EP. 52: A Conversation with IRONMAN legend Mark Allen

Mark Allen is a 6-time winner of the Ironman Hawaii (joint men's record) he had 5 consecutive victories in Hawaii (an overall record). ESPN named him the greatest endurance athlete of all time. Over the course of his racing career, which ended in 1996, he maintained a 90% average in top-three finishes. He was named Triathlete of the Year six times by Triathlete magazine, and in 1997 Outside magazine dubbed him The World's Fittest Man. He was inducted into the IRONMAN Triathlon Hall of Fame in 1997. He has also been inducted into the USAT Hall of Fame and the ITU Hall of Fame.

Mark Allen’s Links:
https://1989thestory.com/
https://tridot.com/mark-allen-edition/
https://tridot.com/mark-allen-premium/

Mark Allen’s Book:
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Competition-Mark-Allen/dp/0989511510

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The intersection of endurance, sport,health, fitness, and life, challenging
conventional ideas and empowering people with thescience of self propelled motion. This is
the a Jurancexperience podcast hosted by TonyRache. I had seen six times that

(00:21):
I didn't know how to pace thisrace. He had won the race six
times coming into it. He clearlyknew how to pace it. I liked
to dictate the race. I likedto mentally feel so though I was in
charge of the race, and thepark wanted to sit behind me, so
be it. So in eighty nineI stayed with him the entire way.
On the swim, I stayed withhim on the bike ride. I shattered
him the whole way. I thought, you know what, you're on such

(00:42):
a fine line that an inch lostor second loss can be a race lost.
But it's going to come down themarathon, and I just thought,
well, I'll just do these littlesurges and it'll be fine. He was
setting a pace. It was absolutelyblistering. The miles just kept going,
and it was clear that neither ofus was able to do anything to break

(01:03):
the other one, and so itwas just going to be a foot race.
And I didn't know how long thatfoot race was going to last.
There was like this silence. Theonly sound that was happening was our feet
hitting the ground. We were bothfailing to wear and tear. And I
looked at the twenty four mile markon the side, looked up at the

(01:26):
top of Planie Hill and said,it's coming up. I'm going to make
my move. And right at thatmoment Mark made his move. Something just
said go and it was like Iwas shot out of a canidate. I
started to sprint, you know,as best as you can sprint at the
end of an iron man. Ilooked back, I couldn't see him.

(01:48):
I stopped and I go, Yes, I knew, and I knew at
that point it was over with.I would have never had that race had
I not been side by say,side with Dave Scott. You know,
he taught me so much that yearabout pacing it and how to race it
and how to stay confident in themidst of impossible moments. I'm Mark Allen

(02:08):
and I came along at an unusualtime in history, early history of the
sport, and we collided at allthese races in the eighties and then in
eighty nine. We had this epicduel and I thought, well, you
know, maybe we'll meet again,and it never happened. There has never
been another race that has come closeto matching what the two of us did

(02:30):
together out there, and how eachof us propelled the other one to such
an incredible performance. Hello, Iam back with season six of the Endurance
Experience Podcast, and what a guestI have to start off season six none

(02:54):
other than the legend himself. Sixtime winner of the iron Man World Championship,
five consecutive victories in ConA, Hawaii. He was named ESPN's Greatest Endurance

(03:14):
Athlete of all Time, Mark Allen. Over the course of his racing career,
which ended in nineteen ninety six,he maintained a ninety percent average in
top three finishes. He was namedTriathlete of the Year six times by Triathlete
Magazine, and in nineteen ninety seven, Outside Magazine dubbed him the world's fittest

(03:39):
man. He was inducted into theIronman Triathlon Hall of Fame in nineteen ninety
seven. He's also been inducted intothe USAT Hall of Fame and the ITU
Hall of Fame. We had agreat converse sation. We talk about the

(04:01):
Battle the Iron War in nineteen eightynine with Dave Scott, a famous legend
that is told by many triathletes andendurance enthusiasts. And we talk a little
bit about that, and I askedMark, are there any lessons of mantras

(04:26):
that he can impart on to athletesto take away from that legendary performance.
I also talked with him about thepro field today and how the times and
the Ironman triathlon keep dropping within saythe last decade. Mark's record held of

(04:54):
course, record held for quite along time. Over the past few years,
it's been beaten or surpassed, ishould say, And so I get
his take on training technologies, innovations, etc. What is the reason for
this out performance. He also gaveme some of his thoughts on the shift

(05:19):
to the new nie France course forthe Ironman World Championship, which is a
much harder course. And he actuallyraced on the nice course ten times and
won it ten times. He wasundefeated on the nice course, so he
gives his thoughts on how the athletesmight fair with a much more difficult course

(05:46):
than ConA. We also talk abouttraining and for athletes on the spectrum from
recreational to high performance. What aresome of the things that he focuses on
in the training cycle for athletes,And so for all your endurance enthusiasts,
you'll be able to get some prettygood advice from Mark Allen. So I

(06:13):
wouldn't want to miss that. Wealso talk about nutrition, not only daily
nutrition protocol, but that critical periodbefore an Ironman event or an endurance event,
or the day of the endurance event. And we talk about in race
fueling as well, what are somebest practices and recommendations. And then Mark

(06:39):
tells us about some of the thingshe's doing now with his coaching business and
his coaching endeavors, and I askhim about the march of AI or artificial
intelligence, and how he's preparing forthe next generation of AI and whether or

(07:01):
not AI would eventually completely eliminate theneed for a flesh and blood coach.
So we had a great conversation andI hope you enjoy it. What a
way to start off season six.So without further delay, I give you

(07:24):
Mark Allen. All Right, Iam on with Mark Allen. Thanks for
coming on to the Endurance Experience podcast. Hey, great to be here.
You called me a legend, butyou are a legend. Let me tell
you. Oh, you mean youprobably looked at indoor iron Man, but

(07:46):
believe me, it's it's not it'snot that impressive. I was thinking I
should I should have googled myself andsee if I'm in the Guinness Book World
Records. I don't know what for, but you know you never not.
Um. Oh, this is agreat, a great pleasure for me to
talk to you, Mark. SoI want to talk about Iron War,

(08:09):
which mean we're coming up on athirty fifth anniversary of U and I want
to talk about you know, ironMan Pro Times, iron Man Professional Times,
seeming we dropping. I want totalk to you your thoughts on why
why that's happening. I want totalk about some nutrition and training. A

(08:30):
lot of endurance athletes listen to thispodcast and so I definitely have to get
some of your your best practices forsure. And I want to talk about
Mark Allen Coaching, which is youryour business and how you help athletes,
coaches and people. So let's startwith with the Iron War. So I've

(08:52):
read Mark Fitzgerald's book Iron War,and on the famous duel between you and
your rival Dave Scott And we're comingup on the thirty fifth anniversary of this
and people, whether they're older athletesor even the younger athletes, they all

(09:18):
know about this story, this legendof the Iron War, and I'm hoping
you might be able to reflect onthat your career and whether or not you
feel like there are any high levelmantras or lessons that come from just your

(09:41):
career in that duel. Many peoplemay not be aware that you know,
it took a while for you toget to the level to be able to
beat Dave. I think you camein a second a couple of times,
a third another time. So arethere any high level mantra there's a lessons
that you can impart on athletes?Yeah, a great question, Tony.

(10:07):
You know, I think anybody whodoes endurance sports, if if you don't
end up learning some lessons that helpyou in life or come up with mantras
or ways of managing difficult situations,you've missed the real gold and the real
richness that sport can bring you.You know, if if a race is

(10:28):
just about a time or a place, you kind of forget about those things,
like when you reflect, when peoplewhen I reflect back on my career.
You know, I don't think gee, I went eight o nine whatever,
you know in that Iron Moore racein nineteen eighty nine against Dave.
I think more about the experience thatI went through during that that day,

(10:50):
you know, marching side by sidewith the best guy in the world at
the time. And so yeah,you know, as you mentioned for those
who don't know it, my firstwinning at the Iron Menorald Championship nineteen eighty
nine and ConA, it didn't happenovernight. Like you know, great successes
don't happen at the speed of Twitter. You know, it takes time to

(11:11):
really develop, and it took mea long time to figure out kind of
what was the formula that was goingto unleash that great race that I had
envisioned that I could have but wasn'tgetting. You know, six years prior
to that, I had competed inKNAT. I got second a couple of
times, I got third once,I got fifth a couple of times.

(11:35):
The very first year that I didit, I was actually with Dave Scott
in the lead of the bike,but about halfway through the bike ride,
my derailer snapped and so I hadto drop out. So I had six
years of kind of these points wherelike I could be in the lead at
the end of the bike, Icould be in the lead halfway through the
run. I could be in theleading with just a few miles to go

(11:56):
in the marathon, but I couldhold it all the way. And I
thought, you know, am Icursed? Do I just not have what
it's going to take. You know, sometimes those big dreams we have,
they are not going to happen.That doesn't mean it's it's not worth pursuing,
but because you always learned something thatwill help you out, that can

(12:20):
maybe even transform who you are asa person in those tough journeys. But
after six times of trying to winand not winning, I thought, maybe
I'm not cut out for this race. I you know, I was able
to beat Dave at pretty much anyother race that I came up against him
around the world. I was ableto win everywhere else, but not at
the Iron Man in Hawaii. Andso at the beginning of nineteen eighty nine,

(12:43):
I was actually thinking, I'm notgoing back to Kona. You know,
I've there's something that's just not therefor me. Maybe the race is
too long, it's too hot,something with a big island. I don't
know, but I'm just not goingto go there. After I kept training
in January, like most people,you know, started to try to get

(13:03):
back in the rhythm, and acouple of weeks into training, I just
could just feel this, you haveto come back. You have to come
back. You know, the islandwas calling, and those callings should never
be ignored. You know, there'sthere's probably turning points in your life or
people who were listening in their liveswhere something was calling you and you were

(13:28):
resisting it, but you knew youcouldn't turn your back on it, and
so I had to. I knewI had to go back for a seventh
to try, but I also knewthat I needed to go there in a
very different way. You know,if you keep doing what you've been doing,
you're going to get more of whatyou already had. And you know,
those races were not satisfying, andso I just I really stopped,
and I reflected and asked myself,what is my real purpose in going there?

(13:52):
What do I what do I reallywant to get out of this experience?
And I thought it would be greatif I could win. You know,
I mean, you get second place, there's the only one spot left
for you, right, But clearlyif you don't win, that doesn't mean
that you're a failure. It justmeans that maybe the purpose was wrong.
So in nineteen eighty nine, Ithought, my my real goal this year

(14:16):
is to go there and have areally solid swim bike and run to push
the pace, you know, don'tdon't go easy, but push it,
but don't go too hard. AndI had never found that middle ground.
Like there were some years where II kind of held back a little bit
and you know, I ran allthe way through the marathon, and there
were other years where I pushed toohard too early, and that I ended

(14:37):
up walking on the marathon. Andif you walk on the marathon at the
Airmmorael Championship, you are not goingto be the champion. Somebody's going to
pass you, right. So anyway, that was my goal, and so
that I guess that would be onesort of high level thing that I learned

(14:58):
is that the purpose of why you'redoing something is is so important and if
the purpose that you have been doingsomething isn't getting you what you what you
want, maybe the purpose is wrong. And I realized trying to win is
great, but having my best raceis what's really important. And so when

(15:18):
I went back there in nineteen eightynine, I had this just sense of
calm and feeling relaxed that I'd neverhad before because I didn't have that pressure
on myself like, oh, I'vegot a win or else today's a failure.
You know. I could finish second, fifth, tenth, twenty fiftieth,
I didn't care. I just wantedto have that great race. And
so that's that really transformed my wholeexperience there. Like in the before the

(15:43):
swim start, I was actually lookingaround and I was like, Wow,
this water really is blue and beautiful, and look at the sun coming up
over the volcano over there. Thingsthat I hadn't noticed before, you know,
And so the whole experience was somethingI'd never felt. And I also

(16:03):
really kind of had to talk withthe island because it's a very intense environment,
you know, and when we throwourselves in intense environments, whether it's
physically intense or maybe intellectually intense oremotionally intense, if we try to push
that away, it's not going towork. You know, you can't.
There's something you can't avoid. Ineeded to feel at peace on the Big

(16:26):
Island with this intensity of the rawness, the lava, the wind, the
heat, the humidity, and Ijust I just went to this place along
the ocean before the race and Isaid, hey, Big Island, let
me just be here as me.And that was That was also a kind
of a high level thing, likeyou know, we have our idols,

(16:48):
the people that we look at andgo, wow, if I could,
if I could do what they do, that would be amazing. And a
lot of times we think, letme do what they do by trying to
be them. And so all thoseyears prior, I had been looking at
Dave Scott and thinking he's winning,He's breaking world records every time he goes

(17:08):
out there. Pretty much I needto be like him if I'm gonna win.
And Dave has this his way ofracing is he likes to control the
race. He likes to be upfront, he likes to dictate what goes
on. He likes to control theentire day in the whole field. Right.
And when he got off the planein ConA, you could just see
it. The guy was like asuperhero. It looked like he got pumped

(17:32):
up to like two hundred PSI youknow, the dude this, you know.
And so I thought, Okay,when I go to KNA and I
gotta be like er, you know, invincible and nobody can touch me and
I am unbreakable. And then Irealized that's not how I race best.

(17:53):
I looked at all of my greatraces that I'd had in other places like
Niece, France and in Australia anddifferent areas, and of course I had
my strategies of how I wanted totry to approach the day to have my
best race. But the main thingthat I did in every race where I
had great performances was I just said, let me just see how the day

(18:15):
unfolds, and let me figure outhow to pull the best out of me
based on what's going on on thisday, because you can't you ultimately can't
predict how it's going to happen.You just got to figure it out on
the day. And so when Iwent there and had that little talk with
the Island, I said, letme just be here the way I am.

(18:37):
Let me not have to be DaveScott, let me be Mark Allen.
Right, And you know, Ihave a book called the art of
competition, and one of the quotesin there is it's very difficult to beat
someone at their game. It's veryeasy to win when it's your game.
And that's how I needed to playthat day. I needed to race as

(18:57):
me and to surrender and to sortof go, let me see how it
unfolds. Was such a different mindset, and so that's you know, that's
another high level thing that is like, sometimes we just have to figure it
out on the day. We can'twhen you when you have the dynamic of
other athletes, of whether of thingsthat can go wrong, you can't predict

(19:19):
what you're gonna have to deal withand how you're gonna make it past those
tough moments. And the third thingthat really stood out on that day was
I saw how how important the thoughtswere that were going on in my head.
So, you know, at somepoints I felt pretty strong and confident,

(19:40):
and there were other points where Ifelt like I was losing it.
You know, that that internal chatterstarted going and all that negative talk was
taking place, and ah, youknow, Dave Scott, he's so strong,
he's gonna win. I don't knowif I can do it. My
legs are killing me. This ishot, it's windy. I should have
done different training, and at onepoint I just go shut up, right,

(20:02):
yeah, you know, and thosetwo simple words shut up. Yeah.
You always think about, oh maybeI should have did a little bit
more, maybe I should have didthat last big ride, or maybe I
should have did this. But itsounds like you were calm, You were
at peace. And when you goin and shape and you're calm and at

(20:22):
peace and you have nothing to lose, sometimes really good things happen, as
they did on that day. Yeah, there's nothing that can be broken when
you're go in with those those thingsthat you just mentioned, and that's what
that day was for me. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So if people
have you just want more background aboutthat race, I would I would highly

(20:48):
recommend going to YouTube. There's alot of YouTube chronicles of the Iron War,
so go check it out. Imight put one in the in the
show notes. Yeah, if youwant, If you want a really good
read on that, Dave Scott andI put together a ten part blog series
about the whole year leading up tothe race, and you can find it.

(21:11):
You can find it at nineteen eightynine the story dot com. Nice,
I'll put the link in the shownotes people can grab it. Yeah,
and it's because neither of us hada perfect year leading up to it.
We all, we each had ourown challenges and it ended up culminating
on that one day. But itwas my business partners. Scott Zagarino said,

(21:32):
why don't you guys tell the realstory of all the stuff that went
into it? Because he goes,I know both of you, and I
know that there's a lot that neitherof you have talked about publicly, and
so that was really cool because Iactually got to hear from Dave what he
was going through that year, youknow, and from his point yeah,
from his side point of view,Yeah, and he got to see what

(21:55):
I was going through. And anyway, that's a it's a really good read
to the two of us sort ofjust sharing our journey that whole year.
I'll have to I don't know ifI ever saw it. I was to
check it out. Well, maybewhen the thirty fifty anniversary, maybe you
two should get together, just youtwo again and go at Yeah. I

(22:17):
think it would be very disappointing,you know, better to leave the legend
as it is. Okay, allright, so let's let's talk about the
the pro field and the Ironman.Now, when when we look back at
the times, uh, you know, Patrick lang Jan for Dano uh and

(22:44):
even over the last couple of years, the times of the of the the
Ironman, the records just keep goingdown. And I'm interested in what you
think is the is behind that?Is it um course changes? Is it
technology? Is it innovation? Imean your record stood for quite a long

(23:07):
time before they were beaten, butall of a sudden, it just over
the last one, I would say, within the last decade we started to
see men's end women's times dropped.So what do you think is behind it?
Yeah? Great, another great question, Tony. You know, for
many years after I stopped, theworld record dropped a little bit, but

(23:30):
it was very incremental. It wasn'tThere weren't any dramatic big jumps in the
time, and a lot of thewinning times were actually slower than I went
for many many years. And soand then all of a sudden, like
you said, kind of starting aroundthat when Patrick long Up broke my marathon
run split, things really started tochange. Part of it, obviously,

(23:56):
is bike technology, you know,just the aerodynamics and all basically all the
pros now are going into wind tunnelsand getting wind wind tunnel tested and really
optimizing their their position on the bike. That's one thing. The second thing
is just a lot of the themetrics that people can look at and sort
of just fine tune their training alittle bit more each day. You know,

(24:22):
those those little those little fine tuningthings that you know, power meters
and everything that people have now affordsyou adds up to a lot on race
date obviously now most recently. UMtwo other things. One the super shoes.
You know, I somebody sent mea pair of the the Nike Ones

(24:45):
about a year ago and I putthem on. I'm like, this is
a breakthrough, Like these shoes areunbelievable. And if I wish I'd had
these, because it would have mymarathon time would have been so much faster.
So that's another piece. But Ithink the final piece that's really afforded

(25:06):
the athletes the ability to go asfast as they are now are the improvements
on race nutrition. You know,like when I was competing, the products
that we had were kind of inthe dark ages compared to what the athletes
can consume now. And so forme to get in three hundred, three
hundred and fifty calories an hour wasabout the most I could get in,

(25:27):
you know. I heard recently theChristian Bluemen felt when he won the twenty
one Ironman World Championship in Saint Georgethat he was getting in between five hundred
and six hundred calories an hour.And so the speed that we go in
an iron Man is not limited Forme, I was not limited by my

(25:49):
fitness. It was limited by myability to keep the engine full of gas.
Right, Basically I could have gonefaster, but then I would have
run out of fuel. And sonow with the products that they have access
to, they can just absorb morecalories per hour than than I was able
to, and that that makes ahuge, huge difference. What did you

(26:10):
use an eighty nine? I mean, Gatorade wasn't out until I can't remember,
but they had gatorade, but Icouldn't. I didn't. I couldn't.
It didn't work for me in ad I use it a lot in
training, but it didn't work inraises I had on the bike. I
had something that was kind of likeensure, you know, it's sort of
almost like a real replacement, andthen I would once that started to kind

(26:34):
of run its course. I meanlike you get that taste fatigue, and
all of a sudden it tastes likethen I would switch to some gels and
then I also then on the marathon, I took coke, you know,
defizz coke because at that point Ineeded stuff to get in there as quickly
as it could, and I knewthat I could last about three hours with

(26:56):
coke, and so I would havecoke, a couple of gels, and
I also had uh, you know, some salt tablets with me to keep
the sodium up. That was That'swhat I had. Yeah, it's funny
you mentioned it's sure that's one ofthe things that I used for many years.
I would go to CBS and getinsure plus it's yeah, it's made
for older people to get in calories. And the bikes, so you had

(27:21):
steel bikes in eighties and where theysteal no clipping pedals. Well, my
very first bike was a road bikewith with toad straps and you know,
obviously nothing arrow and some of thefirst races that I was in, I
didn't even wear a helmet. Youdidn't need to. There was no regulations

(27:41):
on helmet. Pretty stupid, right. But anyway, Um, by the
time I did my final iron Manin nineteen ninety five, I actually had
I had, I had tried acouple carbon fiber bikes that were the very
first ones made, and they wereyou know, they were very very heavy.

(28:02):
Um, they didn't have the designquality that obviously that they have now
and the rate. The bike thatI final IRONMN bike that I had was
actually made of aluminum and it hadit had some aero tubing and so it
was kind of like the very beginningof the of the erra revolution. You
know, we started using aerobars inI think it was nineteen eighty eight or

(28:25):
something like that. I think Istarted in nineteen eighty eight. Um,
but as far as bikes, itwas right around the mid nineties that aerodynamics
started to come into it. Andthat was that went through a lot of
a lot of changes. And youknow, if you look at my position
on the bike compared to the positionnow, you know, I look like

(28:45):
a complete amateur. But back thenmy position was as good as anybody knew
how to get it. So there'sjust been that that, you know,
that progression of knowledge and it doesmake a difference. And so you know,
if you spend fifteen minutes less ortwenty minutes less on the bike,
you have so much more energy leftover for the marathon, which is also

(29:07):
a thing that adds into you know, these these dramatic jumps in fitness or
in performance. Yeah, so someof it's the bikes, some of it's
the clip list, pedals and arrowhelmets and arrow position, but nutrition above
all, you think. And thencertainly a lot of the wearable technology and
the technologies that we have now indoortraining, our meter technology, all of

(29:33):
it is added up. So nowroutinely and a lot of the pros are
doing sub eight hours on you know, pretty tough courses. How do you
think the Nice course you mentioned Nice? Do you think that the recent change
is going to be a big changewith some of the pro athletes now that

(29:56):
that's a tougher course? Yes,Oh yeah, I think it's got a
over seven thousand feet of climbing somethinglike that. So, um, it's
a very challenging bike course. Withthat amount of climbing. You have to
be good at by candling because youhave the sense you know, what goes
up must come down, right,Um, So it's a complete it'll be
a completely different challenge and probably adifferent skill set that will win the race.

(30:22):
The memorable championship in Nice this yearit's the men. Next year they'll
they'll swap the mental being ConA andthe women will will be a nice um.
The times will well, I don'tthink will be as fast as they
were in uh in ConA last year. Um. And and also Kna.
You know, they haven't had abad weather year in many years now,

(30:44):
and at some point they're going tohave one of the classic howling wind and
no cloud cover and baking hot.And last year was about as perfect as
I've ever seen, like barely abreath of wind and some cloud cover,
and you know, Gustaf Eden justblew away the world's record. So but
anyway, I think as far asthe top people, nieces actually pretty exciting

(31:08):
because it will give some athletes abetter opportunity to have a great race who
just aren't good in Kona. Imean, let's face it, you know,
to win in Hawaii you have tobe good in the heat and the
humidity and just be able to kindof just drone away. That's a very

(31:29):
different kind of skill set and fitness. Then you need to do really well
on a course where you're doing alot of climbing. I personally love that
combination of a very hilly bike andthen just this dead flat, fast run.
For me, that that was likethe ultimate combination, I think,

(31:52):
because one, I'm pretty good climber, you know, on the bike,
so I I was much I'm muchbetter at climbing than I am at just
a kind of like rolling up anddown that that requires more like raw strength,
you know that that suits kind ofa almost stockier type rider. But

(32:14):
climbing, you know, I'm alittle bit lighter, My my weight to
strength ratios is a little bit better, So I'm really good on those just
long, steady climbs um and thenon the run because it was flat,
if you could generate speed over thoselonger distances, you had a huge advantage.
And I was able to do that. You know, I can,

(32:34):
I can push up toward my sortof lactate threshold for longer than most guys,
and so nice suited me perfectly.You know, I raced the trayth
on there ten times, and Iwant at ten times, So that's a
that's the perfect of course, aten pack. I'm super excited and pumped
to be in. I'll be goingto Niece this year and working with iron

(32:57):
Man and it'll be exciting to seewho actually excels on that that course.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'llbe I'll be watching for sure. All
Right, let's talk some some training. And like I said, many endurance
enthusiasts listen to this podcast, soif we if we talked to Mark Allen,

(33:19):
we got to get some some trainingin here. So, so do
you have let's say you're coaching athletesand obviously recognizing that there are many athletes
that fall on the spectrum from recreationalto high performance. So just considering the
sort of middle group that that mediangroup who go out and trains for seventy

(33:42):
point three's and an Ironman races,do you have any any mantras aerobic versus
threshold, cycling, focus, runfocus, low tech versus high tech.
I mean, do you have anymonts or if you're coaching that type of
athlete, what type of high levelstrategic approaches do you employ with those athletes

(34:10):
as far as training goes? Yeah, you know, the one of the
key mantras I try to impart onthe athletes that I coach, which I
do on a platform called try dotis consistency. Consistency is the absolute key
to improving your fitness and performance.So, you know what what ideal you

(34:36):
want to kind of do is tolook for a long term approach to training
and how you train. So youwant to just sort of almost coax your
body into getting in shape, youknow, so a little by and that
requires patients because you'll you'll go throughperiods where it looks like if you're training
consistently, it looks like nothing's happening, and all of a sudden, one

(34:57):
day to the next, you'll goup to the next level. And a
lot of athletes they want to seethat progress all the time, and so
they end up pushing themselves to getthose improvements. But what they're actually doing
is taxing their body to a pointwhere at some point the body can't keep
up and then they have to cutway back. They get injured, they

(35:19):
get sick, they get burned out, and when you are if you are
injured, sick, burned out,and it's harder to get motivated, you
don't go out and do the stuffanymore. You're not consistent. And so
what kind of how that pans outas far as aerobic anaerobic, you know,
the the engine that we all usefor endurance athletics is that fat burning

(35:42):
aerobic engine. So that's you knowa lot of sort of that zone to
work where you go out and youtrain at a steady pace, you come
home, you don't feel completely trashed. You actually probably feel better when you
get back then when he started,very different than when you like do a
super hard workout swimming, cycling orrunning excuse me, where you're really pushing

(36:06):
that anaerobic threshold. You come home, you're wasted and you feel like,
ah, I did a great workout. And yes, those are important to
do because they help elevate votwo max, which means you get more oxygen in
quicker when you do that high endwork. But it's also an adrenal stress.

(36:27):
You know, you activate your adrenalsystem, which is that fight or
flight. It's that that panic modeinside your body that releases all the carbohydrates
and uses those for a fuel um. But you do those sparingly. You
know, that's that should be justa small part of your your total regiment
um. So again, the anynumber you would draw on it just now,

(36:53):
it depends it depends on the athlete. You know, if you're if
you're a younger athlete, you cangain a lot of benefit over a long
period of time with a lot ofanaerobic work. But as you age,
the amount of weeks in a rowthat you can your body can manage anaerobic
work becomes less and less, butyou gain a lot more benefit out of

(37:15):
the aerobic work you do as youas you get older. So you know,
young folks they can get away witha lot more anaerobic work and get
benefit out of it. Older folksdefinitely need to focus on the aerobic but
they still need to do that anaerobicbecause anaerobic hard work give as you get
older, gives you big changes inyour in your mitochondria, those little things

(37:38):
in every cell that helps generate ATPfor muscle contraction and all that. The
side note of that is along withthat aerobic work, you know, load
and moderate heart rate work, it'salso important to do strength training right,

(37:59):
you know, and especially as youage. That's that strength work that you
do functional strength or in a gym, however you do it, so you're
you're actually doing true strength work forthe muscle. That's so key for maintaining
that lean muscle mass. You know, I didn't really get this in the

(38:19):
first part of my career. Inever did strength training. And right about
the time I was around thirty threethirty four, I could see that it
didn't matter how much I swam bikeiran I was not. I was starting
to not have the same resiliency.I didn't have the same strength on climbs.
I wasn't recovering as quickly, myspeed was dropping. I was like,
Okay, I get it. Ineed to do strength work. And

(38:43):
so I actually lived a couple ofblocks from a Gold's gym, you know,
like where all the big dudes are, And so I would walk into
this place and I'd stand there inshock, like I'd look at these massive
guys like throwing these huge weights around, and then I looked at me,
a triathlete, this little scrawny dude, and I was totally intimidated. I

(39:07):
mean, here, I am ironMan, champ Mark Allen, totally intimidated
to go into the weight room becauseI had no idea what to do.
You know, I knew what acurl was, but it's like beyond that.
So anyway, the short version ofit is I needed. I knew
I needed help, and so Igot the help of a great woman,
Diane Bookeda, who was she wasan encyclopedia of strength training, and she

(39:27):
led me through several years just everyevery strength session, cycling through different kinds
of phases and developing that strength thatI had lost. And the first full
season that I incorporated strength training intomy into my swim, bike and run
workouts, it was the best yearthat I had ever. And so I

(39:47):
you know, I'm sixty five now, and if there's one workout, one
type of workout every week that Inever neglect, it's the strength training.
Yeah, one or two sessions perweek, yeah, twice a week,
yeah yeah interesting, Yeah, functionalstrength, the focusing on the prime movers
that you use in swimming, cycling, running. Now, what about so

(40:10):
let's say you're training ironmn just sortof moderately competitive folks, do you I
know coaches are mixed on this.Do you have them train for twenty mile
runs or no? I know somecoaches saying, well, I don't.
I don't bother with the twenty mileruns for my athletes if they're training for

(40:32):
an iron Man, because they're doingso much aerobic work. But I have
talked to some coaches who say,oh, I always make sure they do
a twenty plus or twenty two beforethe event. You know, it really
depends on the athlete. Yeah.Again, like if you're if you're older
and or heavier, you know,you may not you just may not be

(40:53):
able to manage doing those really longruns. You're going to do some long
running. Uh, whether long isgoing to be relative to your fitness and
your experience. Some people, fifteensixteen miles is a long run. Other
people it's they can they can managetwenty or twenty one or maybe even twenty

(41:15):
two prior to the race. Yeah, and I try to, Yeah,
I try to help the athletes buildthat that overall endurance by doing some over
over distance work on the bike.Yeah. You know, it gets your
body used to moving for long periodsof time and it's much lower stress,
much quicker recovery than if you tryto build that with long, really long

(41:38):
runs. Yeah. I mean,if you're doing four hour bikes, five
hour bikes, that builds aerobic aerobicwork. So yeah, I understand that.
Now, what about swimming. Youknow you started off I said a
swimmer. Uh, do you youknow most of the time athletes try athletes,
swimming is the limitter. Oftentimes it'sa limiter. Do you do you

(42:04):
try to make up for that inthe pool or do you you know,
just take a sort of limiting approachto it. You know, it depends
again, it depends on the athlete. If if all you want to do
is just get through the swim,you know, I don't emphasize that workout
a whole lot. However, ifsomebody is actually trying to kind of be

(42:25):
a little bit more competitive in theirage group, and I only coach age
group athletes, by the way,you know, one of the best ways
to have a great triathlon is toactually be able to get out of the
water and feel fresh and not feellike, oh I barely made it,
you know what I mean. Andso and to be able to do that,

(42:47):
you have to swim. You haveto do swim workouts where the total
workout distance is longer than what you'regoing to encounter in the race. So
like you know, for example,when I was getting ready for Kona,
you know, it's whatever, justunder four thousand yards swim, I would
do some I would do a bunchof workouts that were five thousand and six

(43:07):
thousand yards, so that my bodygot used to doing longer swimming than I
was actually going to encounter in therace. So when I got out of
the water, it's like done,already, awesome, all right, you
know what I mean? And andso you know, it's as a coach,
you know, I have to sortof get with the athlete and go,

(43:28):
what's what's what's your purpose here,what's your priority? And let me
let me make the workouts be inline with that. Like if somebody's just
wants to get through the swim,they don't have a lot of time,
they're busy, they've got a job, they've got their family. You can
get you can get through the swimwith pretty short workouts. But again,
if you're trying to really get thebest out of yourself, you know,

(43:52):
and especially in the longer races,it's it's good to actually do some overdistance
swim workouts so that you come outof the water fresh. And the same
with a bike, you do somebike rides that are hopefully longer than what
you're going to have in the race, so that when you get off the
bike it's not like you're at yourlimit, but you know, your body
kind of goes really all right,let's go run now right right, Well,

(44:15):
let's we got to talk about thenutrition because you mentioned nutrition, and
you know, age group athletes cometo you, they say, okay,
I want to show up on raceday with the right nutrition or show up
on the race day with the rightbody composition. What do you recommend throughout
the entire training cycle, the wholemacro cycle. Let's say somebody has ten

(44:35):
months to Ironman or even a yearto an iron Man. What what do
you recommend as a general protocol fordaily nutrition? But also I'm curious,
what's your some recommendations you can givein that sort of three day period right
before the Ironman event. Yeah,well, let's see, you know,
on a on a day to daybasis. You know, obviously, the

(45:01):
more healthy you eat, the moresort of well rounded diet you have,
the less junk that you put inyourself, the better your your engine is
going to perform. You know,one of my absolute keys and nutrition is
to look at what you're look atwhat you're taking in and if there are
empty calories, cut that out,whatever it is. Try to eat high

(45:24):
nutrient density foods. So you know, if you're eating junk food. There's
no nutrition in it. Yeah,you get calories, but there's no nutrients.
And so that's one of the absolutekey things is to try to get
high nutrient density foods, so mand high quality stuff. So one of

(45:44):
the one of the macro nutrients thatevery tra athlete needs is a lot of
protein. You know, you're you'rebreaking the muscle down and without protein,
you won't rebuild. You know,if you if you eat animal products,
that's no problem. If you arevegetarian or vegan, that can be more
of a challenge because your your yourpercentage of carbohydrates has gone way up compared

(46:08):
to the protein that you're able toextract from the food. If you are
an older athlete. Older athletes needto eat a higher percentage of their total
calories from protein to actually stimulate theirbody to regenerate the muscle that gets broken
down during training. So young peoplethey eat a little bit of protein,

(46:30):
their body goes, Okay, letme use this and recover and regenerate,
replenish, rebuild the muscle. Olderfolks need to have more protein percentage in
their diet for the body to go, Oh, I have protein, I
can rebuild a muscle, So thatthat's kind of one key. I try
to have what your meals have.You know, definitely try to cut back

(46:58):
or cut out sugar. Right,What if you have something that has sugar
in it when you're actually training,you're going to utilize it for fuel about
as quickly as you can absorb it, so it doesn't have generally doesn't have
much effect on your blood sugar.If you have a lot of sugar in
your actual food diet afterwards, youknow, you can get insulin spikes you

(47:22):
have. It shuts down your fatburning. So that engine that you're trying
to read to activate for endurance isgetting shut down because if your blood sugar
goes out insulin's release, it shutsoff fat burning and it stores the sugar
as fat. So you know,I really I avoided sugar when I was

(47:43):
competing. I still do. RightBasically, if it's somebody's birthday, I'll
have a piece of cake. Youknow, I'm no angel, let me
put it that way. But ingeneral, you know, every meal I
look at it and go, Okay, where's the protein. Second thing is
I ask myself where are the goodoils? Olive oil, avocado nuts,

(48:05):
you know, every meal I havehas a good source of good oils in
it. And then also I go, where's where's all the the the phytonutrients
like stuff in kale or you know, real berries, or you know,
anything with a lot of color init, you know, the vegetables with
a lot of color. And thefinal thing is if you eat foods that

(48:32):
have um added flavorings to it,like um, you know, you open
up that bag of like dorito ranch, spinal chips that high that has a
high flavor added to it, andthat's sort of like food crack. It's
like right, it hits that addictivepart of the brain and it may food

(49:00):
reward. Yeah, yeah, itwants you to continually eat more of it.
And what it's doing is it's maskingyour ability to actually listen to your
body's natural intuitive sense. It willtell you what you should be eating.
So even at food flavoring additives thatare are natural, they're enhancing the flavor
of food to a point where it'sit has an addictive aspect to it.

(49:23):
And so cut out the garbage thathas that added food flavoring to it.
That's that's not saying cut out spices, spices, are, okay, but
if it says modified food flavoring orany kind of added food flavoring, yeah,
keep it out. That was alwaysmy nemesis, and of course my

(49:45):
occasional red wine. Oh yeah,you know, that's all I would.
You know, that's a personal choice, you know, are you gonna have
your red wine? I love havinga glass, you know, or two
glasses or whatever. Yeah, yeah, just so you know, and you
can make your own decision. Alcoholsort of competes with the same process,

(50:07):
some of the same stuff that enablesyour body to rebuild a muscle. Yeah.
Yeah, So if you've had areally hard workout that eat, like
a long run or a really hardstrength workout or a really long bike,
right or whatever, that might notbe the best night to write. And
it's sort of empty calories and obviouslyno nutrient real nutritional value. Okay,

(50:30):
And then what about that three daywindow right before the Iron Man? How
do you recommend that for your athletes? Basically, you know, when you're
in that last those last few days, you're not training much. So I
just continue to try to basically eatthe same as normal. I will cut
back on foods with that A highfiber one of the reasons is that if

(50:55):
if you're still eating high fiber allthe way through race day race morning,
that fiber in the gut slows theabsorption of the calories that you're going to
be taken in during the race,which can then cause stomach backup and nauseousness.
And I've had a lot of athleteswho just can't keep nutrition down during

(51:15):
a race, who eat super healthy, cut out all the fiber in those
last couple days, and all ofa sudden, they can manage their race
nutrition. So that's that's kind ofone thing. Obviously, you're gonna want
to hydrate. Obviously, if it'sa hot race, you're gonna want to
try to have foods where you justadd some salt to it because you can

(51:36):
store up salt just like you cancarbohydrates. You don't have to carbo load.
You know, if you're if you'reif you're cutting back on your training,
but you're kind of eating basically thesame blend of stuff that you don't
normally do, your body's going tostore up glycogen. And total bottom line
is, if you're doing an ironman, you're going to burn through that

(51:58):
glycogen and you're need to get itfrom your race nutrition anyway. So whether
you start up fifteen hundred calories ortwo thousand calories worth a carbohydrate, it's
it's it's it's not even a factorbecause you're going to have to keep replacing
it during the race. So nobig CARDLOADHU on that day night before or
whatever. You can shift a littlebit toward card, but you don't want

(52:19):
to overdo it because then you canactually it can actually slow down that that
fat metabolism which you want to haveactivate it for race day. Right,
interesting, Yeah, on that day, like so you go, you sleep,
you get up race mourning anything anyspecial thing race mourning. Do you

(52:42):
try to replace glancting then or doyou just stop and you know, throw
in a jail before you How doyou recommend that race day? Well,
you know a couple of things.First, ask yourself if I was going
to be going out for a reallyreally long training day, how many calories
would I take in? What wouldI be eating? Yeah, you're not

(53:04):
gonna go ride six hours on aglass of gatorade, Ye are right.
You're gonna have a breakfast, right, But you'd also don't want to have
a lot of bulk in your inyour digestive tracks, so kind of figure
out how many calories are you goingto want to take in race morning,
and then figure out can you getmost of that through liquid and have it
be something that maybe you aren't goingto be taken in the race. So

(53:29):
I would have I would have ensurei'd have a can or two for breakfast,
a different flavor than I would havein the race, and then I
you know, I'd have also likea piece of toast with some butter and
avocado on it, just to kindof have a little different flavor gone.
And then when you go when youactually go to the race start, you
know, I really recommend that youhave a bottle, extra bottle of water,

(53:51):
extra bottle of sport drink, andthen you know, a gel or
two or some kind of sport energybar or something, so that in that
time between breakfast and your race startyou can top off the tank. You
know, and especially now with wavestarts, if you've got to get your
bike in the rack by six thirtyor seven, but you're not starting until

(54:12):
nine or something, that's three hoursand yeah, yeah you're gonna be ready
for lunch, Yeah, exactly,make sure you have that stuff to keep
topping off your sort of energy tankas you get as you get ready for
the swim. Yeah, and youmentioned earlier about the you know, three
hundred to five hundred calories an hoursome guys are taken. How do you
figure that out with someone? Areyou just doing field tests to try to

(54:34):
figure out figure that out how manycalories they burned per hour and then try
to back into a number. Yeah, kind of start with three hundred,
three hundred fifty calories an hour asa starting point to test practice in your
long rides. Track how many caloriesyou're taking in per hour so that when
you're done with that long ride,you actually are still fueled up, and

(54:58):
you could go for a run,you know, and do it a number
of times, because each day thatyou do it, your body's going to
be in a little different kind ofstate. Like some days you're gonna feel
like you're you're taking in calories constantly. Another long ride, maybe not quite
as much. So anyway, startwith that and see how many you need.

(55:20):
You know, some people three threefifty is way too much, especially
if you're a smaller, lighter person. Yeah, you know, if you're
bigger and heavier, three three fiftymight leave you empty by the end of
the ride, might be bronking.You might need four hundred, four hundred
fifty calories and now, yeah,and that was always mine. Yeah,
yeah, you know, And soI tried to get in four or four

(55:42):
or fifty, but it usually endedup being closer to three three fifty.
And then in the race, makesure that make sure that whatever you're using
is something that you've tried. Soif if you're not taking your own nutrition,
you find out what's going to beon the race course and practice with
it. And my number one thingis it has to taste really good and

(56:07):
work really well in training, becausein the race it might taste okay,
all right, if you're having toforce it down in training, when you
get to the race, you're notgoing to be able to stomach it.
Yeah, that's so true. Imean I remember trying like something like,
you know, gummy bears at Eminem's. Somebody will have them on a course

(56:30):
and I'll grab them and keep going. I love those things any other time,
but on the course they I justcan't get them down. So yeah,
you're right that that's funny. Yeah. And then the other thing to
sort of remember is when you arelet's say, practicing and trying to experiment

(56:52):
and see how many calories now areyou going to need? Take those calories
in at race pace. You know, we tend when we let's say we
go on long rides and all,kay, I'm going to practice and see
how many calories now I need.What a lot of athletes, including me,
would do is I'd have all thesecalories with me, and I'd be

(57:12):
riding along and then we'd stop toget water, and then I got well,
I drink down, you know,a whole bottle of whatever. Well,
while I'm sitting there filling one waterbottle, drinking another one, my
heart rates seventy. But in therace, when I'm drinking and eating,
my heart rate's going to be onehundred and fifty. So practice taking in
what you're going to take in whileyou're moving while your heart rates up,

(57:34):
because that's going to be a verydifferent experience than when you're stopped at a
gas sting in you're a convenience store, right, yeah, And that's hard
to do. I think if youhave a sort of c race, you
can practice there, but it's hardto do it when you're going out on
any given weekend just with your buddiesor something. Yeah, so great stuff,

(57:59):
great stuf. The time has justmelted. So I want to I
want to get your thoughts. Soyou mentioned so you have Mark Allen Coaching,
and then you mentioned you're also doingsome coaching with try Dot, So
I want you to talk about that. Just how can how do athletes benefit

(58:20):
from your coaching endeavors, whether itbe Mark Allen Coaching or try Dot.
How did they get involved? AndI also want to get your thoughts about
just coaching in the future. Andnow we have the march of AI.
How's that going to affect the coachingbusiness or even your coaching business and coaching

(58:43):
endeavors. Yeah, well I movedall of my coaching and my clients over
to try dot about a year ago, and the reason is that they have
some AI within the training programs thatdo stuff that I knew. I knew
that I was I wanted to incorporateinto my coaching, but I knew that
there was no way I had thebandwidth or the knowledge or the programming team

(59:07):
to be able to do it.And so, for example, you know,
they all the training that you getin try do it integrates you know,
your age, your your your gender, your past history, where you
are training, the temperature on theday. You know, so like if
you're training in Boston and it's themiddle of winter, your training zones are

(59:30):
going to be very different than whenyou're training in summer and it's baking and
humid and hot, and it itautomatically your training zones are automatically adjusted for
all of that kind of stuff.And you know, the data that has
gone into almost twenty years of developmentfor try dot is it's mind boggling the

(59:52):
number of the thousands and thousands andthousands of workouts that have been analyzed and
then sort of fine and put intowhat actually works. You know, So
like I might think A, Band C works, but through their AI
and what they've been able to analyze, their going, yeah, A B
and C works, but only ifD and E are also working. You

(01:00:13):
know. Basically, what the toolswithin try that have done for me as
a coach is it's kind of like, you know, in the old days,
a doctor would come to you witha little leather bag and he'd pull
up the stethoscope and he'd stick iton your chest and you go, okay,
cough, you know, right right, and he'd tried to figure out

(01:00:35):
what's going on with you, andhe'd put the thermometer in and see what
your temperature is. Well, nowadays, you know, they put you into
an MRI machine and they actually canlook inside and get all this analysis,
and then it helps the doctor toactually fine tune and understand what's truly going
on. That's kind of how AIis, you know. And it's also
with all of the data that athletescan generate in a training session now with

(01:00:59):
power and you know, your youryour your pace and how how does that
measure up as far as like actualstress on your body and all of these
different things. They get analyzed throughthe AI that's in try dot and your
future training gets adjusted based on that, and the predicted times that you can

(01:01:19):
do in your race get adjusted basedon that, and it's it's as refined
as down to the point where likesome platforms give you a stress score,
and I won't mention any name.Are you talking about? Yeah, the
most the first and probably most popularat this point, gives you a stress
score. But all it does isit analyzes the amount of time that you

(01:01:43):
spent in let's say zone four andamount of time that you spend in let's
say Zone two. Try DOT looksat that, but it also looks at
where in the workout you did that. So for example, if you do
if you have let's say ten minutesof Zone four work and you do it
at the very beginning of the workout, that's a heck of a lot easier
and lower stress on you than ifyou do that Zone four at the at

(01:02:06):
the very back end of the workout, when you're tired. It's so much
harder and it's much higher stress.And so that's even even down to like
the stress score that you get andtry to it measures where in the workout
you did the hard stuff, andyour your stress score will will change,
and so it's it's so refined.But at the same time, you still

(01:02:27):
need a coach. You know,you still need that person that you can
communicate with, that you can talkto, that you can have accountability with,
and they can help you with alot of the mental stuff. And
then also you know, no matterhow perfect kind of the AI is,
there still are going to be timeswhen things need to get factored in that

(01:02:50):
the AI won't even see. Likeyou know, you've got a project at
work and you're getting three hours asleep, you know that kind of stuff.
And or you've got to vacation comingup, how do you modify your training?
Or an injury or you're you're justfeeling a little sick or whatever it
is. You know, So anyway, it's for me, it's the ultimate.
It's the ultimate blend of technology andhuman the human art of human coaching.

(01:03:15):
Right. I think it's where everytype of coaching will eventually go and
try to try to. Actually haslike a huge headstart on anybody who's even
trying to do this. I've lookedat some other programs that supposedly have AI
in the coaching and it's so rudimentarycompared to what we have. So anyway,

(01:03:35):
you can check it out, tryto add. You can go on
and try training plans. And ifit's a Mark Allen Edition training plan,
you get a lot of like dailyvideo tips and tools and mindset stuff that
comes with each one of the workouts. Mark Allen Premium you get me as
your coach who will look at yourstuff basically every day and you can comment.

(01:04:00):
You can ask me questions, Icomment on what I see. You
know, it's a it's a supergreat sort of symbiosis between the athlete and
me as as their coach. Andthat's on the spectrum from recreational to competitive.
The people trying to qualify FACONA allacross the spectrum can take take take

(01:04:21):
you up on that absolutely, absolutely, yeah, definitely. I want the
links. I want to put thelinks to it in the in the show
notes. I think this is veryinteresting. I mean there's a lot of
talk now about AI, and youknow, I just just looking at chat
GPT when it started to get popular, just saying could this really replace a

(01:04:44):
coach? And you know, justplaying around with I typed in create a
high performance swim workout and it cameback with something pretty impressive. You know
that that a coach would actually develop. So I think AI, if there's
no coaches looking at this, they'rebehind. I think, you know,

(01:05:09):
the tools are getting better, thealgorithms are getting better than machine learning is
getting better well. And also youknow with the AI, it digests all
of that daily data that comes inand and sort of modifies training zones and
you know, future stuff based onwhat you're seeing. And as a coach

(01:05:30):
I could do that, but forlike five people you know, or three
people, because the volume of datathat you'd have to look at and kind
of figure out, you know,what does this mean and how how should
this affect what we're doing in thefuture. And tomorrow it's going to be
a super hot day, so howmuch should I have them slow down?
Compared to you know, it justtakes all of that guesswork out of it,

(01:05:55):
and it takes that that huge mindcrunch that would take to manage athletes.
So the AI helps to helps meas a coach to just make sure
that the person is on track andon the right trajectory each and every single
day. And then on top ofthat, then I get to actually look
and then it's super easy for meto go, oh, yeah, no,

(01:06:15):
we need to cut back here,we need to expand there, or
you know, the actual coaching stuff. Super cool. Yeah, all right,
I'll put the links to the inthe show notes, so you know,
check it out, and yeah,you can have you can have the
legend Mark Allen has your personal coach. You should also come up with some

(01:06:36):
stuff for coaches too, because Iwould jump on that. I don't know
if you still do anything with coaches, but stayed stay tuned. Something might
be in the works on that.Excellent. Excellent. I'll be the first
one on board. All right,you've been very generous with your time.
Thanks so much Mark for being aguest, and yeah, for all the

(01:06:59):
listeners, please go out in checkout the links in the show notes.
Thanks again, Mark, all Right, tell you Ben an honor and pleasure.
Thank you man. Thanks again toMark Allen. What a way to
start off season six. Go checkout his book The Art of Competition link
in the show notes nineteen eighty nine, the story dot com that links in

(01:07:20):
the show notes, and of courseyou can go check out all of his
coaching resources in the show notes aswell. I started out in endurance sports
almost exactly twenty years ago, andI remember picking up the magazines and reading

(01:07:41):
about the epic duels of the legends, you know, Mark Allen versus David
Scott, Julie Moss, Paula NewbyFrazier, and I just you know,
talking with Mark Allen, which wasjust incredible that after all these years,

(01:08:02):
here I am sitting in front ofhim talking about endurance sports. It absolutely
I can say I've come full circle. It's a great honor to be able
to sit down and have that conversation. And even though my tiny little accolades

(01:08:26):
seem minuscule compared to the greatest enduranceathlete of all time, it's great to
just sit down as a coach coachto coach and talk about these topics and
the time just melts away. SoI hope you all enjoyed it, and
I think quite a number of enduranceenthusiasts, male, female, young old

(01:08:49):
athlete coaches you're going to find thisone useful. So thanks again, and
this is the Endurance Experience. EnduranceSport on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
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or for a complete archive of podcasts, love onto our website avent Horizon dot tv.