Episode 79: Behind the Mic and Beyond the Finish Line with Mark Matthews

In this episode of Another Triathlon Podcast, hosts Jenna-Caer and Josh sit down with seasoned triathlete and fellow podcaster Mark Matthews to dive deep into the world of triathlon from both the athlete and media perspectives.

Mark, co-host of the Pro Tri News podcast, brings a unique insider's view to the conversation. They have become the go-to source for professional triathlon gossip, race insights, and all the juicy behind-the-scenes details fans crave. Mark shares how the podcast has carved out its niche by focusing on the pro side of triathlon and delivering content that keeps serious fans and athletes hitting that 'subscribe' button.

Beyond his podcasting role, Mark is also well-known in the triathlon community as the ultimate support crew for his wife, professional triathlete Kat Matthews. Mark’s all-access pass to the pro athlete experience and stories from the sidelines give us a whole new insight into what goes into those podium performances.

Episode Highlights:

• Mark’s Triathlon Journey: From his first race to becoming a voice in the sport
• The Evolution of Triathlon: How technology and training have changed the game
• Pro Tri News: The scoop on pro racing and the stories you won't hear anywhere else
• Supporting Kat Matthews: The good, the bad, and the unforgettable moments of being in a pro triathlete’s corner
• Ironman vs. T100: The competitive landscape and athlete challenges
• Coaching Insights: Mark’s philosophy on training and supporting athletes
• The Fun Side of Racing: Quickfire questions and behind-the-scenes stories

Mark shares his thoughts on the identity of triathletes, the importance of community engagement, and his experiences navigating race conflicts and building support systems on race day. The conversation offers a unique blend of expert analysis, personal stories, and a touch of humor—giving listeners an authentic peek into the triathlon world.

🎧 Tune in for an episode packed with insights, laughs, and a fresh perspective on what makes this sport so special!

Transcript

Jenna-Caer (00:00.89)
Welcome to another Tracklon podcast brought to you by Mana Apparel. I'm Jenna Sayre and I'm joined as always by Josh, but this week we have something a little special. We've got a guest on this week and he's a triathlete a podcaster and wag extraordinaire. We've got Mark Matthews on the podcast. How are you going, Mark?

Mark Matthews (00:18.498)
Hello, how are we? I wouldn't put my talents in those order. I'd probably put triathlete last if I was honest and you can debate between wag and podcaster but I think Kat probably sells a podcaster better than I am a wag. So yes, how are we all?

Jenna-Caer (00:22.734)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (00:32.058)
Fair enough.

Josh (00:33.872)
We're doing great. Well, I mean, the wag part kind of worked last year, that's for sure. And the triathlete part's coming back this year, so we'll see.

Mark Matthews (00:38.615)
Yeah, I'm

Jenna-Caer (00:38.732)
It seems to have.

Mark Matthews (00:41.838)
Yeah, I did one last year. I've entered a pool triathlon back to my roots as like a 12 year old, know, the 400 meters swim in a pool and then change in like a tennis court, park or whatever. And that's in like a month time. So there's more than one triathlon this year, but none of them will be glamorous or impressive. I assure you on that.

Jenna-Caer (01:00.954)
Fair enough. Well, let's jump into it little bit. We're gonna learn a little bit about you, talk a bit about Trathon podcasting and what's going on in the Trathon world these days, but what did get you started in Trathon? How did it all start?

Mark Matthews (01:12.93)
I've been doing it forever, much longer than Kat and much longer than people realize. I think I did my first when I was maybe 12 or 13 and I'm now 37, knocking on 38. So a long time. for many years, sort of, I kept doing at least one a year, even when I was away with the army a lot. And then that's that slipped and I missed a couple of years, but yeah, it was like the local triathlon club near to me was had, we were some of the first kids. And one of the other kids that started then went to the Olympics and I absolutely didn't. And we were the first sort of two juniors there.

It's when the sport was kind of becoming a bit more mainstream. I kind of wish I'd knew about Ironman younger and earlier, but it just wasn't the dumb thing. In the UK, you kind of tried to go to the Olympics and if you didn't, then you just sort of potted along and then stumbled across Ironman later on. But my dad, my parents always supported it. They were always sporty. So I would just on a weekend, I think I did my first, my dad's bike around a school field, you know, whatever these tiny ones were.

So I've been doing it forever. And then I coached and I went to the sort of the best sports university here, but didn't do sport or anything like that. And then realized I just wasn't actually that good or that driven. So joined the army and did lot of cross-country skiing and stuff like that instead, but kind of kept my hand in triathlon. And I've, yeah, I've been, like I said, been doing it forever. I met Kat when I was coaching on an army triathlon training camp, coaching, racing, whatever I was doing there. And then...

Yeah, she sort of turned pro at the same time I kind of went to Kona in 2019 or banged up, but I'd been training before that with like Patrick Manger and people like that just through friends. So yeah, it's a lifelong hobby of mine, I would say.

Josh (02:55.118)
Well, it sounds like you enjoy it still because you love bantering about it. You love being around the sport and that passion, think is something that we've tried to bring to the sport in our podcast and get more people involved just with our enthusiasm with it. And even with the politics behind it all, think that's a huge piece. I mean, yeah, you've been involved in it a long way, but it sounds like you're still enjoying it.

Mark Matthews (03:19.66)
Yeah. And I admire what you guys do. know, there's, it's not be under any illusion. No one is making a lot of money doing triathlon podcasting. So all of us do it for, all of us do it for fun, right. and cause we are passionate about a sport and it's a sport that it's very easy to become passionate about sometimes to a fault. You know, I think it can, I always use the analogy that like, you, if you play Sunday league soccer, you know, for your local pub football team at the weekend.

Jenna-Caer (03:27.352)
What?

Mark Matthews (03:45.504)
And someone says to you midweek, what do you do? You say, I'm an accountant. got a couple of kids, you know, and I like to go to the pub and I play a of soccer. Whereas if you ask someone that does triathlon, what do you do? They say, I'm a triathlete. You're not, mate. You're an accountant. You're, you know, you're husband, you're all this sort of stuff. So I think it becomes so identity absorbing, that it's actually almost too easy to become passionate about it in a way. But that's also why the sports... Sorry, go on.

Jenna-Caer (04:10.132)
Especially with our sport. I was going to say that's why there's kind of a running joke in the sport where if you're not divorced then you haven't been training hard enough for Ironman.

Josh (04:18.31)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Mark Matthews (04:19.157)
So, so fair. Yeah. Yeah. Which is why you should always marry someone also involved in the sport, I think. Though that can just lead to competitiveness and eventually one of you has to quit their job and support the other full time, which is how things worked out for me. So there's worse ways.

Jenna-Caer (04:35.204)
Yeah, absolutely. Now it's funny, so you got into triathlon, you started competing. When did you actually get into the Ironman distance and what got you excited about that?

Mark Matthews (04:42.158)
Not for a long time. I don't think I was ever excited about it. It's a really long, horrible way. I was in the army and the army champs were like standard distance, so just Olympics. And I was repeatedly like first into T2 and would just get run down and blow to pieces. And that trend actually has never changed for me in races. And then I did one of the half Ironman ones and turned out I could rip.

Jenna-Caer (04:48.356)
Felt like you had to do it or?

Mark Matthews (05:10.07)
an odd enough advantage on the bike that I think I held on and won that. And it was the British nationals as well, but like I came second. There was no like pro feel or something. And then there was an Ironman next year and I actually kind of did it out of stubbornness. There was a coach that worked with Army Triathlon that I just didn't like. I just thought it was a bully. And can we smile on this show? he was an asshole. Absolute asshole. But his whole identity was Kona, an Ironman. And I think honestly, one of the big reasons I first did an Ironman was like, it cannot be that hard, mate. Like, come on.

Josh (05:28.75)
yeah.

Mark Matthews (05:40.308)
And, Kat hadn't done one yet. She'd done a couple of halves and maybe just picked up a pro license. So I did like Ironman Barcelona and honestly, it's late as 2018, bearing in mind, I probably did my first draft on like, what, 2000? So I, Ironman was never like, that wasn't it for me. That's why I still really enjoy the short course. I'm passionate about supporting and following the short course. So yeah, I did my first Ironman then. I haven't actually done that many, partly because I was away with work and stuff a lot and partly because I'm just really lazy.

Jenna-Caer (05:54.042)
Thanks

Jenna-Caer (06:09.87)
That is funny. I did my first trath, or my first Ironman out of spite too. There was this guy at the Trath on Club who told me like, give it a few years at the 70.3 in Olympic distance and stuff. And then, you know, maybe you can attempt it kind of deal. So like, what's your, what's your PR? When did my first Ironman like a year later and beat it by five minutes. That was like following across the finish line. was like, it's like, no, you shouldn't do it. It's bad idea. I'm like, no, I'm gonna do it. Get you.

Mark Matthews (06:14.04)
Ready?

Mark Matthews (06:30.272)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, perfect.

Mark Matthews (06:36.448)
Yeah. And one of these other guys had the army's current Ironman record as well. And, I sort of had that in mind that it was possible to take the, like the army record on my first one. And I did just, but if you know anything about Ironman Barcelona, you'll know that it's a hell of a fast course. but yeah. Yeah. And I teched it even back then I was like, I w I'd gone way over the top on kind of the tech side of things for what people were doing then. And I think nowadays you can't really grab a tech advantage in Ironman because

Jenna-Caer (06:52.6)
Yeah, might be some external factors there.

Mark Matthews (07:06.478)
If look at the top amateurs out there, they're crazy times on 20 grand worth of kit. But a few years ago, if you put a bit of thought in, you could probably cheat your way to a good time.

Josh (07:17.958)
And we talk, you, you, talk about getting run down a lot. How has swim bike always been your, your, your thing. And then the run just never really came along in your terms. Now you're still a good runner. You're still, you're still finishing Ironmans, taking the tape in Barcelona. Like the swim bike always just been the thing.

Mark Matthews (07:22.23)
Yeah.

Mark Matthews (07:28.376)
to

Mark Matthews (07:37.282)
Yeah, I think so. So I'm like six foot two and I've got like size US 13 feet and long ass monkey arms. And so swimming is kind of easy, right? I mean, we can all pretend that, you know, it's just about technique and training and stuff, but some of us do just have an advantage. And I think as well in triathlon, if you swam since you were a kid, it's like, I always put it down to like learning a language. you try and teach a seven year old how, a language, they'll pick it up with ease.

And if you try and teach a 30 year old, they'll really struggle and it applies to swimming as well. So I think anyone that's an amateur that comes from a swimming background, or at least just did a bit of club swing as a kid will always have that advantage. And then on the bike, I think with cycling, you just get fit the more you do. And it's just not true for the others. And I also think you retain the fitness way more than you do the other two. So if you put on 10 kilos as you get a bit older, which I've definitely done, you

On a flat bike course, it doesn't really matter that much. You can still just retain the fitness, push the power. Whereas running, think, really, I think it really responds to volume.

Josh (08:41.348)
Yeah. Now that makes a lot of sense. I've actually seen it a lot in my training. Jen and I talk about it all the time. I got an opportunity to go to Puerto Rico a month or so ago and just that one week of training just completely flipped my training for the rest of this block going into Oceanside and the volume's been able to respond and dropped like seven, eight, nine kilo and it's made a huge difference in the run. So definitely feel you on that one for sure.

Mark Matthews (09:08.482)
The thing about the weight is such a touchy subject in like modern thought, because if you push the narrative that light is faster, you run the risk of people making bad decisions. But the hard truth that no one ever says is that everything else being equal, lighter is faster. But the problem is maintaining everything else equal is the hard bit. As you lose weight, you become more injury prone or you may push less power or whatever it might be, but you are faster for it.

Jenna-Caer (09:38.837)
Definitely.

Josh (09:39.014)
Still gotta find a way to take 120, 140 grams of carbs an hour down too.

Mark Matthews (09:44.342)
And how nice is it that we now do that? Back when both of you did your first Ironman, yeah, you were running on 50 grams an hour, right? Because that's all you could really absorb. The sport has definitely become easier because of that as well, which I think means that you can rock up and do an Ironman off a lot less than maybe you used to be able to do.

Josh (09:46.662)
It feels good afterwards.

Jenna-Caer (09:47.08)
my goodness.

Jenna-Caer (09:52.922)
Definitely.

Jenna-Caer (10:02.936)
Yeah, we're definitely seeing some big jumps in performances across the board. And like you said, it's a combination of that fueling and then also the bike tech. Now everyone's absolutely obsessed with the aerodynamics. And if you're not playing that game, then you're just not in the mix anymore.

Mark Matthews (10:16.214)
Yeah, and I'm not that good a cyclist really. just, I think I understand how to push power and that comes from like having done it a long time. So don't go out and just hit your average power target. You know, you're not just trying to hit, if you're, if you're trying to ride 200 watts for your Ironman and you want to go five hours, 15 or whatever on the bike, the worst thing you can probably do is try and ride exactly 200 for five hours and 15. You need to know when to push power, can work. Lots of people talk about this. So I think that's just...

old knowledge that enables you to shortcut and make you look like a better cyclist than you are. And then the second one is tech, right? I steal loads of kit off Kat. I badger her sponsors and all. They're very nice to give me stuff. You know, I was rocking up relatively unfit for Talon last year in a custom made skin suit, you know, all fitted out. Everything was tricked, waxed chains, seals out of bearings, all sorts of nonsense. Cause I find it fun. And again, it just makes you look like a better cyclist than you actually are. But I'm very lucky that I have the time and resource to do that kind of stuff.

Josh (11:10.8)
Yeah.

Josh (11:14.918)
did you get into the tech side of it all? Was it because of CAD or was that something that you always kind of like tweaked around with your own stuff?

Mark Matthews (11:19.038)
No, always loved it. I think now, if I was one of those influencers that wanted to kind have a bit of social clout, I would claim I've got ADHD, and I'd self-diagnose and I'd talk about it endlessly. But the reality is it's probably slightly true. And the only thing that I ever find that I do where I will put my phone down and not do anything else for a long period of time is playing around with bikes in the garage. And I've done that since I was 12. I was building my own bikes for secondhand parts as a kid.

And then that just leads on to as your interest becomes more performance focused, you then just like to lean on. And I've got a bit of an engineering background and stuff like that. So I just, I kind of guess all those, all those things come together to make it a passion and it's a hobby rather than it is necessarily vital for performance. So me spending six hours in the garage tinkering with bearings for my bike for talent isn't because I think that gain is actually worth it.

It's because I enjoy the six hours in the garage tinkering, if that makes sense. So I'm not saying to people, you need to go and waste your time doing that. But if you enjoy it, there is probably some advantage to be found as well.

Josh (12:18.682)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (12:25.114)
That must have been a cool experience then at the Sub 7 Sub 8 project where you had a bunch of mines around the bike tech and trying to go as fast as possible and playing with some of those guys trying to dial it all in.

Mark Matthews (12:36.262)
Well, I think we missed out because Lucy dropped out deliberately very, very late. I don't know quite why. we kind of got the invite about four or five weeks out and we were basically on the way to St. George. I will say that's the best week in sport I've ever had. And I've been to, you know, all sorts of, whether it's like cross-country skiing events or crazy endurance competitions and stuff like that. It was the most fun I've had at a sports event.

Jenna-Caer (12:41.313)
so lucky. Yeah.

Josh (12:57.432)
Everything, yeah.

Mark Matthews (13:04.386)
We didn't get the time or resource to do the bike tech. So we didn't like showcase anything, but it allowed you to nerd out a little bit on, it was actually a logistical challenge that, and that was also fun. was like trying to find six girls that could push X number of power for however long you wanted working out without being able to practice what the best methods were. And then just getting, getting together all the other bits and pieces. But yeah, that was probably the most involved I've actively been because we didn't have anyone else like the others had.

custom wetsuits made and Joe Skipper's team or Alistair Brownlee's team. Alistair would have won that by so far if he was fit, just because of the swim. So far. But, you know, they had like Dan Bingham who broke the world hour record. And in the team they had Alex Dowsett who's like won multiple grand tour stages and six times British time. Like they geeked out and it showed on their bike time. What did they average? 56K an hour for 112 miles? What are you talking about? I mean, what? Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (13:34.97)
yeah. so bummed we didn't get to see that.

Jenna-Caer (13:57.786)
He was 555. Yeah, it was craziness.

Mark Matthews (14:01.836)
So, know, that's always a fun memory when that gets mentioned because it was a lot of fun.

Jenna-Caer (14:05.562)
that track was fun to ride on too. It so fast.

Mark Matthews (14:09.644)
Yeah, it was fast. Yeah. It was, it was a nuts, nuts event and, it got good coverage at the time, but it was, it was recognized as what it should be. It's not a record of any sort. It was just a standalone achievement, but because they had Christian Blumenthal there and you know, all that sort of stuff, it was awesome. I would love to see a repeat of it where you could pick your own teams and do something around it. It would be real. We would, we would jump at that opportunity.

Jenna-Caer (14:18.638)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (14:25.722)
All the best.

Jenna-Caer (14:35.578)
That'd be cool. They really got lucky with the athletes too, because that could have easily been a blowout on either side and it just would have been boring to watch the entire time.

Mark Matthews (14:43.424)
Yeah, I thought it was going to be a blow out on the men's side when Skipper swam that badly, but luckily his team, I mean, I can't believe how badly he I love Skipper. So back when I was racing as a kid, Skipper was racing. We used to race around these school fields when we were like 13 together. Yeah, he was shit as well, I will just say. He couldn't swim then either, but he was always a good cyclist and then he got better and better and better and better. But yeah, no, that was fun. And an Anhal grandpas cat, not Anhal, Nicholas Birig, sorry. Similar. Yeah, it was good.

Jenna-Caer (14:50.5)
the fake times.

Jenna-Caer (14:55.386)
Oh, no way.

Jenna-Caer (14:59.034)
you

Mark Matthews (15:13.208)
Brokid.

Jenna-Caer (15:14.97)
Sounds like you're going to be doing some long distance racing again this year. What do you got on the calendar outside of your car park super short distance?

Mark Matthews (15:24.11)
that's in a worryingly short amount of time. I'm doing Challenge Roth. I'll be honest, we're shamelessly doing it because it's a bucket list event, right? Everyone. I think if you do Iron Man, you should try and do Challenge Roth. Like it's kind of the mecca of long distance outside of Kona and actually as an athlete experienced by the sound of it, probably better. It's got lots of people there. Germany know how to throw a beer party and so there's that. I want to do it at some point. Challenge and Felix and...

who runs the event and Belinda Granger, who you'll have heard on commentary of your fans at the sport. She's kind of the pro athlete liaison for Challenge. They kind of want our podcast to go and do the live series there like we've done from Kona. So in return, we were like, chance for a couple of entries? So me and Kyle, who also does the podcast with me, are going to go and crack Challenge Roth.

Josh (16:16.208)
Who's going to be fitter?

Mark Matthews (16:18.828)
Relative to their own abilities at the moment, Kyle's on track. Yeah, I think Kyle is taking it much more seriously right now than I am. He's got himself a coach. He's banging out regular training. He's putting my hours to shame. But if you measure fitness in terms of speed and time, I would rather die than have Kyle beat me. So there's not, in my eyes, there's not much worry there, but we'll see. We'll see.

Josh (16:21.486)
Yeah, relative, relative. didn't say who's going to win.

Jenna-Caer (16:36.996)
Yeah.

Josh (16:46.214)
Alright, just put a few hours in so we don't want to lose you.

Mark Matthews (16:49.394)
No, no, I couldn't. I just couldn't face it. What I'm really bad at is I'm always like the crocodile closest to the boat. I have this grand idea every year, I've got to go really fast and I'll start training in January the 1st and then suddenly it's March and you're like, probably should start. And then it's six weeks out from a race, I'll really get going.

Josh (16:51.225)
You

Jenna-Caer (17:09.626)
Well, that kind of brings us to the podcast. So you're obviously on Pro Try News, and it's something that's become very popular over the last few years. You get a lot of insider info, which is really great to see and get a little bit more perspective on the sport outside of just the age group or experience. But how did that all start? It seems like the most random group of people, really, when you look from the outside. How'd you guys all get together?

Josh (17:09.84)
Be blocked.

Mark Matthews (17:30.83)
Yeah, I mean, the group, would say it is random, but me and Pat are very similar and Kyle and Talbot are the same person, essentially. They're two Oklahoma boys, know, Bible Belt South kind of grew up around the sport. They were hardcore fanboys of it. Best friends since they were kids. And then Pat essentially is Gwen Jorgensen's wag, though he's an agent on the side. He's an ex pro cyclist, so he's quite, quite athleticly good at that. He's quite kit minded.

Josh (17:39.654)
you

Mark Matthews (18:00.398)
We kind of two pairs on there. They had actually already started it. So the three of them started it and they started it because they basically every week would have a call where they talked about what was going on in the pro racing that weekend. And then after the racing, they would all call and like just talk about what happened. And then they were like, we should record this. But then very shortly after they started, it was Ironman Tulsa, which was a great race. I'm a shy sad that's gone. I kind of met.

Kyle and Talbot, I think they came over to shoot Patrick Langer in Texas when I was with him. And they knew that I was Kat's partner. And they were like, Oh, will you come on the show and talk about, you know, the race a bit with us? So I went on and it just kind of clicked. And then we went to their house after, after the race to record the post one, they got their guns out and they were trying to show us their guns. And there's an ex army girl, current army guy. I was a bit worried about these kind of lunatic yanks waving their guns around the kitchen. But anyway, we then carried on the pod and

We're like three years in now, what episode number are we? We must be on hundreds by now. So yeah, it's kind of, it's always amazing to me how many people actually listen to it. Cause it's a lot of shit and often we're wrong and often we, we just ramble and I'm, I'm amazed at how many nice people come up and say they really enjoy the pods at random places. And that's honestly the only reason any of us keep doing it because people seem to enjoy it.

Jenna-Caer (19:26.33)
That's definitely refreshing, especially after watching a lot of the content before is just pro YouTube channels and stuff and everything's very politically correct and making sure the sponsors are happy and no one upsets anyone. So it's nice to just have some opinions where people actually throw it out there and aren't afraid to ruffle some feathers or piss someone off once in a while.

Mark Matthews (19:47.79)
Yeah, like there's a tricky balance as well, because actually we are all... There was a podcast for a while called Try Starkey back in the day and he just, yeah, I mean, he just upset everyone. He just said some really crazy stuff. What we also, I think what we realized was missing in the sport was a pro-focused one. Like there's lots of podcasts that will tell you if you're an age group, is it best to do lots of zone two training or not, you know, or interview a coach on what his favorite method is or interview an athlete on what they do.

Jenna-Caer (19:56.106)
yeah.

Mark Matthews (20:16.363)
And there was nothing that was actually just trying to promote the pro sports specifically like a Formula One podcast that talks about the race last weekend, what the teams have been up to, who's going to drive for who and who's racing for who. So I think that we kind of, slotted into that. There was a niche in the market that those boys realized, which, you know, if you know, Carl and Talbot, it's amazing. They, recognized a niche in any sort of market, but, they did. we, we've kind of fallen into it.

Josh (20:26.736)
Yeah.

Mark Matthews (20:44.238)
And then the ruffling the feathers is a difficult balance because my wife's a professional athlete. She benefits financially from T100, from Ironman, from Canyon, from ex-sponsor. And someone you insult one day on a podcast might mean you don't get a contract in two years time. Pat Lemieux is an agent and he has to deal with all these people on behalf of his athletes. Talbot is, he relies on access to the pros for his content a lot of the time. He seems to care the least.

But I think people just expect that from Talbot. I think I say some of the most controversial stuff, but maybe slightly calculated that I'm happy to annoy people that are in the wrong. But as we know, I've fallen foul once or twice and been called out and briefly canceled and stuff like that. if I had to just be boring and say stuff that was never going to offend someone, I simply wouldn't do it. I don't want to sit for an hour and a half and pretend to have...

Jenna-Caer (21:13.434)
Yes.

Mark Matthews (21:41.6)
No opinion, just to keep everyone happy. Basically.

Josh (21:45.702)
But you're you're not, you're backing it up with your understanding of the sport, the industry. You're not just starting rumors or throwing out your opinion so much as you are saying, this is how I feel like the sport should be going based on where it has been, where, it is, where you think it should be going. I mean, you guys have done a great job with all the drafting stuff. mean, that is legit. Started to make a change and race ranger now being part of the sport. Like what are your takes on, on what you guys actually have had as.

have made as an impact.

Mark Matthews (22:16.738)
I mean, I think the biggest one, and it's all credit to Talbot, much as I knock those two as a joke, was actually the registered testing pool for World Triathlon to draw in T100. I don't care what they say. The only reason that T100 athletes that weren't being drug tested as part of a registered testing pool ended up on a registered testing pool funded and put on by World Triathlon was because Talbot started a survey.

to speak to every pro that we had access to because of the podcast, find out what testing pools they were on. Then we cross-referenced them to make sure it was accurate. And then we just presented this data that actually X number of people are not being routinely out of competition drug tested at all. And they're racing for a supposed world title at the T100. I mean, ridiculous, absolutely ludicrous. And it was Ironman actually funding all the bill pretty much for anti-doping in...

long distance triathlon, whilst T100 profited off Ironman's work, whilst also simultaneously deliberately trying to undermine Ironman for their own gain and status. And I think it's worked out pretty well for both of them. now both have successful series. That I think is the biggest thing where we had quick impact and it really showed. The drafting one is still yet to come to fruition. We get a lot of push back on that and...

I'm not as hard on it as Talbot. think drafting at the legal distance is actually part of the sport and that's why the distances are where they are set. I think the faster athletes go, the bigger that relative advantage gets, which is why the distance now needs to be extended. That's my maintained opinion. But the head referee and people at Ironman have been there a long, long time. And this guy used to say like, fact, you get no draft at 10 meters. I mean, that's just a lie. It's just an outright. It's just not, it's like something that would come out of Elon's mouth on Twitter.

Jenna-Caer (24:02.649)
Meh.

Mark Matthews (24:06.518)
It's just nonsense, right? So we're still struggling with Iron Man on that one a bit. We'll get there.

Jenna-Caer (24:07.034)
Thank you.

Jenna-Caer (24:13.755)
Yeah, and then they come back saying like, we can't have different rules for the age groupers versus the pros. There's not enough room for age groupers at 20 meters. It's like, okay, come on, you already have different rules for the age groupers and the pros. Pros aren't going to rock up and say, I didn't know.

Mark Matthews (24:23.751)
Exactly.

Yeah. then the excuses always are, know, when age group men get involved in pro women's fields, well, don't get me started on that problem. that, let's solve that. So that's not an issue. And then your NAF excuse for why you can't have two different rules is therefore no longer an issue. Like age group men getting involved in pro women's fields on the bike is so easy to fix. It should just be internally placed by the age group men and the pro females themselves with a bit of integrity. And

Josh (24:55.462)
Hmm.

Mark Matthews (24:56.596)
Why can't you even then, if you have an age group man, the pro female has to sit 20 meters behind them. If they've caught them, they're going to get dropped at that pace anyway. And then two age group men together can ride at 12 meters. It's just, it's a bad excuse in my opinion.

Jenna-Caer (25:02.349)
Exactly.

Josh (25:10.533)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (25:11.928)
Now, and you guys were talking about potentially doing some testing around that 20 meters with some aerial sensors and stuff. Is that something that we're going to see or is that challenging?

Mark Matthews (25:19.352)
Well, the kind of... Actually, I'll give a big kudos to... We almost ruined a whole thing that... PTN? No, that's us. Help me out. GTN. GTN, thank you. They were going to do this already. And they've got some race ranging units and they've started doing some work on it and they're doing it across a period of time. And we suddenly said... But they hadn't told anyone. And we suddenly said we were going to do this. And it...

Josh (25:30.33)
GTN.

Jenna-Caer (25:31.044)
Keep it.

Jenna-Caer (25:34.734)
Yep.

Mark Matthews (25:44.334)
would kind of have slammed on some plans they had for some content they wanted. They want theirs more for content than anything else. And we like those guys. I think that sort of kind of took the impetus out of it a little bit. But the other one was we don't need to do it now because Ironman have essentially recognized it. So Jimmy Riccatello, who's the head ref about Ironman, he said, well, the study will just show you that of course you get less draft at 20 meters than 12 meters. I was like, okay. So now what's your argument?

This is

Josh (26:14.31)
I thought there was no draft after 10.

Mark Matthews (26:16.95)
It changes, mate, people's minds. As people should change, I admire the lack of stubbornness that you change your mind. I would like to have seen the study done. I offer to do it. We'll see. We'll see if it's still required. We have different ideas of how we would do it. I would do it much more scientifically, probably using this long 2K tunnel we have here in the UK that's like a controlled environment. Whereas Talbot wants to do it more based around some content for Lionel's channel and stuff like that.

I if it comes to it now, what you'll get is if they won't recognise this, we will do a quick scientific, fairly unglamorous, but fairly hard to argue against piece.

Josh (26:58.982)
Do you think that all of these leagues, organizations can continue to coexist or do you kind of see short course falling off or, mean, because of the Olympic short course is always going to be around. And how does, how do you see super try and world triathlon and T 100 and Ironman all coexisting going forward?

Mark Matthews (27:19.822)
unamicably as always. Short course will continue to exist as long as it maintains itself as an Olympic event and partly because the Olympics is prestigious around lots of the world it becomes less so but actually when you have amazing games like we had the last Olympics Paris was a super success the viewing figures were absolutely through the roof sponsorship associated was massive so the Olympics thanks to Paris and kind of an amazing Olympics they seem to have redeemed themselves a bit and I'm talking across all sports rather than just triathlon there.

Triathlon short course will exist as long as it stays in the Olympics. The other nice thing about that is it naturally leads into a healthy pathway. Athletes can be developed as juniors running relatively safe distances for young athletes. There's kind of inexpensive for parents, et cetera. They can do lots of short races and then they end up trying to go to the Olympics. Then the natural step off for them becomes where the money is now. There's much more money outside of short course and the T100 fills that next stepping gap probably quite neatly, but it's a small field.

So then how do you get into that field? you were not a superstar at the Olympics style, you're not going to feed straight into the T100. So where else do you go? Well, you go to Ironman, you go to Challenge. then whilst age groupers still want to the sport and they're doing it in bigger numbers than ever this year, or certainly since COVID, know, registrations are through the roof for Ironman. Ironman will exist because they're making a lot of money out of it. And whilst amateurs exist buying $15,000 bikes.

bike companies or pay pros to ride them. So I think they're going to kind of have to coexist. think the most likely to slide away is someone that relies on a new funding source, which is T100 right now. They don't have a sustainable age group fields. They can't internally monetize through age groupers like Ironman does, and they rely on funding. And that funding I think is kind of promised up against viewership figures.

And so if anything drops away, will be that because they haven't realised this dream, but it would be a shame.

Jenna-Caer (29:24.59)
Yeah, we're definitely seeing them make the shift more towards an Ironman model where they're trying to get age group racing on the side to have a bit more sustainability it looks like within the sport.

Mark Matthews (29:32.568)
What do you guys think of that?

Jenna-Caer (29:35.672)
It's interesting. You know, I think it was pretty obvious pretty early on and we've seen anyone with super tri people like to watch triathlon, but not enough that it's sustainable to have a long-term business model. It's just not going to be a thing. Ironman is the monolith has been around forever and there's a reason for that. They charge a lot of money to do these events and they have the name and the brand behind it.

T100, I'm kind of curious to see how they go. There's one saying you did a T100 isn't a big thing right now. No one knows or cares compared to saying I did an Ironman. But the funny thing I've been seeing from athletes that I coach looking at T100 is some of them are shying away from doing the 100K distance because the swim is longer in relation to the bike and the run, which is so funny because it's such a mind grouper or age grouper mindset in there. But that's legitimately turning people away. Yeah.

Mark Matthews (30:17.9)
Yeah.

Mark Matthews (30:24.27)
And it's such a small amount longer. Yeah. It's such a small amount longer. And the people that are shying away from the extra hundred aren't going to be winning their age group because they can't swim an extra hundred. So why does it really matter? But I see the same thing. I agree. I wonder though, Pat made the good point that though they haven't announced all their races on our podcast yesterday, recorded Pat pointed out that with Ironman being so full, will T100 benefit from their overflow? Okay. I can't do these two 70.3s I wanted to do. Well, I'll go to T100 London instead.

Josh (30:27.152)
Yeah.

Mark Matthews (30:53.528)
That could be true.

Jenna-Caer (30:53.754)
The interesting, yeah, the thing with T100 too is they're charging Ironman prices for not quite that Ironman prestige yet. I know at least in Canada, the T100 is more expensive than the Ironman 70.3s over here. So, curious to see how that'll play out.

Mark Matthews (31:08.814)
Yeah, and it didn't start out like that today either.

Josh (31:13.43)
No, I think, I mean, the other thing that we talk about too is because of the expense. don't think you're going to see the numbers of people traveling to get to a T 100 event that you see traveling to get to an Ironman destination that they've known about and put on their list for years. Whereas now T 100 is still adding destinations and okay, well, let me plan five years before I get there. Well, will it be around in five years? I guess is the question and.

Jenna-Caer (31:14.242)
Yeah.

Josh (31:40.516)
That's always something like our bucket list or where can I travel to go race? And T100 is just now starting to attract that.

Mark Matthews (31:43.971)
Yeah.

Mark Matthews (31:48.022)
I mean, even this year alone, I think they've only got exact dates and registration open for four of their eight, five, you know, they've still got races. They've just moved the date of Vegas. And I think if they really want to monetize long distance triathlon age group participation, come midsummer, May, June, July, whatever, they need to announce all their dates and locations for next year. And that's the only way you will get real hype and excitement about filling up your races, I would say.

Jenna-Caer (31:55.492)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (32:15.258)
That being said, from what I've heard from age groupers is the ones who have done them absolutely loved the experience, got some great swag and they've had a blast with it. So if that word of mouth can spread then definitely see some pick up.

Mark Matthews (32:23.714)
Yeah, correct. Yeah. I've you're right. The swag super good. The age group experience is super good. If you're a fan as well, like if you are, if you follow the pro sport and you do it yourself, why not? I mean, you've got to see Taylor Nibbs smack down the field. You'll see Van Riel, Yellow Gaines, Hayden Wild, you'll see Kyle Smith. You'll see all these amazing athletes go properly duking for it. And you can watch them because they always race on the closed course. It'll be separate to your weekend.

I can see the appeal, I could see it working at the moment. think they're just struggling with confirming locations, times, stuff like that.

Josh (32:59.812)
And it sounds like they're trying to be conscious of when the other leagues are scheduling their races and their world championships and a lot of that. Do they actually? Yeah.

Mark Matthews (33:09.662)
shit. I'm not having it, mate. No, I'm not having it. I'm not having it. They had a race the week before Kona last year. I think one of their races is slipping into basically clashing with 70.3 Worlds. I would say, honestly, if they thought they were number one, they wouldn't remotely consider it. I think that they have to recognize that if Taylor and Vaughn Martin and whoever else wants to race Kona...

Jenna-Caer (33:16.686)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (33:21.462)
right before.

Mark Matthews (33:35.714)
they will not do your race or your series if you had three races that conflict with it, for instance. So yes, I think you're maybe you're right. Maybe I was harsh that they probably are cognizant of it, but not for any kind of reason of good sport or charity.

Josh (33:48.752)
Cognizant, but not actually making the determinations based off of it. Like they know it's there.

Mark Matthews (33:53.826)
Yeah, they're clashing a bit, but I think maybe they would happily clash much more if they thought they were number one, if that makes sense.

Josh (34:04.026)
Now you're, coaching athletes too. What are you, how are your athletes approaching this and how many athletes are you coaching? Let's talk about your, your, coaching life. How much drive do get from that?

Mark Matthews (34:12.088)
Mm.

I coach very little now. I did quite a lot. I did quite a lot of age grouping stuff and I've worked with a couple of pros and things like that. Yeah, I coach less now. We were on the road so much last year that I wasn't in good faith putting the right focus into what I would have and should have done. So I don't think it's fair to just carry on to take the money to put in a half-assed product. I coach a couple of young pro. coach... A young female pro is my kind of main passion project at the moment.

And I think if I do coaching more and more, I would like to coach Neo pros and probably do it pro bono as I do now, because pro coaching is so expensive. It's prohibitive. And I think they often get overcharged and oversold a really bad product. So I enjoy that side. And what I do more than anything is kind of consulting. So some like I will chat to people routinely that want help in certain areas, whether it be nutrition or whatever, or

managing advice, I speak to other pros about contracts, should they be signing or is this agent doing the right thing? And I get way more satisfaction out of that than I do building a training picks because age group coaching, that's pretty much what it is. You you might get a few that you're really passionate about, but actually a lot of people were just belt feeding, copy and pasted training picks programs and charging $400 a month for it.

Jenna-Caer (35:25.796)
Yes.

Mark Matthews (35:41.076)
It's a good living and perhaps I should do it more to kind of future proof ourself. But whilst Kat's kind of paying the bills right now in a fairly magnificent fashion, it just doesn't fill me with any joy to fleece a bunch of age groups to try and make a living. If I start doing that as Kat retires in five years time, we can come on and delete this podcast. for now, no, I like to coach when I enjoy it, when I like working with someone and then I really enjoy it.

Jenna-Caer (35:59.353)
you

Mark Matthews (36:10.402)
I will say I read into it professionally a lot and I would consider myself a knowledgeable coach. But again, that's mainly passion driven and kind of for different reasons than actually physically coaching too much.

Josh (36:23.736)
And time consuming, like you said. So you got to have the time to do it. Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (36:23.93)
Yeah. Well, speaking of Kat and following her around now, the T100 series last year, she definitely made her mark on it. I want to know, hear a lot about a lot from the athletes, what it's like being a part of the series, but what's it like on the other side from like you've been, I think nominated number one wag in the sport there. So what's it like from the other side with the supporters behind the T100 racing?

Mark Matthews (36:25.61)
so time consuming and it should be time consuming.

Mark Matthews (36:46.638)
That was Joe Skipper's podcast. Firstly, I am not the number one magwag at all. mean, Eric Langstrom has surely got that sewn up. That guy's capacity for work is unbelievable. Paul is like cat, you know, go on, go on Josh.

Jenna-Caer (36:57.508)
Thank

Josh (37:00.984)
I was, I was going to say earlier, we need a bike tech with Mark and Eric podcast.

Jenna-Caer (37:07.14)
There we go.

Mark Matthews (37:07.406)
yeah, I think Eric's certainly better than me on the mountain bike side. he's, he's SRAM. I'm Shimano. So we would, we would have differing opinions on that. Now Eric. Yeah, possibly. Now Eric's, I admire Eric for his capacity to work. You know, he's, they've established a brand, a clothing line, a team. They've made endless YouTube videos that you could watch on mute because they are so aesthetically beautiful. In that same time, he's won 70.3.

Josh (37:16.696)
You cover the whole world then.

Mark Matthews (37:36.046)
races himself and he supports Paula. And I think he's made a movie now that they're launching. Like that capacity for work is amazing. So when people call me wag of the year, it's absolutely laughable when literally all I might do is pump up some bike tires in a day and call it a hard day's work. It's laughable. But to the question, it's amazing. The T100, the biggest thing about not signing it this year was how much fun it was. That was honestly almost the real draw factor to it for me and Kat and for the athletes.

you, they put you up in hotels. So you arrive, you get picked up from the airport. You're in the same hotel as everyone else. It's all the athletes are in one big hotel. You're all at breakfast together. You quickly have your same friendship groups. obviously Kat and Indy and then whoever else we kind of forced Taylor Nibb to eat meals with us to be social. which I think she enjoys. And then there's also like the bike mechanics room, which is where Kat calls it the husband crash.

because like they have these three bike mechanics, they have a fridge in there that's invariably filled with beer. And at any one time there'll be five different husbands or boyfriends just hanging out with the mechanics in his bike crush. There's normally some Imogen Simmons, boyfriend's a good lad. He, me and him have been known to have a few beers on these things and there's normally an after party. And then there's always gossip as well, which is great. So I can say they are unbelievably good at looking after the pros, the T100. So as much as I bag on them at times.

They have a couple of members of staff like Dylan McNamese and Ronan and a few others that make an unbelievably cool experience.

Jenna-Caer (39:12.772)
When it comes to on the day racing, you find kind of the supporters or partners of the athletes or you guys hanging out watching the race together, cheering athletes on? What does race day look like with you guys?

Mark Matthews (39:22.872)
There's different approaches to that. and some are more standoff than others. Some won't talk to you. Some, you know, wouldn't cheer on another husband or wife or whatever, but by and large, the most are quite good friends. So yeah, you hang out with the same people as well. Like you kind of, you kind of make friends with people. And even if, you know, they're battling out, there's no real, I give splits to loads of other pros, even if they're racing cat, I'm fairly well known for that.

Jenna-Caer (39:25.23)
Okay.

Jenna-Caer (39:49.388)
not hiding the board as other athletes go by.

Mark Matthews (39:51.79)
I couldn't say Taylor talked to Taylor called out Sam Proctor, who is image and Andy Lee's coach and a really good friend of ours for hiding the board as she went by. And his response was, what the fuck did you want me to write? You're winning. Like

Jenna-Caer (39:55.684)
Yeah.

Josh (40:05.638)
By 15 minutes.

Mark Matthews (40:08.002)
There were three dead turns in that course a lap. You're winning by five minutes, mate. Like I'm not hiding the board. I just got nothing to tell you. He's the nicest guy. He'd cheer for anyone. So when she called him out for that, he was like, what do you want from me? Like, so I thought that was a bit unfair, but now you definitely get some that will hide the board. and Philip Seep have had endless times on courses together racing and he, he has this like, aura of being a bit German and standoffy and like hard to talk to, but it's just, it's just not true.

Josh (40:11.718)
Ha ha ha.

Mark Matthews (40:37.74)
He's actually a really nice guy. He's just as invested in Laura's performance as I am as in Katz. yeah, the race days is always good fun. And then straight after the T100 race, all the athletes tend to head to VIP where me and the likes of Jared, Emma, Palance, boyfriend, and whatever, we'll do power drinking before we get forced to go and collect the bikes. And yeah, it's almost like a badge of pride. Who's got the bikes back to the hotel to get to the bar first, you know, who is the most efficient support athlete of like...

begging the transition to let you in, steal the bike and Kat will think it's because I'm looking after her really it's just to get to the bar.

Josh (41:13.412)
When, what, speaking of cat and T 100, that's all started in Miami with, all know the wonderful lighting issues and everything else. But on a bigger picture, could you have ever foreseen the year that your wife was about to have when you're running around that track yelling at her to get off?

Mark Matthews (41:21.614)
Yeah.

Mark Matthews (41:32.098)
Well,

I'm glad you say yelling at her to get off. That clip went bloody viral, didn't it? It looks like we're having it. think anyone that thought that didn't understand what, yeah, anyone that didn't understand the conversation that was going on knows nothing about sports. Like she had DNF'd in Cone over the year before. She'd luckily had an in between race and bar range she won. And she was just basically walking along with a torn calf, like really quite badly ruptured, crying her eyes out saying she was going to finish. And of course I'm just going.

Josh (41:38.959)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (41:39.564)
Yeah.

Josh (41:42.576)
caring about her.

Josh (41:48.175)
Yeah.

Mark Matthews (42:03.8)
You're not fucking walking 16 K in the dark. What are you talking about? And it so was just a, it was just me trying to plead with her to come off the track. after that, did I think she'd have as good a season? I must admit, I don't think I really doubted her at all after that, because she's just, she's a bit like Wolverine. Her ability to recover and focus and regenerate is amazing. When we got an MRI quite quickly afterwards that showed it was a bad tear, I thought we might have to juggle the season a bit.

I think I probably pushed to keep us trying to do the Iron Man series more, to keep Kat trying to do the Iron Man series more. I don't know whether that was slightly selfish, whether it was because I completely believed she could do it or whether I just thought that having something to focus on was the right thing. So I think I probably pushed to keep us going to Texas early. But then as soon as she's done one run, she's like, it's fine. I'll run a 250 if I need to. And it's a fairly freakish ability that she can...

Kat can do 10K running in a week after an injury and she'll finish the week or finish a 10K run and she'll be like, it's fine, I can run a sub three. Me, I'm not running a marathon after that, but she's just got this running ability.

Jenna-Caer (43:11.034)
Now when it comes to T100, obviously this year she's going to focus on the Ironman Pro Series. Are we going to see her jumping into any last minute spots for some of the T100 races or is T100 not allowing that with athletes who turn down contracts?

Mark Matthews (43:20.462)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Matthews (43:30.9)
Yeah, so we mentioned this maybe last week on our podcast, the current policy is that if you turn down a contract, you are not invited to have a wildcard. And it makes perfect sense in one hand, stops people. Let's write. So Taylor Nibb does not need the hundred and X thousand dollars that she gets to sign the contract. She's got lots of money. She doesn't spend a lot of it. She's happy. So if you're, if you allow all the wildcards, why wouldn't Taylor Nibb just turn down the contract so she doesn't have to do all the certain obligations?

She's world number one, so she can roll onto any race she wants as a wild card, because there were wild cards at every single race. She could win your series, do none of your media work, do none of that side commitment. Should be X amount of dollars off, but it would give her total freedom to adjust her series, her season. So I get why that rule would exist, but at the same time, it's completely prohibitive. at the moment, if you don't get a contract, sorry, if you turn down a contract, you can't do a race.

I think they will change that to something like you can do two or three because you can't then be competitive in the series, but they can lean on and draw in these celebrity athletes that did turn the contracts down to race. I didn't answer your question there. I've got no idea if Kat will do one or not. The obvious one will be London if she fancies it.

Jenna-Caer (44:32.281)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (44:45.518)
Fair enough. Yeah, and that's a shame.

Mark Matthews (44:46.19)
But think if she, there's a risk to that, right? If you're absolutely destroying the Ironman series, and I'm not suggesting Kat definitely will, but I say Laura Philipp takes on the Ironman series. She's absolutely destroying it. Why would she then risk going and getting beaten at a T100? Because it kind of makes her achievements that year look secondhand. You know, yeah, but Taylor and Ashley would beat her, or Julie would beat her. Why not? If you're doing really well in one, I think it almost incentivizes you not to do the other ones slightly more.

Jenna-Caer (45:16.986)
Yeah, I think at the high end that's true. When you're looking at kind of those middle-ish tier pros in there, the T100 just gives a lot of coverage and I guess more potential to go up there, but you can see why the big names maybe wouldn't want to go up against people dominating T100.

Mark Matthews (45:30.794)
Yeah, think though they are such fun events and they do get good coverage. think if Cat's healthy and all that sort of stuff, think she would dip into one or two if invited for sure, because they are fun.

Josh (45:45.67)
But chasing one of those big fat checks that says $200,000 at the end of the year is pretty nice to do too. And I'm sure that was a pretty big factor in the decision on which way you went.

Mark Matthews (45:55.21)
Yeah, the money is actually like, if you win one or win the other, depending on how many races you won on the way to get there, the money is even if you factor in the signing fee for T100, the money is probably remarkably similar. So yes, Ironman now having this ability to earn big checks is great, but I don't think it's necessary money decision. I think it's more that...

Kat's come second at two Ironman World Champs. She's come second at 270.3 World Champs. She wants a World Championships. And one of the series includes that. The other one doesn't. So you have to do it on top where you do it as part of. And also Ironman are actually, they've become way better at looking after pros. They often have accommodation now. They have athlete hotels at some of the big European races, or they'll put their better pros up at other races. Their media guys are the same people. you know, they kind of are...

generating that event experience that you get with T100 at their own of races. So we just quite like Ironman as well. I get on with a lot of people in the company, so does Kat. They've always shown her lot of respect and they have the big event. They have Kona.

Josh (47:10.362)
Did Ironman do anything with their pro scheduling of races this year? Cause I noticed that they just opened 70.3 George for, for a little window, but like that became kind of a debacle where everyone came wharfs of the world just signed up for every race and there was no more spots left.

Mark Matthews (47:26.376)
Cam Worth in New Zealand, because Cam Worth is racing Ironman New Zealand supposedly this weekend, so we need to see if he's actually turning up to a start line.

Josh (47:32.494)
if he's actually gonna show up.

Jenna-Caer (47:33.645)
No.

Mark Matthews (47:35.23)
So my theory is that they have done something. They are not publicizing what it is, but I think they are doing that so they can make discretionary slots available for high profile athletes. And sometimes bureaucracy can limit you doing stuff that you wrote the policy to try and do. So if you write a policy that's based around certain world rankings and points, and if you're above X line, we're allowed to let you win even if it's full, we've held these slots, blah, blah, blah.

There's always a case where Jan Frodeno says, I want to make a comeback. quite like to race Frankfurt. And they go, we've wrote a policy where we can't let you in. Whereas if you don't publicize this policy, you're kind of given this flexibility. So I'm sure they have it because the Norwegians announced the day they entered Oceanside and the entry had been long closed on the website. So I'm certain that they put something in place and having spoke to Ironman, I kind of know they have. And I think it's right. You know, I don't like this idea that...

actually getting a slot to an Iron Man series event is whether you stayed up till midnight to book your slot like you're booking your spin class at the gym that always fills up. That shouldn't be how we decide world titles.

Jenna-Caer (48:37.08)
Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (48:43.546)
Well, especially with some countries, qualifications are easier than others to get a pro license. So there are definitely a number of pros that are debatable.

Mark Matthews (48:50.6)
Yeah. And actually weirdly more countries are making it easier than they are hard. Like yours is notoriously easy. So American, are some, so some of you, had the gateway races before we did. So if you do X at one of your national championships or whatever, then you can get a license. now we have a bunch of those gateway races as well. And I think there's a big difference between being an elite and being a pro. And I think like...

Jenna-Caer (48:56.089)
Yeah.

Mark Matthews (49:18.104)
having an elite license means you can race in the elite category. think if you're truly a professional, you have some money earning capacity or potential. And I think a lot of elite triathletes aren't professional triathletes. And when those elite triathletes entry impinges on the earning of professional triathletes and the results of professional triathletes, you're kind of merging these two types of athlete to the detriment of the

those that it is their profession.

Josh (49:49.444)
No, there is no minor leagues.

Mark Matthews (49:51.246)
Challenge me on that by the way, that is a fairly elitist opinion of it, but do remember I'm certainly not one of those.

Jenna-Caer (49:59.618)
No, no, that's fair. it definitely it's interesting to see the different qualifications like Canada here is significantly different than the US compared to the UK. And it's you definitely see that within the pros who are racing within the Ironman series two, can have quite the range.

Mark Matthews (50:11.83)
I think Spain, you've gone sub, yeah, I think Spain, if you've gone sub nine hours or it might even be sub 9.15 at an Ironman, you can just buy it. I mean, yeah. And if you, you know, if you want to go to Chattanooga and do a down river swim or California or whatever, going sub 9.15 is, you know, you would be two hours behind what is possible on that sort of course. And all you had to do is pay for a license and you're on the start list.

Jenna-Caer (50:20.418)
really?

Jenna-Caer (50:28.676)
You did.

Jenna-Caer (50:36.954)
It's good to hear that they're putting some things in place so that we can actually get some of the pronates. I think it was Alistair last year missed out on kind of doing the Iron Man Pro Series. Yeah, because he can get into Texas. So was like, okay, there's a problem.

Mark Matthews (50:43.181)
Texas wasn't it?

Josh (50:43.494)
access.

Mark Matthews (50:47.968)
I wonder about that. I do wonder. I don't think that's, I've never actually asked him about it. I think Ironman would have bent over backwards to have Alistair Brownlee racing in that race. I think he probably looked on it, saw it was full and changed his mind and changed his plans rather than pushed Ironman because there's no way Ironman would have said no to Alistair Brownlee on the list. Just for one extra bib number, no way. In my opinion.

Josh (51:11.974)
Seems odd.

Jenna-Caer (51:11.995)
He tends to bring some attention.

Mark Matthews (51:13.762)
But yes, you're right. It was an issue last year, these lists filling up and it became contentious. I don't think we'll see it this year. Hopefully.

Jenna-Caer (51:21.05)
good to see. Well, we have a couple of kind of quickfire questions that we usually ask our guests on here. So if you don't mind, we'll run through some of those just kind of silly stuff. Nothing too serious. We have gotten some interesting ones through there. So we'll start with what's the weirdest thing you've ever eaten during a race or training? Maybe you're bonked on the side of the road, have to get something from the closest gas station. Have you ever had anything interesting to get you through?

Mark Matthews (51:30.264)
Go for it.

Josh (51:31.984)
some good answers I think coming.

Mark Matthews (51:46.478)
No, just, I eat a lot of shit. I actually go salt. would smash, I've eaten a whole tube of Pringles sat on a gas station, just smashed a whole tube of Pringles to get home. Nothing particularly weird. I don't think I've ever been that remote. I mean, I've had, I always used to have like full English fry up at the cafe stop. And I mean like, I mean like black pudding, bacon, sausages, eggs, fried toast, everything, and then do a chain gang home. And I don't know how my adult stomach would handle that now, but my 15 year old stomach seems better do it.

Jenna-Caer (52:16.352)
Definitely be interesting.

Josh (52:18.138)
Mark and I were bantering on Instagram the other day to try and get Patrick to get Katta a Pringles sponsorship.

Mark Matthews (52:24.014)
Yeah, I would love her to have a pro, but there was joke of a Domino's sponsorship for a pro athlete would be awesome, like a fast food one. Because there is that Swiss girl, there's a Swiss girl that has McDonald's as a sponsor. What a legend. Yeah, that's so cool. But yeah, that's why. Oh, God. Whatever those potatoes they use a cord. Go on next one. What have we got?

Jenna-Caer (52:24.974)
That'd be good.

Josh (52:31.205)
Ha

Jenna-Caer (52:35.297)
really?

Josh (52:38.736)
McDonald's fries, there's your salt, your carbs.

Jenna-Caer (52:40.653)
All the floriome needs.

Josh (52:44.784)
Ha ha ha.

Jenna-Caer (52:44.794)
So if you had to a triathlon paired with another pro, who would it be and why? So this could be someone who would make you go faster or who would just be fun to spend an hour with. Sorry, April.

Mark Matthews (52:53.996)
Right. Let's not say another pro. Let's be very clear. I'm not another pro. Who would I have? They would have to be a decent swimmer. I mean, I would have to have someone I could have fun with that is big that I could get a lot of draft off. I would say Laidlow, but having briefly ridden with Laidlow in Australia, I have never seen easy looking power like it.

Jenna-Caer (53:09.806)
There you go.

Jenna-Caer (53:17.498)
Pretty slippery.

Mark Matthews (53:20.558)
He will sit at 260 Watts, 270 Watts, like 27, 28 mile an hour on the hood, just chatting away to you like it's nothing. But he's quite a big guy. I could draft him. We both have the same bike. We would look good as a pair. And I could probably, if he runs like he did in Kona, I'd probably outrun him as well. So I'd say laid-back.

Jenna-Caer (53:34.901)
Get the shots from.

Josh (53:42.8)
see a future sponsored Canyon race coming.

Mark Matthews (53:46.19)
he would be so frustrated, honestly. So frustrated.

Jenna-Caer (53:52.89)
But if you had to give up one segment in triathlon for life, swimming, biking, or running, which one would it be? Can't do it again ever.

Mark Matthews (53:57.314)
for life.

So interestingly, I would give up swimming, even though we talked about my running. think the freedom of running and when you actually enjoy running, running is beautiful. It's all you need is a pair of trainers, you can go outside. Staring at the black line and the bottom of the swimming pool is rarely enjoyable. And the worst you get at it, you can't lie about it either. You can go running and pretend it's uphill in the headwind and the same on the bike, but the pool clock just doesn't lie. When you're shit, you're shit. And it just reminds me every time I swim that I'm shit now. So it would be swimming.

Jenna-Caer (54:02.488)
Really?

Mark Matthews (54:29.72)
for that reason.

Jenna-Caer (54:31.098)
Gotcha. And if Trapon had a fourth discipline, what would be an activity that you would add that would give you the advantage there? would be anything.

Mark Matthews (54:38.038)
It's so obvious. It's so obvious. Right, yeah, it's four pints pre-race, it's four pints in T1 and it's four pints in T2. And I would give that a real whack. Yeah. Though if it had to be a sport, I would probably add something like cross-country skiing in there because I used to be quite handy at it. But beer would be the one.

Josh (54:40.282)
I was going to say outside of the bar.

Josh (54:49.83)
Beer Mile to the extreme.

Jenna-Caer (55:03.994)
I mean, beer mail is a sport. You could do that.

Mark Matthews (55:06.38)
Yeah, it is. actually the problem is they, the beer milers, those little bottles, isn't it? And they are insanely fast. Cody, whatever his name is, the Canadian is unbelievable. I would, I would have to like do it on length and just add more and more pints and just keep going until it's just a kind of attrition race. Yeah. But that would be my, that would be my race. Yeah.

Jenna-Caer (55:21.721)
Ha ha.

Josh (55:23.024)
Beer half marathon.

Jenna-Caer (55:27.08)
One year I challenged Jens Voigt to a beer mile and he could chug the beers so much faster. I was running a lot faster, but he could just like open his throat, drink it down. It was just like, had no shot. So if you chug fast enough, Jens Voigt, yeah, did a lot of work with Tour de France for a while, but yeah, he can chug insanely fast.

Mark Matthews (55:35.616)
Yeah. Who was that you challenged? Who was that you challenged? wow. Yeah, cool.

Mark Matthews (55:46.222)
Well, he's from one of those kind of Flemish countries, isn't it, where beer is just life, you know, so, well, not Flemish German, but you know, whatever.

Jenna-Caer (55:51.578)
Yeah, can a test. So what's your guilty pleasure song that gets you pumped up during training? Or do you just act like robot and listen to nothing, which I've heard some people say, which blows my mind.

Mark Matthews (56:05.838)
No, that's sick. Weirdos. have the most, I have the absolute most eclectic music taste. I'm actually a bit of a diehard sort of nineties, early 2000s hip hop fan. So my like the go-to album would be Dre 2001 for instance, is in my opinion, the best album ever made. But if you, if you went onto my, your top songs of 2024, it would go, I mean, straight away I've scrolled down. I've got Simon Says by Pharrell Munch, which is like a massive hip hop tune. And the next one is Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison.

Jenna-Caer (56:16.514)
next.

Jenna-Caer (56:20.602)
you

Mark Matthews (56:35.79)
And then we go to how we do by the game and 50 cent. then we're on to Jolene by Dolly Parton. So yeah, I would, there's not a lot of classical music in there, but everything else in between, not a lot of pop either. I'm not, I'm not really a pop guy, but yeah, Dread 2001, the album would be my go-to.

Jenna-Caer (56:42.958)
That is some range.

Jenna-Caer (56:55.78)
Well, last one I'll throw at you here. What is a piece of advice that you've gotten over the years that really kind of resonated with you?

Mark Matthews (57:02.746)
To keep it triathlon specific, a guy I really, really admired and a very good friend of mine, he said, Ironman is just about being comfortable, being uncomfortable. And the person that can find comfort in the discomfort will always do well. And I think it resonates so often in Ironman because you'll be sitting there and your back will hurt a little bit and you want to sit up at the bars, but you just have to recognize that it's meant to be uncomfortable. People that want a bike fit because the bike is uncomfortable.

TT bikes aren't designed to be comfortable. All your feet hurt or you're hungry or you're thirsty. And then you can take that into any walk of life. It's just finding comfort and discomfort. I quite like as a quote.

Josh (57:43.17)
My, my towel on my trainer bike right now is comfortably uncomfortable. Yeah.

Mark Matthews (57:47.894)
No way. Huh, I love that. Yeah, okay, I would buy that towel and I don't buy memorabilia or anything like that, but I would have purchased that towel.

Josh (57:51.556)
Yeah, it's a good one.

Josh (57:56.334)
I believe it's actually a Matt Wolper's Peloton instructor slogan or something that he uses that I got along the way somewhere. But yeah, that was what I put out, put down for my three and a half ride last night.

Mark Matthews (58:04.078)
Ugh.

Mark Matthews (58:08.046)
three and a half hours on the turbo. It's a long time on the turbo that. It's just, it's a long grind.

Josh (58:10.0)
Yeah.

It made looking forward to the three mile run off easy.

Mark Matthews (58:18.466)
God, a brick run. No, man, I never do bricks, ever. I can't bring myself, it's the administration of it. I don't actually coach with bricks. I've never set anyone a brick session in coaching, ironically, and I know we're kind of adding stuff on there. Yeah, and I think mainly for good athletes. I think if you're getting into triathlon, it makes sense to learn the sensation, but I kind of view every brick run as compromised training. one of your runs becomes compromised.

Josh (58:31.376)
That's interesting.

Jenna-Caer (58:33.667)
Yeah.

Mark Matthews (58:45.772)
You're tired, you're depleted before you start it. So you don't realize the gains you would from that run. So what's the point? Once you've proven you can run off the bike. So don't be listening to this as it's your first Ironman. think you're never going to do one.

Jenna-Caer (58:53.966)
Yeah.

That's the big thing.

Yeah, that's a big name, especially those newer athletes when they're just mind is blown how their legs feel off the bike those first few times. just like, no, it's not.

Mark Matthews (59:05.93)
And let's be honest, I should probably should be doing some bricks the way I run in talent. maybe I should maybe I should ignore my own advice and get some of those banks.

Josh (59:13.594)
that body remembering how to do it again.

Mark Matthews (59:14.83)
Hmm.

Jenna-Caer (59:15.918)
There we go. Well, thank you so much, Mark, for joining us today. It was fun to get a little bit of insight into you and podcasting, a little bit more insight into the industry as well. If you guys haven't already, go check out ProTri News. They've got an awesome podcast that comes out every week. But thanks again for joining us.

Mark Matthews (59:31.554)
Thank you very much for having me and I love what you're doing. Good luck with it.

Josh (59:34.842)
Thanks Mark.