August 12, 2021
### [00:00:00] Intro Quote
[00:00:00] **Brian Frank:** Experts are saying, well, you know, there's a lot of research out there that says, you know, high sodium diet are co contributors or directly contribute to a lot of diseases that Americans suffer from high blood pressure, heart disease and so many others.
But if you're an athlete and you're going to do a triathlon or a marathon or whatever, salts your friend, the more, the better load up.
I just can't understand this kind of disconnect, this whole conflict where it's bad for your health, but it's good for your performance if you're an athlete.
### [00:00:35] Episode Intro
[00:00:35] **Kevin Chang:** Hello and welcome to the RaceMob podcast. This is episode number 59. I'm Kevin entrepreneur technology and fitness nerd. And I'm joined by the head coach of RaceMob and master motivator, the incomparable Bertrand Newson.
### [00:00:49] Guest Introduction
[00:00:49] **Kevin Chang:** Hey, there RaceMob crew. Before we get into this episode, we wanted to let you know that we're running a hydration challenge through the end of this month. You're going to be eligible to win a hammer nutrition prize pack. Thanks to our good friend, Brian, who's featured in this episode.
As we talk about in this episode, the best thing that you can do to be hydrated on race date is to stay hydrated in your daily life. And for many of us that means drinking upwards of a hundred ounces a day. Now we don't want you to go from zero to a hundred right away.
But that's where this challenge is extremely important. All we want you to do is drink 16 ounces of water. When you wake up and start being mindful of your hydration strategy throughout the day. Go to RaceMob dot com slash hydration for your daily chance to win this prize pack.
Now into this episode where Brian really dives into his detailed race day, fueling and hydration strategy. Including what to do if you like the flavored water and what should you, if you don't like flavored water. We dive into his recovery protocol and a recent sodium study that he says is a total game changer.
Plus there's a supplement that he's extremely excited about. And after chatting with Brian, I went directly to hammer to go try it myself. Plus got some for my dog.
What is the supplement? Well, you're just going to have to tune in, to find out!
All the show notes can be found online at RaceMob dot com slash podcast. Without further ado here's the rest of our conversation.
### [00:02:18] Strategizing Water and Calorie Consumption
[00:02:18] **Kevin Chang:** So let's talk a little bit about water consumption. Let's talk a little bit about calorie consumption and when you're on a longer run. So when you're on a run or a triathlon, that's over two hours, that's, you know, we have Ironman, you know, Western states just happened earlier this week.
And I think that the, the prevailing knowledge or the preva
iling information is that when you go pass two hours, four hours, six hours, that you should have consistent nutrition strategy, that it shouldn't be, you know, totally off the rail when you're, when you're starting to go even longer distances.
So talk to us a little bit about, I guess, water consumption, calorie consumption. How might one go about strategizing how to do that and especially for longer distances.
[00:03:00] **Brian Frank:** Sure. Well, first thing is with fluid. We're not camels. We can't store large volumes of fluid. So we really have to work on being effective hydrators every single day.
You know, we know from science and studies that are out there you know, a decrease of 1% of body weight due to perspiration fluid loss will decrease performance by something in the neighborhood of 5% to 7%. 2% you're in the 10 to 15% reduction of performance beyond 2%, you start approaching 3%. You're talking about, you know, potentially fatal situations.
So dehydration is certainly something that we want to be aware of and concerned. And after all, this is one of the huge areas of management when it comes to ultras, because you cannot replace what you're losing.
It's never a one for one it's managing the deficit. Okay.
So the point is, is most athletes live their daily life in a state of dehydration. And then they try to super hydrate for 24, 48, 72 hours before a known and obvious dehydration event is going to occur. And unfortunately that attempt at loading actually helps to create a self fulfilling prophecy.
The body doesn't know what to do with all of this fluid that's suddenly coming in. So it just passes it right through, fills the bladder and you eliminate it. When you're eliminating that you're also eliminating your precious electrolytes. So we see people starting race day.
I mean a couple years ago, was it a Northern national championship, one of the pro women was cramping up 30 minutes into the race because it was hot. It was dry. She had been attempting to load. She had flushed all of the electrolytes out of her body. And so she starts the race and her body's like, well, what now?
So instead of, so the idea is, is again this, and we'll get to the same theme with regard to sodium in a minute, just know what you consume. Okay. Again, just like, we're not afraid to give people numbers, just like we give you the numbers for protein. I'm going to tell you the same thing. Okay.
If you're not consuming at least half to three quarters of an ounce of fresh water per pound of body weight daily, exclusive of what you use when you're training and exclusive of all other beverages, tea, coffee, whatever.
You're dehydrated. Okay. Now we'd like to see you get to, you know, something in the neighborhood of that three quarters mark, but most people are below half an ounce per pound. So if you're not there, the first thing to do is make an assessment. What do you realistically consume today in terms of fresh water?
You know, look, if it's 20 ounces, fine increase that gradually to 30 to 40, to 50 to 60, because even an improved going from 20 to 40 is an improvement. We're looking for incremental, sustainable improvements, and we don't want to do it overnight. The body takes several weeks to climatize and adjust to higher fluid volumes coming in.
This is a really important exercise that's worth doing because everything in our body works better when we're hydrated our muscles, connective tissue, organs, everything functions better when we're not dehydrated. Okay.
So be honest if you've got a race this weekend, if you're racing on Sunday. Okay. Today and tomorrow, you can't do anything about changing your hydration status. Okay. Just maintain what you've been doing. And on race day, just don't exceed that 20 to 24 ounces an hour of intake because there's no way your body can absorb that it's going into the bladder.
So I hear, you know, guys being like, Yeah. I was drinking two bottles, three bottles an hour on the bike. Well, no wonder you cramped up like a maniac five miles or three miles into the run.
You just over hydrated yourself for the entire bike on the iron. And so now you're in trouble and unless you're consuming massive amounts of electrolytes to offset.
Okay, so we got to have controlled fluid intake during events. And again, if your hydration, your daily hydration, isn't ideal. All right. Work on that. After this race and work on that on a daily basis, again, as a goal setting.
I usually, I try to get people to find a measuring device that they like, like a 32 ounce Nalgene container or something like that. I usually have a 16 ounce pint glass on my desk and, you know, I'm trying to brain that like five, six times during the course of the day.
But at any rate, that's the idea with fluid intake is controlled and measured in heat stress environments.
Now last weekend at Ironman quarter lane it was 106 degrees. was 140 degrees on the page. I'm on the big 10 mile climb. So people were obviously on the limit. You can drank all the water, you can you've drunk 24 ounces. What do you do when your core temperature is still rising and too high and you need to cool down.
Well, you got some three choices. You can pour water over your head, or, you know, on your body. If you have access to it, you can take water and put it in your mouth and swish it around and spit it out. Or you can slow down.
Those are your three choices and really your only choices trying to keep pushing through and not addressing the core temperature problems and everything else. It's just, it just comes to ruin later.
[00:08:49] **Bertrand Newson:** Question for you. Brian consuming fluids during your actual race or during your training electrolyte preference or water preference. If we're looking at something, you know, over eight, 10 plus miles, where you going to be out there for, again, a blue collar athlete, I'm not elite.
### [00:09:05] Water vs Electrolyte Drinks
[00:09:05] **Bertrand Newson:** But consuming water, if they're a heavy sweater or, you know, are they sweating on electrolytes and then taking a more water on their own, are they diluting their system even more and making them more prone to cramping? Or should they have some form of electrolyte, a Hammer product?
[00:09:21] **Brian Frank:** So a fit, a climatized athlete. And when I say fit, I mean, you know, if they're doing a 5k, they've been doing enough running to be able to do that. They should not really require large amounts of supplemental electrolytes. Until, and unless they're going out for three hours or more.
Now you mentioned some other complicating factors high volume sweat rate. And this is if we want to dovetail this into the sodium side of the, of the equation we can. But I, I think, again, the point is, is if a person's going for a 30, 60, 70 minute run.
Normally, you know, you would want a modicum
of calories, maybe a hundred calories. And it would depend on what your logistics were, whether you have access to fluids or you're going to be running self-contained.
And the other thing is to consider is what is your fueling style preference as far as do you like to drink drinks or do you want to drink water? Because for me that that's going to help me decide on what I'm gonna recommend to someone. So for instance, I'm a water drinker. Okay. Literally if I didn't need calories or anything else, I mean, I would literally just drink plain water all day, every day.
And that's what I do on the bike. And so I developed the Hammer.
gel and the sustained energy and the perpetuum all to be used in a concentrated form. So you would only need a couple ounces an hour to supply your caloric needs, thus, allowing you to drink water primarily for your hydration. Now, I don't know what the statistics are because I've never gone and done a big poll on it and what.
But my seat of the pants hunch tells me that it's about 50 50. Just like it's about 50 50 with magazine readers. You know, people who still read magazines, half of them read them back to front and the other half read in front to back There's it seems like about half of the audience, half of the people out there are drink drinkers, talk to athletes all the time.
They're like, Yeah, warm water in my bottle. I'm not touching that. It's got to have some flavor to it. It's got to, you know, if it, if it doesn't have something to help me get it down, I'm just not doing it. So that person, we always want to give them some flavored beverage to drink.
So again, like you were saying on the shorter run where maybe not a lot of calories are needed they just take a gel before they go out and maybe they bring a small water bottle or a flask or a hydration vest that's got, say some fizz, you know, like the electrolyte tablet with the grape or grapefruit flavor or something like that.
It's nice. It's nice flavored. And it gives them something to look forward to when they go to take a sip or whatever, and it'll supply some electrolytes. Now, when you get well beyond the one hour or two hour workouts, and we start talking about ultra.
That's where we want to get into that hourly rhythm of fluid intake, caloric intake, and electrolyte intake. And again, we can set up a fueling system for somebody doing an iron man that is either having them drinking water all the time on the bike and the run, and only using concentrated calorie and electrolytes.
Or if they want to be a drink drinker, they can have their calories, their fluid, and their electrolytes all in there, bottles and roll like that. So this create some confusion amongst athletes. You know, when they look at our product line, I mean, you have so many products. And how do I know when to use perpetuum versus sustained energy versus heat versus Hammer gel?
And then that's usually when we say, well, if you call us, we'll be happy to explain it to you. And help to discover whether you're that water drinker or you're that drink drinker. And then, you know, which so certain suite of products would be ideal for you.
[00:13:06] **Scott:** I just want to mention that I did exactly just that Brian and I spoke to Tyler. So Tyler helped me with my training. I did a half marathon this past Saturday, and I wasn't sure what if I should take perpetuum or do I just need something heed?
And we talked about it and. He he recommended the fizz drinks because I did like a, something, a little bit of a taste, and that worked for me very well.
But Tyler was so educational and informative that I just loved that. I just could, he didn't just take my order. He helped me decide what to buy and it was more of a, not a salesman, but he was like a coach. He was my nutrition coach for the 10 minutes that we spoke.
And I won't forget it for a long time.
[00:13:49] **Brian Frank:** That's awesome. Scott, I appreciate you bringing that up and you know, it's, it's, it's important to me. Because again, back in the day, everybody talked to me, right. And I could, I could help each athlete. To decide and figure out what was going to work best for them and obviously through growth that's just not possible anymore.
And so it's, you know, despite technology and automation you know, w I just refuse to do that, you know, to just have a call center or an order processing or whatever. Now keep in mind. Now we got the website, you know, so we we're really going into the business. That's kind of really separating into two very distinct channels as far as old school and new school.
You know, people want an anonymous interaction with the website. They want to read the information they want to order the products and everything they can do that. It's a great website. You know, we're shipping the order the same day. It's getting to you in two days. And, and if you want that type of shopping experience, we can do that.
But if you're a little bit more retro and, or, you know, you just would rather have somebody kind of help you to navigate this and cut to the chase, this is why we have the 800 number at the big, at the top of our homepage and on every page of our website, because we actually do want to talk to people.
You're not going to get an auto attendant and you're not going to get a run around and you're not going to get a, you know, I just work here. I just take orders. No, I mean, Tyler, he's a dad and a husband and everything else, but he's also serious endurance. You know, he rides his bike to, and from work every day.
You know, he does these crazy back country, wilderness multi-day wilderness hikes and stuff. And this is who you're going to talk to, you know, now of course, if you would've said, Hey, Hey, I want to talk to Steve. You know, I need to, I need help with my, you know, double century fueling or my race across America fueling plan, or I want to do a state crossing record, you know, and I need somebody to set something up.
Or if somebody wants to talk to me, I mean, I was talking to Don Bergen yesterday from Pennsylvania you know, as a legacy, you know, 33 year client. So we're here, we're here doing what we do and we're here to help people. And we're trying to get this information across to you by whatever means electronic or analog that suits you.
But more to the point is this information, you know, like what you find in our five secrets of success book and elsewhere on our website, it's not just self-serving to try to get you to buy more of our products. Again, less is best, right?
I'm telling people consume fewer calories and I'm a person who sells calories because I'm way more concerned with you, again, like Coach "B" was saying, these people are, this is not even an, a race. This might be a bucket list race. Okay. I mean, I want you to do that with a smile on your face and no GI distress and no cramps and worse.
You know, it's challenging enough, but you want to be able to just enjoy the experience and be in the moment, you know, and Yeah. it's hard, but you know, we all know how good those endorphins feel and how that sense of satisfaction cannot be duplicated that you get when you cross that finish line and you achieve that.
So that's what, that's what I've been trying to do. And, you know, people buy my products and they keep coming back and buying them because we're concerned with their wellbeing, their health, their longevity, their performance. And that's all we're going to try to do is explain that to them, educate them how we can and provide them with the products that they will benefit from.
Not as much as we can sell them, just the ones that they actually need to do what they want to do. And usually it involves some discussions about putting the fork down, you know, just eating less. I kind of jokingly talk about Americans having fork and mouth disease.
And to your point about, you know, in Dr. French has already been talking about this and we're going to continue to talk about it. Because he's a board certified bariatric physician. Okay. He is extensively trained in dealing with obesity And diabetic patients.
But the amazing thing is, is that the healthy fit athletes that he sees, oftentimes their blood work looks like that obese diabetic person.
When you're looking at those at the, at the inflammation markers and they're showing signs, then they're showing, developing fatty liver disease and they're developing insulin resistance. And they're being, you know, being diagnosed as being pre-diabetic. And yet this guy has 5% body fat what's going on here.
I mean the medical world has been telling us up until just a couple of years ago that obesity was the only indicator or precursor to diabetes. So we got all these skinny athletes now that are diabetic because they fried their pancreas from mainlining, sugar, and sugar, like carbs all day, every day for decades.
### [00:18:43] Types of Calories
[00:18:43] **Kevin Chang:** And I guess, I mean, that's a good segue to talk about the ingredients that are in, you know, your products because the calories, you know, we talked about a hundred calories, 120 calories, an hour, 120 to 180 calories, all calories aren't created equal, right? We're not telling people to go eat a Snickers bar every, every hour.
We're telling them, you know, complex carbohydrates, probably protein in there, if you're going for a little bit longer. So talk to us a little bit about what types of calories people should be consuming when they're out on their runs or out on their endurance events.
[00:19:16] **Brian Frank:** Well, again, pivoting from the mindset of, you know, food is your best medicine and the qualities of the calories that you put in your body matters all the time. There's no free calories. Okay. So we know, and we've been talking about refined sugar being the problem
in our daily diet, but sadly, almost every sports nutrition product is fundamentally based on sugar.
It's the primary or the only ingredient, supplying calories in most sports drinks, chews gels, et cetera. So, you know, I've always struggled with registered dieticians and, you know, people with all these degrees and initials after their name, who will say, Hey, you know, you're an athlete, you're running a marathon, you know, just make life easier on your body.
Just start with simple sugar. And then it doesn't have to do a lot of breakdown and conversion to get it to glycogen. So, you know, Skittles m&ms, and again, if we've seen this you know, for decades at every ultra running event, you go to, you look at, you, go out to one of these aid stations and you're like, did a supermarket, did the candy section of a supermarket just explode out here, know what's happening?
There's chocolate chip cookies, there's brownies, there's Skittles and M&M's. You know, and watermelon and fruit and bananas and what, but, you know, people, they, you know, they're not feeling so great to begin with mosey up to one of these aid stations. And like, I know if I eat all of this stuff, I'll, I'll, it'll make me feel way better and I'll be back on you know, on pace running again.
Not so much.
[00:20:51] **Scott:** No gummy bears then.
[00:20:52] **Brian Frank:** Yeah. Right, right. So, so it's complex carbohydrates. You know, and, and people will, you know, with some validity or some basis criticize our products for being corn maltodextrin based. It's a manufactured carbohydrate, no doubt.
I'm not necessarily a fan. Like I've always told people I don't go home and have a bowl of maltodextrin for dinner. You know, I don't sit on the couch and watching TV, you know, sipping maltodextrin.
But when I'm exercising, it is absolutely. The lesser of evils when it comes to a primary fuel source complex carbohydrates versus sugar. So this is why our products are made with the most complex cause there's different types of maltodextrin, some are shorter chain length and act more like sugar and some are not.
So we're using the longest chain length, carbohydrates, multi dextrins to specifically minimize the insulin response that is going to happen as a result of the imposition of those calories into the body.
Then of course, for the ultra applications through my own experience and reading I believe that it's the garbage in garbage out kind of environment where if we're not consuming any protein or, our body's going to be more reticent to burn those things.
Protein specifically, we do not want it to burn because the only place we store protein in our body is lean muscle mass. And we work really hard to get that muscle mass and we don't really want to use it for energy.
Second of all is again, the fat. We want to encourage the body to burn fat as much as, you know, 65, 70% of our calories during an ultra sure can and should be coming from fat.
But as I said before, the interesting thing is, is the introduction of sugar, calories, sugar carbohydrates. Not only increases it significantly, our electrolyte needs to get that sugar to pass through the stomach but it also that insulin spike that comes with the sugar is also inhibiting fat-burning.
So even though that, you know, that flat Coke or, you know, one, something like that, you know, mile 80 and an ultra sounds really appealing. Besides the fact that you're going to fall off a cliff and about 20 minutes, energy-wise it's going to inhibit fat burning for a number of hours.
So this is why we want to really focus on the complex carbohydrates, a modicum of protein and fat coming in, and just mainly avoiding the sugar until, and unless, like I tell, I've told people for decades in Ironman, if you get yourself to the last 10 K on program and you just can't resist that flat Coke or that Gatorade anymore, you can do that, make that switch at that point.
But it's a one-way street. You're going to ride that train all the way to the finish line. And you got to keep sipping that Coker Gatorade every five to 10 minutes. Or, you know, you'll be a mile away from the finish line and not getting a lot closer.
[00:23:52] **Kevin Chang:** I love that. I love that. Yeah. And I mean, it makes a lot of sense, the complex carbohydrates, because your body can break it down relatively quickly. But then the actual process of getting into, you know, your cells takes a lot longer. So, you know, your body isn't distressed when breaking down that complex carb but you actually can utilize that energy for a longer period of time.
And then the amino acids, or, you know, the, the protein, but sometimes I think either branch chain, amino acids, or you know, with some, some, some form of immuno acids can help you there with with energy utilization.
And then fats or oils, so I've heard MCT oils or ketone esters for some people have worked fairly well in terms of oils or, or fat utilization stuff.
### [00:24:36] Recovery Recommendations
[00:24:36] **Kevin Chang:** Talk to us a little bit about, I guess, recovery. What are some of the things that you recommend for, for recovery and for after exercise?
[00:24:44] **Brian Frank:** Absolutely. Recovery is very much under appreciated, especially by younger athletes. And triathletes in general seem to be notorious for focusing on training and not, you know, oh my recovery day. Yeah. That's when I run errands and, you know, go like a madman, you know, doing other things all day. No, you in a train hard, you got to recover hard.
So you know, what that looks like is a lot of different things, but it's really valuing and emphasizing recovery. I mean, I, when I'm on a hard training schedule and I'm training hard six days, I mean that I relished that recovery day because I mean, literally I'm going to do nothing. I'm going to read a book. I'm going to sit on the couch. I'm going to have my legs up. I'm going to maybe run a compact CMS or something like that. I mean, I am talking nothing.
But mainly the is okay, right after you're done with your workout, you have this window of opportunity where your body is most receptive to receiving nutrients, to commence, repairing, and rebuilding and getting ready for the next occurrence of this stressful event.
So when you finish your workout is when you want to start recovering, not dilly dallying around. So, you know, if you're going traveling someplace to work out I always bring with me a bottle of water and like a separate bottle with a scoop of whey protein or a couple scoops of recovery.
Then literally, I mean, I'll stop peddling, get off the bike before I even unbuckle my helmet strap or take off my shoes. I'm drinking my recovery drink. Okay. And then I'm in no hurry. Now I can, you know, shoot the breeze with, you know, guys I've been training with or, you know, drive back home and prepare a meal or whatever.
So the first thing is, is when, if you really look at it, when most people allow 60 to 90 minutes to pass from the time that they actually stop running or turning panel or whatever, until they're actually getting to a good quality macronutrient recovery meal.
And that's a serious compromise to be making. Because recovery has just slowed inhibited, same thing with rehydration. Everything takes longer when you don't start it immediately at the conclusion of the dehydration or the stress.
So take it seriously, do something immediately after now, keep in mind if you have the ability to plan your workouts and you have someone who cooks for you and you can literally like come off that run or come in from the bike ride, take off your clothes and sit down and be eating, you know, baked chicken and brown rice and steamed vegetables within 10 or 15 minutes of getting off the bike, awesome. Do that. That tastes way better than a serving of recovery, right. Or whey protein.
But for most of us, that's not a reality. We're gonna, it's gonna be a while before we get to that next meal. So again, the recovery, you got to keep up the daily protein intake. Like we talked about, you want to be doing timely introduction of macronutrients, both protein and carbohydrates.
Again, not chocolate milk. You know, give yourself, you know, Avocado nuts. You know, if you want to go plant-based or have a protein shake ready to go. And then, you know, get to that meal though within an hour or so. And again, training days, our training days, rest days are rest days. So I would rather schedule, I try to run my errands and do my other busy work.
I do that on my training days, not my rest day.
[00:28:16] **Bertrand Newson:** Great advice. Love it.
[00:28:18] **Brian Frank:** Thank you.
[00:28:18] **Bertrand Newson:** Saving this part of our, all of the podcasts, but this will be replayed for many of our athletes.
[00:28:25] **Brian Frank:** Right. Well, and then, like I said, you know, we normally through age, we sort of learn to appreciate recovery and respect it more and focus more on it.
And as I'm telling, you know, these juniors, these teenagers that I'm working with, the sooner you get on top of this stuff, the sooner you have a VA advantage over 80% of your competition who are not taking recovery seriously, who are not taking hydration seriously are not taking their diet seriously.
You know, if you're in a super competitive, you know, lower age group, you know, 30, 30, 4, 35, 39 you know, you can't, you can't leave anything to chance.
[00:29:00] **Kevin Chang:** Well I mean, there's plenty more though. We'd, we'd love to get into, but I do want to be respectful of your time and make sure that you know, we let you get back into your day.
Obviously, I mean, some of the things that I love about Hammer is the emphasis that you put on the ingredients that you create making sure that you're, you're producing only
the highest quality ingredients, and that yeah, that's, you're always a staple of the community and the, the running community in and of itself.
So we always see Hammer out in so many different events all across the country. We know that live events are starting to come back and that we will hopefully be seeing you sponsoring a lot more live events and a lot more events all, all across the nation.
So just wanted to say, yeah, I, and I don't know if you have anything to say about either of those subjects because I think that is fantastic.
[00:29:46] **Brian Frank:** No. Thank you, Kevin. I have a lot to say about all of that, unfortunately, or fortunately, in case I'm boring people.
### [00:29:52] Community Support
[00:29:52] **Brian Frank:** I'm not in a super big hurry if you want to touch on sodium real quickly. And, but, and, and getting back to your point, you know, I've always supported the most sports that we're active in, you know, and unfortunately we do it in a different way.
So oftentimes people will say, oh, you don't support us because you don't advertise in runner's world, man magazine. And you know, I say, well, you know, how much an ad in a magazine costs and do you know, how many events I can sponsor with that same spend? So, and you know, we're not at the Boston marathon, I've never done an expo at Boston or New York marathon.
And it's not because I don't want to, but it's too big. It's too expensive, you know. Now the BNC races where you've got, you know, race directors are doing this out of a sense of altruism, and again, wanting to support a community These race directors are not getting rich. You know, and, and so this is why, you know, we're going out a lot of the other nutrition companies.
They say, if you don't have at least 500 participants in your event, don't even call us some of them. Won't talk to you if it's under a thousand. And I reckon, you know, these hundred, 200, 300 person trail runs and things we do. I mean, these are, this is where we want to be. So we always support these sports and these people who make the sports happen, but from a grassroots perspective.
So people say, I've, I've never heard of Hammer before I read all these magazines. I've never heard of your product before. And I'm like, well, clearly you don't race. Because if you went to, if you were into a trail running event or a triathlon or a mountain bike race, or any, a gravel race or whatever in this country, you would probably see us.
So, you know, that's, that's something that's very important in a very big part of the brand and always will be. And so I, I appreciate the fact that that's people recognize that. I think the athletes tend to recognize that I know the race directors really appreciate it. And so, Yeah, we will sponsor think this year we're on track to get back up to about 600 events.
I think, I think in 2019, I think we sponsored something like it was 80 plus hundred mile or 50 or a hundred mile or longer trail running events. So, but again, but you know, we don't sponsor Western states because we just can't write that check. It's a big check.
[00:32:02] **Kevin Chang:** If you like our podcast and sign up for our newsletter, where we give you weekly tips on how to run your best race and have fun in the process. Just go to RaceMob.com and sign up today.