying to pull back a
little bit on the business side,kind of let it you guide a
little bit less. Nowadays you're less hands on.
I would assume that's similar for your daughter to some
degree. I don't know what, but I'm
curious to know what are the parallels of things that you
maybe have drawn in your mind that you see how they have

(44:25):
helped influence the decisions or influence the experience over
here, from over here? Yeah, I guess you can draw
parallels where she's out there making her own decisions.
I'd, I, I'd say she's more autonomous than training pizzas
from me. I still have my, my hands and

(44:45):
some, you know, I'm still picking weeds here and there
and, and in, in the weeds, if you will, with some of the teams
and, you know, and driving, helping drive some road map
decision making in different areas.
But I'm also very authentic to that, whereas I'm not authentic
to the high fashion world, you know, New York City living.

(45:10):
So yeah, I know my, I know my place.
Yeah, what is some advice you could give me on being a father?
And how old is your? Not born child.
Oh, OK, 22 weeks. 22 weeks. Station.
Yeah, Wow. Yeah.
I mean, it just like everything takes on a new perspective.

(45:31):
I mean, you actually get more motivation.
I think you get more focused. You know, there's there's, you
know, you're compartmentalizing everything, but you have to keep
all the balls in the air, right?So you got to like when you're
focused on this one thing, you really got to focus on that and
make the most of that of that time and energy that you have on

(45:52):
the podcast or whatever businesses you're running, you
know, so it just gives you more renewed vigor and importance
and, and focus. I feel so I can remember, you
know, those days and looking at gear and he was in the same
position as me, you know, havinghis he actually has a 23 and a

(46:15):
25 year old, you know, like a pretty much the exact same
thing. We were both like, man, this
better make it. I mean, we we just like dug in
our heels and we were like, thisis going to make it.
I mean, there's no second guessing because it had like
that's it. OK, knock on wood.

(46:35):
Amazing. That's not everybody's story
that it worked out for us or thetiming or whatever.
But yet at that moment we said, OK, we're going to step in.
We didn't raise money at the time.
We just paid ourselves and some more money instead of just
distributions. We're like, OK, let's give

(46:55):
ourselves a salary and let's just try and live on this meager
salary, you know, and take it inthe chin, you know, but we're
it's going to be successful fromhere.
It's only looking up, you know, and that's, that's luckily how
it, how it played out. But he's definitely a lot of
risk. At the time, it was all on us to

(47:16):
make it happen. And now we had a young family to
really make it happen. So I we never looked back.
We just like went after it and it just made us hopefully more
focused. Yeah.
How did that affect like the home life of like how do I
allocate time to family? How do I allocate time to this
business and how do I keep them together but separate?

(47:39):
Because obviously, like when youare doing a startup, it's you
live and breathe it. You go to bed, hit the pillow.
You're probably thinking about that more often than you should.
Like it keeps you up at night. Did you ever find a way to
balance it? No, I mean at that stage and
it's it permeates every bit every minute.
So I think you have to choose the right spouse.

(48:00):
That's 99% of it, you know, that's willing to take the
journey with you. Absolutely.
You know, I owe. So we owe so much to to our
wives and our family to allow usto pursue such a crazy, crazy
idea that had no precedence. Like there's no reason why I
should be successful. Yeah.

(48:20):
There's nothing else that that looked like this that had ever
been done before, let alone the Internet.
Itwasa.com bust time frame. So definitely the family owed
them a lot, but it definitely I remember early vacations near
you know, you're on your laptop on the beach, whatever, working
and you know, taking care of customer support tickets, you

(48:45):
know, so that was a part of life.
But I bet that's just goes with it.
If you're taking on something new, it's risk reward.
You can get a paycheck and go work at some, somewhere and not
care about it. And you don't take the job home.
You know, you can leave it behind, behind the office walls

(49:07):
and get your salary and not worry about it.
But if you want to, you know, become the world's best of
something and do something new, that's high risk, you know, But,
you know, reward has come along the way.
So yeah, that's a balance. You choose which pathway you
want to take. Yeah.

(49:28):
So like in the early days when you're hiring, you know,
employee, I think it was like #5or the 5th person on the team,
there's still people that like those people are essentially
taking a piece of ownership because there's going to be more
involved than just probably we give you money.
They're probably taking some of that stuff home, I would assume
in the early days and the ownership they like really feel
that at what point does a company get to and how big does

(49:52):
it have to get before that expectation is no longer reality
where you you shouldn't have that and maybe you should never
stop having that. But is there a line?
Do you understand my question? Maybe I mean, you're talking
about, you know, I think if you have a full time job, that's
your number one. You said you're #1 your family,

(50:13):
you know all that. But in terms of career path,
that's like you're #1 so you have you own some portion of the
business. Absolutely.
Like that is yours to own and beaccountable to yourself and your
team. So I, I think no matter what
pathway you take, you should ownup and be accountable to your

(50:35):
team. And that does often times go
past five PM. Like there's times in business
of every business where it's theselling season or the busy
season, or we got to make this deadline for external customer
and and so pressures on, we're working late to get this done.

(50:57):
If you're all accountable to each other, to each other, the
team is successful, you can rejoice and you can celebrate
when you achieve that goal and take a little little downtime,
But you're, you know, you have, you should have that trust
within the team and you have those common goals that you're
pursuing. And oftentimes that really that
should that absolutely goes past5:00 PM.

(51:19):
You have a full time job, you know, it's not just checking in,
checking out at the coal mine, you know, But yeah, you can grow
with that and earn rewards alongthe way and create a, you know,
a career path from there. Is it better to have an employee
that you that needs inspiration to take on that like true
ownership? Or is it better just to hire

(51:40):
someone and they already have that and you don't have to worry
about it as much you think? Oh, man, I've, I always felt
like, you know, you kind of exemplified your the next level
of your career path before you get that title.
Often times that happens, you know, you are you are playing
that role, but you don't have the title yet or that role or
that position. So I guess it goes with, you

(52:03):
know, finding people that have the inspiration and can learn.
You need to be good at listening, good at learning.
Adopt, evolve, you know, change,evolve.
Whatever I said earlier, you know, change, evolve, adopt, you
know, along the way is, is how I've always felt is the best way
to succeed in careers. You need to be constantly

(52:25):
learning and evolving, and you kind of take on that next role
before you get the title. Good answer.
I mean I like it. I don't know if it's the right
answer. I haven't been in your shoes,
but so what's what's taking up the most mental bandwidth for
you right now? Oh, man, I mean both I, you

(52:49):
know, do a lot on kind of the marketing side.
PRI, you know, had a great experience going to UTMB and
Shamani the last two years as we've seen growth in, in ultra
love working with new sports. It's it's really refreshing.

(53:11):
You know, we're all trying to solve the same thing, like beat
the clock, go faster. Effectively, it's all the same
damn thing, right? Get to the finish line first.
So why does every sport look at it differently?
You know, they do. And every sport looks at it in a
different way. And you learn from different
sports. So I think coaches out there,
they're listening should break out of their norm and

(53:36):
communicate or follow blogs or Instagram or podcasts of other
sports to see how they're tackling the very same, you
know, issues. Excuse me.
So I think working with these kind of emerging markets, if you

(53:57):
will, is really fun. Trading partnerships is really
fun. And then on the on the product
side, you know, we release training peaks virtual.
So that's, that evolves every single week.
I mean that product road map changes basically every Monday
or there's new releases every Monday and now we have free

(54:20):
Tuesdays. So that's really fun to see
people come and enjoy, you know,training peaks virtual we just
released last week my routes. So you can upload any GPX file,
you know, you want and go write it, create your own races, group
rides, etcetera. So that's that's take up a lot
of fun time, you know, just likeexploring where can this product

(54:43):
go and it's so fresh. Getting the feedback from the
coaches is great. How can we develop an indoor
virtual training app to help coaches?
It's kind of a first of its kindas well.
So yeah, a lot of on the productroad map, you know, strength,
you know, I have a strength coach.
It's all delivered through training peaks that's about a
year old. That's really fun and cool and

(55:04):
evolving nutrition side fuel in and food Coach and Hexus and all
these apps that are we're sending data back and forth so
they can come up with your meal plan and your ride nutrition,
you know, there's just all kindsof fun.
Now we have new beta. It's in beta, but it's a stack
chart. Effectively anything in the dot

(55:25):
fit file we now display. So any new device that comes out
that puts some new metric in thedot fit file, we can now display
it. So respiration and core body
temp and hemoglobin and all thatfun new stuff is it's a like a
new sandbox, if you will, to play with.
Yeah. So it's it's beta not perfect

(55:47):
right now, but it's great seeingthat data in there, you know,
and do we need to have respiration zones now, you know,
a time where it says, yes, like where does that product evolve
to and do more than just two reference riders use it?
Like who knows? We'll start to find out, you
know, so that, that I guess that's where my head is at in
terms like marketing, PR, biz dev, product supporting teams.

(56:11):
Yeah. So you you don't think you're
probably ever going to retire, do you?
Yeah, my dad hasn't. He's still rights and he's
involved. He's 80 plus.
I, I think to myself, if I didn't, if I didn't work here,
have this position, I'd wake up and do the same thing tomorrow.
Like, OK, I wouldn't be in the business, but I'm like, I would

(56:34):
still want to interact with these coaches and pursue these
different sports and learn from them.
And where is science going? What new technology is out
there? What new gizmo can I get and
play with? What can I learn from this?
You know, what coaches are usingthis it that's just like my,
where my mind is everyday. And luckily it plays into my
role. So it just matches my my

(56:58):
lifestyle luckily. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No kidding. So you mentioned Training Peaks
Virtual when you first came out with it.
I forget how long ago it was. Now I want to say it was like
what? 6N almost a year yeah November
so. Like a year.
So I remember opening it up early then and I was like, oh,
this seems like a copy paste of Swift now.

(57:18):
And I'm curious to know when youguys came out with that.
Like what is your relationship with Swift and was that
difficult to like, 'cause you'recoming out with something that's
going to be a competitor, a direct competitor of it?
What was that decision making process like?
Did they come after you guys? Is there good relations between
you and them? Yeah.
No, I could say that there's a lot of differences between Swift

(57:40):
and I have not really since a year ago, so.
I I can see yes. Yeah.
You know, I'd say we have good relations with Zwift.
You know, as I said earlier, we want to have that open agnostic,
I guess platform and that's another beautiful thing about
this industry and the endurance market is a lot of companies

(58:03):
that kind of overlap. And you know, our our
competitors in certain respects do have an open API and they
share data. And so I think, you know, early
on, Polar and Sunto did not get that they were closed systems.
And then Garmin came out out andshook that up and created this

(58:24):
Bluetooth technology and was wasamp plus the beginning open, you
know, communication AP is I think that's awesome within our
industry. We need to be proud of that and
and realize that that lifts everybody's boats.
You know, Swift is for a lot of folks, but not for everybody.
We, we developed Turning Peaks Virtual a lot with a coach in

(58:47):
mind and with events in mind andhelping people train for events
and coaches being able to deliver seamlessly,
synchronizing zones, workouts, GPX files, Recon of rides, allow
them to create their own privateor public groups, races, race

(59:09):
series. We're not even involved, you
know, with coaches creating their own events and post
posting to our calendar. So really we looked at it as
serving the coach and being performance oriented.
We started with physics. So George Gilbert, who started
Indie Velo, which we acquired, is the founder, you know,

(59:31):
effectively of training Peaks Virtual.
And he started with the math anddid not start at all with
graphics. And you could tell like it was
amazing math, the physics, the drafting, what side of the wheel
you're on matters. Cornering really matters.
If you come into a 90° turn and you pedal as hard as you can,
you will drift wide and people they're coasting will take the

(59:53):
inside line. It will chop you just like in a
criterium. And you come out of that corner
and you'll have to overcome a power surge to catch back on to
the person that was coasting through the line.
But then that person that coasted now has to ramp up, up,
ramp, back up and Sprint. So it's very demanding.
It's more dynamic. You have to be heads up into

(01:00:16):
know the wind direction. We have a wind sock.
You can see the wind direction. You're coming to a turn.
You have to think ahead. When I turn, that wind is going
to go from headwind to sidewind.What side of the group should I
be on? Positioning really matters.
Plus, when you Crest a hill and start downhill, you don't just
pedal hard. You're going to have to coast
because you're going 45 miles anhour like in the real world,

(01:00:39):
right? So I think we, we, we started
again. George started it with the math,
the physics, the real world physics.
And now we're backing into better and better graphics.
Every single week the graphics get better.
And we've just released a new roads about two weeks ago called
Georgetown, named after George, the founder.
It's a criterion course. It's really cool.

(01:01:01):
Criterion course. So yeah, I mean in the industry
we all play together and kind ofraise everybody at everybody's
boats, I think. Yeah, that's cool.
Thanks for letting me ask the question from a very ignorant
standpoint. I didn't know about the physics
stuff. That's pretty sweet.
It'd be a Thunder. I was actually thinking for my
ride after this, like I was pregnant.

(01:01:21):
Go hop on Swift. But maybe I'll have to go try
out. Yeah, we, we have these great
24/7 and we have these great pacing groups.
So you can choose like, oh, I want to, I want to ride about
180 watts, you know, overall average.
You'll be in a group, it's goingto be dynamic.
You're going to be changing uphill, downhill, cornering, you
know, drafting, etcetera. So your, your watts are going to

(01:01:41):
fluctuate. It's not going to be a flat 180
watts. So it's going to be more
demanding than erg mode in the sense that you're going, you
know, you have these surges and you have to coast and you have
to surge. But overall you'll average 180
watts. But it's going to be more like
going out on the the lunchtime group ride.
So that's kind of fun to jump inthose those pace groups.

(01:02:04):
Yeah, that's cool. Couple more technical questions
and then maybe a few more beforeI let you go.
Do you have a hard cut off? I know I set it for.
No, you're good. Last check, I'm good.
OK, perfect. Like 15 more.
OK, perfect. So AI is obviously shaking up

(01:02:25):
the world. It has an opportunity to
obviously influence, I guess what you guys are doing and I'm
sure you're working on things, but what does a coach offer in
your opinion that no piece of artificial intelligence could
ever replace I? Heard a great quote this last
week from a coach, the same typeof question and they said there
are there's much more many more unknowns then there are knowns

(01:02:54):
currently state of AI. If it's telling you what to do
tomorrow, it's just going off a few inputs of knowns.
But there's infinitely more unknowns going into making
tomorrow's decision of what you should do than knowns.
This is the art and science of coaching.

(01:03:17):
The better you get, the more important a coach becomes or
could help you. When you first begin, the thing
that matters is consistency. So a $15.00 a month, whatever
app to tell you what to do tomorrow will be successful.
You're going to improve, but youwill get to a point where that

(01:03:41):
that trails off. You start to plateau.
How do I breakthrough a often times a coach could come in and
be like, aha, this is let's do this.
And that's going to get you another 10%.
Like again, the younger you are in athletic years, the easier it
is to unlock these secrets. But too many people get stuck at

(01:04:03):
this third level and they're relying on their own advice.
They're self coached. So they might have the $15.00 a
month, you know, AI plan, but the secrets over here, it's like
you're not, you didn't cramp because you didn't take in
enough sodium. You cramped because the first

(01:04:24):
hour you were like you're, you'dhad all these surges.
You're way above threshold for the 1st 20 minutes of your half
your 70.3 Iron Man. You know, like there can be
these little secrets that an experienced coach can unlock for
you and like bam, 10% right there.
You just gained 10%, right? So I'm not here to say AI is not

(01:04:48):
going to stick with us and be here and it's already changing
how we do things. It's we're adopting AI ourselves
within training peaks. But it's going to be a coach
assistant to make the coach unlock some of those secrets,
help them see things or trends that they weren't aware of and
and to make them smarter in the moment.

(01:05:09):
But human coach, certainly rightnow is by far much, much better
than any any AI coach. And you know, no Tour de France
team is leveraging AI to tell them what to do tomorrow.
It's right now, it's at the stage of helping them understand
what happened today and yesterday.

(01:05:30):
So what do you what do you thinkthat the state of the industry
as it relates to coaching and just endurance sport looks like
10-15 years from now? Yeah.
I mean, we all should be open toit.
We should all be looking to leverage it.
But I think you need to be careful right now.
It's kind of like HRV, Not everybody believes in HRV, but

(01:05:52):
what are the trends it it in a way, it's kind of like that in
terms of like, OK, this is give,this is a tool, it's a great
tool, but I'm not going to put every my entire trust in this
one tool, right? Or HRV is going to be tell me
what to do every single day based on HRV.
Like it's not that one metric that matters.

(01:06:14):
But I think five years from now,10 years, obviously it's like,
who even knows what it looks like.
The industry is changing monthlynew technology.
So I think it's going to play a part of every successful coaches

(01:06:36):
toolbox. It's going to be in there.
But again, it's like there's going to be different tools at
different times. I don't think there's going to
be 1 overarching AI app thing that takes care of everything.
You, you might still have 5 different, you know, AI within
training peaks and this AI over here and this AI over here, you

(01:06:58):
know, like, and then the coach is like, OK, well, how do I
triangulate between these three or four different inputs to come
up with what to do tomorrow? I think that's still going to be
the case. There's still going to be some
of that art of coaching happening because you had the
fight with your wife, you have stress at work and you had a

(01:07:19):
whole bunch of horrible sleep. You know, AI will take into
account some of that, but there's still that human element
that needs to be the last. The last mile is still to be
decided upon with that human coach making the right decision
for you. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. And I think it's interpersonal
stuff as well, like the the connection that a human can give

(01:07:41):
another human. I don't know if we'll ever be
able to truly replicate like it'll, it'll be augmented or
like a copy of, but kind of how you were saying before, Like
it's always this kind of prior past knowledge that it's
building up and building onto atthis point to look forward.
Like the the communication that can happen between an AI system
and a human is only based on whatever's ever been said, But

(01:08:01):
humans can have the ability to create something new, like a new
experience, a new understanding,a new level of empathy that I
don't think a machine ever will be able to.
Yeah, I always say, you know, AIcan come back like you've
complete your ride, you upload it, AI will come back and say
great job, coach comes back and says great job.

(01:08:23):
You just get like a different fuzzy feeling knowing it came
from the human. And then you're in the heat of
the moment. You know, it's really struck
really hard, you know, within the race.
Maybe that that's what pushes you over there.
You like that little bit of extra accountability or
somebody's looking in on what I'm doing.
Often times it's the opposite iswhat is where the human comes

(01:08:46):
into play is like what the hell I told you to keep it under 145
heart rate today you average 155.
That is not what I programmed for you.
We're redoing today's workout ispunishment.
You know, like you need that that whip as well.
You know the AI is always going to appease not always, but right
now AI is always trying to appease you and you know what

(01:09:07):
you always right now today are asking the right question.
A coach will say no it's not your nutrition you went out too
fast the 1st 20 minutes of your 70.3.
That's why you cramped on the, you know, there's these secrets
that are obvious and not, not secret to the experienced

(01:09:27):
coaches, but is a complete blindspot to AI and, and, and, and so
again, that that that whip is also part of the magic as well,
like whipping the athlete, you know, saying they went too hard.
Most athletes go too hard too often.
And if the AI is always telling you to go hard, you should be
questioning that thing, you know, obviously.

(01:09:51):
And it's weighted more too with the human human because it's
like for someone who's going to tell you, hey, you went too
hard, there's a level of courageand confidence that is required
within that person, as well as rapport for the receiving party
to say like, oh, wow, they must have thought about this or they
know what they're talking about or that that seems legitimate.
Because the AI system, it's like, like you said, it's kind
of self inflating. A lot of times, a lot of coaches

(01:10:13):
when they start with an athlete,the athlete will say to them,
the coach, this is too easy. It's like, yeah, yeah, we have
to take a step back here and build a foundation.
We have to build your limiters. We're not going to just repeat
the past and work, you know, do what you love doing.

(01:10:35):
Often times when you start with an athlete, they think it's too,
it's too easy, you know, and they think like they're paying
the coach to give them the hardest workout possible.
And that's not the long term view that a human coach will
take. Yeah.
They're optimizing for 18 monthsfrom now, not for next month or
next week. Yeah, yeah.

(01:10:55):
Keeping the mindset and the perspective in the correct frame
of time is. Yeah, the perspective.
Perspective, yeah. So it's said that life at the
top can be lonely. You are at the top of your
company. Who do you talk to?
What do you do to find I guess community or to combat the

(01:11:16):
lonely feeling of being at the top?
I don't feel that at all. I, you don't feel alone.
I don't want to, I don't want tosay we're at the top because I'm
always, I'm that entrepreneur atheart and I'm just like, Oh my
God, let's keep it going. You know what I mean?
It's just like there's always the risk.
There's no, no given to stay at the top, right?

(01:11:39):
And so where do I reach out and fight again?
Like going back to the cute coaching community.
It's like I love we started these Friday gatherings in our
office for local coaches or coaches that come through town
to come in on, you know, one Friday a month, bagels, coffee,
couple hours in our in our Cafe.And those are the special times,

(01:12:00):
you know, going out to the events like Unbound.
I went to Unbound, went to UTMB and Shamani, you know, go to
Breck Epic, you know, mountain bike races, like that's so
invigorating and fun to be out there in the moment.
Unfortunately, being a.com an app, you don't interact with
your customers every single day.They don't walk in the front
door. You don't get to say how you

(01:12:21):
doing today? You know, like I miss that.
So you get that by going to the events in the training camps.
And I love going like I go to Spain usually every January to,
you know, the cycling training camps.
And that's invigorating to get to know the pros and the, the,
you know, the coaches at the toplevel and what are they working
on and how can we get feedback from them?

(01:12:42):
So I think I don't feel lonely, you know, I, I think there's
communities that, you know, I'm,I keep a part of which are very
motivating and, and invigorating.
Who's your mentor? Who do you go to to bounce ideas
off of? Do you have a mentor?
I guess Andy Stevens is our CEO and he's been with us a long

(01:13:04):
time. He's an original investor about
2006 time frame. He's been our business coach,
best buddy along the way. So we do a lot together.
And so definitely look up to himfor a lot of that business side.
Yeah, that's one. Cool.

(01:13:25):
Last couple of questions, are you spiritual?
Yeah, I think I do play it out within my adventures.
You know, going out and not having the headphones on, going
in the wilderness and running inthe snow like I did this
weekend, you know, up in the mountains.
That kind of definitely feels spiritual and and you know, but

(01:13:53):
I'm I'm certainly not a devout anything, but definitely feel a
higher purpose is out there and how yeah.
So in in light of that, when when you do pass and it's your
turn to go, what is the what is the best case scenario on your

(01:14:14):
mind for what happens next, if anything?
I I think it's a continuation ina way in terms of like we, we go
back and we become something else.
I, you know, you look at a flower and a flower was water
and soil and sunlight yesterday.You know, I kind of, I don't

(01:14:34):
know how to interpret that into words for the human being, but I
feel not a reincarnation, but a continuation, if you will,
because it's, it's just a continuation.
So yeah, I don't know that that obviously none of us do, but I
do believe we we have a purpose beyond our current life.

(01:15:01):
So what is as as we know it? Yeah.
What is your purpose that you feel that drives you?
Oh, my purpose, like I I think it you know that that's driven
me all along. That's hence built my career is,
is trying to find the potential and other people helping them
reach their potential. I was never the greatest pro

(01:15:25):
cyclist. I tried to reach my potential
that I saw afterwards how there were a lot of faults in the way
that I went about it. So I think that became my new
purpose was to help other peoplereach their purpose.
And part of that was running a coaching business.
But then now how can I help other coaches reach their, their

(01:15:46):
potential in, in their business life, right?
So I see myself as helping othercoaches build their coaching
businesses. Hence that helps athletes reach
their potential. So that's kind of what what
drives me. Yeah, that'd be a beautiful
legacy to leave behind for sure as well.
So final question for somebody who is like Dirk, I think, I

(01:16:10):
think I kind of want to be a coach.
What advice would you give them?Yeah.
Well, first, like, learn from other coaches, interview other
coaches, see what it's really like.
There's many different types of coaches that are not one type of
coach. There's coaches that are just
motivators. You know, they meet with their

(01:16:30):
group every Wednesday night at the track and they do laps
around the track or the swimmingpool and they're a great
motivator and they can get the person to the start line and the
finish line. But then they don't know much
about science and that's OK. You know that they're they serve
a wonderful purpose. Then there's coaches that are
all science and they're not going to they're not there to

(01:16:51):
motivate you. You're already pro.
I'm just here to get half a percent out of you and we're
going to unturn every rock possible.
And they're going after this more the science, you know,
aspect of it. So I think there's many
different, I know types of coaches.
Often times people think there'sone type, whatever vision they

(01:17:12):
have, but there's many differentways to be a coach.
So I think get out there and interview different coaches from
different sports and see what resonates with you and how you
would like to grow and become a coach.
And then Start learning, you know, what makes those coaches
that you look up to successful? Learn from them, ask questions.

(01:17:32):
It's so easy and social media now to ask those questions or
even get, you know, meet them. And then from there, like Noah's
training peaks right for me. Am I ready to take on this
responsibility? It's a big responsibility.
That's one reason I don't coach now is I know the responsibility
it takes as a coach to to followthrough and what you say, you

(01:17:54):
know, you know, and I was reviewing files every single day
and reviewing comments every single day and making
adjustments every single day. Now that was my form of
coaching. That may not be right for you,
but I know I couldn't do otherwise.
That's this is how I coach. So yeah, learn, interview and
see what your vision is for whatthe coach you want to become.

(01:18:17):
Learn from others. Good stuff.
Well, Derek, thank you so much for taking the time.
I know you're a busy man to sit down and let me ask all kinds of
questions for my own pleasure and gain, but I appreciate you
taking the time in. No, it's a pleasure.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
A lot, a lot of stupid questions.
Thanks. Yeah, you're welcome.

(01:18:41):
Thank you so much to Dirk for coming on the podcast.
I really enjoyed that conversation.
He's obviously very smart, has done a lot.
And yeah, I, I don't know, I guess for me, I think that as I
continue to do this podcast, I spent how to say this.
I spent a quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to ask
really good questions that wouldhave to do with training peaks.

(01:19:03):
But I'm trying to strike this balance between like getting to
know the person. But then if they are a person
who has a very specific narrow, a very specific and narrow set
of expertise, obviously him being a business leader in this
very specific company, in this specific industry.
How many questions should I ask around that versus like the
interpersonal ones? I think I get a lot from both
because I like entrepreneurship and I like the interpersonal

(01:19:23):
stuff, but there's just so many things that I'd like to ask
about and I'm not sure if I should LinkedIn, the episode,
podcasts, podcast episodes, or what.
I think long term I'll probably end up going a little bit more
longer form anyway. I'm just kind of thinking out
loud. But all that to say, really did
enjoy the conversation with Dirk.
Really appreciate you guys beinghere.
And if you were listening to this point in the show, you're

(01:19:44):
the realm VP, you are the small community that helps can
continue help me push these things out because it makes it
more enjoyable when I know somebody's listening.
However, even if only one personwas impacted positively from
this entire podcast over 200 episodes, it'll still have al
been worth it. So thanks for being here and
I'll catch you the next one. Peace.

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#188 - Dirk Friel, Founder of Training Peaks

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#188 - Dirk Friel, Founder of Training Peaks