[DIRK] These AI, I guess, apps that are they're training apps, you know, they certainly promise the world the next best thing. Why hire a coach? You know, get everything for $15 a month. Mhmm. But if you have 5 different AI bots, you're gonna get 5 different workouts tomorrow. So if they're the world's best, then shouldn't they all be saying the same thing? You know? Yeah. I think, like, coaches could actually sift through a lot more data right now than AI can. [KAMAL] Hey, listeners, In this episode of Tech in 20 6.2 pod, I sit down with Darke Frill, founder of training picks, an all in platform providing coaching, training plans, performance analysis, and data syncs for athletes and coaches. In fact, Trending Peaks solutions are used by Tour de France teams, Ironman world champions, Olympians, and age group athletes and coaches around the world to track, analyze, and plan their training. In addition to talking more about how training picks platform helps the coaches and the athletes. Dirk also shares the trends in the industry that he has seen last 25 years and also where the industry is heading, especially in the age of AI or artificial intelligence. You don't want to miss that piece of that that part of the conversation. I hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, make sure that you subscribe so that you get notified when I publish the next episode on this pod. Thanks for listening. Welcome, Dirk. I'm super excited and glad to be chatting with you here on this podcast. [DIRK] Yeah. Thanks, Kamal. Thanks for having me on and excited to, have a good chat with you. Thanks. [KAMAL] So for our audience, Valerie or Clarify, Darki is the cofounder and chief evangelist of a technology company, our endurance tech company called Training Picks. And it's in business for 25 years. So before I tell more about training picks, like, maybe we can start with a quick introduction from you. Tell a little bit about yourself first. [DIRK] Yeah. I I run a bit. I run mainly in the fall and the winter, but I'm really kind of have a strong cycling background, and I was a professional cyclist for 12 years. And I lived in Europe for 5 years. And my really, a lot of what I do today in TrainingPeaks is really rooted within my family and my my father, Joe Friel. He's an author of the cyclist training bible, triathletes training bible, and 15 other books. And and we had a family coaching business, and so that's kinda what spurred all this on way back, you know, in the eighties nineties. So I've seen quite a few decades pass. And so, yeah, I live in, Boulder, Colorado. I ski a lot, and I bike a lot, and I run, you know, in the in the fall and winter kinda kind of, get ready for the ski season. Oh, great. That's a great way to get ready for the skater riding in winter. [KAMAL] Yeah. For sure. Now thanks for sharing your background. Yeah. You've been cycling it professionally for a long, long time before you even started, TrainingPeaks. Right? [DIRK] Yeah. I mean, I started cycling and racing in age 12, and that's pretty much all I thought of from age 12 on. I sort of had my my life kinda planned out, if you will. And I just dreamed of racing in Europe, and, I was on, you know, US national junior team, and I would go to the Olympic Training Center and and do, training camps there in Colorado Springs. We're talking about 19 eighties. Right? Right. And then I turned 19, and I decided to drop out of school, and I got a one way ticket to Belgium. And I that was the way you did it back then, you know, and there was very few easy paths, to racing in Europe. So I pretty much just kinda dove straight in and and and dropped out of school and moved to Europe. And, yeah, that was 1990 is when I moved to Europe. So I was there for 5 seasons, and, I, you know, retired as a pro cyclist in 2002. So, yeah, it was it was a crazy wild ride, and, thankfully, I would do it all over the same again. It took me 9 years to graduate from university. Yeah. But, I I would absolutely do it the same way all over again. I was chasing chasing my passion. I have a 21 year old daughter now, and she's studying in London. So in many ways, she's kinda following me as well. So I just hopefully, she she's finding her passion, and we'll make something of it. And so, yeah, same thing with me. [KAMAL] That's exciting to know. That's, carry forwarding the torch. Looks like you picked up from your dad, and you're passing it on to your daughter. That's that's exciting. As I read about TrainingPeaks, looks like you started over a beer with your friend, and your dad. Tell us a story. What I I'm always curious to learn about the founding story of an organization. It's always an amazing story behind it. [DIRK] Yeah. Well, like I said, I was racing professionally cycling. I came back to the US in 1995, to race over here. And my father had a coaching business. Right. By this time, he evolved from being a high school football coach and high school track coach to himself running marathons. My my mom has run the Boston marathon. Oh, great. My dad did a lot of marathons, and my dad decided to leave, the public school system as a as a teacher, and he bought a running store. And he had one of the very first running stores in the in the United States. It was called Foot of the Rockies in Fort Collins, Colorado. Mhmm. And then lo and behold, there was a bike shop next door, and he decided to buy the bike shop, tear down the wall in between, and he became the world's 1st triathlon store, which definitely was ahead of its time and was not successful. But it was great for me being, you know, a 12 year old. You know you know, I live the world of of of trotland cycling, running, swimming. But really cycling was what kind of I just had so much passion for cycling. So then I go off to Europe. I come back to America. My father has a coaching business, and I start coaching under my father. And that was 1997. And in those time days, you know, we were just getting the Internet. Not everybody had email. You know? And And so we would send training programs either by fax machine or by email, email attachments. And just depending, you know, what did the the client have? What did the athlete have access to? Right? And so we were sending, you know, the the programs out via attachments or or fax machine Right. Sheets of paper. And then every Sunday night, the the fax machine in the family, you know, office would just fill up with paper every Sunday night of, like, that week's training logs for our clients. I see. I see. And then a lot of our athletes started to get Polar, you know, heart rate monitors. PowerTap was one of the first, power meters that was affordable. Mhmm. Some of our clients had SRM power meters, you know, for cycling, and they started by PowerTap power meters. And so now now we were getting email attachments of these heart rate and or power files. And no one was was using GPS yet. Right? Right. But so now I had in order to open a polar file, I had to have a desktop software application to open up that file format. Yeah. If someone sent me an SRM file, I had to open up the SRM software. So you open up the SRM file format. And so, you you would have, like, 3 or 4 different desktop applications open to work with 1 athlete, and you may have an email attachment, you know, or email of, like, their training logs. So Deluxe. Data was fragmented. It was horrible. It was horrible to try and consolidate. For those that would send us a a fax, we would 3 hole punch it and put it in a 3 ring binder. Yeah. And we put it up on the shelf, and it was really hard to kinda pull the data out of, you know, handwritten records. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So now we start to have the Internet, the late nineties. So I had this idea vision. I pitched it to my father, and neither of us were developers or programmers, you know, engineers of any type. But, luckily, a teammate of mine and the best man at my wedding, his name is Gear Fisher, he had a day job as a web developer, and he's the only developer I knew in the entire world. So he was living up near Vail, Colorado, so I went up and had a beer with him. And and his name is actually George Arthur and shortened it to gear is but, anyways, we went to a pub called The George, and The George is still there in Vail, Colorado. So we have fond memories of of that bar, and we we, you know, revisit it every so often. But, yeah, I had a beer with him there and pitched him. I was like, hey. You under he understood our coaching business. He under he read my father's books. He understood, you know, the business of coaching, if you will. He was an athlete, a cyclist. But, most of all, he was the technology, you know, behind Right. The launch of TrainingPeaks. So, luckily, we had brand recognition from my father and his books. We kinda knew, a lot of coaches, and we had a coaching business where we could we we not, at the beginning, intend to start a software company. Not at all. We were simply trying to create a better quality service for our athletes in our coaching business. Right. And so it was an internal project for our coaching business, and that's where it first started. We went live with it in 2,000, and it was simply for our, you know, 15 coaches that we had. They were coaching cyclists, running runners, and triathletes. Mhmm. But then towards the end of 2000, we had the idea that, hey. You know, other coaches could really benefit from this. So we started to sell it actually outside of our our own coaching group, and it actually started to bring in revenue. And we just we literally didn't even have that as a business plan. Right. So it kinda developed a life of its own from effectively October 2000, to today. [Kamal] Oh, wow. So, basically, you are solve a problem that you and your father is having in your coaching business and then eventually figure out how to scale it for other coaches. Yeah. Definitely. And there are some trends that helped us along the way. Mhmm. But, yeah, we we we definitely knew a lot of coaching businesses back then. Right. And when I say a lot, there worked weren't a lot. So near 2,000, you know, quitting your day job and becoming a coach and having your real business that was coaching endurance athletes, that that really didn't exist. There are only a handful of coaches doing that, but but there are a lot of, you know, coaches kinda doing it on the side. And so, luckily, we knew most of them, and they were they were using the fax machine and email as well, and there's no other option. Yeah. Yeah. And Immediately, when they saw it, they're like, wow. That would make my life so much better. And and the service that they could deliver to their athletes would immensely improve. So, yeah, we started to get those early adopters, and it started to scale. And we certainly had we had, you know, no debt. We didn't raise any money. It wasn't virtual capital. There was none of that back then. Yeah. We say, you know, it was truly 100% bootstrapped. If a dollar came in, we reinvested 80¢, and we kept 20¢ for ourselves. And that's effectively what we do all the way to today. You know, that margin is definitely a very important thing for our business. You know, we built a a long standing profitable growing business Mhmm. And still privately held. And, you know, we have one investor, and it's you know? Anyway, so that's kind of at the root of our our DNA as a business. Great. And it's all for the long haul, if you will. Like, we've never made any short term decisions. It's always been for the long haul. Mhmm. And we've never taken an an advertising dollar. That was also very, very unique in the year 1999, 2000. Every web business was powered by advertising. And Right. To this day, we've never taken an ad dollar. Mhmm. And luckily, the profession of coaching really took off and technology took off within endurance sports. Mhmm. So it was a great time to start start that business. Great. What is the story of getting your first paying customer? Because this is always a fascinating story. Like, can someone take their wallet out? Okay, Dirk. I'm willing to pay you for whatever services the training picks is offering. Yeah. You know, it was really kind of, like, close friends, if you will. Like I like I said like I said earlier, it was you're doing, you know, you're outreaching to a lot of, small businesses and and coaches. Mhmm. And luckily, some here in Northern Colorado, you know, trusted what we were developing, and Okay. And they were the first to to come on board. So it you know, I guess the next phase was, like, selling the coat to people that you don't even know. That was, like, a big deal. I was like, wow. I don't I I didn't even know there's a coaching business in Missouri. You know? Right. Like and then you just start to look into who those new customers were. But certainly at the beginning, it was just folks that we knew, you know, literally in Boulder or Colorado. And we would just sit around the dining room table, You know? And that was how we we were selling it. We Yeah. We weren't we had no advertising, you know, and search engines just didn't really exist, or they weren't very good. You know? Right. So, I think it was a lot of, yeah, literally meeting face to face. That is how we started to to build the business, with just with local coaches. Oh, wow. That's great. So let's come, you know, get you forward or, get forward to today. Like, what is TrainingPeaks today? I know it's an all in one platform. Like, how deserving the athletes and, coaches? Yeah. Well, at the root of what we do is we help people learn a new skill. We want you to prepare for an event, and you need to learn and practice along the way. And, ideally, you apply a deliberate practice. So that's what we believe. We believe you should work and and seek out expert advice. Mhmm. You set a goal. You register for that race. You you look for expert advice. You do focus practice. You get immediate feedback, and you repeat that. And that that's on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly, an annual basis, you know, decade over decade. Ideally, once you start down the path of being an an endurance athlete, you know, it never ends. It can be the you know, Hopefully, it's with you for the rest of your life, and you continue to evolve as an athlete, maybe one sport to another. So with that with deliberate practice being at the heart of what we do Mhmm. You know, a lot of what we focus on is serve obviously servicing the coach. If the coach isn't successful first, you know, we can't be successful. Right. So we do a lot to help educate coaches. We we do a lot to try and build, you know, business for coaches. When athletes come to us looking for a coach, we can help refer athletes to coaches that we work with. We're not a coaching business. We're we don't hire coaches, but we are a software business that's in the middle we're the technology between coach and athlete. And so, obviously, we have to stay on the forefront of technology, you know, all new training devices that athletes may be using. Mhmm. You know, we need to see if it's you know, do we should we become compatible? It's that's becoming easier and easier these days to be compatible with devices. So we work with a lot of different partners and hardware vendors to make sure we're compatible and so that the coach can rely on us to be their technology partner. [KAMAL] Okay. And, from a from a numbers point of view, because I'm a data guy, and I love to talk about numbers, How do you set training picks in terms of, the athletes or the coaches that you're supporting? [DIRK] How many? Is that what you're asking? Yes. Kind of in terms of numbers so that you can understand the scale of training picks. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have tens of thousands of coaching businesses that are customers of ours. And now and when I say that, that's we it's not just cycling running triathlon. It's a very, very diverse coaching customer base. Mhmm. And I I say, if you are in a sport where you care about heart rate, speed, or distance Mhmm. You're a prime candidate to be on TrainingPeaks. A football coach would not get hardly any value out of TrainingPeaks. But, actually, you know, an Olympic sailing coach does, and we have Olympic sailing teams on training peaks because they train on the dry land. We have, you know, America's Cup boats. American Magic is one of our, teams that we work with, and those athletes strain very, very hard, you know, for for yacht racing. And they care about power and heart rate and distance and time. Mhmm. So, yeah, it's very, very fun, diverse to find out all the different sport types that are on TrainingPeaks. We have, you know, race car drivers. You know, race car drivers train very hard to prepare for those hot conditions, you know, in in their cockpits, etcetera. So, yeah, that's, you know, and we have, whatever, few million accounts created within Turning Peaks. But I think we're not we're not we're not so much about the volume per se, but we are very much about performance. Right. So I I believe, you know, in order to kinda start getting benefits from training peaks, you you sorta have to have that internal drive pass and and a goal in mind. Oftentimes, that is an event, but more and more it's not. You know? A lot of people are doing these journeys where they wanna run across the Pyrenees, and it's not an actual event. It's a journey they're taking. Or they wanna climb Mount Everest or some major ex expedition. It's not an event, but it's an, you know, it's a journey that they're on. And so at the end of the day, they have this kind of, you know, hard goal that they want to attain, and they they look for help in achieving that. And so within TrainingPeaks, a rest day is just as or more important than your hard days. Makes sense. And a lot of apps out there, it's the opposite. They only care about your hard days. You know, who did you beat today? And we're more about, like, who are you gonna beat 4 months from now? We're gonna prepare you for that event 4 months away, or it might be 18 months away. So, yeah, we really look at training holistically, and you can capture we're coming out with strength training within TrainingPeaks. So we'll have strength, set rep weight, video strength exercises, all contained in the training peaks. So we found 70% of our athletes actually do strength training. So that was a a big a big, feature for us to come out with in the next few months. So, yeah, it's ever evolving. That's what's fun. Yeah. That's I can see. So if I'm looking at it from an athlete point of view or say myself as a runner looking at looks like you are integrating with all the sportswear technology companies out there. Right? So you can get the data from there, and that can help them analyze those key data points that you set for coaches. And they can give them feedback and how they're doing on. Yeah. And then you are if I'm looking at it, you're supporting triathlon, running, cycling, strength training, winter sports, swimming, rowing, and more categories. So the whole suite of sports that you're covering with endurance at athletes as well. If you look at from a, the the coach point of view, and you mentioned that you are supporting their businesses. [KAMAL] I'm just curious to see, you know, how you're enabled through technology to support coaches businesses. Like, you mentioned that the clunkiness are, you know, manual operation. You take it away from the coaches. But if you say in today's age, how you're enabling them coaches to run their businesses through the training pitch technology? Yeah. [DIRK] You know, we give we again, we help the coach at the beginning. It was about managing data and managing you might have 40 athletes you're working with or 20 athletes, but amongst those 20 athletes, they may actually be using, you know, 10 different devices. Mhmm. So to know that we can consolidate all that data, all that incoming training data Mhmm. And it and now it's more than training. Right? You have sleep data from WHOOP and Garmin and all kinds of things. So all that data is coming in from those device those wearable Right. That's right. So that's certainly a key value proposition we bring to coaches. Beyond that, on the business side of things, we're developing solutions to help, like, onboarding. So I see. Helping a coach create bundles that they can sell in their shopping cart. And then once that athlete comes in, do some automation in terms of, like, assigning them to you know, a coach coaching business might have 8 assistant coaches. So if someone you know, one particular coach may only offer this one particular service, And if the athlete signs up for that service, automatically attach that new account to that specific coach and layer in this, you know, unique content from day 1. Their 1st week is already planned for them from day 1, for example. So we can start to streamline a lot of the onboarding, for coaches on the business side, and the and the billing cycles and helping manage, you know, that that billing side of things for businesses. So that's certainly a lot of stuff we're working on right now that we've been, pioneering with some of the larger coaching groups internally, which we'll roll out to more more coaches. So we become a partner. You know, we have an an amazing coach directory. So if an athlete is in Kansas City, Missouri and they're looking for a run coach, they can go to our coach directory and go to their local town and see if there's a local coaching group. A lot of athletes want to work with their coach obviously in person. For other athletes, it doesn't matter. So that's unique, athlete to athlete, and not every coaching business offers in person coaching. Right? So it's Right. You know, coaching businesses are are unique in terms of the type of clients that they attract, so we can help do, pairings between coach between athlete and coach. And we actually have a service called, the coach match service. Yeah. I saw that. Yeah. Yeah. You might be in a town where there are 30 coaches. You know? Right. Boulder, Colorado has more than that. So, how do you go about finding a coach? And so we'll we'll work with you. You can fill out a survey. We go through that, then we come back to the athlete with 3 options of good coaches that meet their their need. And then we invite the athlete to interview, those coaches. And I believe a good coach athlete relationship really needs to be at a personal level. It's not just numbers. So, you know, I highly recommend athletes interview their coaches and see if they get along at that personal level Mhmm. Because you should be sharing a lot a lot of stuff, you know, with your coach on the personal side as well because it all really does affect your training. Yeah. So, yeah, we we help coaches, build their businesses as well and find new athletes. Great. So and the the the match program so athlete, you match with the coach, and then they interview the coach. They can do all in the training picks platform, the the animals then, the athlete as well as the Exactly. So Right. The athlete fills out the questionnaire. We help them find a coach. If they want to work back with our coach, then we can attach that athlete account to that coach. I see. And then if the coach wants, we can actually take care of the billing, you know, on on, you know, on their behalf, to make it easier for the coach to not have to hire a bookkeeper, for example. Right. Right. So and then, you know, we have a training plan store. So a lot of athletes maybe are willing, ready, whatever, for to hire a personal coach, and they just wanna start with a low cost option. They're doing their first half marathon. You know, they could spend $49 and get a 8 week training plan for his hour, 12 week training plan for their first half marathon. And then that loads into their account. We then obviously provide those funds back to the coach, the author that created that training plan, and then we deliver the content to the athlete. Right. So there we have, you know, a lot of a lot of coaches sell a lot of training plans, and that's a large part of their business. [KAMAL] Oh, great. You know, one of the key things when someone would be looking for a coach is to build an accountability partner. Right? Hey. I see that I'm running for Boston coming up in couple of weeks, and my longest run would be next Sunday. And I I'm supposed to go easy on 5, 6 miles, and, you know, I need an accountability partner. Yeah. You know, I can go really fast or I can ignore completely the training plan and, hey. I I didn't feel good today, so I'll just do 12 months or whatever. You know? Yeah. But when you have some accountability partner, you still say, hey. Someone is looking up to me or looking at what I'm doing. So they build that accountability partner to stay on course, you know, based on the training plan they choose to. I'm just also curious to see how does training picks enables that because it's it's you're talking about performance, and this is the performance of the athlete that, you know, training picks as a platform is enabling them. Is that something turning picks also helps athletes to keep, you know, the accountability partner through technology? Yeah. Absolutely. That that's a large part of our deliberate practice kind of, cycle, if you will, and get get immediate feedback. [DIRK] Uh-huh. The the immediate feedback part is kinda what you're honing in on. Technology can help with that immediate feedback as well as a a personal coach can help with that, component and that accountability. I mean, for example, if you you com you complete a a workout, and you're working with a coach, a coach can actually enable what we call, you know, notifications. Mhmm. So let's say athlete completes their workout. It gets up to training peaks from their Garmin watch, and then that immediately triggers a notification to the coach. The coach then then gets it, and I it's, like, 247, you know, just in time coaching, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. The the coach can get that notification, immediately read the comments, you know, post workout comments of how did it feel, how to go, whatever issues they had. They could then go in a layer deeper and actually look at the file, look at the data, and see if they did as planned or completed as planned. This can all be done on the coach's mobile phone. You know? But, literally, a coach can be in the dentist office waiting for their dentist appointment. Uh-huh. And they get a notification, and they quickly go in, look at a cue key, comments, data points, and immediately hit reply and get back to the athlete with post workout comment, all contained within training pediatrics. Coach can say, hey. Alright. You you hit the distance, the time, but you know what? The first five miles, you went out too fast. Now when we do when we do this workout next week, I want you to slow it down the first five miles. But that's that's this amazing when you say partner, it's a it's a true partnership, and that's what's really fun and exciting, and that's where you really bond and connect with the coach. You know, the athlete will receive that tough love. And a lot of times, coaching is tough love. And it's saying, hey. Yep. Good job, but or this is horrible. Yeah. Hopefully, it's not like that every day, but it's, you know, it's like, good job, but tomorrow, we need to work on this new skill. That feed then at on that daily basis is getting that immediate feedback, and they're fine tuning it day to day. And it's not all about the data. You know? Oftentimes, the you have the subjective data and you have the objective data. And the subjective data is the comments and how you felt and the rate of perceived exertion, your mood, your appetite Mhmm. Relationship with your husband or wife. Right? Things are going bad at work. That stuff oftentimes does override the training plan. That's where a coach can come in and really do a much better job than a free training plan in Runner's World Magazine. Right? Right. And everybody is deserving of that. You know? Like, if you have this big goal, you know, you don't have to be an elite to to warrant a coach. You know? Someone that only has 6 to 8 hours a week to train, has a family and a day job, you know, those are very valuable 8 you know, 6 hours they have to train. And so let's make the most of those 6 or 8 hours or whatever it might be because they do wanna finish the Chicago half marathon or whatever it is. Right. So yeah. You know, you're worthy of a coach and that partner. No. That's great. I just turned it on to highlight because TrainingPeaks is enabling the athletes to get that accountability partner in online or offline. Right? That's what you're enabling them, the athletes, which is great way of looking at from a athlete point of view. Now, Dirk, you have seen a lot last 25 years building training. I'm just curious. What are the trends you have seen, especially in endurance stack as you build, training picks? And then we're gonna touch on what's next, but but I need to see, you know, what are the trends we have seen. Well, obviously, coaching the growth of coaching, it was enormous. I mean, I think it really I you have to give a lot of credit to triathlete triathletes. You know? They really were the first, you know, sport, if you will, to really have they had no inhibitions in terms of triathlon had no, tradition. It was a I see. Brand new sport. Mhmm. They didn't have a cycling running traditions, swimming traditions. They created their own culture. Right? Uh-huh. And they quickly adopted technology. Triathletes quickly adopted coaching. I see. You know, a triathlete is very highly likely to hire a coach, much more so than a runner. Mhmm. It it's very difficult to manage 3 different sports and the nutrition, etcetera. It is. Yeah. And so that was a big trend. You know? I I owe a lot to the sport of triathlon in terms of, you know, these these, you know, adoptions of coaching and technology. Mhmm. You know, unfortunately, triathlon is a very expensive sport. So in a way, they would adopt new technology because they were used to, you know, spending a lot of money. Right. But then that trend started into cycling. And as power meters really took off You know, in the mid 2000, 2007, 8 time frame, that's where you'd probably see this hockey stick effect of, like, power meters really kinda taking off and being adopted within the cycling and as well as within triathlon. And that was a big, big trend. Learning you know, I say, like, if you bike without a power meter, it's like you see the world 2 dimensionally. Mhmm. But once you incorporate power, you now see the world in 3 dimensions. You see this additional workload that you can't capture without power. Mhmm. So it's somewhat like pace, right, in running. Right. But yet pace doesn't pick up a headwind and a tailwind. It you know, it Right. But power does. You know? You know? So, it's kind of the raw third dimension that a lot of sports, lack, but cycling is can be so precise. Since we learned a lot from cycling that are that can be applied over to running. So for example, in cycling, you know, there's my father kind of pioneered a a data, metric called decoupling where we look at power and heart rate. Mhmm. And if you maintain the same power, your heart rate is going to deviate at some point. Mhmm. But as you get fitter, that deviation point is farther and farther along. Right? You're getting Right. Some people call today durability. So you can you're you're you can maintain the same intensity for longer at the same heart rate or at the same input. Mhmm. Same thing you could do with pace, so decoupling with pace. You could do a workout consistently over time and as somewhat of a test, and you can see that improvement. So we saw a lot of innovation come out of cycling due to the power meter. Uh-huh. And then from there on the running side, you know, GPS is now everywhere. Like, you Right. Pretty much don't buy a watch, obviously, a smartwatch or a training wearable watch, that doesn't have GPS. And so runners used to just do you know, pace on the track, and they would maybe do their long run, and they would drive their car before or after the rate the the run Yeah. To actually find out how far they went. Yeah. Now they can do it in real time, you know, from their wrist. So as wearables took off within running, we became more, attractive to runners to manage all that data. And you might be a Garmin customer today and a Polar customer next year and a Sunnto customer the year after that. So, you know, hopefully, you're not keeping all your data in one of those datasets. You know, hopefully, you're keeping it within training peaks or a third party, you know, that's compatible with all the different devices. And now with it running, we're getting power meters have been running. We have the Strive power meter and Garmin. All brand new Garmin devices have it built in natively for run power. Mhmm. So run power can be very, very valuable for, you know, a lot of training. Not so good, like, in trail running and ultra running because of, you know, undulations and steepness and grades, etcetera. But for pure running, you know, power is becoming a valuable metric, for runners to leverage as well, and we're compatible with the running power meters. So those are some key trends. You know, coaching, new technology. Now, obviously, in the last 5 years or so is a lot of people are tracking HRV and sleep data, so we're compatible with all of that. So how does your HRV and sleep compare to the training you've been doing, and how might you make decisions based off of that data going forward? There's a lot of data coming in, you know, where a coach can help you out. And not all data points are are equal. Right? So Right. Trying to decide which data points to look at and and make decisions from is becoming more and more complicated. Oh, wow. Yeah. That because that would be a data point because this is off the track. Right? Either it's cycling or, you know, running or motor racing? Because those data points are of the primary sport that are actually enabling them. What is the story of that performance that he or she just uploaded? Right? You did not sleep well, so it may impact your performance if you're doing a training schedule. So Yeah. Maybe they can connect the dots. But I would guess also you probably have to educate even the coaches too because you are seeing the data point from a holistic view across, you know, all these dimensions or development or technology trends. Now you have to bring probably up to speed the coaches. Like, hey. This is a data point. Maybe you should incorporate in your training or learn about it, how you can help or better help the athletes. Is that the case happening too? Yeah. We certainly have an education department. We have a TrainingPeaks University Yeah. That is focused on helping coaches. So we have a lot of courses there where we have experts present, on new technologies, new data you know, how to how to leverage this new data. Mhmm. Sorry. So we definitely take it upon ourselves to help educate the athlete or sorry, the coach. But we also lean on the national governing bodies heavily as well. Uh-huh. So USA track and field, USA Triathlon, cycling, we work with, I don't know, 35 different national governing bodies. And so we really want, you know, there to be a a, you know, some national governing body within that sport that that coach can go get certified from. Ideally, coaches are becoming certified in their sport. And then I I like the model where there's continuing education units. Mhmm. So whereby a coach needs to get so many CEUs per year to maintain their coaching license. They have insurance. You know, that's really important. So legitimizing, you know, the profession of coaching, I still feel we have a long ways to go in all endurance sports. Some sports are are farther along than others, and many obviously, nation by country by country is very, very different. So that's an ongoing issue, if you will, educating the coach. You know? And and good smart coaches should realize it's ever evolving, and they should always be learning from others. And I like when coaches open up and there's no secrets. There's no there's no more secrets. There's no secret workout. Right? Right. And the secret is in the sequencing of the workouts specific to that individual. You know, that is the secret of a of a really good coach is they can they can leverage the feedback they're getting from the athlete to prescribe tomorrow. Right. So, yeah, I I, you know, I definitely think coaches should embrace education, and continuing education is definitely, you know, a a very important aspect that we we definitely put resources into. That's great. You know, another area that I we should definitely touch on as we are talking about the trends is what's happening in the industry, especially with AI or artificial intelligence last couple of year or year or 2. Now how do you see that the specific personalized coaching industry can add up these upcoming technologies, especially AI, to enhance the experience for both athletes and the coaches more. Yeah. No. Absolutely. AI is here to stay. Right. Not quite sure how quickly it becomes adopted or valuable, but certainly on our side, we wanna we we want to adopt AI to help the coach first. But I feel like AI is in a state right now where it can help the expert more than the consumer per se. Uh-huh. A lot of you know, when you go to chat GPT and you ask it any question you want, you actually kinda have to be an expert to know what's the right question to ask. True. If you ask the wrong question, it's gonna take you down the wrong rabbit hole. Mhmm. And just because it's in chat gpt does not mean it's true. There's a lot of false information in these language learning models today. It's all they're doing is simply looking at the inter entire Internet. Right? Right. So it doesn't make it true. And so I feel like we need to bring to the coach, you know, AI that helps them be smarter, faster, better in the moment Mhmm. To help analyze, you know, first, the data coming in, so they can make a better decision of of what to do tomorrow. Mhmm. I think, unfortunately, today within the world of AI, you know, it's a race to the bottom. These AI, I guess, apps that are that are training apps, you know, they certainly promise the world the next best thing. Why hire a coach? You know, get everything for $15 a month. Mhmm. But if you have 5 different AI bots, you're gonna get 5 different workouts tomorrow. So if they're the world's best, then shouldn't they all be saying the same thing? You know? Yeah. I think, like, coaches could actually sift through a lot more data right now than AI can. You know, a coach can understand in your comments that you had a sore right cap was getting tight. Okay. So let's not do tomorrow's hill repeats or, you know, strides or whatever it might be. They can take in a lot more nuance and help the athlete make a better decision for tomorrow's workout currently. But I think AI right now is a really good solution, you know, certainly for beginner athletes that wanna spend $15 a month. You know? Mhmm. That's the number one thing at the beginning is consistency and getting some at least some sound advice. But you can't you can't say all AI out there is gonna give you sound advice. You know, if if the AI says go out and do 5 times 1 kilometer repeats with 30 second recoveries Mhmm. That can be way over the head for a beginner. Right? So I think you need to be cautious at at this stage, but it's certainly here to stay. It's gonna evolve and get better. And so I think we're gonna apply it first to the coach so they can help the athlete in the end. Now that that makes total sense that you're enabling the people who are actually helping the athletes to use the technology to help them better. Yeah. Yeah. [KAMAL] Do you see a day where a a AI coach can be as effective as a personal coach? [DIRK]I think an AI can do a large part of the coaching for sure down the road. Mhmm. But that final mile, you know, if you say, the the the like, there's still gonna be a lot of override from a coach. And to tell you the truth, like, if I touched earlier about in, notifications, like, per post workout notifications. Yeah. So if I do today's workout and it comes back from the AI and says, you know, great workout, my coach might come back with the very same thing and say, great workout. Mhmm. But internally, I get a much different feel and vibe because I know a person actually, in is investing in me. Right? Right. And I get back to that person, and I say, hey. Thanks, coach. That was such a fun workout. I'm I can't wait to do that next Wednesday. Can I do can I run an extra 2 miles tomorrow? I feel really good. Mhmm. Okay. Now that same response goes to AI. You know, number 1, can AI, you know, accommodate for those comments and make those decisions? And I believe, yes, at some point, it will. Right. But, again, I'm not gonna have that fuzzy feeling and that really good vibe when the coach comes back and says, actually, no. You should not do the extra 2 miles tomorrow. Let's take the easy day. Remember, your right cap is was sore was sore 3 days ago. Right. Right? Like, there's so much more depth to working with that coach and that that final mile, the final decision making. And that actual human connection, you know, is really what makes and and what I wanna say champions, but, you know, you finishing your first half marathon in your goal time is making you a champion. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Just for the elites, that deserve that human interaction to help them reach their goals. So I think there's always gonna be a fault in computer AI because you're not gonna have that human interaction. And oftentimes, when when I'm in the hard hardest point of the race, I might push a little harder because of that human coach that's standing there at the finish line. It does. Right? It's the coach that got me out of that got me out of bed at 5 in the morning more than the AI got me out of bed at 5 or 4. Right? Yeah. That's a good one. There at the finish line. The coach is also helping me with, free race strategy, post race review, that's really, really important. And AI doesn't always know that your competitor went out too hard. And Mhmm. Should you just should you go out with that competitor at their pace Yeah. Or hold back and do your pace? It depends on the course, depends on the race, depends on your competitors. If you're racing for the podium, that matters, and that's something very, very, very far off from AI in terms of helping you make decisions before the race of how to how to yeah. If all you had were the numbers, it'd be an equal straight line. Yeah. Do equal pacing. Yeah. Yeah. It is. Actually, racing, especially in cycling, triathlon, ultra running, trail running, There's so much more than just holding it and maintaining an equal pace, you know, mile after mile. Right. So, yeah, it's a long winded answer. I think AI will do a lot of coaching, and coaches will embrace it. It'll help coaching, but I don't think it's gonna overtake personal coaching. Yeah. But I think what you are referring to is that you still need the human in the loop for the last mile that you just mentioned or the last mile use cases that you just went through. You still need a human to make those decisions to better help the athletes than an AI bot. You know, coaches can deploy AI bots to help in a certain, like, easy decision that can, you know, output from the data that they can refer back to the athletes. But for that couple of last mile scenarios that you just laid out, you still want the human in the loop. Maybe to enable coaches to scale more because now you have AI agent or AI bot helping them to go to the the training data and get some inference and feedback, which they have to do, which is easy to do. You can train the bot to do those things. But the last month, they still have to do more. Now that that's great way after looking at it. Yeah. I I it's funny. I was you know, if you if let's say you had an AI bot and a personal coach, and they both happen to prescribe the very same training. Yeah. Yeah. I would bet on the athlete that has the human interaction to perform better. Makes sense. So that's never gonna go away, I believe. I hope I hope we don't replace humans. Yeah. We are all learning, and we'll see, how it evolves for that. Dirk, it is great chatting with you. I really appreciate your time. I learned myself quite a bit about training peaks and, you know, personalized endurance training and how TrainingPeaks enabling both the athletes and the coaches and supporting them. So thank you so much, for sharing everything about, Training Picks. Yeah. Thanks, Kamal, and, good luck to all of your listeners out there training for their individual goals. It's exciting stuff, and, yeah, hopefully, it all goes well for everybody. So, yeah, thanks a lot.