S6E12 -- Triathlon Legend : Bob Babbitt (Breakfast with Bob!)

On today's episode of 515 The Ultra Podcast, we're joined by a true legend.  Bob Babbitt is the voice behind one of the most celebrated radio programs and podcasts in endurance sports – Competitor Radio and Breakfast with Bob.

He is also a visionary community builder as a co-founder of Competitor Magazine and the Challenged Athletes Foundation.

His impact on the sport is undeniable, earning him inductions into both the USA Triathlon Hall of Fame and the Ironman Hall of Fame. 

Find Bob Babbitt on social media:
Website - babbittville.com
Twitter: Bob Babbitt
Facebook: Bob Babbitt
Instagram: - Bob Babbitt
YouTube: Bob Babbitt videos

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Competitor Magazine
• Challenged Athletes Foundation
• USA Triathlon Hall of Fame
• Ironman Hall of Fame
• Babbittville
• Tugs Tavern Swin Run
• Tugs Hall of Fame
• ABC Wide World of Sports
• Running and Triathlon News
• Competitor Radio
• Muddy Buddy Ride and Run Series
• Competitor Group
• Rock and Roll Marathons
• Triathlete Magazine
• Women’s Running Magazine
• Mighty 690 Radio
• Ironman St George 
• Ironman Canada 
• Ironman 70.3 World Championships
• Challenge Daytona
• Danskin Triathlon Series
• Challenged Athletes Foundation
• Orange County Performing ArtsCenter Triathlon 
• Tinley Sportswear
• Challenge Bike RIde
• CAF Gala
• Team USA Paralympics 
• Sportscenter 
• Fundraise Your Way for CAF
• Nike
• Toyota
• EOS fitness
• UM Australia
• Ironman Oceanside 70.3 
• Ironman Pro Series
• Professional Triathletes Organisation
• T100
• Super League 
• Challenge Family
• Challenge Roth
• We are Triathletes – Film 
• IM Nice World Championships
• IM Kona WOrld Championships

Shout outs and mentions in this episode:

• Ned Overend 
• Tom Warren
• Gordan Haller
• Dave Scott
• Dave McGillivray
• Kurt Madden
• John Huckabee 
• Lois Schwartz
• Mark Allen
• Paula Newby Fraser
• Will Ferrell
• Rod Dixon
• Lance Armstrong
• Skye Moench
• Graham Fraser
• Mark Burnett
• Jim Ryun
• Kip Keino
• David Epperson
• Jelle Geens
• Menno Koolhaas
• Magnus Ditlev 
• Daniela Ryf
• Michellie Jones
• Greg Rorke
• Katie Kelly
• Julie Derron
• Jan Frodeno
• Thomas Hellriegel
• Greg Welch
• Jim MacLaren 
• Jeffrey Essakow
• Rick Kozlowski
• Jim Knaub
• Lauren Parker
• Deborah Jackson
• Desmond Jackson
• Parker Berg
• JJ Reader 
• Scott Molina
• Kurt Madden (S5E3)
• Curtis Tylar
• Jane Bockus (S1E4)
• Heidi Babbitt
• Steve King (S1E1) (S1E2) (S1E3)
• Michelle Vesterby (S5E12)
• Jen Annett  (S6E9) (S6E11)
• Simon Cochrane 
• Gordon Haller
• Matthew Davella
• Sheryl Cobb (S3E11)
• Dave Cobb
• Chelsea Sodaro
• Natascha Badmann
• Nixon Annett
• Klaus Vesterby
• Hayden Wilde
• Taylor Knibb
• Kat Matthews
• Ashleigh Gentle
• Rodger Krause 
• Rob Balucas
• Beth James
• Liza James 
• Dick Hoyt
• Rick Hoyt
• Morgan Pearson 
• Gregory Barnaby
• Matthew Marquardt
• Mirinda Carfrae
• Larry King
• Lucy Charles-Barclay
• Jamie Whitmore

Transcript

Bob Babbitt Early Triathlons

Larry 0:49

On today's episode of 515 the Ultra Podcast, we're joined by a true legend. He is the voice behind one of the most celebrated radio programs and podcasts in endurance sports. He is not only a renowned broadcaster, but also a visionary community builder. As co-founder of Competitor Magazine and the Challenger Athletes Foundation, he has revolutionized the landscape of endurance sports. His impact is undeniable, earning him inductions into both the USA Triathlon Hall of Fame and the Iron Man Hall of Fame. Today we are fortunate to have him join us from Babbittville via San Diego. Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Larry 1:33

Yeah, thanks for coming and joining us here on the podcast. Of course, you're you are a legend in the Iron Man world, and everybody knows you for that. But you also have an Ultraman connection, and shortly um we'll be talking about those things. But I did want to find out a little bit about uh your earlier days. Earlier days. These days everybody recognizes you for your your media presence. But if we go back to the early days of triathlon, you were there as an athlete. Can you tell us about your athletic career?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Well, I was a lousy athlete, but yes, uh I got into triathlon when I first moved to San Diego from Chicago back in 1978. Uh Earth was still cooling and the sport was just starting. And uh so '78 was the first ever Iron Man. Um we read about it actually in 1979. Article in Sports Soul Street had talked about this crazy thing called the Iron Man over on the island of Oahu. And uh my roommate at the time was a guy named Ed Overend, who became the one of the first inductees in the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame, but this was so far, or before that, mountain bikes hadn't been invented yet. So, you know, the two of us read about this our this race in call in Oahu, and the winner was a guy named Tom Warren. And actually, I had done Tommy's uh tug, swim, run, swim events in San Diego for a number in 78 and 79, and those were really some of the original endurance events. You swam a half mile around the pier, this place called Crystal Pier, you ran five miles on a beach and you swam around the pier again. And the first 70, you didn't when you ran through to finish, you kept running. Because if you ran two Tugs Tavern, which was a couple blocks away, the first 75 people got breakfast. So you ran right through the finish, you ran through two Tugs, and the goal was to get your your uh plate with the runny eggs on it along with the Tugs mug before the 76th person got there and got nothing. So bragging rights is what that thing is all about. Actually, uh there's a photo behind me of Tommy and I with a table with a you know probably 50 or 60 of the Tugs tugboats you got for you know for uh enter for finishing the race, not for finishing the race, but for winning your age division. Like one of my proudest possessions is a another Tugs, these were handmade tugboats, and it's uh he inducted me into the Tuggs Hall of Fame. So I got that going for me, and I got I got a tugboat for that. But Tom, so we tracked Tommy down because he had won the race, and it's not like you go online and find out about doing this Iron Man thing. So we went to see Tommy and that night, he Tommy invited us. He goes, Babbitt, come come to my come to my office. We're on the west side of the street, uh just south of Crystal Pier. So we go down there and it's a parking lot. There's no offices, there's a motorhome with a bike on the back and running shoes tied around the side view mirror and a paddleboard around top. And what Tommy would do is every morning he'd go down to Crystal Pier and he'd ride, he'd ride out to Oceanside, which is 30, 40 miles each way. Then he'd paddle out in the ocean, he'd run five miles. There's actually a light pole right by the jetty, which was a turnaround point. And every day he'd run and put his grimy hand on this pole as he took the turn. There's like to this day, there's a handprint like all the way around this pole from years and years of Tommy running around that thing. So, anyways, and there was also a payphone behind the motorhome where Tommy would call and order pegs of beer and and and he'd order, you know, chips and all the stuff he needed to run his business.

Larry 5:25

So, did he think he was Jim Rockford? Or what kind of life is he leading?

SPEAKER_00 5:29

That's that was Tommy. Tommy was basically when Iron Man came about, it was almost like, well, I'm doing this every day, anyways. What's the big deal? That that was his lifestyle. That's all, that's all he uh all he did was swim, bike, and run and run tugs. So, anyways, we're we we go to this little tavern, uh believe it or not, uh called CD Hayes, right before like 9:30 in the morning with him to ask him questions. How do you do this thing? Do you need to own a bike? Can you borrow a bike? You know, how so as we're asking him questions, you know, Tommy is drinking beer, a little early for Ned and I, but he's drinking beer and he's got a magic marker. You know, he's got a magic marker and he keeps making marks on his arm. And we're like, Miss, you know, again, he's our mentor here. He's going to show us how to do this Iron Man thing. Mr. Warren, sir, what's the deal with the magic marker? And he goes, Well, I've got a little bit of a drinking problem. So I make a mark on my arm. When I get to my sleeve, I go home. I'm like, okay.

unknown 6:30

That's fine.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Then he invited us to his house and he had a bike in a sauna that he would ride for three, four, five hours a day in the sauna to get ready for Hawaii. You know, sort of like the e-training people do now. But back then, you were just certifiably crazy. You were just sort of a knucklehead. So he told us, you know, you guys got to get bikes. So Ned and I went to the police auction, and my bike was 75 bucks. The whole back end was had been burned in a fire. So I covered that with duct tape, put a Radio Shack radio, which I probably have around here somewhere, on the oh yeah, I'm in here. This is my radio that I listened to in the 1980 Iron Man. It was bungee coined to the handlebars of the bike. And um had panier sleeping bag and tent put on the bike because I thought you swam 2.4, road 56, camped out, and rode back the next day into the marathon. I had no idea it was like a one-day thing. So, you know, this this bike had had uh had reflectors, had a kickstand, it uh uh had a fuzzy raccoon seat cover. It was, you know, one of those things that uh who knew, right? So the the funny part though is we got to wow, this is before the days of bike boxes. When we get to Oahu, I flew in, and you know, they come rolling, I just rolled this bike out, right? They you're just basically like you're unloading a bus, just took the bike uh off the cargo area and rolled this thing out. And there was these Navy SEALs who were coming over to do the Iron Man. A lot of the early Iron Man guys were Navy SEALs, and they see this bike, they see me with this big black beard. I look like Gordon Haller, who won the 78 Iron Man, and they think that I won the Iron Man with this bike with the panniers and sleeping bag and Radio Shack radio, etc. And they're looking at my bike like you'd be looking at Lance Armstrong's bike after the Tour de Prauds, like, oh, look at this. Yeah, you guys have no clue. But it was one of those things you had to have a support crew. I was a school teacher. So one of the kids I taught, her dad lived over on the island, and he showed up race morning with his Piat convertible, his two girlfriends, and I gave him my 50 lows of lion sweepbread and Gatorade, and off we went. They had no idea where we was there was 15 starters and 12 finishers in 78 and 79. Then in 1980, because of the article in Sports Illustrated, there was 108 of us. And if you look at that group, it was Dave Scott who went on to win it six times. Dave McGilbury, who's run Boston Marathon, I think close to 50 years in a row, just did his 10th Iron Man World Championship this year. Kurt Madden, who finished seventh overall, who runs training programs for Tri-Dot. It was it was a pretty interesting group back then. Um, but the best part was they were supposed to do the original Iron Man was the Waikiki rough water swim. And the night before the race, we Ned and I are standing on the at the Grand Otani Hotel waiting for the pre-race meeting. And basically, the this guy Hank, who is a race director, goes, and the waves are breaking against the building. They're like 10 feet high. Ned and I have done all of our swimming in a 120-length in a mile condo pool. So we basically were resigning to the fact that we're gonna die the next morning because there's no way we're getting through this surf. So the race director comes in and he goes, Hey guys, I know you're all looking forward to Waikiki rough water swim, but we can't get the boats out to support you because the waves are too big. So we're gonna move the swim to Alamoana Channel. And the other reason we're moving it is ABC Wide World of Sports is here and they're shooting cliff diving on Sunday. If we can't put the event on tomorrow because of the waves and have to move it to Sunday, I'll lose Wide World of Sports. So we're moving the Ala Moana Channel, which is totally protected. And of course, Dave Scott and all the Navy SEALs are like, what a pussy event. You can't freaking move the Iron Man and it's a swimming. Ned and I are like, Yeah, you can't move it, knowing we would live, which was great. So, anyway, we get out of the water, uh, uh, and I'm swimming along, I'm staying as shallow as possible. And I'm swimming along, and there's four lengths in Alabama Channel. I do my first length, I'm on my way back, and there's a guy seriously walking at me, moving his hands like he's swimming, right? His name was John Huckabee, 59 years old, known as the Incredible Huck, the only guy there with a sponsor. He'd run the Athens marathon three times in one day, right? He'd run over 75 miles in one day, but he didn't know how to swim. So, and that's the type of characters you had back then. So he's swimming, he's walking and moving his hands. And I nearly run into the guy because he's walking and I'm swimming on my way back. And he's the only guy to ever get blisters on his feet during the swimming portion of a triathlon. Uh and then later they found him during the run portion. They found him about one in the morning. Uh, they lost him, had no idea where he was. Crew had couldn't find him. He was in a diner in Waikiki having having breakfast. Because there was no cutoff times back then. You could be out, he was out there 24 hours. So it was it was a little bit of the wild, wild west. My crew, mile 25, gave me, gave me a Big Mac fries and a Coke. Uh mile 90, I got Ripbeer Snow Cone. Between the bike and the run, I got a four 75-minute massage. Uh it was, you know, it was different. We didn't, I mean, I'm laying there getting massage between the bike and the run, which felt great, by the way. But uh then oh, and then they had it they had a rule back then that if you lost 5%, no, 10% of your body weight during the race, they pulled you out of the race. So they had scales along the way. They weighed you before the race and they weighed you at these different scales. So I finished the bike and I'm eating Hawaiian Spreetbread and drinking Gatorade and waddling through Waikiki, and I stop to get weight about mile five, and I can hear this guy on a walkie talk. It's like, hey, can you give me that again? This guy's gained five pounds. You can't gain weight doing this. Then when we're about mile 21, 22, you're running up Diamond Head before you drop down into Capulani Park and the finish. And I'm thinking my crew is behind me, their fiat convertible, the lights on me, lighting up the road. And I'm going, this is the coolest thing ever. I thought it was a two-day event. I'm gonna finish the thing in one day. So then I start thinking, there's gonna be bands at the finish, there's gonna be cheerleaders. I can't wait to see what they got waiting for us to finish. Come rolling into Capulani park, and I see a chalk line on a pavement and a light bulb above me. And I, you know, I'm a little confused. And I I like I hear this voice to the right of me in the in the park going, hey you! I'm like, Yeah, you in the race? Yeah, you're done. That was it. There was like one guy doing one-arm push-ups in a park and nobody else. And it was just me. And you know, but it was one of those things where I knew the same thing had changed me. I knew that I could do things that I didn't think I can do. So that led to um starting, I started working for running and a magazine called Running News. Guy named Mike Plant owned it in San Diego. And I went to him and said, dude, this sport is gonna be huge. You should change your name to Running and Triathlon News. And based on the 108 idiots who had just done this silly thing, and he did. And so I became the LA editor for Running and Triathlon News, and I convinced the art teacher, I was a P teacher, I convinced the art teacher, Lois Schwartz, who took that amazing photo, ironware, and had no background in photography, to leave teaching and join me at this silly thing called Running and Triathlon News. And every week we would drive to LA and cover running events and triathlon events, and you know, we did we just loved it. And then in 87, when running and triathlon news closed down, we had no idea what we were gonna do. And I went and met with three, two different publishers in Southern California. One had a magazine called Southwest Cycling, and the other had California Bicyclist, and both of them told me the same thing. Because I said, if we did a magazine covering running trathlon and cycling, it could be really cool. And they both said, listen, this running thing, we'll never put a skinny runner on the cover of our magazine. And triathlon, this is a fact. It'll be gone in five years. This is June of 87. April and May of 87, because we came out with the first edition of competitor in June of 87 because some friends got together and presented Lois and I a check for $17,000 and said, go start your own magazine. Our first print bill was $20, so we were $3,000 in a hole. And we were in, we were underneath 10,000 pounds of bike racks in a guy's garage in his storage area, paying $200 a month for 200 square feet. And we didn't pay ourselves for seriously three years before we finally realized that this thing might catch on. It might do okay. So yeah, the trathlon was a huge part of who I am and what we've accomplished because competitor ended up eventually 11 editions, half a million circulation around the country. And I had launched competitor radio in 1990, and then we created a series called the Muddy Buddy Ride and Run series. In 2008, we were bought by a group that loved our brand, a competitor, the private equity group, and it became the competitor group. And we owned all the rock and roll marathons. We owned my Muddy Buddy series, competitor magazine, Tri Athlete magazine, Vela News magazine, women's running magazine. It became a little sort of a bigger entity than the two of us underneath 10,000 pounds of bike racks.

Larry 16:19

Yeah, considerably bigger, yeah. So when when you're a teacher, and

Early Media Days (Magazines and Radio)

Larry 16:25

by the way, I'm a PE teacher.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

That's what I was.

Larry 16:28

Yeah. You're a teacher and you and you and you walk away from teaching to start this magazine, and three years of not having a salary, how how are you surviving at that point?

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Living on friends' floors. Uh living on friends' floors, and just that we were, you know, we were selling advertising and we were we grew it slowly over time. We started just in Southern California, then eventually we we buy we had competitor Texas, we had competitor southern, it was uh competitor northeast. Uh I'm sorry, yeah, competitors south southeast was Atlanta and Florida. Originally I was Florida Sports, and then we purchased that. And then Northwest, we were up in Portland, Seattle. So we were just we were growing, you know, we were growing, and then the radio was really, you know, at the time, triathlon was still a little baby sport. And the idea was I went to radio station, uh, sports radio station called the Mighty 690. And I said, listen, I would like an hour of airtime to talk triathlon because uh people listen to sports radio and hear Magic Johnson and Wayne Gretzky and people like that. Well, imagine if they could hear Mark Allen and Paul Newby Frazier and Dave Scott, they would think these guys must be important. They're on the radio. Because we weren't just growing our brand, we're growing an industry. And the whole idea was let's get more people exposed to who our athletes are. And so we launched that radio show. I said to them, I don't care, give me whatever time slot you want. It doesn't matter. If somebody's a troughly or runner, they'll they'll fight us. And this is before there wasn't podcasting. We had a transmitter for the station in Mexico that in a broadcast on Sunday night from 8 to 10. I wanted, I wanted the worst possible time. I didn't care. So we were right before the Mexican national hour, and we were on Sunday night from 1990 through through COVID, through 2021, every Sunday night for two hours. And it was it was wonderful. Yeah, I just uh we interviewed everybody from you know Will Farrell to uh to Dave Scott to Mark Allen to Rod Dixon, and I've got all my cassette players in early days was real to real tapes. All my early interviews with Lance Armstrong around real to real tapes. That shows you how far this stuff goes back. But it was there was there was a joy to getting be able to talk to all these amazing athletes, right, and learn what made them tick. Because I think what what connects people is they understand that when an age grouper is watching Breakfast with Bob, they're understanding that that someone like a Sky Monch, who's one of the top pros, that she was an age grouper. She didn't know she'd make a living at this thing. You know, she we were actually interviewing her in St. George at St. George Worlds, and we were in Zion's Bank, right? This place, this bank in in uh in Utah. And she goes, you know, I worked at Zion's Bank. I'm like, what? She says, Yeah, uh, my parents told me out of high school they couldn't afford college, and I need to be able to fund college myself. So when I went to college, I cleaned houses and I worked as a teller at Zion's Bank, and I graduated with my CPA owing nothing. And um that's you know, I I was an age grouper and became a pro and became one of the best. But the deal is that she, you know, she you can tell her dedication and hard work because yeah, she was working two jobs to put herself through college and graduate school to get her CPA, and that hard work went in the triathlon and she you know became one of the best and just had another baby.

Larry 20:17

So when you're doing this you know, terrestrial radio in the early days, yeah. Um what what's going through your mind? Are you like, oh, I've I've made it? I've I've graduated from magazines to radio, or was the magazine a bigger thing for you at that time? And where where did you think it was gonna go?

SPEAKER_00 20:38

I had no idea. You know, that's the thing, is when people talk about a five-year plan or this or that. I I've never had a plan. Uh my plan was to do what I loved. And I and I think a lot of times when you do that, when you do things from your heart and you do things from your soul, that you it's the right thing. Right. A lot of times, in fact, I noticed that when we had the magazine, and Graham Frazier and I were talking about this. Graham owned Iron Man North America with Iron Man Canada and Placid, and he created all those events in the US. And we both talked about our meetings with our team. And not once do we sit at our meeting and go, how do we make more money? It was always, how do we make the magazine better? You know, how do we make sure more people are able to pick it up and find it? Uh Graham's was, how do I make the events better? What other what other things can we add? Would it be great to have a coffee cart? People would like coffee in the morning. Let's do that. You know, and so when you do things because it's the right thing to do or it's in your heart and soul, it things turn out well. When you do things based on how do I make more money, I just you know, one time during the 90s, wall mall walking had become very popular. So a lot of the shoe companies were selling shoes to mall walkers, so they were doing a different, you know, sort of a shoe that they Didn't have as much in it because it was walking, right? It wasn't running. And you know, we're sitting there going, you know, hey, should we get into this? Because this is where a lot of shoe companies are investing. It's like, we have no interest in that. And we're not doing that because it's it's not the it's not us. We need to do things that are us. So yeah, so the radio show. Well, what was great about the radio show is so I'm doing an interview with you know with uh Mark Burnett, who started Survivor or any of those guys. Well, now I've got these tapes that I can trim. Now, back then you couldn't do AI and transcribe these things, you had to do it yourself. But the great sound bites that came out of it, because most of my interviews back then were half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour. So you're doing long-form interviews and you get nuggets. You just get some great, great uh sound bites from people. And you know, we were just in New Zealand for 70.3 worlds, and one of the New Zealand athletes who I loved, Rod Dixon, was uh he took a bronze medal in the 72 Olympics and 1500 meters. And 11 years later, he ran 2089 to win the New York City Marathon. Talk about some range, 1500 meters through through the marathon. But in one of my early interviews with him, I asked him, said, Well, you know, when did you know you wanted to be an Olympian? And he goes, 1968 Olympics. I'm in my hometown of Nelson, New Zealand, listening on my transistor radio to the finals of the 1500 meters from Mexico City, and it's Jim Ryan and Kip Kano. And I'm like, oh my God, that is my dream. The the the reception is coming in and out, and I'm going, this is what I want to do. He goes, four years later, first round of 1500 meters in Munich. On my left is Jim Ryan, on my right is Kip Kano. How's that for a dreamer come true? You know, that that that's that's what sport is all about. That's what endurance sport is all about. It's just like those moments, those great sound bites that that stay with you forever. So I just I just love that. And then we did

Covering the IronWar

SPEAKER_00 24:04

just for competitors, all these amazing covers. You know, we did a cover with on the 20th anniversary of Iron Man, Paul Newby Frazier, Mark Allen, and Dave Scott all dressed in tuxedos, right? And they combined, they had won 20 Iron Man titles. It was just perfect. So that I I love that type of thing to be able to do things. I mean that Iron War cover of Dave Scott and Mark Allen. We had I had reached out to those guys in March of that year because during the 80s, Mark Allen and Dave Scott raced each other, raced seven times before Mark Allen finally beat him, right? Actually, yeah. So in in uh 82, in February of 82, um that was Dave Scott got second place that year. And Mark, because that was the year Julie Moss collapsed and crawled. Mark was inspired because he knew Julie is a fellow lifeguard. He came in October of 82, in October of 82, because they moved the event to October, really based on the fact that Julie and Kathleen had created so much interest in the sport that uh they ended up moving into a better time for the island. The winter was not, you know, they sold out in the winter. October was less popular. So all of a sudden, here you've got the Iron Man moving to October. He had two events that year, but so that year, a Mark Allen's derailer fell off the bike after he caught Dave during on the way to Javi. And the following year, Mark got third in 83. And uh then the following year, 84, he had a 13 minute, 12 and a half minute lead on Dave, blew up, and you know, Dave's got past him by half marathon with a down 12 and a half, 13 minutes. 85, neither of them race because there was no money. Iron Man didn't put money in until 86. 86, an anonymous donor on the island donated 100K. So Dave was there and Mark was there. Dave wins, Mark gets second. 87, Mark has a five-minute lead. Dave passes him and wins again. And 88, Dave didn't race. Mark gets fifth because he flatted a couple times. And it came down to 89. And my feeling was some things are meant to be. And if Dave Scott was, if Mark Handle was going to beat Dave Scott, he needed to beat Dave Scott. He needed to win the Iron Man when Dave Scott is there. So in 89, I called both of them up. It was actually pretty funny. I called both of them up in March or April and said, Hey, I want to do a cover of the you two guys, Showdown on the Kona Coast. And Dave's in Davis, California. And he goes, not a problem. Have Mark come here to Davis. I'll do the shoot. And Mark's in Boulder, and he's like, not a problem. Have Dave come here to Boulder, I'll do the shoot. And they were budget. So they sent our photographer, Dave Epperson, with all his equipment. He drove to Davis, drove to Boulder, and we composed them on the cover, Showdown on the Kona Coast, the two of them back to back, pointing at each other, all this cool stuff, which was a little innovative for 1989.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

And then that year in October, the two of them had the greatest race ever, where they were side by side for the whole day. And actually, what was funny is in the interview I did for the March edition with Dave and Mark on the cover, um, you know, I said, Dave, what do you think is gonna happen this year? And the year before, in '88, uh, Scott Molina won with a 302 marathon. And Dave goes, I'll tell you, uh I said, so Dave, what do you think is gonna happen? And he says, Well, I'll tell you what's not gonna happen. Nobody's winning this race by running a 302 marathon. Somebody's gonna be running in a low 240s, and there's only two of us who can do that. Dave Scott and Mark Allen, right? So Mark's reading this going, oh crap. At that point, Dave's course record for the run was 249. So he's basically saying, we're taking eight or nine minutes off this course record, and you better be ready. And so on race day, they were separated by 58 seconds. Dave Scott went his fastest time up until then was 828. That was the course record, and he went 810, and Mark went 809. So on the fastest day that Dave ever had, Mark Allen beat Dave Scott, which to me is really what it's all about. You beat that guy on the fastest day he ever had. That's what that you don't win in 88 when he's not there. You win, and then he never lost again, right? Mark won five in a row after that. Uh so he took one year off in '94 for Julie to have the baby, but then came back in '95 and finished up his career winning his sixth and final Iron Man World Championship title.

Various Ironman Stories

Larry 28:53

It's amazing that you have been witness to the entire history of this sport. And, you know, like from your magazine to radio host, and then I guess blogger and vlogger. Now now you would be called uh an influencer and a content creator. I guess. Yeah. How how how do you how do you how do you reconcile those titles?

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Are you you know the cool part is is I get to talk to great people. And it's funny, it's one of the like we just came back from New Zealand. We did 203 interviews this year.

Larry 29:28

Yeah, I was checking out your channel. It was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

203. I was just looking at it, it was like adding up the numbers. Actually, what's cool about this era, back then, I mean, I could put out half a million magazines, but I couldn't tell you how many people watched what or read what. I couldn't tell you any of that stuff. Well, now you can I can tell you that we had 5,677,000 minutes of viewing this year, and that the average view was nine minutes and 18 seconds, and impressions nine million two hundred and eight thousand impressions, and 30% of my viewers are in US. It's all that cool type of stuff is it's quantifiable now. We're back in the day, it wasn't. You know, we was like, I can't tell Nike how many people looked at their ad on the back cover of the magazine or and how many shoes did they sell from. I you can't, but now it's really a great era because you hey, you know if you suck or not. You know if people like what you're doing. If people like what they're doing, they're watching and they're telling their friends. So it and I get an opportunity to you think about getting a chance to interview early in the year, uh you know, uh at Oceanside, Yeli Deans. This guy just won 70.3 worlds. Nobody knew who the Halley was.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

When we went when we went to Kona this year, we had, I think we had 15, no, 16 of the first 17 were had been were interviewed. I think we did 50 some interviews that week. And the cool part was, you know, you know, it's all about research. So you do some research, and it used to be if you swam 50 minutes, if you rode 415 to 420 and ran 250, you were a factor. Now you need to be swimming 47, you need to be riding 403, and you need to be running 237, 238 to be in the ballpark. So there was a lot of guys who like you know, Man O Kulhaus. Before that race, nobody knew who the LA was. But it was like, but you when you do your research, you know, I know that the people have no idea who this guy is, but he's gonna be a factor. And so you we get to introduce a lot of folks to people who they'll be watching forever. I remember when we Magnus Dietleff, we interviewed him at you know, challenge Daytona back in 2020, whenever that was. People didn't know who Magnus was. They had no idea back in the day when Daniela Reef joins us in 2014. Uh, and I remember sitting with her at, you know, at our at our set at Huggles on the Rocks, and she's going, she got in like on Wednesday of race week. I mean, people come in what three weeks early now. She shows up on Wednesday and we're sitting there, she goes, she's looking at a lee drive and goes, Is this where we run? Yeah, this is this is where you'll be running in in two days, you know, in three days. You'll be you'll be running there, and you're gonna become one of the greatest of all time with five Iron Man World Championship titles and five 70.3 world championship titles. Uh but right now nobody knows who the hell you are. It's cool.

Larry 32:41

As as you're interviewing all these people and figuring out who to talk to and and you're getting all these great interviews, I noticed one of the things that you did this year is you had two women on from the 2000 Olympics and the 2024 Olympics. Does that just happen organically, or do you go in thinking, oh, this would be a great way to tell a story, and I want to have these women on? Can you how does that come about?

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Well, in the McKee, so I met Mikili Jones when she was she we let met in Tahiti at a triathlon down there. I I forget the what the name of it was, but we both raced this triathlon down there, and she outsprinted um one of the Mutan twins to win the race. And then she and her husband at the time, her boyfriend at the time, moved to San Diego. They had a like a $500 Ford Maverick, the whole roof was coming off. And but she was gonna be special. I I knew she was gonna be special. So I called up a couple of you know potential sponsors for her, and neither of them had any interest. And then I called up my buddy Greg Rorick, who was launching uh or had launched the Danskin Woman's Trial Series, which was turned out to be really phenomenal. And I said, Greg, I think this woman looks danskin. She's just very classy. And he goes, Okay, here's what I'll do. Um, anything she wins at my race, prize money-wise, I'll match it. So if she wins two, she gets four. So McKealy ends up like third or fourth in the first dancekin race and fifth in the second one, and then wins 20 some in a row, ends up becoming the highest paid woman in the sport, winning a BMW, sponsored by Metric, sponsored by Reebok, uh, and then you know, goes on to win an Olympic silver medal. We were staying at her house in 2000. And then she was there when we started our Challenge Athletes Foundation in 1994 and was at our events early on. And then she was so connected with challenged athletes when Australia said, Hey, we need someone to guide Katie Kelly at the first ever Paralympic paratriathlon in 2016. It was McKee that wins a gold in the Paralympic paratriathlon. So, you know, McKee knew about challenge athletes from being involved with us. And then uh uh Julie Durone from uh from Switzerland, you know, she amazing woman as well, and she took a silver at this year's Olympics, and it was really cool because you know a lot of times people will tell you their real thoughts, and she was going when there was four of them left towards the you know, the in the middle portion of that 10k run at the in Paris, she was thinking, This is cool, I'll get four. There's four of us, I'll get fourth. And then she's like, Well, why? Why I'm leading, I'm pushing a pace, and she ended up getting the silver. You know, we're I think every age grouper can relate to, I feel like quitting, it's too hot, my foot hurts. Pros have the same thing. One year we're interviewing Jon Fordano after it looked like he had an easy win in Kona, and he said, Yeah, easy win, I was ready to drop out 14 times. So, you know, and and the age grouper can relate to that because they go through that same thing with the the guy on one shoulder saying, Quit, this is too hard. And the other guy saying, Why? You're you're okay. You can you you can handle this. And um, actually, Mark Allen in the 95 Iron Man, he's 37 years old. He's got this, you know, 26-year-old kid Thomas Hellregel, who's got a 13-minute lead off the bike. And Mark's running through town thinking to himself, my hotel's right there. You know, I right there. I've won this thing five times. Nobody would give me crap for dropping out. This is awful. Well, then Greg Welch, one of the who had won the 94 race, he Greg Welch stops the stretch. And for whatever reason, Mark got power from that. And next thing you know, he's making up that 13 minutes and winning. And what I love, it's the last trap on he ever did. The last day he ever raced, he made up a 13-minute lead. And it's not like Thomas Hellreagle died. What'd he run? A 258 marathon or something? And Mark had to run, not just ran, he had to run a 242 to win the race. And that's you know, you think about Hellreagal. The following year, he came off the bike with Luke von Learde, and Luke had a penalty and had to sit down for three minutes. So Thomas ran a 246 marathon that year after coming off the bike with Luke and then having a three-minute gap. And Luke ran 241 and broke the course record and took the win. So his first two years, Thomas Hellreagal should have won the Iron Man. And in 97, he finally did. But I mean, that guy should have two, he should have three Iron Man World Championships.

Larry 37:46

And and and it's just amazing the way you're able to bring all these stories forward, and they're they're in your head. It's like that Steve King kind of brain of the the names and the numbers and things like that. And I think that's why people enjoy watching, you know, all of your interviews and mentioned that he kind of came across uh doing announcing and things like that by accident. But you know, he was he was running races and finishing near the beginning, and so one day he grabbed a bullhorn and started calling other people in. Your way of doing it seemed to be a lot more um organic, or it seemed to be organic as well, in that you know, you you came out of I'm gonna promote this sport and and just start meeting these people.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Yeah. And we leave meeting the people has been the best part because I do think there is such a can our sport is very rare. You can't go and play the masters with Tiger Woods, you can't go and play Wimbledon with Federer, but I can be in the bay treading water with Jan Ferdano as a 70 to death age grouper on the same day at you know, running the same course and being able to talk story with him afterwards. How was a win for you and Javi? What was it like at Kwaihai? How was the energy lab? We have a common bond that our athletes are our pros and our age groupers are, you know, it's it's it's it's basically you have a fraternity sorority of suffering. We have that bond because we suffer in training, we suffer on race day, and nobody really understands it who's outside of our world, how much you enjoy that suffering and how much you gain from that suffering. So it's you know, there it's a the that's what makes our sport so unique and so special.

515 Now on YouTube

Larry 39:38

Hello, let's go. I'm gonna be putting parts of my conversation.

Challenged Athletes Foundation

Larry 40:26

And one of the things that I think other people admire about you, and we we've you know, you mentioned it briefly before, is the Challenge Athletes Foundation and making sure that it's accessible to everybody. Not just accessible to age groupers, but accessible to everybody and concurrent to your rise in the sport media world. You you did you know co-founded the Challenge Athletes Foundation, and and most people will form a foundation based on personal reasons for doing so. Can can you tell the listener a little bit about why you and your co-founders started the CAF over 30 years ago?

SPEAKER_00 41:03

Absolutely. Back in 1985, there was a guy named Jim McLaren who was an offensive lineman at Yale, 300-pound offensive lineman, and he was taking acting class to New York City, was on his motorcycle going to acting class, got hit by a New York City bus, thrown 90 feet in the air, did an arrival, live, ended up losing his lower left leg, uh, got a prosthetic, and with a walking leg, he went to a marathon and ran 316 with a walking leg. Right? We're not talking the high-tech prosthetics you see today. We're talking about one step up from Captain Hook. Then he comes to Kona, which is where I met him, and he goes 1042. We're talking top 20% of everybody in the race. Everybody knows who he is. He's sponsored by Budweiser, he's traveling the world. In 93, he's racing Orange County Performing Arts Center, Triathlon in Michigan. A van goes through a closed intersection, hits the back of his bike, propels him headfirst to Napoleon, and becomes a quadriplegic. And at that point, um, two close friends of mine, Jeffrey Esaka, was actually the CFO at the Tinley Company, which was a clothing company, and Rick Kozlowski was a fellow 1980 Iron Man guy who I met back then. And he be he puts on, he put on all the major races in San Diego, travel. So the three of us got together, and the goal was because you know I had a background with challenge athletes. I covered a lot of wheelchair athletes, five-time Boston Marathon champion Jim Kanab. And um three he won the LA Marathon three times, and he taught me so much about disability. I remember interviewing Jimmy at his house, he was an Olympic trials pole vaulter, who also had a motorcycle accident before he was, you know, which paralyzed him. And I remember interviewing Jimmy for he was going to be on the cover competitor, and you know, no magazine was putting wheelchair guys on the cover of a magazine, but the stories to me were so rich, and they were they're they really made a difference. You know, here's a guy, you know, if he's what he's doing is inspiring other people to say, Well, my back's a little sore, but this guy's out there in a wheelchair pushing himself. What's my excuse? Yeah. So I'm in Jimmy's house. This is Jim Kenab, and I'm, you know, I'm interviewing the guy, and I look down and there's a nickel on the floor. And my first thought is, you know, the poor guy, you know, he can't reach down and pick up the nickel. So I go to pick up the nickel and it's glued to the floor. And I look up and Jimmy's drinking a beer, and he's like, So, Babbitt, you didn't think the poor cripple guy could pick up a nickel off the floor. Here's lesson number one don't ever underestimate anyone. And I just learned so many lessons from that guy. His whole thing, which resonated for somebody in a wheelchair or on a race bike, he would say it's hey, the person who wins a race isn't the one who goes the fastest, the one who slows down the least. That's something anybody can relate to. Or he would tell he'd go to rehab centers and he'd be like, listen, they're they're telling you what you can't do. I'm here to tell you what you can do. And that was Jimmy. And so when Jim McLaren was injured the second time it became a quad, it was obvious that we needed to do something. So the goal was we're gonna put a little trial on, we're gonna raise 25 grand, and we're gonna buy Jimmy a van with hand controls to give him independence. That was it. Because one of the things I learned from talking to wheelchair athletes, I asked them the worst part about their new lot in life. Invariably it was, I'm 30 years old, here come mom and dad back in my life. I was an independent person, now I'm not. So how do we give Jimmy independence? Van with hand control. That was it. We raised 49, figured our jobs done, and then three amputee women who put a team together to support Jimmy at this triathlon came up to us and said, Hey, it's great you did for Jimmy, but did you know when you get injured? Your health insurance will cover a walking around leg or a everyday wheelchair. Nothing to do with sport is covered by insurance. Well, that didn't make sense to us. So we got our 501c3 and decided someone needed a piece of equipment for training or a piece of equipment, training, or travel expenses. We raised $180 million, sent out over 48,000 grants to challenged athletes in all 50 states, in 73 countries, and more importantly, and for equipment training, travel in 105 different sports. And our 105th sport was wheelchair pickleball last year. So it's you know, and and all that ties together. I mean, Jimmy was a triathlete. We you know, I always called triathlon a small sport with a huge heart. That's where we started. Uh now we've, you know, we we put on uh every year we put on a million-dollar challenge bike ride down the coast, uh, San Francisco to San Diego, 175 riders. Uh in 2023, we raised 3.3 or so million dollars from that ride. We do a gala in New York, a gala in San Francisco. It's amazing. Um, yeah, it's it's it's pretty special. And our athletes are special. It's it's great. Just you give somebody a piece of equipment, they they change the world.

Larry 46:16

Yeah, well, and and change the world, they also are able to excel. I I know that your foundation has also given at least some funding, maybe and along the way, to 50% of the athletes who made up Team USA at the Paralympics this year. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 46:32

There were 225 members of Team USA in Paris, and 127 of those had received grants from CAF. And that's not including a Lauren Parker and a number of our international athletes. Uh there's, you know, that that's the key. And having a mom come up, this is in Rio. This this woman, uh Deborah Jackson, came up to me in the hotel lobby and she goes, you know, Desmond, my son, her son, who's an amputee, says, You guys got him a running leg three years ago. Tonight he's running in the finals in the 200 meters. You know, that that's the type of stuff. This is it's you can change lives for the better with a piece of equipment. You know, that that to me is a no-brainer. And just and then the next thing is, well, actually, next week, I go to the Major League Baseball Network up in beautiful Secaucus, New Jersey, and taking Parker Byrd, who two years ago became, or actually last February, became the first uh ball baseball player with a prosthetic leg to play Division I baseball. And by getting out of Sports Center and getting on World News Tonight, all these families with their kids who are amputees, uh, who were connected to Parker because of baseball, um, have reached out to him. And Parker is constantly connecting me with these families. And so Parker is coming to Secaucus along with this young man, JJ Reeder, who lost his leg to a shark attack three years ago. He's 13 years old. And both those guys will be with us in studio. Just the power of baseball, the power of sport, the power of connection. Uh, there's so much there that we love seeing.

Larry 48:09

And and you said that you know, you have these galas and and races and things like that. Is that the main way of funding the foundation, or are you now more with sponsorships? How could a everyday listener get involved and help with the fundraising?

SPEAKER_00 48:25

Yeah, fundraise your way is what a lot of people do, is they'll we'll help them create a website and they're say they're training for Iron Man Wisconsin. You know, they could fundraise uh by training for Iron Man Wisconsin and by racing Iron Man Wisconsin. So we have we have a lot of you know people who fundraise your way. Um we have the gala in San Francisco, gala in New York. We have our San Diego Traton Challenge, which is the event we created for Jim McLaren. Um and then we also have Nike is a longtime global partner of ours, Toyota, um uh EOS, which owns over 100 fitness centers around the country. And what's great about EOS, any challenged athlete in their family gets a uh free membership to go to EOS and work on. And one of the things when we're reading, actually, and this starts in January, we start reading through the grant requests for 2025. And you read through the grant requests and you see people with disabilities and what they make financially, and you're seeing $20,000, $25,000. So when when someone like that is asking for a wheelchair basketball chair that's $4,500, it's not like that's even feasible for them to afford. You're making $25,000, $30,000, and you need a $5,000 piece of equipment, or you need travel to go to the beep baseball world series. You know, those those type of things, it's invaluable. The grants we provide, and that that's my favorite thing is reading through these grants because you're going, you know, the guy's at a he's at a stop sign and a billboard falls on his car, paralyzed from the waist down. I mean, how people get injured is a lot of it is fluky, a lot of it's congenital, but it's the one thing that connects the dots to me is the power of sport to change lives for the better. Because you get out there and you know what it feels like. You ride your bike, you feel better. You go to the gym, you feel better. You avoid the opioids, you avoid all the, you know, you avoid the fact that the dad is at home because he's paralyzed and doesn't own a hand cycle, and the family goes for a bike ride without him. Or dad has a hand cycle and goes on the bike ride with them. Huge difference in the family dynamics. So that that to me is what all this is about. Actually, one year at our San Diego Trothon Challenge, something that really resonated with me, a mom came up and she goes, You guys don't realize that for my son in a small town in Michigan, for 363 days a year, he feels like a freak. He's the only amputee in the city, he's the only amputee that, you know, and people stare every time he walks out of the house. He comes here and there's 150 challenged athletes, and there's prosthetic legs laying all over the place, and there's wheelchairs, and all the resident, he feels like everybody else. He feels normal. Normalcy is something that you know, I tell people this all the time. When every time an athlete like Rudy Garcia Tolson, who's a double above-knee amputee, and we've been working with A7, every time he walks out of the house, the spotlight's on. You don't blend when you're uh you know you're an amputee or if you're in a wheelchair, people stare. You either embrace it or you shrink from it. And the majority of our kids, they embrace it. They that that's that leg is what makes them different in a good way.

Ultraman Memories

Larry 51:52

This past November um must have been very busy month for you. I'm sure they're all busy. But if you're doing all these foundation things in San Diego with the gala and the race and and all of that at the beginning of the month, and then at the end of the month, of course, you're over to Hawaii for the Ultraman World Championship. Um when when did you first cover that event and and how many times have you been there?

SPEAKER_00 52:18

Well, back in the day, Scott Molina, I think, won the first one, if I'm not mistaken, one early one, anyways, and then Kurt Madden, one of my my Kurt Madden was the first winner. Was Kurt the first winner? Okay. Yeah. So what was Molina? What was he?

Larry 52:33

I'm I'll have to check the stats.

SPEAKER_00 52:35

Yeah. So but Kurt was one of those funny guys because when he did Iron Man uh in 1980, he finished seventh. And I remember I think I still have the article. There's an article on Kurt finishing the Iron Man that year, and he goes, Yeah, in the article, he goes, Yeah, this is something you do once. That's 1980. We're now in 2024. He just finished, he did Coda this year, he did 70.3 World. Yeah, if you you do it once, like what, a week, maybe once a week you do it. So uh over the years, I've always loved, I knew Curtis Tyler and obviously uh um uh Jane and just all the folks who were involved with Ultraman. And then a number of years ago, uh uh Jane said, Hey, would you like to come? And I'm like, you know what, that'd be really fun. We could do social media around the island. And the first year we did it, the the race went up into the Kahalas. And my my wife Heidi does all the posting of all the social and stuff, and so we're in the Kahalas. I get out of the car and you know, do a report, and the wind was so bad it could barely open up the car door, and you couldn't hear a word I said, right, in the in the stand-up. And Heidi just wrote underneath, she goes, he says it's windy. And that just sort of touched the nerve, and we you know, we started getting really, really nice uh you know response on the fact that we were there and we're covering this really fun event. And it's uh think about it. You come around a corner, and there's a legend, Steve King, sitting on the back of his of his rental car, you know, talking and telling you what's going on in the race. And then you've got, you know, this year we had Michelle Vesterby, who's been, I think she for best was fourth place in Kona, uh, but multiple-time top 10 finisher in Kona, just recently, you know, retired. Um, then Jen Annette, who we we met at challenge Penticton years ago. So, you know, you had these two wonderful women, and you know, the thought was beforehand, you know, they could win overall. Somebody could win overall. And then as it played out, and you said, you know, sort of ultra moms dominating and winning each each day. They won, they won all three days. Michelle won the swim and and the bike on day one, and then day two was a 171-mile bike ride that Jen won and made up some of the ground, and then she made up another six minutes or so in the first half, first marathon on Sunday, and then just you know, uh Michelle's second marathon, I think, was close to four hours. And so, and Jen ran 322 and 324. That's unbelievable. But just seeing that, and Simon Cochran, uh Robin.

Larry 55:25

Yeah, the year before Simon setting that blistering world record in Australia.

unknown 55:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

Yep, and and he wanted to do the same thing, he wanted to wanted to break the course record and and do the same thing in in Kona. And just, you know, to me, because I think my viewers uh can relate to something that's on the Iron Man course. And when you start talking about, you know, okay, guys, we're here at the beginning of the Ultraman swim, and you know how your swim goes out a mile and 1.2 and turns around and comes back? This goes to the outrigger. All right, this goes 10k. Then you're riding 90 miles with 8,000 feet of climbing. Then, and you know, a lot of times it's uh the day two, 171 miles, it's pouring rain, it's cold, it's you know, it's everything that it wasn't on day one. And then everybody can relate to, you know, that place you ride to for the turnaround a Kona called Javi. They're running from there, they're running a double marathon from there. It's like, uh yeah, Knucklehead City. So it's you know, it's it's really fun because these guys are there, there's no prize money, right? It's I'm doing this to spend time with my family. I'm doing this, it's about as altruistic and as pure and as raw as it gets, right? And you you're you and your crew either create a bond or you hate each other, right? You just it's and I as somebody who did the crew. And both most times. And sometimes both, yeah. And doing a crew back in 1980 when Iron Man was was before it moved to the big island, when we were at Oahu, it was all about crews. And you know, Gordon Haller, who won the first Iron Man, he was the best. He had he had two bikes. He had a bike for the climbs and a bike for the downhills and the flats, he had a chef, right? He he he knew how to work that. And you know, he won the first ever Iron Man, and his crew was a big part of that. So, in my crew, with carrying all my Hawaiian sweetbread and just being there whenever I needed them, and the Big Mac fries and a Coke and a snow cone and a massage. You and the crew are because the athlete's pretty naked out there, they're out there by themselves, and then here's your lifeline, your crew that's there to help you and get you whatever you need. And when you got a fine-tuned crew, you the athlete, the athlete doesn't have to worry about anything except turn the pedals, turn the pedals, and then the swim, having like Michelle had you know, they they had local paddlers, and a local paddler was big in Hawaii, huge, huge. She gained a lot of ground the last part of the swim because I think her paddler took a better life. Yeah, that's we love the cruise, and we love just the whole thing with you know the photographer, Matthew is one of every aspect of Cheryl and David. It's a family, it really is Ohana. And uh, you know, that that's what I like about that that event. It's it's special. Uh, and any opportunity to go to the big island is the opportunity we're gonna take.

Larry 58:36

And with the the story this year of Michelle racing against Jen.

SPEAKER_00 58:42

Yep.

Larry 58:43

That was like the story. But were what was uh what else stood out for you this year? Were there were there other compelling stories that that you came across?

SPEAKER_00 58:52

You know what? I I mean I love all the athletes, but I was it was so compelling to me that you had two moms, and this is coming off of Chelsea Siddhartha becoming the first the second ever mom, Natasha Batman won Iron Man as a Mom, but the second ever to win the Iron Man World Championship as a mom. There's just something special about that. Now, obviously, you know, Jen's uh uh Jen's uh kid is older, and Michelle's got two youngsters, which you know is a difference, more definitely more impactful when you got young kids. But just seeing the joy for both of them, you know, you'd think that you you see some grumpiness, and you know, yeah, it's those are long days, but every time we'd see Jen and Michelle, it's like they were just so excited to be doing what they love. Okay, I'm not worried about gosh prize money, or I gotta go to this meeting or that meeting. It was just get out there. And it's funny, the other side of it is that I remember one year at Oceanside, I was doing the announcing at this uh place called the Hot Corner. So Oceanside 70.3. And you'd come out on the bike and you'd turn at the lifeguard tower I was at, and it's only maybe it's 500 yards, maybe it's a thousand yards from from the transition area, and you go out and come back the same way. Well, this woman goes by, and I didn't think much of it, and then I see that same woman walking back, and she's got blood on both shoulders, her wheels are all bent, and you know, she's crying, and the Iron Man team jumped out there to change out her wheels, and and underneath me, I'm staying on the top of this lifeguard tower. Underneath me is a guy who's got a baby jogger with two kids in it, and a in a backpack with another kid in it, right? And I'm I'm yelling, obviously her husband and the kids, and I'm yelling to her, you know, you don't need, you don't have to do this. You you know, you're you just stuff her, she'd hit a speed bump or something. It's pretty traumatic. You know, you could you could drop out if you want. And she looks at me and she's like pointing at them, goes, This is my time. I've got six hours to be by myself. It's like, I get it. It's Mother's Day, right? This is this is her joy. I get to ride my bike and run and not think about the kids and they're you know, they've they're dribbling, they're doing this, they're doing that. I I can be by myself. Actually, I wrote an article called Mother's Day based on that. This reminded me so much of that. Is these guys, and in fact, the cool part for um for Jen, she had her son running with her for parts of it, which was really good.

Larry 1:01:36

Yeah, Dixon was right there running, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:38

Yeah, that's and so that the bond that they created that day is something they'll have forever and ever. And the same thing with Michelle. And you know, I don't know if you know the original Michelle story when we first interviewed her. So Michelle was in Lanzarote, Lanzarate, she was at Club Lasanta partying. She was there for vacation, and she's partying, she's in the bar and dancing, and she sees this boy, Klaus, and she says, she doesn't have me. She goes, Bob, I decided I wanted that boy. Okay. And so she's you know, flip dancing with him, flirting with him, and yes, and he's there, I'm there for, I'm here for a triathlon camp. And she goes, Oh, she goes, I'm a triathlete. She wasn't a triathlete. She wasn't on a bike, she didn't own anything. So then it turned out he lived close enough that he asked her out. And she's oh crap, what am I gonna do now? So she borrowed a bike and put it in the living room to make it look like she did this trapon thing. And next thing you know, she's admitting to him, okay, I'm not a triathlete, and they start training, and he realizes she's already better than him. So and I said, So what does Klaus do now? She goes, He's my bike bitch. Okay, and I love so we've been calling him bike bitch for a decade. And so then every time during a race, I'm like, okay, today you're water and gator bitch, and uh then you then it's after the the 171 mile bike, it was hack up the bike bitch. Yeah, in fact, it's funny, they just were posting photos of their vacation, and in the photo you can see her holding the kids, and he's you know, like, we got all the bags, and I'm like, Oh, he's like his luggage bitch. Look at him. So yeah, it and that was just so much fun all weekend long with the two of them, and then we're and they liked each other. In fact, the photo that uh Heidi took of the two of them at the finish line, both of them were in the capes. I the last I checked, probably 150,000 views, something like that. It was crazy. It just touched the nerve. All these female pros, you know, uh Lucy and were all sending notes. Go, you know, go and go Jen, go Michelle, you guys are role models. So that that I think that became something very special.

Larry 1:04:01

Yeah, yeah. Well, I did have both of them on um for their own episodes prior to the race. And and Michelle did tell that story. So, people, if you want to hear more about Michelle or Jen, go back in the library and and you can find both their episodes. And Jen came on again after winning and he was talking about how much he enjoyed racing with Michelle. And also, you know, we've got the smiling attitude. And I think for Jen, it was also an opportunity for her to uh to get back to when she really enjoyed triathlon because one of the things she said in her interview was it became a job and it became about getting a paycheck. And it was it was a little bit too hard. Um and even getting to Hawaii for her was was difficult financially.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:49

So she got help from the city, from friends in the inner area, so yeah, yeah.

Larry 1:04:55

So I mean for for those people who are are pros to to go to this race and enjoy it in that way, I think it says a lot about what the Ultraman spirit in Ohana is all about.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:07

Yeah. Did did Michelle tell you the penalty box story?

Larry 1:05:11

No, I don't know that one.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:13

So, Michelle, the last time she did Kona, she gets a penalty and she goes in the penalty box, and you know, Michelle is always happy, but she's not happy now, she's pretty pissed off. One of the guys working at the penalty box says, Hey, can I get a photo? Can we do a selfie, right? The guy's working in the penalty box and he wants a selfie. And Michelle is like, sure. And so she does a selfie and starts smiling and changed her whole attitude. Changed her attitude from being pissed to you know what, I'm out here because I love it. Let me enjoy. So she had a great last part of the bike ride and and run. And she thinks a lot of that was because she totally re refocused her her positive energy.

Larry 1:05:55

Yeah. Hello, listener. I love

70.3 World Championships

Larry 1:06:52

Well, after Hawaii, you you talked about it a little bit earlier. You went on to New Zealand for the 70.3 World Championships. What were your impressions on how they did it hosting the race this year? Because I know it's a smaller community.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:06

You know what's funny is I, you know, I think uh they had what 3,000 volunteers, and I don't know if they have more than 20,000, 30,000 people who live in Tampa. So they had a pretty huge group. I thought it was unwell, first of all, the area is just beautiful. And the to have a hosting event with 63,000, 6,400 people, and a lot of those folks had qualified back in 2019 for the 2020 uh event. And actually that we were supposed to go in 2020, and then because of COVID, everything got canceled for four years. So a lot of these folks have been waiting four years to come and do this event. And you know, the weather was spectacular. Um, it can when you get a lake and you get any type of wind, the wind chop can make it a little victory at sea-ish in the water. But it was beautiful swim conditions, uh the bike conditions, you know, it's a it's chip and seal roads. Um, there wasn't a lot of wind, but it was, you know, 2,000 feet of climbing, over 2,000 feet of climbing. It's definitely a challenge. But watching the way those guys raced and watching, you know, Hayden Wilde was gonna, he was gonna run, he was gonna run 105, 106, it didn't matter. He didn't he didn't slow down at all. And next thing you know, he's you know, he's getting passed by Yelly. But he put it out there. And Taylor being Taylor, she just dominated all day long. So, and then Kat, you know, I think people have underestimated Kat's ability as a runner, and she was phenomenal. And then Ashley, you know, ran away into third. It was it was great. We did 35 interviews there and just you know, loved all of them. The athletes were great. Like you said, McKealy was racing as an age grouper and won her division in the 60 to 64, I think, as she is now, and you know, and got a really nice photo with her and Julie Duron, the other the silver medalist from 2024. And our sport is the fountain of youth. It's something that you know, someone like McKealy, who's 60 years old, um, is still going pretty damn fast. And you know, there's no reason than Kurt Mann. There's literally no reason not to do this sport forever. You know, as a runner, you're not getting fast. Orthopedic reality, you're not getting faster after the age of 50. But for Trofon, there's no reason I can get better wheels, I can get a better wetsuit, I can actually train a little bit. You can be faster at 70 than you were at 60. We're we were looking at, I think it was the oceanside results. And I think there was a like a 50-year-old woman who, you know, her time was faster than a lot of female pros. You know, like, wow. Yeah, it's it's it's it's a very, very special sport.

Women in Triathlon

Larry 1:09:52

Yeah. And that's one of the things that I looked at last season was the actual rise of women in ultra triathlon and how they're coming on. And so like having Michelle and Jen there, you know, on the top of the podium was no surprise. Like it's it's something that's been definitely uh growing and coming on. And and women I think that I mean they have their young children, but as you're saying, women that finished their child rearing can then move on to focusing on their training, and maybe their job is safe and they have that security, or they're finished their job. And and there's just all all these different factors that come into uh you know people carrying on in this sport later in their in their life and and being successful.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:38

Right. And I also think from a for the women part, you know, people for years have been saying, gosh, you know, you've got 80%. It was in our in the sport in running Anthroathon back in the day, it was 80% men and 20% women. And over the years, like our company owned the rock and roll marathons, and that became 60% women, 60 and 65% women. And the charity component was important, the fact that you know, women, you grab your buddy and it's you know, you need your running shoes. That's all you need. Go to see, go to see great cities, go to San Francisco, go to Chad, go to um uh you know, go run the country music marathon, go to Arizona, you can go wherever you want and not need to pet pack a lot of stuff and you go away for the weekend, you have a great time. And it changed the whole face of the expos for rock and roll. Uh, the expos became way more shopping-centric because if you and I were going to an expo, we're there to get our number and get the hell out. And that t-shirt. Uh, but a lot of the women who were going were going shopping. And shopping to a point where it became, you'd see a lot of the booths understanding that we better have a different selection each day of the expo so that uh we sell more product. And it, yeah, it became a big deal. And the other thing is if you think about it from trial, I think one of the limiting factors for us with women in the sport is for Olympic or sprint, you can go and you can take spin classes. Um uh you can do spin classes, you can do a lot of your training indoors, but when you start getting towards 70.3, you need to ride outside or you need to ride in something safe. And I think because of Swift, because of um because uh, you know, because think about it. Um I've my wife Heidi has never really ridden the bike outdoors on her own, right? We we'd ride together because it's scary for someone to be out there on their own. So now you can be riding with somebody, but doing it indoors. You can be riding, you know, you're on Zwift or you're on um one of the other, what's it full gas? There's there's a number of different ways you can do it, but you can be doing four, five, and six-hour rides so more and more women can come out and do these races. Because before you need to get a group together if you're gonna go for a ride. You can't, we can be very spontaneous. Guys can be spontaneous and just go out and go ride. Well, for women, it's it's not the same, it's not safe out there. So uh it's I think this is a better era for women to be doing longer distance uh travel and running events, right? Same, you don't want to be running. You can run on the Oahu, you can run, you can run indoors and get the same experience on the different treadmills that are out there. So I think we're seeing more and more women doing longer distance uh events that they can train for indoors and train on their own.

unknown 1:13:38

Yeah.

Larry 1:13:39

When you were in Tapo and you were doing all your interviews, were there things outside of the pros that you did that uh you were proud of? Because it's it's not just pro-centric all the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:50

We had a couple of uh Roger Krause and um Rob Balukas, two of our wheelchair athletes from CAF, both participated and both did well. Um Beth and Liza James, they is sort of like a Dick and Ricoit type of thing. Beth's daughter Liza was the family was in a car accident a number of years ago. A couple drivers were on the 4th of July and they were racing and crashed into Beth's car, and her um youngest daughter, Liza, uh, was injured severely, brain brain injury. And Beth uh brings Liza to do these races. They didn't finish, but you know, that's less important than just being there. The fact that Liza was able to go to New Zealand, she's been to Kona, she's been to Raw Challenge, Roth, travel the world. Um, those those type of things are really cool.

Larry 1:14:39

Yeah.

Ironman Pro Series (thoughts from Bob)

Larry 1:14:40

And and being the last race of the Iron Man Pro Series, uh, the the champions were crowned. What what were your thoughts of the pro series? Is it uh has it been successful? Has it accomplished what it set out to do?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:55

I think so. I you know, listen, anytime pros make money, it's a good thing because it keeps them in the sport. If you think about it, going into COVID, um, if if the PTO didn't step up and do what they did by anybody, whatever they did in 2019, they received bonuses in 2020 from PTO. And PTO kept them in, uh, kept them in the sport. And at the same time, uh the Pro series has enhanced that. So think about the options that pros have now. They can do, hopefully, you know, qualify to do a T100. They can do that. That series has a lot of money. I mean, think about I think Kat Matthews made about 70K from the PTO T100 series and made what? Uh it was what was her total. Um she received a you know a huge bonus for for uh you know for for winning the um, I'm not winning, but getting, you know, getting uh I don't know for winning the the um the Iron Man Pro series. So yeah, that we're talking when pros are making $450 to $500,000, that's pretty damn cool. And it one, it keeps them in a sport, two, it allows them to focus on what they want to do. So you know, you talk about World Triathlon, you talk about Super League, you talk about um, you know, Clash used to be a player in that challenge, T-100, and Iron Man. That's spectacular. So these athletes now can go, where do I want to race next year? Uh I'm gonna do a couple of T 100s, I'm gonna do a um a 70.3, uh somewhat like a look at a Morgan Pearson. He won in the desert last week, I think, uh in you know Palm Palm Desert at 70.3, which qualifies him for worlds next year. He just signed on to do T-100. So that guy, you know, he knows he's already in 70.3 worlds. Um, he can make a decision to try to do a few of the 70.3 races. And even if he doesn't do a full Iron Man, he could still end up with some bonus dollars from that, from the Iron Man series. And I just love the fact that you know it came down to the last day, right? And you almost had two races going on. Taylor Nib was in part of the Iron Man series, so she was just out there kicking butt and taking names, where a lot of the other women were racing each other. And and think about um uh think about Greg Barnaby. Greg Barnaby and Matthew Mark Bark were basically Gregory was leading uh Gregory um uh and Matthew, it looked like because Matthew had done one last race, if he had placed well, he would have won the series. But instead, it was uh, you know, he did not have a good day, he had some cramping issues, et cetera. And Gregory Barnaby from Italy ends up winning the Iron Man Pro Series, which is awesome. So, you know, if you look back at 2019, uh before any of this stuff, before PTO, before Iron Man Pro Series, and you people had you know, you one, you eliminate all the T100 events, and all there were were the Iron Man 70.3 with you know what, five to ten thousand dollar prize per for the winner, these guys would not be making anywhere near the money they're making. So PTO and Iron Man need to be congratulated on recognizing the value of the pros. And I think there's age groupers who say, hey, you know what? I'm gonna go do some of those Iron Man Pro Series events. Why not? It could be pretty fun.

unknown 1:18:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:41

So it's it's this is a great time and probably the best time ever to be a pro. Now, I will say that back in the 80s and 90s, I think pros were getting more from companies like Power Bar, Cliff Bar, they're getting more sponsorship dollars from probably from the running brands uh than they are now. But you know, besides that, uh in terms of the prize money, making a living uh without having to worry about getting sponsorship, uh, that was something you couldn't do before. You needed sponsorship to survive. I think you can just go race and be valuable on social media and you can make a good living.

Larry 1:19:21

Yeah. Well, the Iron Man website says that in 2025 there's 170 plus triathlons worldwide. How many are you planning to attend? What's your schedule look like for next year?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:34

Well, we'll be for sure. We'll be doing the show from Oceanside. We'll be doing the show from hopefully from Challenge Roth. I just love that event. It's one of my favorite events on the planet.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:44

And we just we did a film called We Are Triathletes on the 2014 event uh where Miranda Carfrey won. Um and we'll be doing uh we'll be in Nice and Kona and um hopefully

Bob's advice to Larry

SPEAKER_00 1:20:00

in Spain.

Larry 1:20:04

And you know, usually on on this podcast I invite my guests to share tips and tricks for training and racing 515 distance races. But today I want to be a little more selfish and ask you for some tips and tricks that you have learned over the years or you've been taught for for interviewing and and talking to your guests. So today I want tips and tricks just for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:31

I mean, the deal is when you interview people, it's because you're interested. And so having as much information on that person is obviously essential. I have never liked that uh Larry King style of interviewing where I haven't read the book and I really know nothing about you, and I'm just gonna ask the same questions. That to me is is an insult to the person you're bringing on. Uh, you want to make sure that you're prepared. And I also feel we're not talking brain surgery here. Uh you want the athlete to feel at home. You want the athlete to feel that, oh, they're they're not gonna be talking about uh what I did in third grade or you know, some some past thing that I got a penalty, wherever. We're here, I think, to to put that athlete in the best possible light to showcase who they are and showcase their personality. Because people at home, all they see is a number and a stat. This guy was third in oceanside or fourth at this, they don't know who that person is or what makes them tick. When you're interviewing Julie Duron and you find out she's got two fellow pro sisters, right? That's cool stuff. You know, you got three sisters, all of them loving the sport. And um, you know, they come from that, they come from Switzerland, so it's Dan Daniela Reef. And it's it's it's really cool that our athletes uh that we get to showcase great things about them, you know, and and all these gems come up. I remember the first time we interviewed Lucy Charles Barkley and just asking her, so how much back when you were just swimming, how much did you swim a week? You know, like you know, 100,000 meters. Wait, wait, what? 100,000 a week? I mean, I haven't swam that in my life. You know, but you you find out what makes them tick, and you're here's somebody who tried so hard to make the Olympic team in 2012 and open water swim and in 1500 missed by a spot for both. And then what does she do? She goes off and she becomes an Iron Man world champion, right? She chain and becomes the most followed person on social media and sport. So, you know, when one door closes, another one opens up, and I think that's a message that our the person watching the interview can relate to because they're always looking to be better, to be different. One of my favorite people is a woman named Jamie Whitmore, who won as a uh ex-TERA athlete, won 37 titles, right? And she won one world championship, but 37 wins at X-TERA. And then she had a pain in the back of her leg. And when she went to see the doctors, the doctors would were like, uh, we don't know what that is. Maybe it's maybe it's in your head. Maybe you know you're you're you have maybe you have a low threshold of pain. And you know if you're doing extera, you're up on the flume trail at 11,000 feet, you're you're not you're on a low threshold of pain. Well, they finally realized that there's an um a tumor wrapped around her sciatic nerve. And when they when they had to cut that off, that she'd end up with drop foot and not be able to run again. So here's this woman who grew up loving the Olympics, right? She, as a little girl, she was like, Oh, I wanna I wanna be in the Olympics. She'd watch it on TV and first as a swimmer and realized she didn't have the swimming chops to do that. Then as a runner, she ran it in UC Northridge, not gonna do it in running. Then as a cyclist, and then as a mountain biker, and she didn't have the chops for that, then finds out I'm really good at the sex terror thing. So sort of put the Olympic dream on the on the back burner and became great at that. Well, now she can't run again. So I actually called up her uh husband at the time, Courtney, at the hospital and said, Listen, have Jamie call me because she's the most competitive woman I've ever met and she's gonna need sport. And so when I connected with Jamie after she got out of the hospital, she goes, Um uh uh, what are you thinking? I said, Well, paracycling sounds like might be good. So connected her paracycling. Next thing you know, we're in Rio at the Paralympics, and this woman who had this Olympic dream wins a gold and a silver medal in paracycling at the Paralympics, and her dream from being a little as a little girl to be an Olympian, well, she's a Paralympian. And she had that career as an ex-terra athlete. And the cool part was as she was um recovering, she got sick again and was puking and couldn't figure out what was going on. And her doctor said, just go in and get a blood test, we'll see what's going on. She goes in and a doctor comes in and goes, You're pregnant with twins. So in 2016 at the Paralympics, there's the twins at the Paralympics watching mom win a gold and a silver medal. You know, like one door closes, another one opens up.

Larry 1:25:34

Yeah. Well, I I I really enjoy getting to know my athletes, like you say, and sharing their stories. And the stories that you have shared today are are just amazing. And I hope to have uh, you know, as long a career in talking to these people and getting to know all the people that come through the 515 Ohana. And uh it's it's something that I strive for. You're your inspiration for me as well as many others. But for me, it's more for the for the actual broadcasting. So that's pretty cool. Um I will put all of your social links into the show notes, including the CAF and all that stuff, so people know how to connect with that. And and I really want to thank you today for taking the time to to come and and share these stories and and talk about your career and and uh what it's meant to you and obviously the hundreds of thousands of people that that you have inspired. So thank you for your time.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:35

Oh thank you. Appreciate it. Best of luck with the show, and just uh keep doing what you love. That's what it's all about. If you love it, people will love it.