- What's up, Trainiacs?
Morning.
Welcome to 2020.
Happy New Year.
With it being a new year, of course everyone's thinking
about their new races, their new plans, their new goals.
I'm doing the same thing.
Today, we're gonna talk about what the goals
and plans are for this channel, our website,
Team Trainiac, Kim and I, all kind of things like that.
Let's dive into it.
It's a new year.
It is exciting.
(groovy music)
So Trainiacs, I do one of these every single year,
and talk about the things that we've got on tap
for the coming year.
What you can expect from me.
Now of course, throughout the year, it ends up changing.
I didn't really talk about this last year,
where we ended up going from a video every single day
to ending that video every single day
to three videos a week.
Well, this year's no different.
We might change as 2020 unfolds, but at this point,
here's where my head's at.
And I guarantee that this is gonna change,
because frankly, I'm not a big like five, seven year plan
kind of guy.
I'm more like a what's the coolest thing
that we can do that's the most helpful
in the next three months?
And here's where our head's at with that.
The first thing is teamtrainiac.com.
Teamtrainiac.com is where we are putting the vast majority
of our energy.
What we did over this past year in 2019 was,
essentially, we got the website up.
It worked, it got people to some PBs.
A lot of people said that they were faster,
feeling better, recovered from injuries.
We had a couple of people qualify for World Championships.
Lots of people hit personal bests.
But frankly, the website was like an MVP,
a Minimum Viable Product.
And there's a phrase in tech development,
that if you don't get embarrassed
by your first version of something that you released,
you released too late.
And certainly, I look back at what people came on board for.
We had, I think, at tops, 365 Trainiacs training on it.
I look at it, and I'm like, we could've done so much better.
Well, we now have a Trainiac internal
that is monitoring the development.
We have a development team out of the Ukraine,
where there's anywhere from two to six people working
on it at a time, so there's lots and lots of updates.
In addition to that, we've brought on some consultants
in Dan Plews and Paul Larsen,
and a one-on-one coach, pro triathlete Scott Bayvel,
who is one of Paul Larsen's athletes.
So big, big changes and updates and improvements.
It's gonna happen largely over the next six months
that you're gonna see.
And it's things like we're rewriting and reworking all
of the workouts to make sure the periodization
and the weekly workout breakdowns are really designed well,
based off of what Dan Plews and Paul Larsen recommend.
We're making sure, and I'm recording and uploading
an audio file or a video file
to explain every single workout.
Like, these are thousands of workouts,
to make sure that every single workout
is really straightforward and you know how
to execute it and why we're doing certain workouts
at certain times of the year, how to approach certain times
of the year, things like that.
We're also changing the user experience,
making sure that Trainiacs can search
for other Trainiacs that are local,
Trainiacs that are in cities that maybe you're traveling to,
Trainiacs that are racing similar races.
We're making sure that the social media side of it
is more interactive, a little more like Facebook,
a little less like Strava,
so that you can get good comment threads going
and chat amongst each other.
And we're just improving the general user experience,
the interface.
Making sure that you can move workouts around on your own,
that you can see a calendar view of the entire year,
that you've got a dashboard that shows you where you're at
in your training.
Are you falling behind, or are you on track?
All these things that we're trying to tie in
that take a long time and a whole lot of ones
and zeros from techies.
But that's what we're working on,
and I think it's gonna be pretty awesome.
Next, I say this every single year,
that I wanna put a bigger focus on triathlontaren.com.
That's kinda the catch-all.
That's the start of where people should go
if they wanna take their training with us
to the next level.
It's not teamtrainiac.com, because you might not
be ready to switch what you're doing.
But if you want to basically go somewhere
and learn a little bit more about our training methods
beyond YouTube, that's what we're going
to focus on in 2020.
And like I said, I say this every single year,
but I think now we've got a strategy in place to do it.
So what we've got right now is there's lots of freebies
that you can kinda go and get some free downloads
and maybe go over and see some podcast posts,
but it's not very structured.
When you go to triathlontaren.com,
you don't really know where to go,
and you don't know which free resources
are really going to help you.
You don't know which books are going to help you,
who it's going to help.
So what we're gonna do with the website
is basically just build in some tools
that you can indicate where you're at in your training.
Are you a beginner?
Are you intermediate?
Are you super advanced?
Do you struggle with biking, swimming, running?
All of those, and it'll point you
in the direction of which free resources you should look at
or which books you should think about
or are you ready for Team Trainiac?
And it'll kinda help you know where to go
for the most beneficial resource for you.
In addition to that, I think what we're gonna do
is work with those one-on-one coaches,
like Scott Bayvel, to start creating
more regular blog posts.
I know I say this all the time,
but frankly, I just run out of time.
But what we're going to hopefully build in
is make sure that the one-on-one coaches
that are on teamtrainiac.com are able
to write an article every single week
about training in general, specifically
for the developing triathlete,
or just interesting topics,
so that we can be a one-stop shop
with free resources, with articles, with podcasts,
with access to books, previews of books, things like that.
As far as the YouTube channel goes,
I think, well I know that as long
as we keep doing things here, we are going
to hit 100,000 subscribers.
And my guess is that that's going
to happen somewhere around March or April, is my guess.
It's sort of when we're on track for.
And when that happens, hopefully we don't have
to wait years and years for a silver YouTube play button.
But after five years of uploading videos
and that being one of my original goals,
to be the first triathlon channel
that reached that, well, I didn't become the first,
because Global Triathlon Network came in
and did it in a matter of about five or six months.
But to hit that goal, that'll be kinda fun.
With the Triathlon Taren podcast,
it is already and still is the most highly rated,
ranked, reviewed, and I think one
of the largest triathlon podcasts in the world.
But the numbers that I've heard
is that there are some competing podcasts
that in past years have averaged close
to 15,000 downloads per episode.
Some of those podcasts don't exist anymore.
So that's why I say that we are, I think, the largest,
because we're around 12,000 average downloads.
I'd like to hit that number
where we surpass 15,000 average downloads per episode.
And I mean, for no real reason,
that'd be kind of a cool number to hit.
Shows that we're growing it, and we're gonna continue
to do those every single week
and have some bonus episodes every month
with Coach's Corner, and maybe even bring back some Q&A.
Thought about that, but to be determined.
Training-wise, I think I'm going to end up doing two races.
Now, I haven't yet 100% confirmed this,
because it depends a little bit
on training camps and how the first race goes
and then that kinda dictates what the second race is.
But I am committing to working towards getting to Kona.
What it's looking like right now
is I believe we're gonna end up racing the first Ironman
of the year in June.
And we had a few options.
I had Frankfurt, Hamburg, Subic Bay
in the Philippines, Ironman Cork.
Going to Germany makes it really hard to get to Kona.
Everyone is a monster there.
So Frankfurt and Hamburg, probably out of the question.
They can also be fairly hot.
Subic Bay in the Philippines, really hot.
I do not do well in heat.
Ironman Cork in Ireland, cold, slightly hilly,
brutal weather.
Besides the hills, sounds a lot like Winnipeg.
We have brutal weather here, too.
I think the average is about 15 to 17 degree Celsius highs,
which is, do quick math,
somewhere around 55 to 60 Fahrenheit.
That's my money spot.
So I think that's gonna be the first crack
at getting to Kona.
In all honesty, I don't really expect to qualify there.
I think I need more times of wrapping my head
around Ironman training and racing.
I think I need to do, compared to Challenge Roth,
a similar performance, but instead,
just like a 9:15 to a 9:20 is sort of the fitness
that I need to get to.
That means I need to shave off anywhere
between 21 and 26 minutes
from a comparable Challenge Roth performance.
I don't know if I can do that.
So that means that we'd try to race again
if I don't make Kona, and having enough time
to prepare for that means that I'm racing next in September.
And that leaves basically Maryland and Wisconsin.
And I'm leaning towards Wisconsin at this point,
because I know some people there from back
in my curling days, and I got a place to stay.
Finally, the big news is that NTK,
Kim, No Triathlon Kim is going to start working
for us full-time this year.
This is a slightly terrifying thing.
So the goal for that, over 2020,
is to not murder each other.
But frankly, I'm really looking forward to that,
because over the past year, as I've started traveling more,
it's been a little bit lonely.
I would end up in pretty cool places
and there's neat things to do,
but when you're by yourself because the pro triathletes
or the event that you're working on,
they're all working on their event,
and it's not like I tend to go and sightsee
and do things by myself, so I'd end up in Airbnbs
just chilling out for like entire evenings
or afternoons, just by myself.
But now, NTK can come along
and we can experience those things together.
So, that should be fun.
And it's slightly scary.
So Trainiacs, those are the goals for 2020.
Little bit of racing, a lot of just kind
of taking everything that we've done
over the course of the past couple of years
and making sure that, instead of having just free stuff here
and books here and (warbles) and everything
just kind of scattered about, making it easier
for all of you to know what to use,
streamlining things so that it's straightforward
and you know how to, if you want to,
start training with us a little bit more
beyond just YouTube.
Because we do a lot of things,
and we wanna make sure that it's easy
for people to get the benefit of those things.
Helps us, helps you.
And if you wanna be along for the journey
and see if NTK and I survive 2020,
make sure you hit the subscribe button below.
Happy New Year, everyone.
Have a great year.
I wanna hear from you what your goals are for 2020
in the comments below.
Later, Trainiacs.