From Ice Hockey Dreams to Endurance Success: Colin's Journey of Transformation

I remember when I knew what he was doing, I told myself I would never do that. That was not going to be the path. And seeing what it had done to him at that stage, I just had no intentions and swore to myself that I wouldn't do it. I do remember the first time I used and thinking of him.

Welcome to another episode of the Business of Endurance where we dive into the extraordinary journey of Colin Cook, a man who has transformed, transformed his life from the grips of addiction to becoming an elite triathlete, a sub 9 Ironman finisher and coach of some of the sport's best. Colin's story is one of redemption, resilience and relentless pursuit of excellence. And in today's conversation, he opens up about his battles, particularly with both alcohol and drugs. From overcoming these personal demons to building a thriving business and competing at Kona many, many times, Colin share the lessons he's learned about grit, mindset and balancing life's demands. You'll hear powerful insights into leveraging both tech and AI in both endurance sports and business, maximizing recovery and how to shift from destructive habits to life changing passions. So whether you're chasing your first marathon or balancing family life with your business and your athletic goals, this episode will inspire and equip you to push boundaries, endure challenges and live your most fulfilling life. This really is an inspiring story. So I know you're going to love this episode with Colin Cook. So Colin, welcome to the Business of Endurance podcast. I know we've got a real treat in chatting to you today. This is going to be a fascinating conversation and inspiring conversation. I know, but I like to take things right back to the start and my understanding is that your sporting youth was more around ice hockey or probably what you term hockey rather than ice hockey, but in the UK we would need to call it ice hockey around that sport in particular. So tell us about what your sporting youth look like and the level that you got to within the world of ice hockey.

Yeah, for starters. Charlie, Claire, thank you so much for having me on here. Really appreciate the opportunity and hope that everybody enjoys here. But yeah, kicking it back to when I was a kid here, hockey was definitely my primary passion, but I really did just love all things sports. And not to start off weekly when I compare my childhood to the way my kids are coming up these days where you don't just go outside and play with the neighbors and do whatever sport is out there. It seems like those days are more challenging to come by now, but I was out doing everything. I played baseball, I played basketball, obviously Hockey, but soccer, I guess, when I was real young and just loved sports and competing, I think.

And where did that journey in ice hockey take you? Tell us a bit about what your aspirations in that sport. What level did you get to?

Yeah, so hands down, my goal for most of my life was to play in the NHL and I was not successful with that, but I did make it to the collegiate level. So I played NCAA Division 1 for a few years and it really was very transcending for me. You know, I played on a very elite level team starting in fifth grade. I was traveling, I was going to Canada and things for tournaments during the summer, playing in the junior World Championships when I was in eighth grade, playing on a high level private prep school when I was in high school and trips to Europe to play all across the board. It really helped me also personality wise. I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, but I think a lot of small town kids get to know their surrounding area and don't get to see as much of other states, never mind the world and get to meet other people. I think my comfort and personality really developed significantly being thrown into those environments all the time and really enjoying that.

And so obviously we're going to come on to endurance sport over the course of this conversation, because that's why we're all here. What do you think you learned from your foundation in ice hockey that you later, whether that's mindset, whether that's discipline, what did you apply from the world of ice hockey into the world of endurance sport? And also how did it help you through physically, if at all?

Yeah, having that mindset of wanting to be the best and trying to be a professional hockey player, I think was always something that pushed me into trying to be the best that I can be. Contrary to that, my grandfather played semi pro baseball and so he decided that my dad was going to be a pro baseball player when he was growing up. So by the time I believe my dad was 11, he never played a sport again until he was 30 years old. So my dad took the complete opposite approach with me. So everything had to come purely from me. There was absolutely no push. And honestly, when I look back, I feel like I wish maybe there was a little bit more push. And they were obviously my parents were extremely supportive, both my brother and I. My brother was a pretty competitive dirt bike racer. So a lot of times on the weekends one of us was taking us to the rink and the other one was taking us off to the racetrack. That was the tremendous commitment from them. But the Drive. And the passion really always came from me. And as we look at kid sports now today, and you see these kids going specific very early on and we're learning really, that may not necessarily be the best path. But I always had my parents saying, you sure you want to go play on that team during the summer? You don't want to take it off or something? I was just, heck, no. There's no way I want to stop playing. I just absolutely love every moment I had on the ice, and it was just all complete pleasure for me from playing ice hockey.

How do you think that has shaped you as an endurance athlete? Like, what can you take from playing in a team sport and applying that to what is a very individual sport actually in the world of triathlon, on endurance.

Yeah.

I think there's a couple ways to look at this and how it's impacted things. The funny thing I realized that's interesting is especially as I was a goalie in hockey, so ultimately I'm trying to obviously not let in any goals. And the goal was to try to have time go by as quick as possible. Right. Because you didn't want to let in any goals. And so by the time the game was over, you didn't let any end. That was what you wanted. Obviously, I look at triathlon or endurance sports and it's the same thing. You want to be done as quick as you possibly can. I've often thought about how maybe that applies to the sport. But one thing that is interesting, and it transcends just ice hockey and goes into just competitive athletes, excuse me, specifically collegiate athletes and kids that have played hockey or a sport their entire life, and then you find yourself finishing, whether it is high school or college or wherever your kind of career ends, I had a tremendously difficult time with that. And when you've been playing sport for, let's call it at least 15, 18 years, and now all of a sudden it's just completely gone and you lose that structure. That can really be very. It certainly was very difficult for me, and I'm certainly. I know that I'm not alone. And people that struggle with the challenges of trying to move on when you've had those structured practices and the team and that environment for your entire life, and like I said, it's just all of a sudden gone. I think that my. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but my drug use and things like that were really centered around being lost. And ultimately where I had this goal to make it to NHL, and I failed at that. And so I found myself really struggling to figure out what is next for me and really being satisfied with where my life was headed.

Tell us a little bit about that next stage. So at what point did you decide your hockey career is over? And then how did that evolve into the problems with drugs and alcohol that was the next chapter of your life as far as I can see. When I'm boxing it out, yeah, the.

Writing was definitely on the wall. Even I could say in high school, you could tell by that point, I think that I certainly did not give up on it, but that I was not at the caliber of a lot of the NHLers and what their trajectory looked like in order to get to the NHL. So I think the writing was on the wall there early on. And. And to be fair and transparent, my partying started towards the end of high school, but was certainly my main focus, I would say over sport, even in college. And I was, as I mentioned, a goalie. And I was actually the. The third string goalie when I was playing at the Division 1 level. And both the goalies in front of me were better than me. So it wasn't a position where I felt like I was being treated unfairly, but it also opened up the opportunity where I knew I probably wasn't going to play Friday or Saturday night. So it opened up my ability to really let loose and do some things probably shouldn't have been doing, especially at that caliber of hockey. But I was doing that. And I think that when the hockey completely closed there, it just made me feel very lost and just didn't have the direction or the desire to really find where I wanted to be next.

It's really interesting to hear about that structure around sport and as athletes ourselves here, we certainly have that routine and we love that structure. I also see some similarities and actually there's some research behind addiction and also how athletes are. So that's really interesting. We'll come on to that. But tell us a bit more about, if you may, about the addiction to drugs and alcohol. Like you talked about this slippery slope, like how it started, like how did that become from partying to where it was before you got into endurance sport?

I guess I would wake up every Sunday in particular, usually, so I'd still consider myself an addict, but I wasn't a daily. Cocaine was my primarily drug. I would go a few days without consuming and then ultimately I'd feel terrible. I mentioned Sunday mornings because I would party all week, you know, start usually Thursday night, party very hard. I usually go to work still on Friday after a couple Hours of sleep and then maybe sleep some Friday or Saturday night. But it would be very, very burnt and tired by the time Sunday came around. My kind of typical week was partying Thursday through Sunday. I'd literally go to bed at 2, 3 in the afternoon on Sunday because I was so exhausted. I'd work on Monday, I'd get home from work five, five, I'd go to bed and I'd start to come around. And by Wednesday I'd feel like, okay, I feel all right. And then I'd just do it all over again on Thursday. I can't tell you how many times I must have told myself on that Sunday morning in particular that I'm never going to do this again. This is the last time I've had it. I'm done with this. And then again, as the week would progress, I would somehow figure out a way to justify going in and just doing it all over again.

From where you were, like, what was the deciding factor of you suddenly making that big change? Like, it must have been extremely difficult. So what happened?

Yeah, so I do like to say that my endurance career started about 3:00am, you know, a Saturday night slash Sunday morning actually, at my brother's house, very high and intoxicated. And I told my buddies and my brother that I was going to run the Boston Marathon that year. And they all laughed at me and said, yeah, sure, Colin, why don't you have another one here and we'll keep talking about that. I guess to go back on where I felt like I was lost, there was definitely those times when I knew I was better than what I was doing and that I was capable of more and that I needed to get myself into a better situation. And so by saying that even during those days, I like to be a man of my word and do what I said. And so I just started training. Very simple, like an online marathon training plan where I was running, I think three or four times a week. But the shift that made in me and the passion and the focus and really the purpose that that gave me was just a complete shift for me. To be fair, I did not cold turkey, just totally stopped drinking and partying. And even to this day, I still struggle a little bit with feeling like I was letting my friends down and things like that that I wasn't partying with and so forth. So there was definitely a transition period with it for sure. But I felt so much better. And my saying now is I like to wake up a little bit sore, a heck of a lot better than hungover. And so that just kept progressing and it was. I did run the. The Boston Marathon. That was back in 2009. And actually I think it was a month or two before the race. I was looking at what would be the next thing and found triathlon as potential opportunity to do that. And so I started swimming and biking a little bit and I was just completely fell in love nearly instantly where that again, getting that structure and doing different things every day. I just absolutely loved it and really haven't looked back from there.

So that leads us on to kind of a good segue in the sense of there's clearly. I often describe myself as having an addictive personality and fortunately I'm now addicted to something that's good for me as opposed to something that's bad. Would you say the same thing? And also, how did you end up consuming? I know your dad used drugs and your brother used drugs at different stages. Was that sort of how you ended up down that path or was it just totally unrelated?

Yeah, so I guess my brother and I actually when I was in high school, we absolutely hated each other. He started consuming drugs before I did. And so really the only time he would be at our house for the most part when he was hungover and miserable. So he really wasn't that much pleasure to be around. I remember hearing that my brother was primarily using cocaine and he ended up going to heroin and worse things than in my opinion. But I remember when I knew what he was doing, I told myself I would never do that. That was not going to be the path. And seeing what it had done to him at that stage, I just had no intentions and swore to myself that I wouldn't do it. I do remember the first time I used and thinking of him, I was intoxicated. Alcohol. Not to make this all about substance abuse, but alcohol is a gateway drug when you start making poor decisions. Once it got a hold of me, definitely it was something I was drawn to and had a very difficult time stopping. But yeah, his use and my father's use definitely were what I thought motivators to not do it. Told myself that those were things that were going to prevent me from doing it, but they didn't.

Do you think it had the opposite effect? Did it normalize it or was it nothing to do with it?

Ah, that's a good question. I'm not sure on that one. I was still, for the most part living with my parents throughout this stage and outside of when I was at college for school. And I think they were relatively accepting of me doing it which that can go two different ways as a parent. Right. If you go too strong, then maybe that just pushed the person off into the wrong direction or obviously you want to be there. And they were always there for me when I was ready to change. But I think it was accepted and something that was just my brother and I were doing and they, you know, were very, again, loving of us, but didn't really do much to try to stop us.

It's really interesting, like you having grown up in that environment and then where you are now as well. I talked a little bit or mentioned a little bit about actually my interest in addiction in terms of from an exercise perspective. And I wonder, as a coach, but also as an athlete yourself, do you see any relationship in either mindset or patterns like what athletes do in terms of this addictive nature and endurance sport?

Completely, yeah. So I didn't answer Charlie's question directly on that as well either. But I wholeheartedly believe that triathlon is. Is just another addiction. It just happens to be a lot healthier one. And it is making sure that I'm keeping that balance, especially now as a father of four and other businesses and things that I'm involved with, I have to make sure that I find that balance and to be fully transparent again. This year I had a really successful year and I think I felt a pretty good balance, but I was definitely pushing that envelope there as my big races were approaching and I think driven to succeed and I want to be successful, but really at the end of the day, it is about that lifestyle and hopefully being a good role model to my kids first and foremost and also to my community.

There's two parts to balance there, isn't there? One. One from a family perspective, but one from an athlete perspective. How do you help your athletes with balance when you see them maybe going down that more kind of exercise addiction, if we term it that.

It's a great question. And I think to me, what really makes true coaching or as a coach, what you can really do to help an athlete. Sometimes I'm just a glorified babysitter because you're just giving people workouts to do and if they follow those, that's going to help them. But when you're in regular communication with your athletes, you can start to gauge when things may be going astray. And if, if you're just following a plan, you don't really have anybody overseeing things, then I think that gets lost and there's nobody there to keep you in check on that, I guess, kind of Twofold. I always put myself in the athlete's shoes. So when I'm writing the workouts or something like that, I obviously know their circumstances are different than mine, but I always like to keep that athlete mentality. And if it's ultimately not something I would do, then I'm not going to give it to them. But at the same time, I think that it can be difficult and especially when you're competitive or you're really in the midst of things and it's a challenging part of your journey to whatever race line you're getting to. We need that outside reflection and somebody to be able to give you that guidance that you may not be able to see yourself. Definitely. Really try to stay keen and communicate regularly with my clients to help prevent that.

I think it's really interesting and you talking about that made me think back to what you said about what your grandfather did to your father and then your father's approach to you. So this balance is also in terms of how hard you push. So now that you're a parent, how hard are you pushing your children towards sport?

Very minimally, I guess I should say. My daughter is six now. She's just about turned seven. She has not done a triathlon, but my other three have done triathlons and certainly give them the opportunities to do that and would love to see them doing that. But currently there's really minimal youth programs, especially around me and in this area. My second child is pretty severely autistic. Sports aren't really something that he's doing much of these days. Hopefully that'll change at some point here. But my first and my third child, they play flag football when they're out on their bikes just having fun. And if they show any interest in a sport or doing some kind of event, like we did a turkey trot here in the States in Thanksgiving a couple days ago. I'm gonna encourage those things and support them as best I can. But I really wish they were swimmers right now and part of a swim team. But my oldest did do that for I think, a season, but he wasn't enjoying it, so we pulled the plug on that. I'd say that I'm going to leverage what I know as competitive athlete growing up and make sure they know what it takes to get to that level so that if they want to really be there. Actually, my seven year old wants to be an NFL player at this point and I try to remind him of these kids. There's a serious amount of work that has to go into doing that. So I'm not going to make him do that by any means, but if he wants to get where he wants to be, he's going to have to put in the work. I think I hopefully am finding a happy medium there.

Brilliant. You want to nurture them towards stuff, but ultimately if they're not motivated to do it, there's no point in enforcing the issue for sure. I want to dive into more of your sort of. You transitioned from the Boston Marathon into doing Ironman's and you've achieved huge amounts in the world of Ironman. What's your highlight of your Ironman and triathlon journeys so far?

There's definitely a few out there, but I would have to say so far, being the overall amateur winner at Ironman Lake Placid this past season and going under nine hours on that course is. It's got to be up there for sure.

And I guess when you did your Ironman event, like tell us a little bit about that because you've done obviously multiple Ironman events now and multiple world championships. We were just talking about Kona before we came on today. Tell us a little bit about your first Ironman event, like what made you go back?

Yeah, great question. So first Ironman or full Ironman was Ironman Arizona back in 2010. I think that my goal there obviously was just to finish, but I did get hit by a car about six weeks before the race. I had some labral tear that got developed. Actually I think it was already there, but got distinguished and determined officially at that accident. So there was definitely some question of whether I could achieve it or not. But I will say even by that point I already had Kona aspirations on my mind. I knew it wasn't realistic that I was probably going to qualify at that race, but there was the drive and the inspiration to keep going. And I guess actually it's interesting. I would say maybe the last few races I haven't felt this way. But almost during every Ironman I've done, I've said, all right, this is going to be the last one. And during it, at some point, right when you start questioning things and you have your doubts in your mind and right after the race with the soreness and things, but always within a few days I'm back and I've gone away from. I used to tell my wife that, all right, I think this is going to be the last one. No more Ironman. And I've stopped saying that because I. It's just the enjoy the journey. And what I think it. It really helps and I guess what she will also agree with that I need this kind of training in my life to keep that structure and to keep me on point.

I'm noticing that you said exactly the same thing about your drug and alcohol of this will be the last time I do this. Then on Thursday you said it, Charlie.

But you're absolutely right. Hence, hence agreeing that it is indeed an addiction here.

Yes, I think there's the proof is in the pudding. I think we're all nodding ahead going, yes, that's me too. So you've obviously done a lot of Iron Mans. So for me, and I was having just done Kona as well, I was looking forward to the next year going am I going to, am I not going to? And the thing that I concluded was as soon as it became about the time, it became less interesting when it was about the experience in the adventure or qualifying. Firstly, would you agree with that? And secondly, how have you continued to stay motivated doing Ironman after Ironman over the years?

Yeah, great questions. So I think that answer has actually changed for me over time. I qualified for Kona for the first time back in 2012 and I do remember everybody telling me that, okay, congratulations, you qualified. Now just go to Kona and just enjoy it. And I did do that, had an incredible trip, but went over a little over 11 hours on that first trip to the island. And I, I think that it's important to have, yes, goal number one has to be completing the event. I think for everybody, right. That's got to be the priority one here. But to me, and I think for highly motivated people, if you keep it that ambiguous or you don't give any more detailed goals that when you're out on the lava fields at mile 16, when you need to find that extra gear that need to dig deep to continue to push yourself, it's a lot harder to do that because unless you're, I guess you're pushing up against the 17 hour cutoff or something like that, then maybe that's going to motivate you to get your butt in gear. But if you don't have something driving you with a little bit more granular goal, I think that it can make it tough when you're already pushing your limits and so forth. So I, I think that has, has changed quite a bit over where that's how I, I was thinking of things and, and approach things back then. And I think you always have to keep that grander scheme and make sure that you're content and, and happy with whatever happens on that day. Specifically when it comes to racing, then for most of my people, especially the higher level people, it's having some more detailed goals within that, I think, you.

Know, your experience as an athlete and then being able to coach is really important. So you talked actually about coaching right at the very beginning in terms of actually being there for your athletes and being able to really understand them. So how do you use your experience as an athlete to really coach your athletes?

So I guess I'll start that by saying I do think it's very helpful to be a strong or a competitive athlete. But just because you're a fast athlete or successful athlete doesn't mean you're going to be a good coach. Right. So there's a big differentiator there. But I certainly practice what I preach and I like to lead by example for sure. To me it is really getting in my athlete shoes and figuring out, all right, what is really going to be best for that person to help them be successful and not to get too much into the weeds of that. I think that for most people, and I do focus primarily on competitive higher level athletes that are doing ironman or half ironman distances, but typically have families on full time jobs and all the things that go along with that. And so finding that balance like you talked about we hit on a little bit earlier is really essential. Right. Because I certainly don't have any magic workouts or special workouts that are going to get people to where they need to be. It's that consistent workload and being healthy and remaining there. But you have to be both physically and mentally able to absorb that and be able to do that. If you're not able to do that, you may have some short term success or get to some shorter goals. But again, transitioning to where really to me it's all about that lifestyle and hopefully having success along the way. You really need to make sure you're finding that balance.

Balance seems to be the key word coming out of this. I'm interested to know, how do you measure balance? Do you use any particular technology? Does that help you to be able to coach an athlete, to really give them evidence as to where they are and help them with that balance?

Yeah, so I guess I'll answer that for myself as an athlete first. And I'll say that while I'm trying to maintain relative balance among what I really consider to be the three aspects of my life, that's my family, work and then that's me as an athlete, there's going to be shifts in time where one is a little bit skewed or is taking up more than others. For example, after now completing Kona a little over a month ago, I have been doing next to no training. I've been keeping movement and things like that, but I am really focused on giving back some of the time that maybe I was taken away. I do think, relatively speaking, I keep my volume on the lower end side compared to a lot of the guys I'm competing against, but making sure that I'm doing extra things with the family and enjoying the holidays and those for me, it does sway a little bit and it's going to be different throughout the year and where it pertains to my races. But when I think about my athletes, I guess I do think of it in a similar fashion. But it's also really making sure that you're focused on some kind of short term goals. And I think that a lot of people can, especially during the winter and what I actually refer to as the committed season as opposed to the off season is a real good opportunity to improve on things. But you don't necessarily have to go crazy with the volume in order to do that.

And is it also about. So do you get your athlete doing, encouraging them to do other sports or other activities, or are you just trying to say dial it down and spend more time eating breakfast or having coffee in the cafe with your mates? Sort of, you know, what's your approach?

I think it depends on the person there. I would say in general, yes, I am a huge fan, especially during the winter here, of cross training. But even during the season, whether it's that's mountain biking or cross country skiing, you know, anything that somebody's in. Actually, I have a, I do have a client now that's just starting to learn to play hockey. We're dealing with the adult hockey of 11:50pm Games and things like that and how much that's impacting his sleep and the rest of his training. But yeah, it's definitely doing those things. We need the specificity of swim, biking and running as certainly as our races approach. But we can get a lot of gains out of doing different things. And especially during the winter, I think it's a tremendous opportunity to do that.

And you mentioned sleep there and I heard you use an aura ring from another podcast I was listening to you on, as both Claire and I do. So how do you use that with your athletes? And is it just sleep or are you dialing into things like heart rate variability? And if so, how are you using that with your athletes?

Yeah, great. Question. So I'll start with sleep. You know, I'm certainly not convinced that everybody needs eight hours of sleep or nine hours of sleep, whatever it may be. I think everybody's different there and you need to figure out what your body responds best to. Right. Using something like an ring to be able to do that. Quick tangent there. If we dive into gadgets, making sure you have a reliable data source. Glad to hear you guys are on the OURA ring board. I think there's some other options out there that are risk based, which I'm not a fan of just because I don't think they're a reliable source. And if you're going to make that much rely that much for your training and your life based around that data, you better make damn sure that it's actually accurate data. That's priority one to me and making sure that we're finding what works for that person. But 100% using really primarily HRV on top of that sleep. Yes. We can look at the sleep scores and things with aura and the readiness. HRV is a tremendous resource and I've found to be invaluable over the years. And it's something certainly again as me as an athlete and also as a coach, I'm looking at and I've been amazed over the years. There's been times when I've gotten indicators that hey, maybe you should slow down a little bit or even clients have said and they overlook that or they disregard it, say ah, I'm fine, and then sure enough, a day or two later they're sick or something bad happens that affects their training as a whole. I think that usually you're better off going slightly easier or toning it back and ensuring that you're able to continue as opposed to pushing a little bit too hard. And I think a lot of people end up making that mistake.

And so if a listener is thinking about just getting into buying OURA rings and any other gadgets around this, and particularly with heart rate variability, could you give them an idiot's guide as to what they should look at to avoid over training and getting injured, please?

I guess the way I like to really quickly explain HRV heart rate variability is you look at your heart rate and let's say it's for simplicity here. It's 60 beats per second, right? That would obviously equate to one beat per second. But the reality is that not every beat is happening exactly every second. There's going to be some that are 0.9 seconds. The next one's going to be 1.1 seconds. And there's that variability. And the research has shown that when that variability is too significant there, that can definitely have an impact on your readiness to, to do anything really, but especially when it comes to training here. So I would just encourage you to. You have to get a baseline right, everything. Like, just like with sleep, the HRV is completely independent and personal to that person. Right. My score versus yours, Charlie, is completely irrelevant to each other. I think it's setting up and understanding what your baseline is and then making educated move movements and adjustments based on that.

When you're training with hrv, what do you suggest to them in terms of potentially, like, recovery techniques? If they are really pushing themselves, they need to step back a bit. Tell us a little bit about recovery and your ideas around recovery.

Yeah, I guess one thing I'll mention here, if it hasn't come out yet, is so I do own a wellness center here in New Hampshire. So we do things like cryotherapy, float therapy, light therapy, infrared sauna, and different things like that. But I always start the conversation, if I ever talk about recovery, is that sleep is hands down, you can come to me and I can offer you some services. And yes, they will help. But if you're not sleeping well, you need to figure out and work on that as priority one because, and it's just amazing to me, yes, you have to impress or encouraging to people that are willing to push through sleep deprivation. But most of the time, if I hear, oh, I only got four hours of sleep last night, but I still got that workout, and I'm shaking my head saying, oh, why did we do that? And again, that dedication. And it is impressive and it is a mindset thing at the same time, but what's that doing to the next day and the day after that? In the long term, issues that's going to result in here, I would say most of the time, especially when you're working with dedicated people like myself, it's more trying to figure out how to convince people to tone it back to make sure that they're not overdoing it and they're not running the risk of, of a burnout or injury. But yeah, I'll say my favorite recovery tool is our float therapy. So people that aren't familiar with that, it's a pool of water, typically about 10 inches of water, and it's got over a thousand pounds of salt in it. So what you do is you go in there and you just float. Ideally you turn the lights off, you can have some meditative music on but it's the one place especially in again, we can dive into gadgets here, but where technology is taken away from us and we're just able to settle and just let our minds decompress. And the salt is great for our bodies and can definitely help speed up recovery. But it's more about that mind reset here and how valuable that is. I try to float at least once a week and find it to be extremely valuable.

Is there any research or evidence around floating and the chirotherapies? If there is, tell us a little bit about it.

There is. There's definitely more around the float therapy than there is. There's definitely some studies going on still around cryotherapy. Depends. It depends who you talk to, to be perfectly honest, whether that beneficial to you or not. But with the float therapy, even things like post traumatic stress issues and things like that, they have proven so they're trying to get veterans and people that have had, most of us have had some kind of PSDD issues in our lives here that we need to work through. But yeah, there's a lot of compelling stuff around that primarily again from our minds and what it can do there, but also again, physically to a certain.

Degree, just being in that space and floating, as you said, you're away from gadgets, you're away from technology. And having that time and space is so important, isn't it? What other gadgets do you use with your athletes or technology? So Charlie's the big tech guy here. You know, you've talked about the Oura ring and other kind of wrist wearables. Like what's the number one wearable or gadget do you think that athletes really benefit from?

I would assume mostly listeners are probably already doing this, but you have to start with the watch. I'm a wahoo guy, so I'm wearing a wahoo. Your garmins, whatever it may be. To me, it's almost comical to me when people start complaining about the price of watches. When we say it's 5, 600 US dollars or something like that for a watch, I'm sure it's not cheap. But when you think about if you're using that every single day, oftentimes multiple times during a day, and the amount of data and how relevant and helpful it is, to me it's. It's a bargain. But yeah, I think that if we want to get to where we, if we haven't decided or we haven't found out where we want to go, we're never going to get there. We have to have benchmarks and we have to understand going to take to get to that place. And so having the proper data is the place. You got to start there. So to me, the number one requirement is to have a watch for sure, certainly on the bike. I'm a huge fan of power meters. We still don't require power meters with our clients, But I think 98% of them do have them. And we certainly encourage everyone to have one for sure.

Looking to the future, and I don't really mind whether you answer this from a recovery point of view or from anything else, but where do you think the most exciting technology is around the world of endurance sport? That's coming down the pipeline.

I'll talk a little bit about Tridot maybe for a minute here, and Human GO is another one that's up and coming here. And so I actually, I use tridot last season for my training just because I was so intrigued by the AI elements of that and what that could do for us. And so I really wanted to experience it myself. And there was a lot of talk about people drinking the Kool Aid that the tried out. People really drink the Kool Aid.

You're Talking to a try.com vert. All right, so this is great. Keep going.

Yeah. Where I think that AI can really come into play is with weather and adjusting your training based on the weather, assuming that you're going outdoors and things like that. Because I like to consider myself a pretty good coach, but using myself an example or my coaching, if I was coaching one of you guys, sorry, guys, I'm not going to go into the weather app every single day to look at your training and make adjustments to it for that, it's just not feasible for me. So when we can start to help the AI or the AI to help us as coaches to be able to learn what adjustments we need to make and making those adjustments for us if we can be confident with them, I think that's really the future. And where I see the real value is in AI. I still think that there's so much mental to triathlon coaching and having a human being in your corner is extremely valuable. Again, obviously unbiased as a coach saying that, but I think that as we continue to leverage that AI to help us as coaches, it's really going to be impactful for the community and in general, where I see a lot of value coming.

I couldn't agree with you more. I think that this is the. So I've had a lot of conversations around AI, not just about tridot but AI in business as well. And it's allowing the humans to do more of the stuff that they're good at, which is the empathy, creativity and leadership. And it's allowing the AI to do what it's better at, which is massive amounts of data and repetitive bore. I've never been a triathlon coach, but how many times have you pasted the same kind of workout into different athletes? I should be spending my time talking to the athletes as opposed to programming a computer.

Exactly right. Yeah. I think, again, not to go too far off a tangent, I think that a platform like tridot for newer coaches is tremendously valuable because they may say, oh geez, Charlie, how long of a ride should I give you this Saturday? Or something like that. Where maybe more experienced coaches may not. May be able to do that a little bit more naturally, but it really sets that footprint. And you're 100% right. I certainly like to do testing as a coach and trying to figure out what strengths and weaknesses athletes have and things. But you, you can't skin an endurance workout too many different ways. Right. When you just got to get in that appropriate amount of effort and maybe the volume certainly changes depending on the person.

I think it's, it's going to be interesting. Isn't it over, well, even the next year, how quickly AI is advancing and what we see in the, the world of endurance sports as well to help us. So thinking about the more human side, you have recently set up an elite triathlon team. So tell us a little bit about your reasons for doing that and how you create that team spirit.

Yeah, there is a new team. We just finished up our first season. It's called the Top Guns Triathlon Team. We do actually have a few professionals and kind of newer professionals on the team, but it is primarily an age group triathlon team. And, and really our goal is yes, we want people and most of our folks are quite fast and do very well placement wise. But to me the goal is to try to showcase that it is possible to be very successful on the race course while still being, in my case, a great dad and very successful in professional life. You know, I guess going back that balance. That word, balance. Right. And so finding balance and being successful across the board and also trying to show our failures. We do encourage our athletes to talk about their failures and things that don't go well. You know, I'm, I will say I'm not a huge social media fan and I wish I could be a little bit more present on there, but it just doesn't come all that natural to me. But what I don't like about it is most people are only posting about all the good things in their life, right? But life isn't perfect and life isn't all good. And we have to encourage our people to share those challenges they have. And because we all have failures and failures, what breeds success and how we learn and those kinds of things, we try to hopefully share that side of things as well.

But I love that idea of learning from failure and sharing that. And I think in a group environment it's always so supportive to share your failures. And obviously you do so many different things. You're a coach, you're an athlete, you've got your own podcast, you're a dad. How do you balance everything?

And if it wasn't clear, I actually have a full time job as well. So I'm in the cybersecurity world as well. So I have a full time gig there. So yeah, I do get asked quite regularly, how do you do all that you do here? And I think the biggest thing I always start out that answer with is planning. Right. I can already tell you what time I'm going to work out tomorrow and what things I'm doing. I live on Google Calendar and making sure that everything's there. And yes, I have four or five different Google Calendars that I'm trying to collaborate all together to make it all work. But it's really about figuring out what, prioritizing what's important to you and then making sure that you're putting those in the appropriate windows. And if you do that, I think a lot of people are amazed at what you can do. But I guess also I mentioned there's three priorities in my life when I talk about there's my family, there's my work, and there's triathlon. I am one at this point with the things that I have going on, I can tell you there's really not much else to my life these days. That's what I care about and that's what I focus on. I'm not doing much other things and I'm totally good with that. But that's also a key aspect to it too as well.

What I'm sitting here thinking is, is we've only mentioned really in passing the fact that you not only have you got a full time job doing the cybersecurity, but you run this other business on the recovery clinic. I'm assuming that means that you've got a team or at least one group of people that are running that business for you. So what's been the secret to your success? To have a business that is successful but that you're not working in on a day to day basis.

Yeah. You have to be able to delegate. That is absolutely critical. I almost consider myself more of an investor in Peak Recovery and Health center, the Wellness center these days than a true business owner. Because yes, I'm contributing and giving feedback and things like that, but I'm never at this point a recovery technician on the clock covering our services and things like that. And it's more just making sure that we're doing things efficiently operationally and those kinds of things across the board. Actually we talk about with it being the winter now and not doing as much training since Kona, I've been looking at ChatGPT, what I can do to automate tasks and things like that to eliminate those things or at least reduce the amount of time that I'm consumed by those kind of things. So I guess efficiency is a word that I'm also a very big fan of and like to really focus on and making sure that I'm being as efficient as possible.

This is a whole other conversation, isn't it? Because there is so much potential there and obviously try DOT is a way of using AI to accelerate the training process, whether it's as a coach or as an athlete. But in business there is. I'm just nearly finished delivering a course on how businesses can grow using the power of AI because there and ChatGPT is the most incredible tool but it's one of many tools that you can use. Let's dive a little bit deeper on that. How do you see that you're going to use AI in those businesses to help grow and be more efficient?

So far, to be transparent, I can't really say I've gotten too far along the way. I think there is that learning curve is when you get started here where you got to figure out and it is the heavy lift is obviously at the beginning and once you get over that line then it's going to be super easy. But to me I think it's making sure that my calendars and all those kinds of things are intact and automating some of the kind of follow up and things like that we do, especially when we look at Peak Recovery and Health center with new customers coming in and then the follow ups and educating them about our products and those kinds of things. Drip email campaigns if you will, is what I'm focused on right now with improving what we're doing there. But there's so much that being done with that automation. It's just. Yeah. A matter of really figuring out the structure and getting it actually implemented.

That. That is exactly it. It's. It's this concept of fafoing around fuck about and find out. Basically there's. You need a lot of that with this AI. But. But yeah. No. Awesome. I just think it's. It's such an incredible opportunity and obviously I can recommend a good course for you if you're looking to expand your lineage. So one of the things that we asked every guest on the podcast is about book that they found that they've either helped themselves or they find themselves recommending regularly to others. So any books that you would recommend to your clients or any books that were transformational in your journey still, if.

I have to pick one, I would go with David Goggins. Can't hurt me. I just think that he just shows what is possible if we set our minds and our intentions correctly. I always. So for those that have listened and certainly not to get into his story too much, you got to take David Goggins with a grain of salt. Because if you look at relationships and other things, he's not maybe the ideal mentor there, but he has proven what we can do when we put our mind to things and how when we're going through those hard things, making sure that we're in the right mindset, it's a game changer. I think that it's an incredibly powerful story and shows what we're capable of for sure. So I'd have to go with that one. I was going to also mention I'm currently I'm a big audiobooks guy, so I am in the process of reading Just Add Water by Katie Ledecky here, which has been really good. Good. And as somebody that I guess I'll call myself a decent swimmer, but not quite where I want to be in the water. I'm trying to soak in as much of the swim experience as I can.

So this is not a book I've heard of actually. So. So I love David Goggins as a recommendation. Claire and I did an ultramarathon a couple of years ago and as we were in the last couple of miles, I was quoting David Goggins. I won't repeat that bit now, but yeah, you'll know which bit that was. But tell me about Just Add Water.

Tough. So it's really just. It's the audiobook version is actually Katie delivering it herself, which I always like when obviously it's the person delivering it is really nice, but it's just all about her journey and how she's gotten to where she is. And I'm still, what am I about halfway through? And it's still, it's primarily talked about her childhood and the dedication it took and her experiences throughout that. The success she had is just unbelievable and at such a young age, I can't even imagine having to be able to handle that at that age is absolutely incredible. But it's really neat to hear hear her story.

And we have a tradition on the podcast where the last guest asks the next guest a question without knowing who that is. So we are. Our last guest was Joseph Spindler, who obviously coaches Rico Bogan, who's a big Q Cycles guy as well. And I know you're a fan of the coup cycles, so I think Claire's got Joseph's question.

So Joe asks, when was the last time you did something for the first time and what was it?

Oh, let's see here.

That's a tough question, isn't it?

That is a good one. Yeah.

I'm going to give you some thinking time there because that's tough.

This is actually going back a little over a year now, but I'm gonna share an experience where I really got out of my comfort zone. So we were actually having, my oldest was having his birthday party. We had it here at the house and we had a reptile guy come in with all these snakes and other reptiles and things like that. And I love turtles. I love, love those reptiles. But I am petrified of snakes. And I actually have a picture of me with a python, like a six or seven foot python around my shoulders that I still can't believe I did that. I still actually, we were talking about it recently and it came up and it was. I'm not even sure I'd be willing to do it again. Is that really how scared I am of snakes and things? But yeah, that's something that was definitely a first. And I, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a last.

And to finish off, I'd love to know how many times have you done Kona now?

I just did seventh time in Kona.

So seven times in Kona and completed so many Ironmans gone under nine hours. What's next? What are you looking to do? What would excite you? About 2025.

So still in negotiations with the wife about what the calendar will look like in 2025. But I am definitely, I'll admit I, I did come up a bit short. So I finished 10th of my age group in Kona this year I really be in the top five and I think I got eighth when it was in St. George. I guess I've done the world championship eight times, but seven in Kona. So I have not gotten their man world championship podium. That's definitely something that inspires me or something that I'm hopefully working towards. But as a 42 year old, soon to be 43, I really want to continue. I still just finished what would be my fastest year, I would say, and continue to get faster. And I want to redefine and disprove a lot of that as slowing down as we age year. I do recognize it's coming at some point here, but I still feel like I'm in my prime and I want to enjoy that and keep pushing the boundaries.

And having done St. George and Kona, does that mean you're going to do Nice so that you've got the sort of trilogy?

There may be some motivation to go as well. I think it looks like a beautiful course, beautiful venue. Arguably for me on the east coast in the US it's actually closer to me than Kona is. Yeah, I would love to get over and complete the trifecta. I guess I'm going to have to use. That's a good one. I've talked about that with my wife here.

I always think that the Europeans can consider Nice to be easier for them and the Americans consider that Kona would be easier. But how do you feel about the fact that the World Championship now bounces between Kona and Nice?

So I am actually a big fan of it and I think that we should continue to rotate the championships and primarily and that's actually more for the professionals than even the amateurs. The Kona course is, don't get me wrong, spending a week in Hawaii is. You can't beat that. And I'm not sure sure any of these other venues are going to be able to top that. But that type of environment definitely suits certain athletes better than others. Right. So if you really want to see who a true champion is, put them in different environments and prove that in different places. So I think for the sport, in the interest of the sport, I think there's a lot of value in doing it in different venues.

I think it, it opens it out to a lot more people as well that as a Brit you need a pretty deep pocket to justify the Kona truck trip. It has a, it has a lot of benefits. And as much as I only wanted to do Kona now that I've done Kona. It's like, well, now I'd quite like to do Nice. But it was always.

It is interesting. Right where it does shift once you said, all right, I've done Kona. Whereas maybe if you were trying to qualify for next year you'd be like, oh, and there's no doubt so far in St. George. Anyways, I was not in Nice for last year's men's race or any of the women's races, but I think that there is. There's definitely a different mindset and a doubt in that it's the same quality of field as it is in Kona with the exception of the professionals for the amateurs. It doesn't seem like everybody's amping up and, and really shooting for whether it's in Kona or Nice, they're treating things differently.

Although even with the professionals, we didn't get Lucy Charles defending her title this year. But I dare say she'll be back to Kona to defend it next year. Maybe. Who knows? Who knows?

Yeah, no doubt she will be for sure. Yeah.

Colin, it's been absolutely brilliant chatting to you. It's an inspirational story around being in a very dark place and getting yourself out of that. And I love the way that it's endurance sport that took you from what could have been a life changing habit into a different life changing habit. But a good one. So it's amazing. And then to see where by 42 the the quality of the level of triathlete that you are and how you're embracing the coaching is absolutely brilliant. I wish you every success. Hopefully I'll see you in Nice. Hopefully we both get a sign off from the missus and yeah, I hope team have an amazing year as well and we look forward to following you with a keen eye.

Thank you so much for having me. Really enjoyed the conversation here. So thanks so much.

The best place to find out about Colin is at Instagram where he is at Colin Wesley Cook that actually if you go to his link tree on there, it will give you the link to Peak Triathlon coaching, which is his coaching business, Top Guns Tri Team, which is the elite team team Peak Recovery and Health center and some of his other business and sporting links. So what did you make of the chat with Colin?

It was great. I think it's really interesting to. We've talked about sort of mental health report, haven't we? And had quite a few guests on talking about their mental health. But this was just another side to it in terms of coming from an addiction into being an extremely competitive is world championship level athlete or competing at world championships in Ironman. So I think it was fantastic and fascinating actually to hear where he's been and actually how he managed to get out of his addiction and potentially into another.

I was going to say arguably replace it with another, but at least one that was good for him as opposed to one that was bad for him. I think, I think it's. I've had several conversations over 130 plus episodes that we've done, but one that stands out was Flora College. This the extreme Ironman athlete who, who also studies addiction or teaches addiction at a Swiss university and studies it, I think. And so where the boundary lies between just enjoying an addiction is difficult. But what I thought was really good about Colin was the fact that he clearly realized, like I did a few years ago, that I needed to earmarked certain things so that I, yes, I'm. I can be addicted to endurance, but because I've earmarked the family time and the business time, I can actually get all of them done so the addiction doesn't take over the rest of it. And other than lying on the sofa exhausted on a Saturday afternoon when possibly you should be engaging with your children, it's not the same as being addicted to drugs or alcohol, is it?

No. I think the addiction to exercise is really interesting and I can see how my experience also worked in clinical perspective in eating disorders is closely related to an addiction as well if you think about it. So yeah, it's really interesting to me how a lot of these things merge and how an exercise addiction is someone's pullback or support something that they're not getting in their life or can't control in their life. And I think it's really interesting. I'm really interesting as an athlete myself because I can see how easy that is to get into over training. And where does over training and addiction cross over. But I guess one of the things also he was using and this comes into the use of software and tools, coaching. He was talking about Tridol, wasn't he? And using Tridol as a coaching tool. And I think there definitely is a use here for really good evidence for an athlete showing them that actually maybe they're doing a bit too much. So I think actually when you think about addiction, that's a really good way to actually show somebody that potentially they're not doing enough or doing too much.

And interestingly, as obviously as I'm a big Trident advocate, I didn't know that Colin used Trido before we started the interviews, but one of the big selling points of tridot is the fact that they reckon that their average athlete trains less hours in total, but gets better results because tridot is trying to eliminate that over training problems. So, yeah, I think that's, I think that's great. And in fact that, that actually kind of segued nicely into the conversation about AI, didn't it? Which I thought was brilliant. I thought. I really enjoyed chatting to him about how he was looking at, trying to learn how he could use AI more in. In his business. And in fact I, I mentioned our AI workshop and course, if any of the listeners out there are interested in that, we have a free webinar. It's called Unleash the Power of AI AI. I'll put the link in the show notes, but if you go to the trusted team, you can find it listed under the online events because I think it's such an incredible opportunity and risk to businesses. You're either embracing AI and you've got this incredible opportunity to accelerate way faster than ever before, or you're ignoring it and your competitors are accelerating faster than they have ever had before. What did you make of that part of the conversation?

I thought it's interesting actually. It ties in from it. You talked at the beginning of having these segmented kinds that you don't. You're not an addicted exercise because you have to have segmented time for your business and for your family. And I think actually the use of AI does free up time if you know what you're doing. And I think being able to understand and navigate that AI world in terms of using the right AI tool for the right job that you can free up your time. So I think that may be a really interesting thing that came out of that for me in terms of. Yeah, freeing up time.

Yeah. Ultimately it's about getting the. It's freeing up the human to do what the human does best, isn't it? So the humans are best at empathy, leadership and creativity. And in the same way that in the Industrial Revolution we had the machines taking over the work that we previously did with our hands, we now have AI doing taking over some of the work that we did with our heads that just took time and repetitive and boring. And yet it frees us up to do the stuff that we are best at as a human, which actually you could summarize is really what we do with our heart. It's all about the empathy, creativity and leadership. So. Absolutely. And try. That is a great example of that. It's freeing up the coach to do the empathy piece and the leadership piece where because. And the AI is taking over the bit that it's best at, which is all of the kind of data and kind of repeated building the program and multiple times if you're trying to pick which race you won and all of.

That sort of stuff.

So I think it's, I think it's really fascinating, but a great interview, really interesting. I really enjoyed chatting to Colin and for everyone that's listening at home, keep on training. If you want us to keep getting amazing guests onto the business of Endurance podcast, we don't ask for you to pay for us. We don't ask for patronage. All we ask for is that you subscribe to the podcast, ideally on Apple, give us a five star rating because it shows us you care. And if you've got time, time, leave us a comment. One word is fine, something like inspiring or amazing or something like that. But we really do appreciate it and it will help us to continue to deliver amazing guests on what we hope you find to be an amazing podcast. Thanks very much.