USA Track & Field

So that, we talked about the team scoring, but not necessarily our own individual races.

I guess, like, at this point, it feels, like, so far away when the lead car USATF Half Marathon Championships debacle happened.

Like, it's just-

Like another lifetime.

... it's like, is that pacing? It, it's like you didn't ask them to.

You d- you, you may have even told them not to, but, like, how do you do that? I, I imagine there would be some sort of a official there that would probably take care of that in, like, an, in, in a USATF or a World Athletics or IAU type of scenario.

But, um, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things that could be, like, a little bit goofy with that.

And the- that's a great point too with the, the content stuff because it's one of those things where I think of the events that have gotten a bunch of public attention and really pushed the sport into new people's, uh, presence has been some of the content creation along the way.

But I really appreciated in this piece how you parsed through how track and field has...

Inconsistent is the word that you use, and I think it's the best way to describe how the track and field world, world athletics, USATF, have kind of embraced gambling, but also have not embraced gambling in ways that we've seen with the NFL, NBA, MLB.

And so...

I'm curious what led you to write about this topic for starters, especially in the track and field context?

They are suing a lot of the...

There are, like, they are doing some of these tennis tours to fight for better pieces of the pie.

And I think one thing that athletes are always frustrated at, track and field athletes, is that every time World Athletics or USATF makes a decision, they don't really talk to the athletes about it.

They have this sort of, like, Athletes Commission, which is under World Athletics, which, as we all know, is this kind of, like... like gesture to say that you're hearing athletes' voices.

You mentioned about coaching and learning.

Were you doing any, what I'm going to call the, it's not official, what do I call it? The like coaching education, like did you go to any USATF level ones, USTFCCCA classes, Altus, any of that type of coaching education at this point? I

did.

I did the USATF.

I believe.

I did like the strength and conditioning.

But I think that the more voices we have, the more angles we get on how parallel owners are influencing how public lands are used and our direct impact, everything from the things that we use to our voice in politics.

What I'd like to see in the long run is some kind of institute to help to train individuals, similar to how USATF has a program to train coaches, that I'd like to see the American Trail Running Association take up leadership and to start training the next generation of folks who can not just train the next generation of trail runners, but to be a voice in it on the various different facets of how our sport is impacting the environment.

And I think that instead of just speaking about public lands, we need to have a broader focus as to how we're impacting our usage of these lands.

Do you like the Road Dogg podcast? I think you do because here you are listening again.

Wow

... uh, working with the Minnesota Vikings for four years as their mental performance coach, um, USA Track & Field, and now, uh, do a lot of still work in professional sport and my keynote speaker.

Amazing.

So I lead a company called the Mentally STRONG Institute.