Episode 625: Sue Reynolds

0:09Brady J. Hunsicker: Welcome to The Running Public with Bracken Crocker and Kirk DeWint.

0:13Sue Reynolds: Whether you are a brand new runner or you already have a great mustache,

0:16Brady J. Hunsicker: we're here to help you increase your running knowledge and present it at a practical level. This is The Running Public.

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0:44Sue Reynolds: Again, go to the running public.com and check out our offerings.

0:48Brady J. Hunsicker: Sue, are you in Michigan currently?

0:52T. J. Tollakson: No, I'm in Indiana. I live in southern Indiana in Bloomington. so we're very close to the Kentucky line well about an hour north of Louisville in Kentucky and you guys are in Minnesota?

1:05Sue Reynolds: and Wisconsin

1:06T. J. Tollakson: and Wisconsin, okay what part of Wisconsin? Milwaukee area well that's where Nationals is this year my mom volunteered there last year she did? she'll be there this year that's one of my favorite race venues oh yeah? art museum it's yeah it starts out at the discovery world yeah in the art museum but then and i wrote about that race in my first book um because i was terrified of the hohen bridge yeah it goes up

1:39Brady J. Hunsicker: like 11 stories and you have to ride your bike over it it's gigantic yeah and i'm afraid of

1:45T. J. Tollakson: heights and when we got there like a month before we got there they discovered that the bridge was collapsing or something. And so there was all this construction on it and lanes were closed because I didn't want like the weight of the cars on parts of the bridge. And I'm thinking, okay, we're going to ride our bike across that. And the wind gusts. Yeah. Yeah. And then the course is all along, the run course is all along Lake Michigan. So it really is just a beautiful, beautiful venue. I really, really enjoy it there.

2:17Brady J. Hunsicker: Milwaukee is an underrated city. Would you agree, Bracken?

2:20Sue Reynolds: Yeah, for sure. It's like any city. It has its parts that it's mostly known for, but that's not most of the city.

2:32Brady J. Hunsicker: I wasn't incorrect, though. So you're from Michigan, aren't you? Or did I read that incorrectly?

2:36T. J. Tollakson: I'm originally from Michigan. I grew up in Michigan. And then when I came to college in Indiana and ended up meeting my husband down here and we just stayed down here.

2:47Sue Reynolds: yeah what college did you attend i'm sorry what college did you attend uh depaugh university in

2:54T. J. Tollakson: greencastle indiana yeah and then i i i've been for the past four or five years traveling um to florida to train in the winter so it's really nice when you're retired because it can just take off and do what you have to do so yeah that's good do you do you know that i have a very fond memory of

3:11Brady J. Hunsicker: DePauw University because that's where I was an indoor All-American in track and field my one time. DePauw hosted indoor nationals that year. I mean, so I have very fond memories of your college campus.

3:26T. J. Tollakson: Oh, cool. That's nice. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. And congrats on being an All-American. I I mean, that's, and it was in the 1600?

3:38Brady J. Hunsicker: 1500, yeah.

3:39T. J. Tollakson: 1500, yeah.

3:40Brady J. Hunsicker: But I would have had no reason to go to DePaul for anything else, and it was the only time we had gone because you hosted back in 2002, I think it was.

3:48Sue Reynolds: Yeah, it's a tiny college.

3:51Brady J. Hunsicker: So, a question for you. The bike behind you, that looks like quite a piece of equipment. Is that your main tri bike sitting behind you?

4:01T. J. Tollakson: It is right now. it's my tri bike right so I really enjoyed that I actually purchased a bike before that from the Paralympic gold medalist Grace Norman who is sponsored by Cervelo and so Cervelo just like every time she has a major win they give her bikes she has her garage looks like a bike shop I mean there's just bikes all over the place but the next the next level up from this bike, the base bars. So when you're not in, in aero, the base bars are like so low so that you're in, in aero when you're in the base bars as well. And, and I could handle it, um, in the turns and, and everything, except I'm still doing a flying mount at my age.

4:52T. J. Tollakson: And, And so I'm 72 now. But the base bars were so low that to get my weight up, it was like trying to, I don't know, I just couldn't handle it. So I got rid of that bike and purchased this one, which I love. And then I have to give a little plug for Head Wheels. They're fantastic. Well, they're made in Minnesota, I think, in Minneapolis. So they're made in America, and they're just really high quality. wheel and they have helped me out with my wheels. So I always have to say good things and they really are a good wheel. Yeah.

5:31Sue Reynolds: Every time I start to think I'm spending too much on shoes, I think, well, I'm not into bikes and then I sleep easy.

5:41T. J. Tollakson: Yeah. Although shoes are expensive these days too.

5:45Sue Reynolds: Carbon and yeah, for sure.

5:47T. J. Tollakson: But yeah, I think, I think I spent more on my bike than my first car.

5:54Brady J. Hunsicker: I bet you that I guarantee you probably did.

5:58T. J. Tollakson: Yeah.

5:59Brady J. Hunsicker: Yeah, although you have to, being in triathlon, you have to buy those shoes and you have to buy the bike and you have to buy the wetsuit. Yeah, all that stuff gets out of it. What shoe do you prefer to run in when it's time to really rip, Sue?

6:12T. J. Tollakson: Well, yeah, it's interesting. so the shoe I'd like to run in and the shoe that I am running in are two different things. I'm running in a Hoka Clifton and the reason I'm running in that is because on the, I wish I had one here, I can hold it up and show you, but on the back of the heel there's almost like a built-in shoehorn and so I really pride myself in going through transition very quickly and I can I can get that shoe on in like two seconds. And so like I'm, I only, my goal is to be stopped for 18 seconds total or 15 seconds in T2 when I'm putting my shoes on. And so I really need a shoe that I can just, you know, get on really quickly.

7:03T. J. Tollakson: So I'd rather be running in a carbon shoe to get the extra 4 % or whatever it is. But the shoe is built like a sock, and I'm not flexible enough or strong enough to hop on one foot while I'm putting it on and then hop on the other foot while I put the other one on. So it was taking me so long to put those shoes on in T2 that I ended up going with those HOKAs.

7:31Sue Reynolds: Did you do the equation, how much you're losing on transition versus getting back on the run and just decided Clifton ways?

7:40T. J. Tollakson: Yeah, we measured it. When I do transitions, my husband films me and then we literally, I stop frame when I stop at my bike or when I'm coming in. And then when I start off again and it's 18 seconds in T1 and 15 seconds in T2 are my goals. But yes, then I did the math about if I'm 4 % better or whatever by using the carbon. How would the math work out? And it was better to go with the hokas.

8:09Sue Reynolds: For a full Ironman, would you swap that?

8:14T. J. Tollakson: Probably, yes. And I probably, even for, I mean, half Ironman. My key race has been draft legal sprint triathlon. although my best race ever was the one I did before I became overtrained in 23 and that was an Olympic distance but yes absolutely I mean when when you're running you know competing for that long of a distance having a quick transition is not as important so that makes sense yeah that

8:48Brady J. Hunsicker: Clifton does have a bit of a shoehorn the way you describe it as well I have a couple pairs and they They do have quite the heel, I don't know what you would call it, but they have a raised pointy heel that you can slide right into. It's just like a shoehorn. Now, Kirk's new favorite, the Cielo,

9:06Sue Reynolds: has a little mini bit of that Swallowtail on the backside. You can get into it quick. Swallowtail. So maybe the Cielo might be worth looking at.

9:16T. J. Tollakson: Okay, I will do that.

9:17Sue Reynolds: But I think Hoka's the only one doing it. I mean, they legitimately have, I think the Rocket X3 does as well, but I know the Cielo has that open heel design.

9:28T. J. Tollakson: I don't think anyone else is doing that.

9:31Sue Reynolds: Cielo, yeah, the Rocket has it as well.

9:34T. J. Tollakson: I just wrote that down.

9:35Brady J. Hunsicker: I will explore that. I do like that shoe. It might be my new favorite, to be honest. I've worn all the super shoes. We should probably introduce you, Sue, huh? Oh, yeah. Does that seem like a reasonable thing to do? I have your book right here. The unfortunate thing I have here. Is this book been released yet across the line?

9:55T. J. Tollakson: No, it comes out in 13 days on July 14th. Okay.

10:01Brady J. Hunsicker: Well, I have a book. Unfortunately, I didn't get it until Tuesday night. No, Wednesday morning. So I haven't read it yet, but it's shiny and new and looks really nice. So good job. And I was reached out to, I don't know if it's like, I don't know who this gentleman is to you, I suppose, if he's a publicity gentleman, but interacted with him before. And I see you're with the 80-20 publishing crew. And I always think anybody who's with the 80-20 publishing crew is like already a friend of mine, right? We've had Matt on the podcast three times, Bracken.

10:34Sue Reynolds: Three or four, yeah.

10:35Brady J. Hunsicker: Plus Ryan Whited, who also was part of that crew. And I was like, you were instantly, verified certified. I'm like, we got to talk to this woman. And then I see your story and I'm like, okay, I don't care about 8020 Publishing. We got to talk about this woman and her story irregardless. So there's many reasons to talk to you. But I think without giving it all away, Sue, you, in essence, turned your life around. Is that fair to say? Absolutely. Somehow you lost 200 pounds, give or take, and went from a non-athlete to a triathlon champion in your 60s-ish, 50s maybe. 60s. When did you start this off?

11:20T. J. Tollakson: 60. Yeah.

11:22Brady J. Hunsicker: So you had a lot of bad habits probably already in place that you had to fight like heck to break, I assume.

11:29T. J. Tollakson: Yeah, I worked in a career. I had started a nonprofit that helped schools improve and close achievement gaps. And it was really work that I just absolutely loved. And I pulled a lot of all-nighters, not because I had to. I just wanted to because I thought the work was so valuable. And to stay awake all night, I would eat. And I mean, I would sit down and eat, you know, three dozen cookies. And then I was getting sleepy because I'm not a carb. And then I'd eat a bunch of M &Ms. And I just, I don't know, I just ate and ate. And I like to tell people the more the nonprofit grew, the more my waistline grew.

12:13T. J. Tollakson: It was just, so yeah, so lots of bad habits. And I really didn't understand nutrition. I didn't understand even the importance of eating well, really. I wasn't in the sports, and so nutrition just wasn't on my radar. And I knew I was overweight. My family was quite concerned. I weighed 335 pounds, and there were a lot of things that I couldn't do. I couldn't get down to tie my own shoes. in a public restroom. I could get in the bathroom stall, but I couldn't close the door behind me because my body just got in the way. I mean, there's just a lot that I couldn't do. And one day I just said, and I don't know, like everybody always thinks, oh, there must have been some big thing that happened that made you turn your life around.

13:06T. J. Tollakson: And I just, there wasn't, I just got really tired of not being able to do stuff. And one day I just, I sat at the breakfast table with a couple of donuts, I think, in front of me. And I remember just putting up my hands against them and just saying, enough. And then I started making different choices and ended up, I did not do any specific nutrition plans. So I wasn't like, I was just eating healthy. and started losing weight. And one thing led to another and I lost 200 pounds. I mean, it took a while because I did it, you know, I did it slowly. But if you lose, you know, a pound a week, you know, which doesn't take cutting a lot of calories to lose a pound a week, there's 50 pounds in a year.

13:57T. J. Tollakson: So I just told myself this was a long haul situation and I, you know, luckily the weight came off. So, yeah, that was pretty cool. And then the other, so the sports side was, so I knew that if I exercised, that would help with the weight loss. But I hated exercising. I just hated it. So I would pretend that I was training for a triathlon. And I'd be like waddling down the street, but in my mind, like, oh, I'm training for a triathlon. This is really cool. And then I got to the point, I mean, I started doing water aerobics. And then after class, I would swim a length. And then I could actually I couldn't swim a length.

14:41T. J. Tollakson: I got a kickboard and kicked a length. And then I think a dog paddle or breaststroke the length after that. And but then and then I started on a spin bike in a spin class. And then one thing led to another. And I thought I could probably do all those distances. And I have no idea why I signed up for a triathlon. I did not know anyone who had ever done a triathlon. I had never seen a triathlon. but I went and signed up for one. And when we got there, there were 400 people there. I just made sure that I went last. And I just watched everybody in front of me and kind of, and by the time I started, some of the people had come back into transition.

15:20T. J. Tollakson: So I kind of watched what they did and, and I did one and fell in love with it.

15:25Brady J. Hunsicker: And I believe you took dead last in that first one.

15:28T. J. Tollakson: I did. Nice. And still came back. We call that DFL as we call it.

15:35Brady J. Hunsicker: Yes, yes. I was DFL.

15:38Sue Reynolds: So from hands-on donuts pushing them away to the start line of that first triathlon, what was that time frame?

15:49T. J. Tollakson: Probably, I started walking 5Ks and then trying to run 5Ks. maybe let's see I would have lost maybe two years from the start of losing the weight and then I started walking 5K's my son got me into that another thing that I did not want to do but my son was an adult by that point and I thought man if we did one of these together it would be a really cool mother son bonding thing so So I just didn't want to spend time with him and then kind of fell in love with that, too. So, yeah, so I got into this whole thing kind of by accident. I never played sports in school. So and that's been really interesting because, like, I'm 72 now.

16:40T. J. Tollakson: But in athlete years, I'm really still quite young because, you know, I didn't start when I was five years old and develop all of this. So which means I don't have a lot of common sense. I've learned the hard way as an athlete. But I also have most -

16:56Brady J. Hunsicker: If you started young, you would still have to learn the hard way. I promise you, yeah.

17:02T. J. Tollakson: Yes. Yeah. But I also, I'm hoping that I, well, my doctor tells me I still have a lot of cartilage left because I didn't start until I was 60. So, yeah.

17:10Sue Reynolds: So that's good. That first try, how many steps did you run? Would you guess?

17:15T. J. Tollakson: The first try that I did, I ran the whole thing, but I ran it very, very, very, very slowly.

17:22Sue Reynolds: But in two years, you went from 200 pounds overweight to running, I assume, a 5K at the end of that one? Yeah.

17:29T. J. Tollakson: Yeah. Yes, it was a 5K.

17:31Sue Reynolds: I mean, I know you said you really slow played the weight loss, which is good, but that also is kind of a quick leap in fitness, all things considered.

17:42T. J. Tollakson: Yeah, I suppose it is. Yeah. Yeah, I also joined a fitness class that was probably a lot like what you do in your work, Kirk. And when I signed up for that, I thought I was signing up for just a diet program or a weight loss program. I didn't know that there was an exercise part of it. And so I got into that by accident, totally by accident. Like I remember walking up to the door and thinking, I looked in the window and thought, oh, my gosh, they're doing exercises. What is this? So, but yeah, so I think that helped with the fitness too because, yeah. And I noticed, like, Kirk, in your videos, it brought back memories for me because there was a gentleman in one of your videos online that was not doing, like, push-ups on the floor, but you had him doing push-ups against the wall to help a little.

18:42T. J. Tollakson: So a lot of my fitness was just doing stuff like that. And every single time I got to a new station in the classes, they'd have to give me an alternative exercise because I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even get up so a lot of it was going like circuits going from station to station around the circle and I couldn't get up off the ground to walk from one station to another so I'd have to crawl on my hands and knees from station to station it was just it was ridiculous but I don't know why I just stuck with it and yeah it's I mean I'm so blessed and so grateful that I did that's so cool um but i don't know where you want to go with this but i actually want to go

19:23Brady J. Hunsicker: i'm curious about before all this to be to be honest is to to understand sue pre how old exactly were you when you you know don't shove the donuts away moment what was your

19:34T. J. Tollakson: exact age uh probably 58 58 okay so what was what were you doing did you have an did you have

19:45Brady J. Hunsicker: any athletic background, even in your very younger years? Did you have any examples of that? Was the weight gain gradual or was there a period of self-sabotage that got you to that point? I'm very curious to the lead up years in particular. So any sport history?

20:05T. J. Tollakson: So one of the things I put in the book, there's three flashback chapters to my childhood, which would have been in the 1960s, 1970s. And the challenge was that there weren't any sports for girls back then. So even if I had no opportunity to discover sports, to discover if I had a knack for sports, and I'm guessing that there are a lot of female athletes my age who are athletes and don't know it because they never had the opportunity when they were young to explore that field. But I was kind of a tomboy. And one of the chapters in the book is about me sitting on the sidelines in Billy Gelder's backyard, begging the boys to let me play football with them.

20:59T. J. Tollakson: And they all said no. And then finally, they let me come in for one play. And And I intercepted the ball and ran down the field and scored a touchdown on my first play in the game. But even after that, they wouldn't let me play anymore. So no, so I did not have a background in sports. There was a neighborhood swim pool that had a little kid's swim team. And the coach of that team, who was one of the lifeguards, asked my mom if I could be on the team. He said I had a good kick. So when I was like six and seven, I was on this swim team, and I learned to love the water in doing that. So I think that was helpful that I had that experience in the water as a child.

21:47T. J. Tollakson: But no other than that, no sports.

21:51Brady J. Hunsicker: You're about my mother's age. You're just a couple years older. And I know she was, and my aunts in particular, I have a number of them. None of them played sport back then. Cheerleading was sort of the option if that existed. So they did cheerleading. But did you, I don't know, I've never talked to her about, did you have any sport options to play for like your high school? Was there anything that existed?

22:20T. J. Tollakson: There was nothing. So even like in PE, when it came time for PE, they split the PE classes by gender. and the boys they would take to the gym to play basketball, but they felt that basketball was too rigorous for girls to play. So they would take us to the home economics room to square dance. So like PE for me was square dancing and that, yeah, there weren't any. Another chapter in my book is when I was in ninth grade, I remember, so this would have been in 1969, so a couple of years before Title IX passed, And there was a, one of my PE teachers was all excited. And she sat us down the gym floor and she said that we were going to, our school was going to play a basketball game against another school.

23:12T. J. Tollakson: And that was the first time that that ever had happened. And it was a one-off. And then after everybody got up and went to the next class, she pulled me aside and said, I'd really like you to be on that team. It wasn't really a team. I just played in that game. We didn't have uniforms. There was no bus. But I can remember distinctly how excited my PE teacher was that girls were going to have a game against another school. And the other thing that really hit me is how excited our mothers were, you know, because they had had so few opportunities. I mean, you couldn't even sign a contract as a woman.

23:53T. J. Tollakson: You had to have your husband sign it for you. and I think for them this was such a huge step that their daughters were getting to play in a sports game against another school so but yeah that was it I think in school in high school I think some so in high school was right as title nine was passing and I think there were some women's sports that that that came about then but I mean it was at a time when they didn't think that women should run more than 800 meters. If you look back in the Olympics, there were no events for women at all in running that were more than 800 meters. So, yeah, it was kind of crazy.

24:38Brady J. Hunsicker: Times are changing. For sure.

24:41T. J. Tollakson: And luckily, my granddaughter plays on a football team now.

24:45Sue Reynolds: That's great.

24:46T. J. Tollakson: But yeah, it's a co-ed football team. I love it.

24:49Sue Reynolds: So what did you...

24:50T. J. Tollakson: If I had had that opportunity, I probably would have been a professional football player. So seriously, I'm sorry, go ahead.

24:58Sue Reynolds: What do you think you missed out on the most due to that?

25:04I think the opportunity to discover who I am.

25:12T. J. Tollakson: At age 60, when I first started participating in triathlon, it just felt to me like, oh my gosh, this is who I was meant to be. This is who I am. This is me. And I think all the running around, you know, in the neighborhood and riding my bike in the neighborhood, and the little bit of swimming and you know, I always had a sense that I like being active and being outside. But I never really had the opportunity to discover if I were any good at it, you know, or to have the opportunity to go down that road. I'm sure my career would have been different. And I mean, I joked about becoming a professional football player, but I know that that would have been my goal.

25:55T. J. Tollakson: So. Yeah.

25:59Brady J. Hunsicker: So what happened? Let's even call it exercise, fitness, movement in life. Was there much of that after you got out of school and into adulthood? Was I mean, were there like decades lost to no movement or what did that look like for you?

26:17T. J. Tollakson: Well, I didn't move at all between, well, I mean, there were no opportunities. So really, I didn't move at all until I was age 60. You are fresh.

26:35Brady J. Hunsicker: But there was never like you tried to get into running at some point or you went for, you were into hiking or strength training, never.

26:43T. J. Tollakson: When I didn't have those opportunities as a kid, I went in different directions. So I went into leadership and working for different things that I got moved by. I founded a nonprofit. I went into student government when I was younger. So my life went in a whole different direction. And there were, like I can remember, there was a period maybe when I was 40 when all of a sudden running for women was a big thing and lots of my friends were starting to jog and that kind of stuff. But by that time, I was already so busy in my career that I just didn't go in that direction. Looking back, could you have?

27:30Brady J. Hunsicker: meaning if you wanted it as bad then as you want it now would you have made the time could you have made the time would it have been the wrong time in your 40s like did it happen at the right time for you or was it you forced it because it needed to happen well I forced the weight loss

27:48T. J. Tollakson: because that needed to happen but I think the I mean everything else after that happened just by chance, by accident. But I think it was absolutely the right time. I ended up taking an early retirement so I could really commit to my sport. And one of the, I mean, the latter part, which is the book that you just referenced, is about me wanting, deciding. So there's really two parts of this journey. The first part was the weight loss, discovering triathlon, training with a coach for a local coach but training like like casually and qualifying for worlds and then finishing six in the world that that and my first book is about that all that whole journey and then after that part of the journey I started wondering I'm really curious and I started wondering like what would happen if I started working with Olympic coaches and And, you know, yes, I'm at that time I was 68.

28:49And yes, I'm 68.

28:52T. J. Tollakson: But why can't I train with the meticulousness of an Olympic gold medalist? Why can't I commit? Why can't I focus on recovery and nutrition and all those little things and really train like an Olympian would train? So that's when I took an early retirement and then started training with Olympic level coaches to discover, you know, where that would take me. But looking at time-wise, I think to have that kind of commitment, as I look back, there's really, and there's probably lots of exceptions to this, but I think there's really only two times that can happen. One is when you're really young and you don't have the responsibilities of a career and children and all of that.

29:35T. J. Tollakson: You're kind of, you know, footloose and fancy free and you can really commit to something full-time. And then the other is when you're old and your house is paid off and your kids are through college and, you know, you can take an early retirement and you still have your fitness and then you can really commit at that time. So to answer you, that was a long-winded answer to your question. But, yes, I think discovering triathlon at age 60 was the right time for me.

30:04Brady J. Hunsicker: hmm so um i guess the question then would be uh bracken yeah i know you've gone through injury bouts i've gone through injury bouts um where we've had to take time off and even coming back to training after heaven forbid six weeks off then i think like 40 years off of working out and I'm going to start training. The deconditioning and the discouragement probably felt had to be quite, I don't know, feeling insurmountable. What were those first, I don't know, what was that first week like, that month like? Wouldn't you be like, this is dumb? Why would I do this? I guess what was going on in your head and how hard was it?

30:51Brady J. Hunsicker: Oh, my gosh. It was very, very hard.

30:55T. J. Tollakson: Um, so the, the, and I, and I, I always clarify that overtraining, there's so many misperceptions about what overtraining is and what overtraining syndrome is versus overreaching or, you know, being a little fatigued. And so I always like to start out by talking about how overtraining syndrome is a medical condition. It's an injury. so it's and coming back is is somewhat like like coming back I mean I've had a I'm probably the only person in the world who's ever broken their clavicle during a run workout I was pushing I was I was pushing a threshold workout and it was supposed to be a track workout but I wanted to get a sense of distance on the road.

31:51T. J. Tollakson: And I was working with Bobby McGee, who is like a legendary run coach. He's coached the run of every Olympian in some aspects since triathlon started in the Olympics in 2000. He's just fantastic. But I asked Bobby if I could do that threshold workout on the road because I was really trying to get a sense of like distance-wise, what does a mile look like down the road? But he agreed. So I'm doing this threshold workout, and it's a long story. But at the time, I was an ambassador for Precision Hydration, and I missed tying my preload on my hydration and ended up dehydrated and literally passed out mid-stride in the middle of this run on an isolated country road and laid across the road on a 90-degree day for who knows how long until someone finally found me.

32:46T. J. Tollakson: But in the fall, because I just, I mean, it was just a dead fall. In the fall, I fell on my shoulder and broke it. So, at any rate, so. Is this a thing that you've struggled with in the past? Well, what I've learned this way, I mentioned earlier about the wisdom and maturity as an athlete, because what I've discovered through all of this, both with that, when I push through pain to the point of passing out and then pushing through fatigue to the point of overtraining syndrome, I've learned that I didn't realize how much grit I have and that I'm capable of pushing through things. And then I also, because I was so young as an athlete, I didn't have the common sense to know this is when you should stop.

33:30T. J. Tollakson: You know, I just kept thinking there was a level deeper that I could dig to. And I didn't like recognize, no, when you're weaving back and forth down the road during your rest intervals, it's time to pull back a little bit. So yeah, I mean, I was really stupid.

33:49Brady J. Hunsicker: That sounds scary as heck, to be honest. I have a feeling that you came too after that. That was some sort of aha moment. So you literally, so you had just, I guess that day, it's very, because we're in summer training now and people, we just had a conversation with Danny Moreno earlier this week and we were talking like, you know, sodium and hydration and fueling. In that example, so there, in hindsight, there were a lot of signs in fact that you were like already unstable on your feet. It was pretty obvious. You were trying to grit through. You were like drunk running in quotes. And then finally, boom, you wake up and you're on the concrete.

34:26Brady J. Hunsicker: It just happened like that.

34:28T. J. Tollakson: Yeah. Actually, a passerby found me laying not along the road, across the road. He almost ran over me. And it was really an isolated country road because I didn't want to deal with cars. And yeah, so I woke up in the hospital and my Garmin watch did exactly what it was supposed to do. And kudos to Garmin. When I went down, and alerted my husband that there had been an incident. So my husband was on the phone trying to get a hold of me. I was in the ambulance at that point, and the EMT and the ambulance picked up and told him where he was taking me. And, yeah. And I did, I mean, I hydrated well.

35:09It was, in working with Bobby,

35:11T. J. Tollakson: Bobby, one of the things I've learned about Olympic-level coaches is that they are meticulous. And he wanted my distances that I was running for these intervals to be meticulous. And he said, if you're not going to run it on a track, then you've got to take a wheel out and measure the distance on the road. So it's exactly 400 meters and exactly 800 meters. So the week before, I went with the wheel and I measured it and I took spray paint and I painted all the lines exactly. And on the way, the town where I live that's hilly and I had to drive to another town where it's flat. on the way there I did my my preload on the hydration and and and really paid attention to the electrolytes as well to make sure because I'm a heavy salt sweater but um so so I do my preload as I'm driving I get there and the county has repaved the road and all of the marks that I had spray painted were now covered with a new layer of cement so yeah so I had to remeasure And then that made my preload off.

36:20T. J. Tollakson: And yeah, so, so yeah, that it was, it was crazy. And I woke up in the hospital. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know. I didn't even know my name. It was in, and they kept talking about that. Well, they thought, cause you know, what's it with the, the rhabdo when you're, when your muscle breaks down. So my, whatever that is, it was way elevated. So they thought I had a heart attack and then my kidneys shut down and then my, My liver was damaged and I can't remember anything. So I think I have traumatic brain injury. And then I thought, oh, my organs are shutting down. I'm in the process of dying.

36:58T. J. Tollakson: It was just like, it was not fun. But yeah, so I always make sure I hide right now.

37:05Brady J. Hunsicker: You think it's contributed exclusively to that? Like after the dust settled, it was like they got fluids in you and like within hours you came back to somewhat normalcy or what happened?

37:15T. J. Tollakson: Well, I was there for, I was in the hospital for three days before my kidneys kicked back in, where they felt they could release me. And so during that time, they ran every test under the book because, I mean, I couldn't tell them anything about what had happened. But the only thing that, the only information we had was what my Garmin watch showed, which the cardiologist actually found helpful. But yeah, they ran every test under the sun for three days. That's all we did. And, yeah, they finally said, I guess you're dehydrated.

37:49Brady J. Hunsicker: One last question about this situation. Your Garmin watch, is that a setting you set up for an alert? Is that built into the watch? What is that? I feel like some people are going to be like, huh, that might be worth my time. What is that?

38:04T. J. Tollakson: So I think maybe most of the Garmin watches have that now, but there's a setting. I forget what it's called. It's like incident setting and you just turn it on. And then if you have a sudden stop and a sudden decline in elevation, it's just like a two-foot decline in elevation. It doesn't have to be a lot. Then an alarm goes off on your watch and it literally sounds like a police car siren. And then the screen turns red and it tells you you have like 20 seconds to turn it off or it's going to call whoever's phone number you've put in there or text them. Yeah, so it's great. There's one of my drills, one of my run drills.

38:54T. J. Tollakson: It's quick feed where I'm just trying to quick feed drill. Every time I do that drill, it sets it off. So I have to always do the drill, turn off my watch.

39:05Sue Reynolds: So did your non-moving time on that activity give any insight or just like the activity timestamps itself into how long you were on the ground for before the ambulance got there?

39:16T. J. Tollakson: Yeah, we think I could, yes, so I could tell, because my watch was still running. And so I could tell when I stopped moving, when I passed out, and then when I started moving again when I was in the ambulance. So we could time that. And I think it was just like 45 minutes, so it wasn't like really.

39:39Sue Reynolds: That's a lot. To bake in the middle of the road unconscious? Yes.

39:44T. J. Tollakson: See, that's just it. if the man hadn't found me, I mean, it could have been lights out. It was, yeah, I was really glad. And I didn't know this. Like when there's a call to 911, they record it, and you can get it. And afterwards, I was trying to, I still don't know what happened. So I was trying to see if there's any clues in the 911 call, and that poor man who found me, he was like terrified. I mean, he just comes across his body, you know, like across the road. and the 911 people were like, they asked him, can you see if she's breathing? And he was like, no, I'm not going anywhere near that body.

40:24T. J. Tollakson: He was scared to death. But thank goodness he called 911 because who knows?

40:32Sue Reynolds: 45 minutes is a long time to be unconscious.

40:35T. J. Tollakson: Yeah, especially on black pavement.

40:37Sue Reynolds: Especially in the middle of the country road.

40:40Brady J. Hunsicker: Yeah. Well, already so dehydrated that you passed out. It's not like you're laying there with a full tank of gas feeling good. You're already in a bad spot. So how long after that did you go for your first workout back?

40:54T. J. Tollakson: The next day. So, yeah, when they released me from the hospital, I asked them, you know, I released the train, and I got a little lecture about why would someone your age want to do this. But they said, really, you were just dehydrated. And by that time, I mean, I was in the hospital for three days. So by that time, my kidneys were back up going. And yeah, so I went out and I was a little worried about PTSD, not so much from the fall, but from thinking I was dying in the hospital. So I wanted to get out right away. So I immediately went back to where I passed out and did a run. Actually, I did that on the way home from the hospital.

41:34We stopped there.

41:35T. J. Tollakson: We stopped there. So I just wanted to walk it. And I was a little bit curious about if I tripped over something. So, yeah, and then the next day I started running again. And it wasn't, I mean, I just must have a really high pain tolerance or something. But it wasn't until five weeks later when my shoulder still hurt that we found that I went back in and said, it was during the five-week checkup afterwards. And they said, oh, let's x-ray that shoulder again. And then they said, you know, my shoulder's broken. So clavicle is broken. So I've been swimming. I've been doing all my dynamic mobility drills.

42:14T. J. Tollakson: I've been doing everything with a broken clavicle. But it wasn't a bad break. But I just, I think, oh, gosh.

42:20Sue Reynolds: How did the aero bars feel with that?

42:24T. J. Tollakson: Well, yeah, I think at that time I was riding on the road bike because I was doing draft legal cycling. So I couldn't use the aero bars. So, yeah. And then after that, the doctor said, okay, no more. You can sit on your bike, but you can't touch your handlebars. And, but he would let me, like, I couldn't swim, but he would, he would let me dog paddle. So, you know, as long as I didn't bring my elbow up, I was fine. So I did all my swim workouts, dog paddle. So that was, that was interesting.

42:54Sue Reynolds: So was this a common thread throughout your life? Like, were you tenacious in business and were you able to, like, were these traits always there? They just had to be channeled or were you discovering these as you went?

43:08T. J. Tollakson: No, I think, I think the, my, my kind of mantra at work was no excuses, whatever it takes, find a way. And I think that, that, I'm not sure when that started. Like I almost flunked out of college because of my grades. So I know I wasn't like meticulous all through my life, but definitely in my work. I mean, I really believed in the work and there were so many people that made excuses for why kids couldn't achieve at a higher level in school. And especially looking at kids who were, you know, on the edges that, yeah, so no excuses, whatever it takes, find a way has always been kind of my mantra.

43:51T. J. Tollakson: Yeah.

43:54Brady J. Hunsicker: your family, we're going to move on from this incident, but your family and your husband were like, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, dear. It's fine to keep training after this traumatic situation. Like there was no, there was no question about, okay, maybe I need to dial it back. You just doubled down, huh?

44:11T. J. Tollakson: Yeah. My husband was concerned. And there was not then, but there was another race where I kind of collapsed after the end of the run. And he was very concerned. But I have a wonderful doctor. And for my husband, I took the video of me collapsing after the race to my doctor and said, for my husband, will you watch this and tell me if it's safe for me to push myself to this level? And so my doctor watched the video and he said, tell your husband that in cross country, falling down at the end of a race is not unusual and that this is fine. So yeah, I mean, he said, tell your husband you were just tired.

45:05Sue Reynolds: So is, and Kirk and I, we've talked about that before, that females are especially susceptible to that crash in blood pressure upon completion of that crazy final sprint at the end of a high exertion race. Is that what you think happened in the interval workout where you finished a rep and as you came down off the rep, you passed out, or did you pass out mid-stride, do you think?

45:29T. J. Tollakson: No, I was definitely mid-stride. It was definitely mid-stride. That's when I was going over everything with my run coach, Bobby McGee. He said, you just passed out cold while you were standing up because I wouldn't have broken my clavicle, he didn't think. I would have braced my fall if it were just a blood pressure kind of fall.

45:54Sue Reynolds: So your Garmin showed pace, pace, pace, ground? Yeah, nothing. Interesting. Yeah.

46:01T. J. Tollakson: But I know what you're talking about. And so for a while, when I was first starting to train, after a series of hard threshold intervals, I would go down. And that always felt horrible. and then someone explained to me that this is not a good idea that to to let yourself go down so i always make myself walk now at the end of a race and you know in triathlon they're always wanting to take the timing chips off your leg and i'm always like i'm sorry no i have to walk so yeah so i i try to like pay attention to that now yeah progression of sports so let's talk about that okay the discovery of the athlete sue

46:47Brady J. Hunsicker: so you do your first triathlon you take dfl for some reason that makes you want to come back um i imagine that was demotivating and motivating at the same time oh it was not demotivating at all

47:01T. J. Tollakson: To go from obesity to be able to finish a triathlon, that was the hardest race of my life. Maybe walking the 5K was the hardest, but it was one of the hardest. And I felt so, I mean, I'm dead F last, and I'm coming across the finish line. In all the photos, I'm holding up, I'm a number one finger. To me, I had won the Olympics. You know, it was just, it was incredible. Anyway, so yes, so I finished and it felt good and I came back for another.

47:36Brady J. Hunsicker: Okay. Well, that's, that's amazing. We, we've had a previous conversation with somebody where, you know, we talk about how it's, it's easy to tow a start line when you know you're competing for a top spot. It's much more difficult to tow a start line if you know you could be DFL and the courage it takes to stand on a start line when you know you're one of the worst and you're getting the gallery clap, it's easy to be the hero until a start line and hurt. It's another thing to be, you know, one of those at the back, because that can be a different ball game in itself. So that's why I asked that question.

48:09Brady J. Hunsicker: But clearly for you, it was, you were trajecting the right direction. And this was just a big positive, which is great. So what happens? Oh, go ahead.

48:17T. J. Tollakson: I was just gonna say, when people are talking to me about starting endurance sports, I always tell them that the biggest celebration is the step across the start line, because that represents The training, even if you didn't do any training, it represents the guts to get there, the guts to take the challenge, the guts to try. To me, that's the most important part of sports is just having the guts to try something. So the start line to me is much more of a celebration than the finish line.

48:47Brady J. Hunsicker: I like that. So what happened after that triathlon then? What was your progression? How did you begin to improve? Talk to me about your metrics. Like how fast could you average on the bike for an Olympic distance to what you progressed to? How fast did your running get from starting point? Like I want to hear about all that stuff, what people can expect. Because Bracken and I, Bracken, you often coach like late onset athletes. I feel like I do. Like I picked it up in my 40s and they have disposable income. So they hire a coach. People who pick it up in their teens and 20s don't often hire a coach because they're young and it's not something on their radar.

49:23Brady J. Hunsicker: Point being, so I think there's a handful of people listening who have started sport and later in life. I know a handful of people I work with have. And so knowing you can improve while aging, I think, is what I'm really trying to get at here. But walk me through it.

49:37T. J. Tollakson: Yeah, so I was really slow. Like my first triathlon that I did, I think I finished in, it was a sprint. I think I finished it in two hours and 20 minutes. I mean, I think my run pace was maybe a 19-minute mile. I mean, it was just like really, really slow. And the other thing that was hard when you're working with older athletes is that in most of my local triathlons, I was the only one in my age group. So it was kind of ridiculous. I would be last overall and get the first place medal for my age group. and I thought so just mentally I had to I used to play games in my head I would say I'd be out there on the run knowing I was in last place and I'd be thinking I am beating every single woman who is still in her jammies drinking coffee at home or I'd picture the fast runners because I was majorly overweight I'd picture them with straps over their shoulders with 12 gallons of milk hanging from those straps.

50:47T. J. Tollakson: And I think if they had to carry the weight I'm carrying, I could maybe beat them. So, yeah, so I was just always trying to put where I was in perspective. So I finished that first race, and I had no idea if I had any skill to this because I kept coming in first because I was the only one. Then I decided to go to nationals. because I was the only one and was first, I qualified for nationals. So I went to nationals. I looked up all the times and I thought, based on the previous year's times, I would have finished second to last. So I thought my biggest fear was I would be in last place by so much time that I would inconvenience the race director, you know, because they'd have to wait for me.

51:33T. J. Tollakson: So I thought, okay, second to last, they're going to have to wait for the other person, not me. So this is okay. So I go to nationals and I, that wasn't nationals, that was worlds. I went to the worlds open class when it was in Chicago in like 2013 or 14. And I came in middle of the pack and I thought, holy moly, if I can be middle of the pack in my age group without even trying, what would happen if I took this seriously? and had a coach told him that I wanted him to start training me like an elite that I really, because I know what I'm capable of doing when I really put my mind to something.

52:20T. J. Tollakson: And I can remember him kind of rolling his eyes a little bit. Yeah, she's like old and she wants me to train her like an elite. And I thought, well, I'll just show him what I can do. And then a few months after that was nationals. and at that race we it was a mass swim start I've never done one of those before there's like 70 women they start us all and I'm halfway to the first buoy and we're all like like it's shoulder to shoulder and my arm comes down in the middle of this woman's back and I'm thinking what do I do now and like part of me like I really wanted to beat her to the buoy to get a good position going around the buoy but you know in real life I would have I you know I smacked her in the middle back in real life I would step back and say excuse me you go right ahead you know but but I ended up shoving her underwater and swimming over the top of her and I just loved that feeling I mean it was just like this animal came out of me that was like like I didn't care that I shoved her under to the water.

53:28T. J. Tollakson: I just wanted to get to that buoy before she did. So yeah, I came home and told my coach, I think there's something wrong with me. I shoved a woman underwater and I liked that feeling. And he's like, no, Sue, that's like competition. That's okay.

53:42Sue Reynolds: Now you're a triathlete.

53:44T. J. Tollakson: So at that point, I knew that there was this competitive beast inside of me and I really enjoyed competing and I wanted to do it seriously.

53:55Brady J. Hunsicker: Is that a sign that you care? Like if you're out for a trail run and you're trying to pass somebody, but you just shove them off the trail, would that be like the one? Or is it more okay to swim over the top of somebody? Can I just punch somebody in the back of the head for advantage? Or is it triathlon? It's like, yeah, it happens.

54:16T. J. Tollakson: Well, really, you're so close to each other. I mean, like you're rib to rib. And so, I mean, just the motion of swimming, I mean, you're not like trying to shove someone under. I didn't purposely try to shove this woman underwater. I just kept my arms going around. And in that process, she went under and I went over.

54:33Brady J. Hunsicker: So, yeah.

54:34T. J. Tollakson: But no, I don't know. On a trail run, that may be a little iffy.

54:38Brady J. Hunsicker: I got a race on Saturday. I'm just, you know, if I do pull that move, at least now I have, you know, I have an alibi. You can blame it on me.

54:48Sue Reynolds: So I'm curious. I'm curious what your training looked like before and after telling your coach, train me like an elite. What was that difference? What changed in that decision?

55:02T. J. Tollakson: Well, there were two jumps. One was coming home from that race and asking my local coach who has only trained age groupers to train me like an elite. And then several years after that, when I started working with Olympic coaches and asked them to train me like an elite, that was a whole different picture. But for my local coach, it meant that I was already really consistent. I know you guys talk about consistency in training a lot, and I was very consistent in my training. We added in strength and mobility, so that was added in. And one of the things that I kind of pushed my coach on was finding, I told him, if we find 10 places where we could save six minutes, that's a whole minute faster.

55:56T. J. Tollakson: So we were like looking for every second, and not just equipment and stuff like that. But like when I'm taking off my wetsuit, I take one leg out as I'm putting my glasses on at the same time. there's a second that I can, or probably five seconds I could save. So yeah, it was just being very meticulous. My coach did a really good job of getting me fit and then, you know, peeking me and then tapering me. But yeah, I think the biggest change at that point was just adding in the strength training on top of everything else.

56:33Sue Reynolds: So then going up to an Olympic level coach,

56:37T. J. Tollakson: what was the eye-opener there oh my gosh night and day so and i had i had no clue what i was getting into again the the key word so this started five years ago my my local coach decided to go in a different direction and i thought well a door is closing and you know how can i make the most of this i was i loved my my local coach i was heartbroken so i called my first olympic coach was Bobby McGee and then Jim Vance. And the biggest difference was the load. I was doing two or three workouts a day instead of one, which meant that we had to be really meticulous about recovery. And at first, I didn't understand that.

57:28T. J. Tollakson: And I was like dying. And finally, Bobby McGee said, let's talk about what happens between your two workouts. And yeah, and he said, no, so there's going to be four hours between workouts and you're going to take a nap, have a good meal, hydrate, and then come back for your next workout. And, you know, looking at getting to bed so I can get nine. For me, I want to be in bed nine hours a night and, you know, doing that and making sure that my nutrition was timed right so that it could, you know, I was fueling my workouts and fueling my post-workouts and eating the right kind of protein before I went to bed so that my muscles would grow overnight.

58:11T. J. Tollakson: And, you know, it was just really, really meticulous. Yeah, and the self-body care, like the coach that I was with when I was overtrained, he would not train me unless I committed to doing self-body care massage every day and went to a professional massage person once a week. And then he reached out to the professional massage person and told him, I want you to hurt her. So he didn't want any of this fluff, feel-good massage. He wanted to make sure that that guy was really getting it. And he said, make her cry, which he did. So, yeah, so it was just, I mean, I can't even describe it. But like when Darren Smith, so Darren is like one of the winningest Olympic coaches in history.

59:04T. J. Tollakson: In the 2012 Olympics, he took six athletes from six different countries, none of whom had federation support, and got them all to qualify for their country's Olympic team and had a third place and a fourth place finisher with no federation support, no federation money. I mean, it was just amazing. but he was so meticulous he would he even he lives in Australia when he assigned me a bike workout he he had gotten on google earth or something and told me exactly which roads he wanted me to do ride on I mean it was just like everything was and and he took over my life he took over my husband's life it was just like he controlled everything but but you know he gets results so So, yeah, that was a huge jump for me to jump up to that.

59:59I also started working with a mental performance coach, and that was huge as well.

1:00:05T. J. Tollakson: That was really helpful.

1:00:06Sue Reynolds: Did the intensity at which workouts occurred or paces or heart rate, did that change? Yeah.

1:00:14T. J. Tollakson: Well, the duration did. My swim training doubled. I had been swimming like 1800 meters and I went to 3400 three times a week two to three times a week so that really that jumped a lot um the in my running so that jumped from my first coach everything kind of my first Olympic level coach everything kind of went up with him when I started working with Darren the one who overtrained me. So I'm not really a runner. My best race was in Ponte Vedra as my last race before the overtraining in July 2023. And I came out of the water first with a three minute lead. I came off the bike and out of T2 with like a, I think it was a 10 minute or 12 minute lead.

1:01:12T. J. Tollakson: I mean, I was like so far out in front, it was ridiculous. And my run was so slow that five people passed me and I came in six. So in a 5K, people made up like 10 minutes on me. I mean, I was probably running at a 13 minute pace maybe, and they were running at an eight something pace. So it was quite possible for them to catch me. But at any rate, so Darren, when I came back from that race, Darren said like he's just an amazing coach he said Sue you are no longer a triathlete we are not going to race any more triathlons until we have fixed your run and so he dropped out some of my bike workouts I think I went down I think I had one bike workout two swim workouts a week and then the rest was run so and that I mean I don't know.

1:02:12T. J. Tollakson: I ran a whole lot. I don't know exactly what the numbers were, but I had been doing two runs a week. I was at four, and then there were three run-related workouts where I did run drills and sprints and short sprints and stuff. So, yes, that really, really picked up. And then just little, like in the water, I don't know. when I tell people this who swim triathlon and they know how old I am, they're like, oh my gosh. So there are two workouts I remember as just being just killers. One was 40 times 100 meters threshold in the pool with a 10 second rest between those efforts. And like, I didn't think I could finish that, but I just told myself, just take one interval at a time.

1:03:07T. J. Tollakson: And I held them all threshold all the way through. And then there was a three hour bike in the afternoon after that. So it was pretty crazy. And then the other one, so Darren did, I don't know how you guys would feel about this, but Darren doesn't believe in run walk. He just believes in all run. So for my long runs he wouldn't let me walk at all so I would do two and a half hour run with with no walk over hills and that was another one where I thought I was going to die but I didn't so so yeah so it all it all got more but at the same time the recovery you know and then nutrition was all dialed in so that I could support that that level of training Thank you.

1:03:51Brady J. Hunsicker: You mentioned now, I don't know, half a dozen times about Darren who over-trained me. Is it Darren? Darren.

1:04:00T. J. Tollakson: His name is Daz.

1:04:02Brady J. Hunsicker: Well, I'm taking that as a negative connotation.

1:04:07T. J. Tollakson: No, no.

1:04:08Brady J. Hunsicker: Like the coach who messed me up, honestly, is how I'm taking it. Have you thought that? So walk me through when you say he over-trained me and what that felt like.

1:04:18T. J. Tollakson: I try to word that really carefully so that I'm not saying Darren. And if I said that, I have to watch myself because I do not watch myself.

1:04:26Brady J. Hunsicker: That was my interpretation, by the way.

1:04:29T. J. Tollakson: I don't want to say Darren the coach who overtrained me. I want to say Darren the coach I was with when I became overtrained. Because there were – so the book, to my knowledge, is the first case study that's ever been written about overtraining, overtraining syndrome. There's a lot that's been written about the causes and the symptoms of overtraining, but nothing about just how do you get into overtraining. And after Daz pulled me from training, my first question was, why did you let this happen to you? And I really did a deep dive into, you know, it's like everybody thinks it's like, oh, you have too much stress, you know, and stress being not only from training, but from emotional stuff, what's going on with your family, whatever.

1:05:18T. J. Tollakson: or too little recovery. And that's true. But I wanted to look at in the book like, well, what was underneath that? Why did I not recover better than I did? Why did DAS maybe give me more volume or more stress than I should have had? And so I just really started looking at overtraining syndrome from a systems perspective, which is in my career, that was kind of my specialty is looking at things from systems level. And I really feel that overtraining syndrome is a systems failure, more than just a personal failure. There were a lot, culturally, there were things that were not supportive psychologically in my own upbringing.

1:06:06T. J. Tollakson: There were things that were not supportive relationally. You know, there were, I wasn't communicating as well as I should have. and then just logistically and that's a big thing. Like he was remote coaching me from Australia so he never had eyeballs on me. It was always, you know, his knowledge was based on my reports to him and at the same time he was trying to really push right at the line between injury and health, you know, like he would push an Olympian. and so and my thinking now is remotely trying to coach at the line I don't think that works I think you have to have a little bit of a buffer in there because you're not eyeballing the athlete so yeah and I ended up hiring a coach at home who could eyeball me for for that reason but no so I do not I think Daz is a brilliant coach he's still a very good friend of me mine he encouraged me to write about overtraining with him.

1:07:12T. J. Tollakson: They really encouraged me to write the book. He read the entire manuscript for accuracy. And all the parts were a little bit messy, where I think people are probably going to critique him or critique me. He didn't ask me to take any of those out of the book. So the book is very, very honest in terms of what his contribution was, what mine was, and what was underneath all of that that led to us making not the decisions that we wish we had made. This is interesting because when you hear a lot about interference effect currently in fitness

1:07:53Sue Reynolds: and multi-sport athletes, hybrid athletes are constantly balancing that. But what I'm hearing is that you dove into essentially the interference effect of everything, not just run, bike, swim, lift. It was relationally, it was psychologically, it was upbringing, culturally, all that, that the interference effect from every stressor in your life culminated in overtraining, not just the am I recovered from Wednesday's workout before pushing Thursday's swim kind of thing.

1:08:24T. J. Tollakson: Yeah. I mean, like I made some bad decisions. There was one point a month before Daz finally pulled me from training where I was toast. I mean, I was absolute toast. And I had been writing to Daz, you know, I'm just trying to hang on to the end of the week. I think there's a rest week coming or rest few days coming the next week. I told him, you know, I'm trying to hang on. And the last day of that week, I was so proud that I finished that block. And I wrote, I'm absolute toast. And I'm thinking there's a few rest days coming. And Daz gets on the Zoom with me and he looks at me and he says, you don't look tired.

1:09:08T. J. Tollakson: I'm thinking, how could I not look tired? I'm like absolute toast. And then he talked about changing our training mode to being recovery on demand instead of a predetermined rest. and he asked me do you want to go to recovery on demand you know is are you are you okay with that and I'm thinking the answer must be yes I'm okay with that because I'm toast and he's giving me this option so I said yes I'm okay with that had I said no or if I had I said please give me you You know, yes, I like the idea, and I do like that idea. I think it makes a lot of sense. But I need to rest first before we start that.

1:09:55T. J. Tollakson: But I didn't say that. I just said yes. And so, you know, psychologically I've had to think about, why didn't you say no? You know, why did you, you know? And the answer to that is that I was so insecure and inexperienced that I thought I had more in me than I could dig deeper. And when Daz was digging deep and asking me to do more, I thought, well, he must see something in me that I don't see in myself. And he's pulling that out of me. and I welcomed that and I trusted you know that that that was good so yeah so then after the whole thing blew up and he pulled me from training then I was mad as heck at him I you know I'm like why didn't he listen to me why didn't he see that I was tired you know I'm telling him I'm tired then I started like I started telling him I wasn't sleeping my resting morning heart rate was my resting heart rate was way up um you know the moodiness was there my performance fell out I would be doing like on the bike, I'd be doing a bike that was at easy watts and it felt like threshold.

1:11:09T. J. Tollakson: I mean, I couldn't even get through an easy bike ride. It was horrible. You know, why didn't Daz pull me? But then I believe that Daz is a good person and I think that he is an exceptionally good coach. So I had to think about, you know, why, you know, if I assume that Daz is a good person and a really good coach, why did he keep pushing me? And then I realized that I was giving him mixed messages. I would tell him that I was tired. But then in my feedback for an individual workout, I was so happy that I had completed the workout. Because, I mean, every workout was like doing an Iron Man. I mean, it was just crazy hard.

1:11:49T. J. Tollakson: And I was so happy at the end of the workout that I was like on cloud nine that I finished it. And I'd write, you know, woohoo, I finished the workout. I'm so happy. So I'm like totally giving him mixed messages.

1:12:03Sue Reynolds: So he's reading it as there's self-doubt and then I did it. I'm ready for more.

1:12:08T. J. Tollakson: Yes.

1:12:09Sue Reynolds: And you're reading it as I can't believe I survived because I feel horrible.

1:12:13T. J. Tollakson: Yes, yes. I read the, I listened to a podcast with Bob Bowman who coached Michael Phelps. and Bowman talked about how he said that some athletes were really hard to know what to do with because they had the ability to suck it up and push through workouts and complete them and so you thought everything was fine you didn't realize as the coach how much they had had to suck it up to finish that they you know they went beyond what they should have and and that's what I was doing. I was just, you know, to do those 40 hundreds in the pool at threshold. I mean, I was just sucking it up. I probably should have stopped after 25 or something, but I just kept going.

1:12:57T. J. Tollakson: So, yeah. So, so Daz did not have good information because he was coaching me remotely and couldn't see me and because I wasn't giving him good feedback. So, yeah. And then we also talked about how different coaches have different comfort levels with risk and and i have a high comfort level with risk and and and daz does too and so you know we were both like pushing the envelope you know theoretically he said to me once this is really weird sue i i have to push i have to hold my other athletes back but i have to push you and i don't i just don't think he understood how much grit I was showing.

1:13:41T. J. Tollakson: And on the other hand, I could have held him back. I could have said, no, I need a rest. And I didn't do that. So neither one of us was holding the other one back when we both probably should have been a little bit.

1:13:52Brady J. Hunsicker: What was your breaking point where it was obvious that you needed a breather? Like it was rock bottom, this is obviously a problem. And then what was the exit strategy? yeah that's that's a good question so one of the i there were like i had all the symptoms

1:14:17T. J. Tollakson: and i was telling dad i was tired and when he wasn't hearing that i was sending him the data so that he would know he did um an orthostatic test with me which and another thing in which i think is really important for people to understand that are looking at overtraining is how easy it is to go into denial. Like when I couldn't push those watts on the bike, instead of thinking there was something wrong with me, I thought the power meter was broken. You know, when I couldn't sleep at night, I thought it was because I was trying to go to bed a little earlier. And so my sleep, you know, was just off.

1:14:53T. J. Tollakson: I kept making excuses for everything. But on that orthostatic test is when you lay down, lie down, and then you stand up. And then you're looking at how much your heart rate goes up from that movement, and then how long it takes it to decline. And like, you know, my heart rate never declined, it just, I'd stand up and it would just like for, you know, for five minutes would keep going up and up and up. But I assume that that test didn't apply to older people, you know, instead of just thinking, you know, that's a little alarming results. So at any rate, so I got to the point, I just couldn't figure out why Daz wasn't pulling me from training.

1:15:38T. J. Tollakson: And I finally, and I'm like, at this point, I'm not thinking very clearly at all. And I'm thinking, he's testing me. He wants to see if he can break me. And so I was bound determined not to break. And so after that, I just did everything he asked me to do. And I was not going to break. I was dying, but I was not going to break. And then finally, he called me and said, I'm pulling you from training. You're overtrained. And my first question was, well, I want to know what was your final clue? I've been trying to tell you for four weeks that I'm in trouble here. And I think it was just an accumulation of everything.

1:16:22T. J. Tollakson: I think he kept, there had been a couple of days where he gave me lighter workouts and it really didn't make any difference. And of course, overtraining is when your body does not respond to rest. And I think he finally figured that I wasn't responding to these little lighter workouts that he had been giving me and I was just done. So he pulled me. So that was how I ended up being pulled. And then after that, Des didn't have a lot of experience with overtraining syndrome because he'd only overtrained, had only been with two other athletes who were overtrained while they were working with him. And so he just, he told me to just do what I felt like.

1:17:06And I was so, I mean, for, you know,

1:17:12T. J. Tollakson: over 10 years I had done workouts every day. It was just like, I have to work out every day. So, and I had read, by that time, I had done a lot of reading about overtraining and what I read is it's okay to train as long as you don't do it very long and you stop when your body says stop. So the first day after being pulled, I just decided to go out and do a walk. I walked for 10 minutes and I was done. I mean, I had been sucking it up for so long. But then my mind was still like, you know, you walk for 10 minutes. Maybe you could walk for 15 minutes. Just push, see if you can get to 15. And then I'm thinking that is the mindset that got you into trouble to begin with.

1:17:58T. J. Tollakson: So the whole thing in that period of all of this was just learning to stop when my body said stop. And realizing that I had, for whatever reason, I'm able to push through pain. So I've got to be really cognizant of when to stop and not always trying to see can I get out a little bit more. So, yeah, so that was it. And then just to, yeah, it was just like a mental nightmare of blaming myself, blaming dads, being embarrassed, not wanting to tell people because I thought they would think I was just being lazy, you know, or not committed. and people don't understand what overtraining syndrome is and that it is a medical condition and it's not something that you choose to do.

1:18:50T. J. Tollakson: It's not something that if you just suck it up, you can do it. So it took me a while to just come to terms myself with that my body had limits, that I didn't know my body anymore, that my body was not reacting predictably, That was really bizarre. Then finally, after about a month, I went out on social media and told people that, you know, I was overtrained and, you know, taking a break. And, yeah, so that was in February of 2024. So it's been two and a half years. And I just got the green light to actually push a race last weekend. So it's been like a two and a half year coming back. And I still, my run is not anywhere where it once was.

1:19:44T. J. Tollakson: But so I'm still coming back, but at least I got to push a race. So that was fun.

1:19:49Brady J. Hunsicker: How long did you go with unstructured training?

1:19:55I went with unstructured training for three months maybe.

1:20:01T. J. Tollakson: and then I hired a coach who was local because I wanted somebody who could eyeball me so that if I did this to myself again that somebody could stop me and so I hired a coach that was in Indiana a top level coach who works with Paralympians and he was very, very conservative on bringing me back I went for almost a year and a half with only running two-minute intervals at a jog pace. We brought back my swim first and then my bike, and then we were in the process of bringing that back. And this is now after the book. So I'm working with that coach for a long time, and I have a comeback race. This was a year ago.

1:20:58T. J. Tollakson: And I was all excited because it was Nationals, World's Qualifier, and that was my comeback race. And the day before the race, I break my toe in some just freak accident. And it was a bad break that could have become like totally dislocated. So the doctor said, yeah, you need to drop out. So I dropped out of that race. Then I started training again. And then with no symptoms at all, I went down in a track workout with heat stroke. So, I mean, I learned my lesson. I was hydrated for that workout. And, you know, I was playing. I didn't have any fuzziness. There was no staggering. I was just fine.

1:21:42And down I went.

1:21:44T. J. Tollakson: So that was another three-day stay in the hospital. and then after that I decided everybody advised me to just take some time off so I took five months off just with just self-coaching I just did what I felt like doing and really re-examined like what is my new relationship with sports because I don't want to do what I did before when I was crazy and I want to do this more logically and I don't want to I was neglecting my sons and my grandchildren to, you know, because I was so single focused and I did a whole values clarification and, you know, I wanted to be a grandma more than I wanted to be a triathlete.

1:22:26T. J. Tollakson: So I've kind of adjusted that. And yeah, then I hired a local coach in January, last January, and then we've been coming back and I got to actually race my race last weekend.

1:22:40Brady J. Hunsicker: How did it go?

1:22:43T. J. Tollakson: uh i was slow but it was what i've discovered in all this is that what i really love about racing is just trying to manage the course and um you know so in the swim like i you know i got to like like not only with pacing but like you know this person is passing me can i grab onto their feet can i draft behind them you know now i'm on the bike and you know what what what is what's the course giving me and what you know i just love that part of the intellectual part of racing so yeah so i came i mean i was i don't even know where i placed i was well i was first in my age group because i was the only one but yeah i was slow i mean my and i i'm still only i'm still only running two minutes at a time so like the whole run was a two minute run one minute walk two minute run one minute walk so and i was happy to get through the 5k doing that because that was for right now, that's kind of a push for me.

1:23:42Sue Reynolds: So from day one of Daz removing you from training until now, how long has it been?

1:23:48T. J. Tollakson: So that was February of 24. So I think the whole over-training started in the end of 23. So all of 24, all of 25. And then so almost two and a half years.

1:24:03Sue Reynolds: wow that's a long time what is your what is your feeling as like you being whole again how how close are you to that mentally or physically both physically i have hope for my bike and my swim

1:24:26T. J. Tollakson: and I think I have hope for everything. Physically, my goal is to get my fitness back by the start of 27 so that then I have options. I can decide, yes, I want to go crazy with this again and try to be among the best in the world or I can just have fun going to destination races and working to manage the course. But I won't have that option until I have my fitness back. So we're there.

1:24:59T. J. Tollakson: Mentally, most recently, I think I'm pretty good. I think that was really a struggle because I really didn't know what I wanted triathlon to be to me. after, you know. The other thing that's really bad about, I think, about overtraining syndrome, when I broke my clavicle, the doctor could say, okay, the recovery is probably going to take this many weeks, and then you'll be fine. But with overtraining syndrome, you don't know if it's going to last a couple months, a couple years, the rest of your life, you know. So that mentally, that was like, do I quit triathlon? You know, is it time to take up a different sport?

1:25:42T. J. Tollakson: I did a couple of 5Ks just for fun where I like ran in the back of the pack or ran walked in the back of the pack and talked to people and waved to people and, you know, stopped at the aid stations and chatted with folks. I mean, just but this last race, I really discovered that I like competing. And I like not not with other people. I like competing with the course, you know, to see, can I find all the opportunities on the course? Can I find every second? And so that mentally, I feel like I'm back right now. I feel like that's where I want to be. So, yeah. So I'm a happy camper right now.

1:26:28Sue Reynolds: I have to know how you broke your toe because we just had our last guest with the most random toe break story. I've ever heard. So I need to know now.

1:26:41T. J. Tollakson: I was, I was, we had taken our RV to a race, the nationals. And I had my, my bike trainer, it was a Wahoo kicker, which is really a heavy in the RV. And I was just walking across the RV and I stubbed my toe on the kicker. totally random yes and we heard a break i mean it was just we knew right away

1:27:11you were already at the race venue huh all the way there yeah i was raised oh yeah i one time

1:27:18T. J. Tollakson: at a race i bruised my heel badly the evening before a race that i had traveled to i was doing

1:27:28Sue Reynolds: a clinic the day before and demonstrating something and crushed my heel and woke up the next morning and couldn't fit my foot in a shoe and just had to not race. So going to a race and not racing is far worse than getting hurt prior to the race and not making the trip.

1:27:50Brady J. Hunsicker: Didn't you roll your ankle the night before a race once as well?

1:27:53Sue Reynolds: I did that. I did that one time as well. And didn't race, right? Yeah. It's starting to sound when you say it all together like a pattern, but it's just two times in 39 years.

1:28:04T. J. Tollakson: Three times. I feel the same way when I talk about passing out, overtraining syndrome, broken toe, you know, but it's just so much of that. It's just like random.

1:28:15Brady J. Hunsicker: Overtraining is so tricky because it's, unless you've gone through it, it's only a hindsight thing. And it's like a very much a hindsight thing. Like I have to look way back. There were signs six months ago and six weeks ago, and I got to the point of being so broken, and I can't think of the last good workout I had. It's been months since I've actually felt like I took control versus survived. But you're always optimistic and hope it'll come around and think you're doing all the things, but there's this point. Once you're submerged, there's one fix, and it's don't do anything. I mean, to an extent, but it's never...

1:28:52Brady J. Hunsicker: And the best foresight on that for those who haven't experienced it is like a conservative ramp up approach with built in reprieve, even when you don't think you need it. And coach, I don't need a down week. Well, I don't care. And you're going to take a week off every six months because we need to make sure we don't fall victim and get ahead of it. And it's a philosophy that I've used. But it's hard as a coach remotely because, Bracken, you can attest to this, like some athletes are being babies and they need to be pushed. and they are looking for excuses to get out of things, and they'll justify it in their heads.

1:29:26Brady J. Hunsicker: And then there's others who will run themselves into a brick wall, and even when they shouldn't be. And you can't feel that out right away as a coach with some people. It really is hard. You have to learn the nuances of the athlete and their communication. And, I mean, maybe there were more signs, and maybe this coach should have had more foresight. But at the same time, like I can say, like, I have a handful of athletes. I have really no idea truly what's going on with them from that standpoint. Are they babies or are they really, you know, fatigued? I think some are babies and I think some are actually fatigued, but it's hard to decipher sometimes.

1:29:59Yeah.

1:30:00T. J. Tollakson: I really think that dads thought I was being a baby and, and the, um, like I'm, like I was the first age grouper he had ever coached. I'm the first older person that he's ever coached. So, and I think with working with only elites, high, you know, high level elites, like who were probably always asking for more and never saying that they were tired. But to me, I always, because when I'm coached remotely, I always viewed myself as the assistant coach. So I thought I'm the coach's eyes and ears on deck because the coach isn't here. So when I felt tired, I would tell Daz that I was tired because I thought that was good input for him.

1:30:39T. J. Tollakson: But I think he was really not used to athletes saying that they were tired. And so he just thought I was whining all the time. And he didn't say that. I'm just kind of guessing. But I think it's understandable. I think that has to be one of the hardest things about coaching. It's just trying to figure that all out. I mean, it has to be hard.

1:30:59Brady J. Hunsicker: When to tell them to push and when to tell them to not. That's a tricky thing.

1:31:04Sue Reynolds: For the athletes out here who will dip their toe into or towards the overtraining pond, what are your like bullet points when you see feel experience this please start paying attention what are those things that you wish you had seen and paid attention to

1:31:26T. J. Tollakson: i think the the advice i would give them is one to be really familiar with the um with the symptoms of overtraining. I had had no clue. And probably, I mean, there were two for me. Probably the biggest one was when I was doing the easy bike workouts that felt like threshold. I mean, something was wrong there. And then the other advice that I add on top of that is to not make excuses. to really consider the possibility that it may not be the trainer or the power meter. It may be your body that's not reacting well. So that's one, just when your performance is dropping and there's no sense of why that might be happening, to really consider that it might be something physical that's going on with your body.

1:32:25T. J. Tollakson: And then the other one for me was just not being able to sleep for more than an hour at night And, you know, even though I was exhausted, I couldn't sleep. And, yeah, those were the two big for me. But I think everybody's different. The other one for me that we didn't know until after the fact, the first sign we had is that I always gain a little bit of weight over the holidays, and then I always take it off. So, you know, if you look at my, since the, you know, whatever year that was, 2010 when I first dropped the 200 pounds. Like if you look at a chart of my weight, like every Christmas it goes up, it looks like a little roller coaster and then it comes down.

1:33:10T. J. Tollakson: I can always tell where Christmas is because the chart goes up. But this Christmas, I couldn't lose the weight afterwards. And I thought that I hadn't been meticulous enough with my nutrition, so I started cutting a little bit more. So I might have had some red S going into this as well. And later, after Daz pulled me, I wanted some verification medically that this was really the situation. So I did all kinds of blood work and I met with my sports doctor. And my resting metabolism rate, RMR, had decreased by 36%. I mean, yeah, that's huge. But I didn't know it at the time. But that was the first indication.

1:34:03T. J. Tollakson: But to answer your question, the sleep disruption for me and then the, yeah, not being able to hit my power, that was huge. So, Kirk, you've been through this before?

1:34:19Brady J. Hunsicker: No, I haven't. But I've worked with people who have. And I'm aware, and we've had interviews with others that we probably have dipped into that in conversations with other athletes we compete with. Firsthand, luckily, I don't believe so. But yes, through proxy, yeah.

1:34:37T. J. Tollakson: What clued me that you had either known people or been through it yourself is because when you said that you don't know, you're in it until after the fact. And in the book, I call it the invisible vortex because you don't know you're in it. You just get caught up in it until it's like, you know, too late. So, you know, to answer your previous question, just take those early, you know, warning signs seriously and consider, you know, that it could be an overtraining injury.

1:35:05Brady J. Hunsicker: It's a you're feeling good. Great. Let's take a break. You're feeling good. You're feeling super fit. Awesome. Let's take a week down. We do have to run, though, Bracken. I know you have to get going, don't you? so last question for you not to abruptly end this thing but if people want to find out get your book learn more about you I went to your website it was very informative and a nice site where can people do that and then the books that you've written and all that yeah so I'm on Instagram I

1:35:37T. J. Tollakson: I think it's sue.reynolds. And my website is sue.reynolds.net. But the book is available everywhere. So it's for pre-sale right now on Amazon and all the different book outlet places. And one thing I want to mention, too, is that 100 % of the author's share of the proceeds from the book are being donated to USA Triathlon Foundation to help people with disabilities participate in sports. So when people buy the book, they're hopefully getting a good read, but then they're also supporting a really good cause. So in my first book, The Athlete Inside about the weight loss and going to my first couple of worlds, that book just came out last week in paperback format.

1:36:28T. J. Tollakson: So that's available on Amazon as well. So, yeah. So, yeah.

1:36:33Brady J. Hunsicker: So encouraging everybody. I'm sorry? You're not getting rich off of this?

1:36:38T. J. Tollakson: No, no. No, no. Authors don't get rich to begin with. But, yeah. But I love what the USA Triathlon Foundation does. They really do good work. And it's been a joy to, you know, to donate to them.

1:36:54Sue Reynolds: Well, Sue, my first career was a special educator. So I fully support and get behind this.

1:37:00T. J. Tollakson: Yeah, very cool. Yeah, because even with USA Triathlon Foundation now, there's divisions for people that have physical handicaps, but now there's also divisions for people who have cognitive challenges. So that is super cool. Yeah, nice.

1:37:17Sue Reynolds: I'll have to swing down and watch when you come through Milwaukee this summer.

1:37:21T. J. Tollakson: I'll be the one walking in the run, probably.

1:37:26Sue Reynolds: I'll time everyone, and anyone who's running two-minute intervals, I'll know it's you.

1:37:31Brady J. Hunsicker: yeah all right so well thank you for your time today uh appreciate it's been a very nice conversation so thanks for your time appreciate it yeah thank you and i and i'm a listener to

1:37:38T. J. Tollakson: your podcast and i i appreciate your podcast as well yeah absolutely so you guys do it's always conversational and i i enjoy that kind of podcast so yeah thanks thanks

1:38:01Thank you.