Episode 164
Ep. 164: Bikes, Tech, and Thyroid: The Triathlon Trifecta You Didn't Know You Needed
In this episode:
In the medical mailbag Juliet and I answer a question about training with hypothyroidismm. How much of an impact does thyroid dysfunction have on an endurance athlete and what does this gland do anyways? We give you all the details. Then, in a world where triathletes are often left wondering if their competition is playing fair, Race Ranger swoops in like a superhero with a tech-savvy cape. James Elvery returns to the Tridoc Podcast to shed light on how this nifty gadget not only tracks drafting but also enhances safety for every participant. No more chaotic bike packs where someone’s drafting off you like they’re in a Tour de France highlights reel! The system uses a combination of lights and technology to enforce rules, and it’s finally making its debut among age-groupers. We get into all the juicy details about how it works, including the fascinating (and slightly terrifying) tech behind the scenes that tracks your distance from the rider in front of you. The conversation flows from the challenges of scaling up for larger races to the proactive measures taken to ensure that athletes are not only competing but are safe while doing so.
Segments:
[06:59]- Medical Mailbag: Thyroid disease
[29:48]- Interview: James Elvery
Links
James's Website @Race.Ranger on Instagram @Race_Ranger_Tri on X
TriDoc Podcast in Supplement form (newsletter) sign up
Transcript
Everyone would still have the devices on their bikes as part of doing the race.
Speaker A:And I guess the benefit to the rest of that group that, you know, the probably the larger portion of the field is not so much about the drafting, but it's about those safety elements of, of knowing where they are and if they've had an accident on course and if they've gone off course, live tracking as well.
Speaker A:So your, your fans and your sp, your family and spectators.
Speaker A:And then I guess the last piece is data.
Speaker A:So after the race there's a whole lot of information we can spit out already at the moment, which we're doing with the pros around.
Speaker A:Who overtook who when, how fast was that person going when you passed them, how much illegal time did you generate while you were overtaking that person, vice versa, and create like a course profile of all the different overtakes through the event and who passed you, who'd you pass, how much time did you accumulate that was and how much was was safe?
Speaker A:And how does that rank you?
Speaker B: ,: Speaker B:I'm your host, Jeff Sankoff, the tridoc, an emergency physician, triathlon coach and multiple Ironman finisher coming to you as always from beautiful sunny Denver, Colorado.
Speaker B:The voice you heard in the opening of the podcast was that of my guest on this episode, the co founder and CEO of Race Ranger, James Elvery.
Speaker B: my guest back in February of: Speaker B:Well, three years later and the technology is finally going to be used to watch for drafting in the age group ranks.
Speaker B:And so I asked James to come back and give me an update and our conversation is going to be heard a little bit later on.
Speaker B:Before that, Juliet Hockman and I answer another listener question in the Medical Mailbag.
Speaker B:In this episode, we discuss a reasonably common chronic condition that can have a significant impact on athletes if it isn't properly diagnosed and managed, and that is derangements in thyroid gland function.
Speaker B:When that gland is not working properly, it can have wide ranging impacts across a lot of different physiological systems.
Speaker B:We look at the science that's coming up very shortly.
Speaker B:Before all of that though, I want to share with you some exciting news.
Speaker B:Now, to be fair, there was a lot of news to discuss in the world of triathlon right now, and I kind of struggled to decide what to prioritize to chat about with you in the opening of the show, but in the end I decided to be just a wee bit selfish and focus on a couple of things that involve me and this program.
Speaker B:First of all, as a small number of you know, last week marked the first ever publication of the Tridoc Podcast Supplement Form.
Speaker B:Now you know I rarely approve a supplement, but this one I wholeheartedly recommend because it's actually a newsletter that encapsulates the content of this podcast in print form and delivers it to your email box one week after the episode comes out.
Speaker B:In it you will find a summary of the medical mailbag findings and recommendations as well as a listing of all of the references that were used to develop them.
Speaker B:Plus you'll find more information about the episode's guest and a few other little tidbits as well.
Speaker B:I hope that this is of interest to you.
Speaker B:The first edition got pretty positive reviews and I think it would be a great companion to the podcast and if you forward it to people who might find it interesting, they too can sign up and receive it and possibly listen in as well.
Speaker B:The link to sign up for the newsletter is in the private group for the podcast on Facebook, in my bio, on my Instagram feed, and in the show notes for this episode.
Speaker B:The second piece of news is all about a new collaboration between me and my friend and frequent contributor to this show, professional triathlete Matt Sharp.
Speaker B:Matt, as you may or may not know, produces the excellent twice a week triathlon newsletter the Tempo News.
Speaker B:And a little while ago he approached me about an idea for the result of which is going to be this hey everyone, I'm Matt Sharp, producer of the Tempo Newsletter, professional triathlete and former Olympic triathlete.
Speaker B:And I'm Jeff Sankoff, the Tridoc an emergency physician, triathlon coach, age group triathlete and producer of the Tridoc Podcast.
Speaker B:Jeff and I want to invite you to join us for our new triathlon podcast, Tempo Talks where we'll aim to combine the best elements of the Tempo News and the Tridock Podcast.
Speaker B:On this show we want to bring you on an exploration of all things triathlon.
Speaker B:I'll help demystify some of the science behind endurance training and performance and I'll.
Speaker C:Bring you the inside scoop on what.
Speaker B:Is happening on the pro circuit and.
Speaker A:In the industry side of our sport.
Speaker B:And together we will answer your questions based on feedback that you provide to Tempo News and the Tridoc Podcast.
Speaker B:This won't be a one way dialogue, but rather an interactive conversation where you, the readers and listeners, drive the conversation.
Speaker B:We hope that you want to join.
Speaker C:Us on this journey?
Speaker B:Because honestly, it'll be a lot more fun than us just going at it alone.
Speaker C:So look for Tempo Talks wherever you.
Speaker B:Find your audio content and be sure to subscribe.
Speaker B:The first episode will be out in the next couple weeks, with a new episode publishing weekly after that.
Speaker B:We're looking forward to having you along for the conversation.
Speaker B:I'm really excited for this opportunity and I believe that together, Matt and I will make something that you will all enjoy.
Speaker B:Enjoy.
Speaker B:Now, don't worry, the Tridoc podcast isn't going anywhere.
Speaker B:If anything, it is my belief that the exposure from Tempo Talks will only make this show stronger.
Speaker B:So look for Tempo Talks wherever you get your listening content and subscribe now.
Speaker B:The first episode will be out next week.
Speaker B:Now, I have asked in the past for all of you who are listening to the podcast to kindly go out there and leave a rating and a review wherever you download this content.
Speaker B:And if you're watching on YouTube, please hit the like button and leave a comment.
Speaker B:That has only had some effect.
Speaker B:Some of you have been doing that as I've asked, and I will tell you that it really does make a huge difference in whether or not other people find this podcast.
Speaker B:So going forward, if you would be so kind as to leave a rating and a review wherever you do so, or leave comments on this episode in the private Facebook group on that platform, I'm going to give you a shout out.
Speaker B:The next time I record an episode, I will read your comments.
Speaker B:You can let me know if you want to keep them anonymous by sending me an email.
Speaker B:But if you put your comments in any one of the platforms where you download, especially on Apple podcasts where they're most visible, you can also leave comments on Spotify, I see those as well.
Speaker B:Or in the Tridoc Podcast Facebook group, I'll read them on the next episode of the podcast.
Speaker B:So please, please, please do so.
Speaker B:It goes a long way to helping out make the show more if you're watching on YouTube, you can see that I have been joined by Juliet Hockman, my friend and colleague at LifeSport Coaching.
Speaker B:Juliet, how are you?
Speaker D:I am great.
Speaker D:How are you?
Speaker B:I'm well.
Speaker B:And if you're listening now, you know that I speak the truth because you've heard her voice.
Speaker B:And that can only mean one thing.
Speaker B:It means we're here for the Medical Mailbag, the latest segment where listeners send in questions and we get into the science so you don't have to, so that we can provide you some answers.
Speaker B:And we have A question sent in by a listener this episode.
Speaker B:Juliet, who are we answering and what is the question?
Speaker D:Great.
Speaker D:So this question comes in from Mike Campbell, and it's a bit of a long question, and it goes into a little bit of detail about his background.
Speaker D:But to put it in a nutshell, he has.
Speaker D:He's been diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease, which is hypothyroidism.
Speaker D:And every year he.
Speaker D:He works really hard to keep his weight steady by balancing his medications and staying healthy and training for a triathlon.
Speaker D:And he's been fairly successful, but he finds that he easily puts on weight when he gets into the off season.
Speaker D:So his question is, are there other things that he can do to not only perform better, but also to drop a few pounds as he goes along the way, he's ramping up this year, and we'll probably do Ironman, like Placid later in the year.
Speaker D:So this is top of mind form right now.
Speaker D:So what do we know about.
Speaker D:Well, I guess both thyroid diseases, hypo and hyperthyroidism, and how it affects endurance athletes.
Speaker D:Knowing that, what did you say, 1 in 20Americans or 1 in 20 people have some sort of thyroid disease?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So not an uncommon problem.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I'm pretty sure that if you're listening to this, you probably know somebody who has this.
Speaker B:Not necessarily an athlete, but certainly you will know someone who has it.
Speaker B:Maybe you yourself have it, and maybe you've wondered whether or not this is something you need to be concerned about.
Speaker B:And Mike's question came to me by email.
Speaker B:That's another way that you can send in your questions for the mailbag.
Speaker B:You can do that by sending me an email@triodocloud.com as just a reminder.
Speaker B:But, yeah, Mike's question, I think, is quite pertinent because although it's not something we commonly think of as something that influences athletes in general, it is something that we know is fairly prevalent.
Speaker B:So let's.
Speaker B:Let's begin first with just a discussion.
Speaker B:What is the thyroid gland?
Speaker B:What does it do?
Speaker B:So the thyroid gland is a gland that's located in the anterior portion of the neck.
Speaker B:I'm.
Speaker B:I'm demonstrating here on the YouTube channel.
Speaker B:It's located.
Speaker B:We don't generally see it because under normal circumstances, the gland is quite small and.
Speaker D: er the periods of sort of the: Speaker B:Right, right.
Speaker B:And it's a disease of historical significance, because goiters or swelling or an enlargement of the thyroid gland came about because of a lack of iodine.
Speaker B:So the thyroid synthesizes thyroid hormone.
Speaker B:It is a very delicately controlled synthesis of hormone.
Speaker B:It's controlled through what's called the hypothalamic pituitary axis.
Speaker B:Not going to get into all of that.
Speaker B:But suffice it to say that you require iodine in order to make thyroid hormone.
Speaker B:And when your diet is lacking iodine, as is commonly the case in the 18th century in Europe and also in many places in Africa, what would happen is the thyroid gland would enlarge and become this large mass in the anterior part of the neck, which was called a goiter.
Speaker B:And when physicians and researchers figured out that it was a lack of iodine that was causing this, we started to add iodine to salt, and that's why salt continues to be iodized.
Speaker B:And when you purchase salt off the shelf, you'll see it's called iodized salt.
Speaker B:And the reason for that is to make sure that we get enough iodine in our diets.
Speaker B:We don't need a huge amount, but just enough to make sure that we are able to synthesize thyroid hormone.
Speaker B:So that's what the gland is and where it's located.
Speaker B:The thyroid hormone itself is incredibly important in regulating a whole host of metabolic tissues, A whole host of metabolic processes in all of our tissues throughout the body.
Speaker B:The hormone basically controls kind of.
Speaker B:It's kind of like the accelerator or the throttle of metabolism.
Speaker B:So when you have an increased number or an increased amount of thyroid hormones circulating in the bloodstream, then everything seems to go faster.
Speaker B:Your heart rate will go faster.
Speaker B:Your liver is gonna be operating at a higher level.
Speaker B:Your cells are all gonna be running at a faster metabolic rate.
Speaker B:Your nervous system is gonna be running more quickly if it's unchecked.
Speaker B:Can lead to symptoms of hyperthyroidism.
Speaker B:Too much thyroid hormone is elevated, so it's called hyperthyroidism.
Speaker B:And that can lead to a host of symptoms, including weight loss, diarrhea, liver.
Speaker B:In the most extreme situations, it can cause what's called thyroid toxicosis, which I'll get to in a second.
Speaker B:But just hyperthyroidism in general causes a tremor.
Speaker B:People will have this very fine motor tremor because their nervous system is heightened.
Speaker B:They have the diarrhea, as I mentioned, they are not able to, well, tolerate heat because their body temperature tends to run high.
Speaker B:So the engine is running hot because the throttle is opened, and they get into a whole host of Problems with their heart rate being too quick and also the heart not operating particularly well, as we'll get to in a second when we talk about impact on endurance performance.
Speaker B:Now, conversely, if the thyroid gland is not able to synthesize enough or for whatever reason, the pituitary hypothyroid axis, sorry, the hypothalamus pituitary axis is out of sync and your thyroid gland's not working properly to produce enough hormone, then the opposite things will happen.
Speaker B:You have a slowing down of everything.
Speaker B:People get constipation, they get sort of a fatigue and a dullness of thought.
Speaker B:Their nervous system is slowed down, their gastrointestinal tract slows down.
Speaker B:That's why they get constipation.
Speaker B:Their heart rate tends to be slower.
Speaker B:They put on weight because they're not metabolizing things as, as quickly as they should be.
Speaker B:They tend to run cold.
Speaker B:And so they have a very poor tolerance to cool temperatures.
Speaker B:And over time, if that's left unchecked, they can develop what's called a myxedema, which is actually quite dangerous.
Speaker B:So on both extremes, if you have unchecked hyperthyroidism, that can result in what's called thyroid toxicosis or thyroid storm, which can be fatal.
Speaker B:And on the other side, hypothyroidism and very severe, and that's usually a problem in the elderly, can result in what's called myxedema, which also can be very dangerous and an important problem.
Speaker B:Now, thyroid disease itself tends to occur when the thyroid gland is attacked by our immune system.
Speaker B:So you mentioned Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which was Michael's precipitant.
Speaker B:That's the most common cause of hypothyroidism.
Speaker B:It tends to be a little bit more common in women than men, but not hugely.
Speaker B:And it's more common, as with advancing age.
Speaker B:So we see hypothyroidism in older people much more commonly than in younger people.
Speaker B:And what's happening there is there's been some kind of inciting infection or some kind of cause that causes the immune system to create antibodies that basically attack the thyroid gland and render the thyroid gland no longer able to produce hormones.
Speaker B:And therefore you end up with no thyroid hormone in your hypothyroid for life.
Speaker B:And the treatment for that is just to replace thyroid hormone with a synthetically produced thyroid hormone and then follow along and make sure that we're giving exactly the right amount of hormone.
Speaker B:Hyperthyroidism is most commonly caused also by an autoimmune disease.
Speaker B:But this time the antibodies, rather than Killing or causing the destruction of the thyroid gland actually activate the thyroid gland.
Speaker B:And here the antibodies bind to receptors on the thyroid gland, cause the thyroid gland to release gobs and gobs and large amounts of thyroid hormone.
Speaker B:And this results in, or the entity of this happening is referred to as Graves disease.
Speaker B:And Graves Disease is the most common cause of hyperthyroidism.
Speaker B:It's treated by rendering the thyroid gland less operative by giving medications that inhibit the synthesis and release of thyroid hormone.
Speaker B:Okay, so now we're all experts in the thyroid, and, and, and you can understand why it is so important that if you have thyroid disease, you're followed by an endocrinologist very carefully, because you want to make sure that all of your systems are working properly, you're getting the correct amount of hormone to keep things going.
Speaker B:So how does thyroid disease impact your ability to exercise?
Speaker B:And I have to give a shout out to my intern who did the research on this.
Speaker B:It was Cosette Rhodes.
Speaker B:She had a really good time diving into the literature on this.
Speaker B:She said that she learned a lot looking at this and found a lot of really interesting articles.
Speaker B:So I think the most important thing to remember here is that your thyroid gland is kind of like the throttle.
Speaker B:And no matter if you're hyper or hypo, having that throttle not doing what it's supposed to do causes significant, significant problems with your ability to tolerate and to do exercise.
Speaker B:So for people who are hypothyroid, which is much more common, about five times as common as hyperthyroid people who are hypothyroid, they tend to have issues with VO2 max.
Speaker B:They're not able to properly metabolize in their cells, and they have cardiovascular problems where they're just not able to provide the adequate cardiac output in order to supply oxygen and supply blood flow to the muscles that they're trying to work.
Speaker B:So hypothyroidism untreated can be quite important.
Speaker B:Now, some people might be thinking, wow, hyperthyroidism doesn't sound that bad, right?
Speaker B:I mean, I'll have a improved cardiac output.
Speaker B:I'm going to have an improved metabolic rate.
Speaker B:Maybe I'll lose some weight.
Speaker B:I mean, that doesn't sound terrible.
Speaker B:The reality is that people with hyperthyroidism also have significant impairment in their ability to perform endurance exercise, mostly because of cardiac issues.
Speaker B:So when you look at the myocardium of people with unchecked hyperthyroidism, their heart muscle just doesn't work as well.
Speaker B:And therefore, although they tend to run a higher heart rate, they tend to have a higher cardiac output, it doesn't match their needs.
Speaker B:And so they have cardiovascular dysfunction, which doesn't allow them to exercise quite as well.
Speaker B:And the weight loss is not.
Speaker B:It's not normal.
Speaker B:It's not good to have your engine running hot the whole time.
Speaker B:So not really a good situation.
Speaker B:We also know that hyperthyroidism puts you at risk for some pretty significant medical problems.
Speaker B:Heart failure, arrhythmias like atrial fibrillation, and even high blood pressure within the lungs, which is called pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary embolism.
Speaker B:So all of those things can happen if you have hyperthyroidism.
Speaker B:They've done studies on people who were asked to exercise, who were being either treated for hypothyroidism or were later diagnosed to have hypothyroidism.
Speaker B:And they found pretty clearly that if you were doing aerobic training, resistance training, any kind of exercise, if you didn't have well controlled thyroid disease, you did very poorly.
Speaker B:And really, having your thyroid well controlled was the most important thing.
Speaker B:Now, Michael asked a specific question about weight loss, and I didn't find anything specific to that in terms of studies being done.
Speaker B:Most of the studies done just talk about the fact that doing exercise is good if you have thyroid disease because it allows your overall metabolism to be better.
Speaker B:It allow, as always, exercise confers a lot of benefits to us.
Speaker B:But then also keeping your thyroid in check and keeping it well regulated while you're doing exercise also is very helpful.
Speaker B:We know that if you're hypothyroidism, if you're hypothyroid, it's harder to lose weight.
Speaker B:And so when Michael says that he's having some issues in his off season, it makes me wonder if his needs for thyroid hormone aren't maybe changing from within season to out.
Speaker B:And so that's something that he probably wants to talk to his endocrinologist about and something that I would always encourage that you mention to your physician, team, whoever's taking care of you, that, hey, you know, I noticed that this is changing for me throughout the season.
Speaker B:I wonder if my medication might need to be tweaked somehow.
Speaker B:And I wonder if for him, that's something that he needs to think about as he goes from his higher training season to his lower training season.
Speaker B:Maybe he just needs to have his levels checked or maybe he needs that medication to be tweaked a little bit.
Speaker B:Just something to think about.
Speaker D:Yep.
Speaker D:I mean, I would add, you know, if you were to Google athletes who have had to work through either one hypo or hyperthyroidism.
Speaker D:I mean, there's a.
Speaker D:There's a fairly significant and accomplished list of athletes who have had either Hashimoto's or Graves disease.
Speaker D:Among them, Gail Devers and Sarah Piampiano and Carl Lewis, Galen Rupp, although that one might have been a little controversial, but.
Speaker D:Yeah, so.
Speaker D:So it is.
Speaker D:You can perform at high levels with this challenge, but you do have to, as you say, be under the care of a doctor and make sure that medication is.
Speaker D:Is well monitored.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it's not a huge amount.
Speaker B:I mean, most people are taking like 200 micrograms of levothyroxine, which is the synthetic form of the thyroid hormone.
Speaker B:They take that every day, once a day.
Speaker B:And that's generally enough to keep most people going.
Speaker B:But as I said, I wonder if for Michael, who told me a little bit about his metrics, he's a taller guy, he's a heavier guy.
Speaker B:He may need more, especially during his off season and, you know, with dietary changes and things like that.
Speaker B:I think working with a nutritionist or working with a dietitian who might be able to also help.
Speaker B:Knowing your endocrinologic background and knowing what you have going on also could be a way to expand your medical team and allow for a better understanding of how to manage those kinds of questions.
Speaker B:Because I can't possibly give an answer specific to Michael.
Speaker B:I can only give very general responses here.
Speaker D:Sure.
Speaker B:But as you said, Juliet, I think it's important to note, before we started recording, you said, well, is this really going to be relevant to a lot of people?
Speaker B:But we talked just before, and I'll just say it now for everybody.
Speaker B:Hypothyroidism.
Speaker B:The incidence of hypothyroidism, or, excuse me, the prevalence.
Speaker B:So incidence means how often does it come up?
Speaker B:Every year.
Speaker B:So how many cases are diagnosed per year?
Speaker B:Prevalence means how many people have it right now.
Speaker B:So the prevalence of Hypothyroidism is almost 5%.
Speaker B:It's 4.6%.
Speaker B:So 4.6% of the population have diagnosed hypothyroidism.
Speaker B:Now, some of those people are subclinical, which means that they don't necessarily need treatment for it, they just need to be monitored.
Speaker B:But a fair number of them are going to need treatment like Michael does.
Speaker B:And then 1.3% have hyperthyroidism.
Speaker B:And again, that breaks down to about half of them are subclinical, half of them are clinical.
Speaker B:Hyperthyroidism is potentially the more dangerous of the two because it can lead to, more commonly lead to thyroid storm, which is a very important and serious complication.
Speaker B:I actually have an athlete that I'm coaching who has hyperthyroidism, and since we've been working together, he's never had any issues.
Speaker B:He gets his thyroid levels checked routinely.
Speaker B:He's continuously monitored, and he does very well and has not had any issues whatsoever with his training.
Speaker B:So it is something, again, just to know that it is out there.
Speaker B:I'm sure, given the number of people who listen to this podcast.
Speaker B:Michael is not unique and my athlete listens, so the two of them are not unique amongst the listener group.
Speaker B:The one thing I do want to caution is this is not like when I talk about how people with hyperthyroidism can lose weight and they can have a ramping up of their metabolic processes.
Speaker B:This is not something that people should ever consider as a weight loss thing.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I mean.
Speaker D:Right, right.
Speaker B:You don't want to, you don't want to suddenly say, hey, maybe if I took a little bit of levothyroxine, I'll lose some weight.
Speaker B:First of all, it wouldn't work that way because if you have a functioning thyroid gland and you took extra or exogenous thyroxine, your thyroid would just stop producing.
Speaker B:So you would, you would.
Speaker B:The hormone you were taking would just replace what you would make.
Speaker B:So you wouldn't actually get yourself into a state of being hyperthyroid.
Speaker B:Second of all, you would not enjoy it.
Speaker B:Being hyperthyroid is not a comfortable situation at all.
Speaker B:You're very jittery.
Speaker B:You have, like I said, diarrhea.
Speaker B:You're going to be, you know, tremulous.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's just not a good thing and not something that people would ever use anyways.
Speaker B:But I just mentioned it just in case it crossed somebody mind.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:You never know.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:So, yeah, so it's, it's relatively common when we think about, in terms of chronic illnesses.
Speaker B:I mean, it's relatively common.
Speaker B:It's something that is very easily managed these days, and many athletes can do just fine if they have it and they don't have to worry about their.
Speaker B:Their general state.
Speaker B:And like I said, I think just monitoring it closely with endocrinologists, maybe with the dietitian as part of your team should help immeasurably.
Speaker D:Yeah, I mean, when you think about, you know, how all of us, as we make our way through the sport, have to assemble a little bit of a team in our corner, you know, maybe it's a PT and a massage therapist or a chiropractor or acupuncture or nutritionist or whatever it is, you know, ortho who you can get in to see if you need to on short notice.
Speaker D:You know, people who are challenged by.
Speaker D:By thyroid issues are, you know, should just have someone who is.
Speaker D:Is an expert on that in their corner so that they can continue to stay in the game.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it makes just on the bonus episode that came out last week for Patreon supporters, I spoke with Spencer Tomberg, who's a physician, a sports medicine physician, and we talked about this notion of assembling your team because you don't always have to go to your doctor for things.
Speaker B:There are a host of other healthcare providers I know.
Speaker B:Juliet, you work with different healthcare providers.
Speaker B:I work with them.
Speaker B:I mean, I'm a physician.
Speaker B:I go to a massage therapist.
Speaker B:I have gone to a podiatrist before for things related to my foot.
Speaker B:Who do you use make use of?
Speaker A:As boy?
Speaker D:Over the last eight or nine years, I would say at various times I've had in my corner a pt, a chiropractor, a podiatrist, an orthopedic surgeon, an oncologist, at one point a nutritionist.
Speaker D:So you don't have to have people all the time.
Speaker D:You know, you don't sort of have to constantly be engaged with every member of the medical establishment, but you certainly.
Speaker D:I think I.
Speaker D:I feel very lucky that I have an orthopedic guy right here in my fairly small town who I know I can go to.
Speaker D:I have a pain management guy I can go to for spine issues.
Speaker D:So, you know, as you work your way through and different things come up, it's just good to have your people so that you know who to turn.
Speaker D:And as you say, sometimes when injuries or issues occur, you don't have to go to an md A PT will be just fine.
Speaker D:But you do have to have know who your people are.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And I want to add to that list, somebody who made a huge influence on me was a sports psychologist.
Speaker D:Sports psychologist.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because I think we spend so much time thinking about the physical aspects of what we do.
Speaker B:Getting inside your head is so important sometimes, and really I think a valuable insight as to who you are, how you can improve.
Speaker B:And sometimes it's not just sitting on the bike or getting out there for a run or getting in the pool, but actually understanding what might mentally be holding you back can really help.
Speaker B:So, yeah, a lot of useful stuff here.
Speaker B:Juliet, I know you've been struggling a little bit with some next stuff.
Speaker B:Is it going better?
Speaker D:I would say.
Speaker D:I can see some improvements.
Speaker D:We're not quite there, but definitely better than last fall.
Speaker D:Thanks for asking.
Speaker B:Excellent.
Speaker B:Excellent.
Speaker B:Well, you see, it's February, so that's a good time to be working through injury stuff, and we can hope for the best.
Speaker B:And I know that you are leveraging everyone on your team to get better.
Speaker D:I am, 100% for sure.
Speaker B:All right, well, I think that we've done our best to answer Michael's question for this episode.
Speaker B:If you have a question that you'd like to send in for us to consider answering on the Medical Mailbag, I already mentioned how you could send it in by email, but there are other means by which you can do so.
Speaker B:So of course there is the private Facebook group on that platform.
Speaker B:Just search for the Tridoc Podcast.
Speaker B:If you're not a member, answer the three easy questions.
Speaker B:I'll grant you admittance.
Speaker B:You can answer your questions there.
Speaker B:And if you haven't subscribed, please consider subscribing to the Tridoc Podcast supplement form.
Speaker B:It's one of the few supplements that Juliet and I highly recommend.
Speaker B:That, of course, is the Tridoc Podcast newsletter, which comes out every week offsetting these episodes.
Speaker B:It's a summary encapsulation of what we discuss, but it also includes the ability for you to give a comment or a question that you'd like for us to answer in a future episode.
Speaker B:The link for that is in the show Notes, and of course, you can also find it in the Facebook group and on my Instagram.
Speaker B:Juliet, thanks so much for being here for another episode of the Medical Mailbag.
Speaker B:We'll be back in a couple weeks to answer another question from another listener.
Speaker D:Thanks so much, Jeff.
Speaker B:Hey there, podcast listeners.
Speaker B:Are you a fan of the show?
Speaker B:Well, of course you are.
Speaker B:You're here, right?
Speaker B:But are you the kind of fan who'd like to get even more try Talk podcasts coming your way in the form of your own private feed with bonus episodes that come out about every month or so?
Speaker B:Well, you can do that.
Speaker B:And you've heard me say how for about the price of a cup of coffee per month, you could become a Patreon supporter that gets you access to those bonus episodes.
Speaker B:And if.
Speaker B:If you subscribe at the $10 per month level, you get a thank you gift in the form of this pretty cool Boco Tridock podcast running hat.
Speaker B:I'd love to have you along.
Speaker B:So many other listeners have joined, like Justin, like Stephanie, like Leila, and many others.
Speaker B:And I'd love to have you join their ranks and become a Patreon supporter who shows their love for this podcast by helping defray some of the costs that go into making this show and bringing it to you on a bimonthly basis.
Speaker B:So head on over to my Patreon site, which is www.patreon.com.
Speaker B:try DockPodcast and see how you can contribute and get access to those bonus episodes.
Speaker B:I'd love to have you along for the ride.
Speaker B:It's been a great journey so far.
Speaker B:There's a lot more great stuff to come.
Speaker B:As always, I thank you just for considering and thanks for being here.
Speaker B:My guest today is the co founder and and the CEO of the Race Ranger, James Elvery.
Speaker B: e podcast back in February of: Speaker B:He talked to us just before it debuted amongst the pros that were racing at the challenge.
Speaker B: naka well, we are here now in: Speaker B:And so I wanted to have James back to talk about where the Race Ranger has been, how far it's come and what we can look forward to as age groupers for this really exciting technology and whether or not we're going to be seeing it soon at a race near us.
Speaker B:James Alvarey, welcome back to the Tridarc podcast and I should say for those of you watching and listening, James has been extremely gracious.
Speaker B:He's doing a second take because I foolishly deleted our first interview.
Speaker B:So we're doing this a second time.
Speaker B:James, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker B:I really appreciate you being here.
Speaker A:No problem Jim.
Speaker A:Great to be here.
Speaker A:Thanks for having me back.
Speaker B:Well, let's begin.
Speaker B:First, I think most of my listeners are going to be very familiar with Race Ranger, but there might still be a few who are not.
Speaker B:So let's begin first and foremost with just a description, kind of a high level overview.
Speaker B:What is the Race Ranger?
Speaker B:How does it work and what does it do?
Speaker A:Yeah, so obviously in triathlon most events are non drafting.
Speaker A:You're not allowed to to get too close to the rider in front of you.
Speaker A:That's policed by referees on motorbikes patrolling the course.
Speaker A:Both the athletes and the referees are making naked eye judgment calls about what those distances are and this is obviously a bit of problem since the start of the sport.
Speaker A:So we're addressing that with technology.
Speaker A:So putting a device or a Couple of devices on each athlete's bike which accurately measures those following distances and it gives the following rider a light syndication to tell them how close they are to the rider in front of them.
Speaker A:So this is something pretty well in use now in the pro ranks of most top level races.
Speaker A:We served, yeah, 37 races last year, about 13 the year before.
Speaker A:And so, yeah, if anyone's been watching, you know, the C100 or the Ironman Pro Series type of coverage, they talk about it quite a bit.
Speaker A:On the contrary.
Speaker A:But there's also a bike light basically on the back of every athlete and that is showing a series of lights related to how close the rider behind them is.
Speaker A:That's at the nutshell.
Speaker B:And I know when we Talked back in 22, one of the things you were hoping to incorporate was the idea that these devices would actually be talking to the referees.
Speaker B:The referees would have like an iPad or some kind of device and they would be able to see how frequently athletes were violating the drafting rules.
Speaker B:And so rather than assigning a penalty every single time an athlete got into a draft zone, they'd be able to sort of identify the worst offenders.
Speaker B:Is that something that has been implemented?
Speaker B:Is that something that you're still working on?
Speaker A:Yeah, it's a still working on thing.
Speaker A:We, we currently just have the light syndication, so the athletes and the referees both see the same thing.
Speaker A:And that's probably solved probably more than half the problem we feel.
Speaker A:But to really make it that comprehensive system, we want to really add that next step.
Speaker A:So for us, we are currently working on getting a cellular connection going, so a 4G Internet connection for every single unit, and that'll give us a whole lot of capability.
Speaker A:But one of the things is feeding drafting data directly as it happens to the referees out in the course with that tablet app.
Speaker A:We're also developing that app just as a standalone thing so that, you know, it can be an app used by referees at any triathlon.
Speaker A:Whether it's a, a really, really small one or a really, really big one.
Speaker A:They'll.
Speaker A:This will become hopefully the, the standard app to use.
Speaker A:And then if you go to one of these races where, where Race Ranger is on the bikes, then those referees will get a bit more information about, about drafting as well.
Speaker B:Now, in the three years that you've been out there, and I've noticed that it's scaled up, it's really kind of like you said, 37 races last year.
Speaker B:It wasn't 37 in its first year, but I know it's gotten pretty big, pretty Quick, what kinds of lessons have you learned?
Speaker B:Where have things not worked the way you anticipated?
Speaker B:And what kinds of things have you learned in terms of.
Speaker B:Because I know as a spectator and someone who's very in tune with the sport, I've seen a couple of things that have been really interesting when the Race Ranger has been operating.
Speaker B:So what are some of the things you've learned technically and also.
Speaker B:So just from implementing their device?
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, I'm not a.
Speaker A:An engineer at all.
Speaker A:Don't have that kind of background.
Speaker A:So this is our first technical company that we're building also.
Speaker A:No one's ever really built something for Triathlon to address this problem.
Speaker A:So there's a lot of learnings going on all across the board.
Speaker A:Some of the big ones for us are probably quite mundane things like learning about international shipping and customs and duties and what timelines need to be allowed for that to flow smoothly.
Speaker A:And you know, we had an issue, couple of issues this year where.
Speaker A:Or last year.
Speaker A:Sorry.
Speaker A:Particularly in London at the T100 there where basically we ran a program that had worked somewhere else but it didn't seem to work at all in London.
Speaker A:And that.
Speaker A:That was a bit of a problem for us.
Speaker A:And that turned out that the 5G network on the ground at that particular course was clashing with all our signals.
Speaker A:So now, you know, we've got a system in place to check that before every race well ahead of time and make sure everything's going to work and we've got permissions to do what we need to do everywhere we go down to.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Operational lessons like making sure that all our, our employees have, have credit cards in their name so they can rent cars because sometimes you can get den business debit card if you lose your, if you have your wallet, your wallet stolen, lose your driver's license, basically you cannot rent a car as well.
Speaker A:So having a spare one of those handy.
Speaker A:Yeah, lots of little lessons like that along the way that are going to make things better and better as we go on.
Speaker A:But we're still learning and as we grow and develop.
Speaker B:Kind of typical growing pains, I guess, for a small company like yourself.
Speaker B:You mentioned the issue in London.
Speaker B:Is that something that could conceivably happen in another race or has that been addressed so that it's not likely to ever happen again again?
Speaker A:Yeah, we've got some.
Speaker A:I don't go too deeply into it, but we've got some sort of mechanisms to, to check that thing's going to work and to.
Speaker A:Yeah, just, just plan ahead of time.
Speaker A:It's it's pretty publicly available what, what spectrums different operators are using in different areas.
Speaker A:And just this particular case, the specific channel of the radio we had decided to use for the 20 meter race.
Speaker A:Yeah was the one that clashed and so we'd used it at another race in Austria a month, month or two before with.
Speaker A:With no issues at all.
Speaker A:But it was, yeah, just particular cell operator and they actually had their, their 5G towers along the course right where we were operating.
Speaker A:So it was quite a pronounced effect on the, on the signal.
Speaker B:It's really funny with tech, right, what works one day is not necessarily going to work the next day.
Speaker B:Have you had to scale up in terms of your company?
Speaker B:Have you had to hire a lot of people as you've grown?
Speaker A:Yeah, we started pretty small, but we are growing, yeah, slowly at the moment.
Speaker A:We've got a senior engineer now coming on board so he's running all our or engineering side because I was sort of directing things but not coming from an engineering background.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So he'd come in.
Speaker A:We've yeah, developing out a team I guess to, to operate at races, which is a more visible part for everyone.
Speaker A:Got sort of two core guys who are going to be at most of the races, one based in Europe and one North America.
Speaker A:Last year I went to a lot of races and plan is that I'll go to a lot less this year.
Speaker A:So they'll sort of run that and then some people to help with logistics.
Speaker A:So managing the shipping and the to travel to sort of take that off my plate as well.
Speaker A:And obviously there many backup people in case one of those people goes down and can't get to the race midweek, who's on call for that week, all that sort of thing.
Speaker A:So yeah, it's growing slowly but it's heading in a good direction and yeah, it's exciting.
Speaker B:One of the things as an observer, somebody who watches a lot of these races and that even the pros have commented on is the Race Ranger seems to have changed the way the bike leg goes for a lot of the pros rather than having a lot of kind of changing up in the like you'll often get a lead group that goes out on the bike and then you'll often have a lot of changing up at who's at the front.
Speaker B:But what a lot of pros were saying is that this year with the Race Ranger being a lot more prevalent on race courses, people noticed that they would kind of string out in a line, everybody would stay out of their draft zone.
Speaker B:So you would just see that, I guess when you're out of the draft zone, there's no light.
Speaker B:Is that correct?
Speaker A:Correct?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:And so they would get close where they would start to see the flashing light and then back out again.
Speaker B:And so basically everybody would be in this long line where everybody would stay legally separated, which is a really good thing.
Speaker B:But it changed kind of the tactics of the race.
Speaker B:Did you sort of see that being on the ground?
Speaker A:Yeah, I guess witnessing how people are racing as well.
Speaker A:And I guess the other side to it is how it's being policed and that's a big, big part to the whole system.
Speaker A:If there's lights flashing and, and the referees aren't doing anything, then, you know, no one's going to respect it and they're going to keep, keep riding in that in those situations and then expect to be given a pass if you know, or a warning.
Speaker A:So different races have addressed it differently, particularly Iron man have been quite, quite firm on it right from the start.
Speaker A:They took a pretty proactive view that if you go into the red, you must go forward, you cannot go backwards.
Speaker A:And that meant that everyone was probably sitting back at around that 14 meter threshold rather than the 12 meter to try and make sure they had a buffer and didn't really go into that zone.
Speaker A:One dynamic that's quite interesting is when you're riding along, the distance feels a lot closer than you might have thought it would be.
Speaker A:So if you're driving in a car on the autobahn at 300 kilometers an hour, you might feel like you're quite close to the car in front of you, but if you look from the side on shot, you're actually quite far apart.
Speaker A:It's a, I don't know what the name of the effect is, but it's a effect of moving along and that's the same when you're on the bike, even if at slower speeds.
Speaker A:So everyone is commenting.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Wow, that feels so close.
Speaker A:I've never, you know, I never used to ride that close to the ride in front of me and now I know, know what the distance is and so there's potentially everyone's a bit closer than they used to be, albeit they've now got this extra two meters that they're trying to hold.
Speaker A:So there's that.
Speaker A:And then I guess, yeah, I guess people are more conscious that if they go to make a pass, what that means in terms of the next rider or the next rider and they can look down the line and see the different colors of different lights ahead of Them and decide, okay, perhaps I need to pass two people now, but then there's a gap where I can pull into or I'm going to have to go all the way to the front.
Speaker A:Those kinds of things.
Speaker A:Yeah, we haven't seen anyone rates negatively with it where you know, you, you, you intentionally try to get someone a penalty.
Speaker A:That was obviously possible previously as well.
Speaker A:But it's more, I guess would be more obvious now.
Speaker A:But yeah, I haven't seen or heard any of that sort of behavior going on.
Speaker A:And generally yeah, feedback is really good.
Speaker A:Athletes really love it.
Speaker A:Some of them have commented that it makes them quite nervous and they just, they just sit further back than, than others.
Speaker A:I guess everyone's got different sort of risk tolerances and profiles.
Speaker A:But yeah, generally athletes love it.
Speaker A:Referees as well are enjoying using it and developing with it as well.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:So yeah, we're looking forward to adding more features to it to make it even better and available to more athletes as well.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's all really interesting insights and you're right about that, that it's a perception thing about the brain.
Speaker B:The brain perceives distances differently.
Speaker B:It also perceives that the width differently.
Speaker B:As we're moving more quickly, roads appear more narrow, which is also a brain perception thing.
Speaker B:I think we all wish we were riding the bike at 300km an hour, but we'll deal with 30km an hour from now.
Speaker B:Okay, so a lot of interesting insights there.
Speaker B:I think that we've seen just a lot of positive kind of reviews coming out of the pros.
Speaker B:But now we're thinking about scaling it up a whole.
Speaker B:I mean it's one thing to have 30 pros out there.
Speaker B:Right now we're talking about maybe raises with 2,000 age groupers.
Speaker B:What's involved with scaling things up to that level?
Speaker A:Yeah, there's a few parts to it obviously.
Speaker A:First on the product side ride.
Speaker A:We've got quite a few adaptations to make to make it workable for that number.
Speaker A:The way we operate it now is it's quite manual in some respects it's better than our first version back in 20, 22, 23.
Speaker A:I can tell you that we didn't get through a race all year where we didn't have at least one all nighter preparing for the race in the race week.
Speaker A:But in the last year we've jumped to a point where it's easier than that to operate.
Speaker A:But it definitely won't be able to work for 3,000 athletes for example.
Speaker A:So turning them all on, we do it with a phone one by One at the moment we're moving to have that automated.
Speaker A:So they turn up when they.
Speaker A:They turn on when they know they're in transition on race morning, that sort of thing.
Speaker A:Yeah, there's.
Speaker A:There's a lot of things to think about.
Speaker A:We're trying to scale the system down to one unit, which would be a really good improvement to make it, you know, less pieces.
Speaker A:To make less pieces.
Speaker B:Because right now you have one on the front and one on the back.
Speaker B:Right, Correct.
Speaker A:One on the.
Speaker A:One on the fork, which is a smaller piece and then a larger one on the rear seat post, which, which obviously has the.
Speaker A:The bike lighter it.
Speaker A:And that's the one that we'd be trying to go just down to one unit.
Speaker A:That's going to require us to change quite a bit to the way the, the logic of the system works to determine who's in front of who and, and those kind of things.
Speaker A:But we're working on that.
Speaker A:That'd be a great improvement and a big benefit.
Speaker A:There is, you know, we, we're moving this year to the athletes actually putting the devices on themselves rather than us sort of fitting them as they go to rack their bike the day before the race.
Speaker A:So we'll be distributing them at generally at pro briefings where the athletes to go home and put on in their hotel because that's a step that, you know, we're not going to be able to do 3,000 fittings to each athlete.
Speaker A:So the athletes need to do that themselves.
Speaker A:And we're making that as simple as we can.
Speaker A:And having just one unit to put on rather than two will be a good improvement and make it easier for the athletes to.
Speaker A:To do that some other things.
Speaker A:So yeah, we, we want to, yep, I guess get them after the race.
Speaker A:We need to get them back.
Speaker A:And often athletes don't come back to transition.
Speaker A:They might.
Speaker A:Might veer off to their hotel or just go awall and they might have a crash, you know, those kind of incidents.
Speaker A:So by adding a cellular connection to the units, which we're also working on, lots of things we're working on at the moment, we'll be able to, I guess, track where everyone is the whole time.
Speaker A:And so if they go off course, we'll know where they are and we'll be able to alert the event, hey, this person may have taken a wrong turn or just so you know, they're out of the race now, mark them as a dnf or we can know if someone's potentially had a crash or stopped suddenly on the course and where they are, are who they are.
Speaker A:You know, your doctor as a medic at the event, it'll be great to get an alert as soon as someone's.
Speaker A:Hey, it looks like someone's crashed.
Speaker A:It's number five, five two.
Speaker A:It's Lionel Sanders.
Speaker A:We know he's got an allergy to X, Y, Z, or whatever you might need to know on your way there, because at the moment you sort of might have an accident.
Speaker A:And then you're often your family at home watching on the tracker are like, oh, my goodness, he didn't make it.
Speaker A:From that point to that point, there's 15 kilometers a gap there.
Speaker A:And then it's quite hard to find out what's happened.
Speaker A:You're lying there on the road waiting for someone to come and help.
Speaker A:Maybe a fellow competitor will stop and ask if you're okay and then probably ride on to a point where they can get help.
Speaker A:Or maybe you'll get lucky and a motorbike will come along.
Speaker A:So those kind of safety things, I think, are a big thing to add.
Speaker A:And I guess with that cellular connection, we can also get the units back because we don't always at the moment with the pros, you know, it's a limited number and I can kind of to reach out to the ones that haven't finished.
Speaker A:Hey, where are you?
Speaker A:Once they.
Speaker A:They feel like putting their head out of the sand and talk to the world again, I can go and get them back from them at the hotel or meet them somewhere.
Speaker A:But we can't be doing that for 3,000.
Speaker A:So little points like that that we want to work on.
Speaker A:So that's, I guess, the product side of the equation.
Speaker A:There's a lot more to it than that.
Speaker A:But there's also the how does it actually work for age group part on the course and how do we.
Speaker A:How do we change that?
Speaker B:Can I just interrupt for.
Speaker B:Can I just interrupt for a second?
Speaker B:Because you mentioned a couple of things that are really interesting.
Speaker B:I mean, you talk about, but the incident detection, that's very similar to what the Garmin has, right?
Speaker B:Garmin has this incident detection kind of built in.
Speaker B:So presumably Race Ranger then has some kind of motion detection system in it to be able to detect that.
Speaker B:And then also you talked about like, location.
Speaker B:So conceivably then you would not need to have timing mats out there.
Speaker B:People would be able to actually see live tracking of the Race Ranger if that was to be.
Speaker B:Because.
Speaker B:Because I imagine it's almost like the Apple AirPod, the Apple Tag AirTag.
Speaker B:So, you know, they feed off of each other.
Speaker B:They feed into a cellular network.
Speaker B:And so you can get very precise location about where they are, which is really nice, if a really nice benefit.
Speaker B:And then the other thing I was thinking about was I can remember the day of showing up at these races and being given a chip.
Speaker B:And then within the athlete guide, it was this whole thing about if you don't return a chip, you're going to get charged this much money and, and you know, you can mail your chip back if you, if you don't end up coming to the finish and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker B:And I was just thinking, you know, is that something that people will be able to do?
Speaker B:Will they be able to buy their own race Ranger will.
Speaker B:Cause that was something that sports stats used to offer, that you could buy your own chip and then show up at the race.
Speaker B:And this is my chip.
Speaker B:Will people be able to buy their own race Ranger and bring it to a race?
Speaker A:Yeah, potentially, one day.
Speaker A:That's a good question.
Speaker A:We do get a lot of people already contacting us, say, I can see this is coming.
Speaker A:When can I buy a set to train with?
Speaker A:Because you want to practice what you're going to experience on the race day.
Speaker A:For now, we're keeping it just a.
Speaker A:We call it harbor as a service model.
Speaker A:So it's just like the way the timing company works.
Speaker A:Our team turn up with the equipment, deliver the service, take it back afterwards when we start worrying about, yeah, shipping units out and after sales, service to consumers, providing warranties and yeah, all that kind of.
Speaker B:That's a whole other kind of thing.
Speaker A:It's another headache that we're trying to avoid at the moment.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, well, the other, the other thing I thought of is, you know, like the way sports stats got away from losing their chips is now you cross the finish line and there's somebody right there to collect your chip, throw it in the bucket.
Speaker B:And of course, I imagine race Ranger could do the same as when bikes are back in transition.
Speaker B:You've just going around and collecting them all.
Speaker B:I did want to ask about the.
Speaker B:Just the scaling up.
Speaker B:I mean, how are you going to manage with all these race rangers out on the course?
Speaker B:And how.
Speaker B:How are they not going to be like, I mean, are they going to.
Speaker B:Is it going to be a problem with all?
Speaker B:Because, because age group, let's face it, age group races tend to be a little more congested.
Speaker B:They don't tend to spread out quite as nicely as they should.
Speaker B:It probably doesn't matter to a lot of athletes who are out there.
Speaker B:And in fact, Matt Sharp, a friend of the podcast who produces the Tempo News, he wrote about Race Ranger and he polled readers.
Speaker B:And I was kind of surprised to see quite a few readers reacting negatively to the idea that Race Ranger would be in the age group ranks, because most, I think it's fair to say probably 2/3 of people who show up to an Ironman event or a T100 event are really just competing to finish and they're not really all that competitive.
Speaker B:But I will say, as somebody who is competitive, I hate seeing people at the front of the race drafting.
Speaker B:So for me, this is something I'm really interested in.
Speaker B:So do you envision this being applied to everybody in the race?
Speaker B:Will this just be applied to people who are declaring themselves as competitive?
Speaker B:How do you see this working?
Speaker A:Yeah, big shout out to Matt, also a friend of ours.
Speaker A:Thanks for putting it out.
Speaker A:It was a great piece.
Speaker A:And I have to check on the poll.
Speaker A:Last time I looked, it was over 50%.
Speaker A:We're supportive, but I'll check on that.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think that that's something for us to, I guess, work out with the sport.
Speaker A:And that's the other sort of side to the getting it into age groups part is how do we.
Speaker A:How do we chop it up and how do we make it relevant to everyone?
Speaker A:To me, there's definitely people like yourself and most of the listeners probably who are really in tune with what drafting is, generally don't like it, don't want to get a penalty, don't want others to draft and not get a penalty, want a clean race and want to be able to have a nice, fair sport.
Speaker A:And then you say there's a.
Speaker A:There's probably a spectrum of people and a lot of people out there are.
Speaker A:Someone called it the finishers T shirt division to me the other day, which I thought was quite a good name.
Speaker A:You're there to more, you know, get to the finish line, enjoy the experience, do it safely, perhaps beat the time from last year if you have.
Speaker A:If you've done one before.
Speaker A:But you're not particularly worried about having the latest and greatest bike with the.
Speaker A:The fastest tubeless sealant in your tire versus standard, standard old rubber tube in there.
Speaker A:You just want to get around and have a good time.
Speaker A:And so there's different sort of needs out there.
Speaker A:And I can see a world where perhaps we try and segment the field in some way into a couple of groups.
Speaker A:Don't want to call it business class, economy class, but something like that, where you've got a competitive wave and A more of a, a general participant wave.
Speaker A:And those competitive athletes probably want to actually, and this is something to get your opinion on as well, might want to start together.
Speaker A:They generally know how to, you know, the more competent swimmers are in that group and so they actually want to have a race.
Speaker A:They want to be on the start line with their, the athletes in their age group that they're competing against for lion honors.
Speaker A:But perhaps it's, that's not going to work.
Speaker A:But you're never going to be able to separate these two groups on the course.
Speaker A:They're always going to be mixed.
Speaker A:There's never going to be a day I don't expect in the near future anyway, a day for the competitive athletes and a day for the non competitive ones or even different start times.
Speaker A:You're still going to mix on the course.
Speaker A:So for the system to work it has to be on all the bikes.
Speaker A:But then we don't want suddenly create chaos in that general participant ranks by, you know, all these blinking red lights going off and everyone just having a good laugh about things and perhaps some getting freaked out and, and trying to avoid it and others not.
Speaker A:But then you're still going to mix with let's say my mum who's in the a, you know, 65 plus women's division but she's very competitive versus a young 20 year old guy doing his first race.
Speaker A:They're gonna mix on the course.
Speaker A:If he starts behind, he's gonna overtake her.
Speaker A:So in that case we see it working where my mum would see lights but the young guy perhaps wouldn't the other way around.
Speaker A:So you'd only have lights blinking for those competitive athletes.
Speaker A:Everyone would still have the devices on their bikes as part of doing the race.
Speaker A:And I guess the benefit to the rest of that group that you know, the probably the larger portion of the field is not so much about the drafting but it's about those safety elements of knowing where they are and if they've had an accident on course, if they've gone off course, live tracking as well.
Speaker A:So your, your fans and your, your family and spectators, you know, the experience through the, the live tracking apps at the moment could definitely be improved.
Speaker A:They're not really live tracking their, their periodic tracking and you, you could physically have a, you know, moving dot that moves around the course and tells you where you are in your age group group, in the overall race, in your gender, whatever it might be at all times, albeit only for the bike section.
Speaker A:But that, that's, that's sort of the direction we're going and so that would be something that everyone would get.
Speaker A:And then I guess the last piece is data.
Speaker A:So after the race there's a whole lot of information we can spit out already at the moment which we're doing with the pros around.
Speaker A:Who overtook who when, how fast was that person going when you passed them, how much legal time did you generate while you were overtaking that person?
Speaker A:Vice versa, and create like a course profile of all the different overtakes through the event and who passed you, who'd you pass, how much time did you accumulate that was and how much was was safe and how does that rank you?
Speaker A:Lots of cool stuff we can add.
Speaker B:I love that, I love that.
Speaker B:I would love to see that kind of data that you have now.
Speaker B:I'm sure a lot of people who are super triathlon nerds like me would love to have accessibility to that kind of data and to look at a race and say, wow, look at, look at how Sam Long came out of the swim and last and look how fast he moved up through the field and how, you know, that kind of thing is fascinating.
Speaker B:And I, you know, I mean there's no reason not to put out that data.
Speaker B:The pros are highly visible.
Speaker B:They should make that data available.
Speaker B:I think it's fascinating and you raised some excellent points.
Speaker B:Of course you did.
Speaker B:You've thought about this a lot more than I have and you know, I love the idea of a more competitive wave, but I'm very attuned to the safety issues around the swim.
Speaker B:And I think that the way Ironman is doing it with the at a time is just, you know, the trade off of not knowing where you are versus just the increased safety on the swim is to me a trade off worth making.
Speaker B:I do like the idea, especially on a one loop course where you're less likely to run into people.
Speaker B:I like the idea of sending off people who are more competitive at the front, but I just don't see that.
Speaker B:I mean they try to do that by having people self seed but people just don't do it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:That being said, I think you raised some just excellent points and the idea of having the lights only on for people who are competitive is a fantastic conference compromise.
Speaker B:But I know from Matt's poll and some of the comments he posted that there are people who are concerned about cost.
Speaker B:So what do we know about cost?
Speaker B:Has that factored in yet or is that something that's really coming down the road?
Speaker B:I mean, I know as you scale up, obviously costs will come down, but Is it something you've even thought about?
Speaker A:Yeah, I think there's a number of different concerns whenever there's something new and it takes a while to get your head around how it will actually work.
Speaker A:And we, you know, we went through the same process as we were rolling it out with pros a couple of years ago, and people looked at me like I was.
Speaker A:I was half mad when I was talking about the system for the first time.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Not too upset about where we're at in terms of educating people and getting them to understand it and how it might work.
Speaker A:But as I say, we don't fully know how it's going to work yet.
Speaker A:That's all to be worked out as we go, but I think there's definitely a need for it.
Speaker A:On the cost.
Speaker A:Yeah, I guess this is why we're looking to start with the really big races, the ones that you're probably paying quite a bit to enter already ready.
Speaker A:Because there's obviously a cost component involved and it's.
Speaker A:It's based on quite a number of things.
Speaker A:There's obviously how much the units cost us to.
Speaker A:To make per unit, how long they're going to actually last.
Speaker A:So if you.
Speaker A:You think about any rental item, if you make it last two years versus five years, the cost per use has got to be higher.
Speaker A:So there's a lot of that to be worked out.
Speaker A:But to give you.
Speaker A:So I don't want to put an exact number on it, but to give you a ballpark, it's.
Speaker A:I think I said last time, it's definitely more than timing is currently.
Speaker A:That's almost, you know, a throwaway item where if you lose your.
Speaker A:Your chip or your.
Speaker A:Your number can actually be in your bib these days for like a marathon.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's fairly, fairly cheap item.
Speaker A:So we have quite a bit more than that, but quite a bit less than, for example, drug testing, which would.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Be the other sort of extreme.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:I think, yeah, maybe the benefit you get from.
Speaker A:From taking drugs is probably quite a bit less than you'd get from drafting all day.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker B:Although in my age group, it's hard to know because there's just so much stuff being put into people's bodies.
Speaker B:I have one last question, and it has to do with the bikes.
Speaker B:I know we talked about this last time when you were here a few years ago.
Speaker B:Now, when you're dealing with the pros, it's kind of a limited number of bike setups, but once you get to the age groups, the bike setups, it's almost, I mean it's not infinite, but it's a heck of a lot bigger.
Speaker B:I know like for myself for example, I ride a diamond.
Speaker B:I don't have anywhere to attach something in the back of my bike.
Speaker B:I'm sure you've anticipated this.
Speaker B:I know that over the last three years you've done a lot of testing and a lot of kind of placement things.
Speaker B:Things.
Speaker B:Do you anticipate issues as you move to the age group ranks of all of these different configurations?
Speaker A:Yeah, so that's something we looked at pretty early on is you know, we walked a lot of transition areas and you know they do the bike counts and we were always allowed into, you know, have a good look at every single bike in a number of Ironman and long distance races.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker A:Yeah like from our surveys of those, those situations, there's probably 95% of bikes.
Speaker A:There's no, no issue that we foresaw at that point.
Speaker A:With our experience with the pros, we've definitely come along across some interesting ones that have had to get creative with on how to mount to.
Speaker A:But so far I think we've done over 2,000 athlete fittings and we haven't had a bike that's been impossible to fit a unit to.
Speaker A:So optimistic there.
Speaker A:That said, we're doing a race actually next weekend now here at Challenge Wanaka, the age group field there.
Speaker A:So I think it's going to be around 280 athletes that we're covering which will be by far our biggest field that we've covered covered.
Speaker A:And that's, that's an age group field.
Speaker A:There's no pro race so we got to be getting hands on.
Speaker A:There's.
Speaker A:That's one thing to walk transition and have a look with a notepad and, and take a few photos but to actually get hands on with age group bikes for the first time, it's going to be a good experience.
Speaker A:There might be a slight adjustment.
Speaker A:So I've, I've prepared a bit of a booklet for, for the pros really this year when they're fitting them in their hotel room for the first time rather than us doing it, a bit of a guide on how to fit it.
Speaker A:And so we see this being a pretty simple process of letting the athletes know ahead of time you've entered the race.
Speaker A:Just so you know race range is going to be used.
Speaker A:This is the amount of space that you need to keep free at the back of your bike so you've got time to prepare.
Speaker A:You know, perhaps you've got a water bottle that sits really low that could be kind of jacked up maybe 10 centimeters and that would allow enough space for us to be there.
Speaker A:Those kind of adjustments are generally possible with enough time ahead of the race.
Speaker A:Obviously you don't want to be doing these when you turn off at registration the day before the race.
Speaker A:Recipe for disaster.
Speaker A:So just educating people and let them know this is how much room we need.
Speaker A:Last year we had a guide of take a water bottle and put it sideways and we basically need that much space as long as it's above the top of the rear tire and, and not blocked by your, your drink bottles or your, your spares and things.
Speaker A:So just getting that education out there and you know, when I say getting the athletes to put it on themselves, we'll be there as well.
Speaker A:For the first year or two, I expect there'll be devices distributed in the race packs, but then we'll have a, you know, an expo booth with, with our team there.
Speaker A:If you're not comfortable doing it yourself, come and see us.
Speaker A:We'll, we'll fit it for you.
Speaker A:Or if you're just not sure I want it checked, we can do that and then everything will be checked as it heads into transition.
Speaker B:Best case scenario, if everything goes really well in Wanaka, what's the timeline for seeing these devices at, you know, bigger.
Speaker B:Why you said it's going to start a bigger races, so I don't know, world championships or something like that.
Speaker B:When can we expect to see them?
Speaker A:Yeah, so this year will still be mainly about pro racing.
Speaker A:We booked, yeah, around the same Number of events, 35 to 40 events so far and we haven't really looked to grow that because I want to basically stay home in here in New Zealand and work more on the development of the product to make it, make those scalability steps.
Speaker A:So we're not really rushing to get out to age groups.
Speaker A:This Wanaka thing is really to understand some of those, those headaches and those scalability problems like we've talked through so that we can incorporate those into our next designs.
Speaker A:So it probably not, not it's probably not going to be this year, but you might see some of these features we were talking about start to get rolled out on the pros.
Speaker A:So the things like the live tracking, the stopped athlete, the really comprehensive report after the race, that connection to the referees so they've got the drafting data, all these things that will, you know, we want to implement for age group are going to be, I guess tested on the, on the pros when they're ready.
Speaker A:Obviously you can't really.
Speaker A:And that's a great thing.
Speaker A:You can't really just throw something that doesn't work unless the pros that easily because they're racing for money.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So by the time he gets the age group it will have been well tested and gone through some our own testing and then some competition testing with the pros before it actually gets out there.
Speaker B:And then next year maybe for age group.
Speaker A:Yeah, that, that's a, that's a good goal.
Speaker A:I mean that's, I'd love it to be in place.
Speaker A:You, you've obviously got to factor in entries open about a year out for these big races.
Speaker A:So if this is going to be, you know, part of the race and part of the, the event costs going forward, that needs to be passed on to the athletes athlete.
Speaker A:We need to have those agreements in place at least the year out.
Speaker A: So optimistic for: Speaker A:I think, you know, we would definitely be ready to start.
Speaker A:Well, we should be ready by the middle of next year.
Speaker A:Don't say definitely about anything.
Speaker A: Middle of next year,: Speaker A:We should be ready in a position to, to start.
Speaker A:To start doing that.
Speaker A:As I say it's is the product ready, is the sport ready?
Speaker A:Have we got, you know, a good model and put those two things come together hopefully about the same time and we're ready to go.
Speaker B:All right, James.
Speaker B:Well, we seem to be on a two to three year interval of having you here so I'm guessing that in two years we'll be having you back to talk about the race Ranger making its debut in North America at an age group race.
Speaker B:Let's keep our fingers crossed but I'm really interested to hear how it goes in Wanaka.
Speaker B:We'll be watching the reports that come out of that race and I'll wish you the best for that.
Speaker B:That's really exciting.
Speaker A:Thanks Steve.
Speaker B:James Elvery is the co founder and CEO of Race Ranger.
Speaker B:He joined me from New Zealand and I can't thank him enough for today taking the time to be here on the TRIDARC podcast.
Speaker B:James, thanks so much.
Speaker B:Good luck in Wanaka and good luck with the year to come.
Speaker A:My pleasure, Jeff.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:And just add at the end there, quick little plug.
Speaker A:We are in the middle of a capital raise as well so if anyone's interested in getting on board and supporting us in our goals over the next sort of year to 18 months, love to have chat to you and feel free to reach out Instagram or over email for our website all right, I'll.
Speaker B:Have James's contact info in the show notes as well.
Speaker B:Waves.
Speaker C:Hi, my name is Denise Haslik and I'm a teammate of the Tridock and a proud Patreon supporter of the Tridock Podcast.
Speaker C:The Tridock Podcast is produced and edited by Jeff Sankoff, along with his amazing interns Cosette Rose Anita Takashima.
Speaker C:You can find the show notes for everything discussed on today's episode episode as well as archives of previous episodes@www.tridocpodcast.com.
Speaker C:do you have questions about what was discussed on this episode?
Speaker C:Have a question about some hot new gadget or trend that sounds too good to be true that you'd like the Tridock to sanity check on a future episode?
Speaker C:Send Jeff an email@triodoc icloud.com if you're interested in coaching services, be sure to check out tridock coaching.com or lifesportcoaching.com where you can find information about Jeff and the services that he provides.
Speaker C:You can also follow Jeff on the Tridock Podcast Facebook page, Tridock Coaching on Instagram and the Tridock Coaching YouTube channel and and don't forget to join the Tridoc Podcast private Facebook group.
Speaker C:Search for it and request to join today.
Speaker C:If you enjoyed this podcast, do the Tridoc a solid and leave a rating and a review.
Speaker C:And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you download it.
Speaker C:And of course, there's always the option to become a supporter of the podcast@patreon.com the music heard at the beginning and end of the show is radio by Empty Hours and is used with permission.
Speaker C:This song and many others like it can be found at www.reverbnation.com.
Speaker C:be sure to visit and give small independent bands a chance.
Speaker C:The try dot podcast will be back again soon to answer another medical question and chat with another amazing person in the world of multisport.
Speaker C:Until then, train hard, train healthy.
