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The Endurance Matters Podcast, Hosted by Justin “BigMetz” Metzler, professional triathlete, is the ultimate destination for endurance enthusiasts. Join us as we dive deep into the world of endurance sports, from 5Ks to Ironman triathlons to Ultra Races, and everything in between. Each episode we'll bring you inspiring stories featuring athletes, trailblazers, and members of the endurance community. From the highs to the lows, this podcast will help us explore the limits of human physical and mental performance.
Whether you're a seasoned athlete or just starting your endurance journey, Endurance Matters is your go-to source for motivation, education, and entertainment. Tune in, lace up, and let's go the distance together!
Welcome to another episode of the Endurance Matters podcast. I am your host, Justin Metzler, and I have the pleasure in studio today to have Erin Carson. Erin, welcome to the show.
Erin Carson:I'm so stoked to be here. Thank you, Justin.
Justin Metzler:Alright. Well, I start off the podcast with a icebreaker hard hitting question. Today, my question for you is what is the worst, funniest, or most dangerous exercise you've seen someone attempt in the gym? What kind the kind that kind of had you biting your tongue and they pulled it off somehow?
Erin Carson:Well, they put what defines pulling it off, really? Like, they didn't die?
Justin Metzler:Didn't go to the hospital.
Erin Carson:They didn't die. They didn't go to the hospital. Ugh. I've seen some crazy stuff. I think that when people try to add load to pull ups Mhmm.
Erin Carson:And they they grab like, they'll put a belt around their waist, and then they've got dumbbells or plates hanging between their legs, and then they lose their grip, and they fall. It's just that that's a good one. I've been really lucky. I I work in places, and I choose to work in places where not a lot of crazy stuff happens. But when I left Rally Sport and we knew we needed a new place to train, I went over to Crunch.
Erin Carson:My mind was blown how it the rest of the world lives in fitness.
Justin Metzler:$9.99 a month is gonna bring out some ideas, I think.
Erin Carson:There were people, like, dressed up like ninja warriors, like, normal Tuesday afternoon in full costume. But, yeah, there's some pretty crazy stuff in some gyms, but I I I think I've been pretty lucky. Not too much crazy stuff.
Justin Metzler:Alright. That's cool. Well, first off, why don't you tell us who you are and what you do?
Erin Carson:Okay. So my name is Erin Carson. I'm a certified strength and conditioning specialist. I'm super blessed to live in Boulder, Colorado. And I think that's I've I've always been passionate about strength for sport.
Erin Carson:Strength for sport is different than strength for strength, and outcomes really should be based on the success of your athletes. And so I I work with really a lot of the top 1% in in running and triathlon and cycling, and and the outcomes that we're always after is that the sport gets better. The placement gets better. The ranking gets better. The athlete wins a world championship maybe or just continues to ascend and get better.
Erin Carson:So that's been my focus, and I was re I've been really careful through my through my career to stay in my lane, and and I'm a strength coach, not an endurance coach, but I'm there to support and and be really comfortable with that role of being support staff. And you and I have done a lot of work together, and we've always wanted to include the the sport coach as part of the team, and and I love being part of a team. So I'm a strength coach. I wanna be measured by the performance of my athletes and the success of my athletes as they experience their sport, and I don't wanna compete with endurance coaches. I wanna support the journey.
Erin Carson:So that's who I am. I'm passionate about continuing education. I continue to to learn more every day, surround myself with super smart people, and try and stay ahead of the curve, but also recognize that newer isn't always better and that the fundamentals are what champions tend to be built on.
Justin Metzler:100%. Well, there's a you touched on a lot of points that I wanna dive deeper into, but I first wanted to start off by maybe talking about how you ended up here in Boulder. So you played on the CU basketball team.
Erin Carson:Yeah. So coming out of I'm I'm from Canada, from British Columbia, and I was recruited as a two guard, a shooting guard, and took five recruiting visits and had the chance to choose I I I was really lucky. I was I was pretty good coming out of high school, and I could choose wherever I wanted to go, and I chose Boulder because Boulder is spectacular. It's a spectacular place to live. It was the best education that I could choose for myself.
Erin Carson:It was an up and coming basketball program, so I knew I could contribute. And then I looked big picture, like, where would I wanna live after college? So great education, great place to live, quality of life, and I came to Boulder. And it it I did leave to go to graduate school to Louisiana, which reinforced that I should come back to Boulder.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. That's two very polar opposite things. Oh, yeah. Did you have it together as a high schooler? Because I feel like a lot of 16, 17 year olds aren't necessarily thinking about, oh, where do I wanna maybe, you know, plot my roots for the future.
Justin Metzler:Were you always thinking that way? I'm a bit of a root plotter.
Erin Carson:Yes. Yeah. Always thinking for the future. 100%. Cool.
Erin Carson:I like to live in the moment. That's probably my biggest challenge. But, no, always thinking ahead.
Justin Metzler:Cool. Well, you played basketball in school. Obviously, that was probably a big part of your journey there, but you also got your degree in kinesiology and business, which is probably foreshadowing for your success in the future. What was your plan coming out of college, and what did it look like sort of entering the real world?
Erin Carson:Well, it wasn't being a strength coach. It was being a division one assistant basketball coach leading into maybe having my own program someday as a head coach. I was a little bit ahead of my time in those days. I was raised, quote, unquote, by an extremely brilliant basketball mind from here at the University of Colorado, Seelbury. So I feel like I had really good basketball chops, and I thought everyone had really good basketball chops.
Erin Carson:And then I went to other universities, and I realized that a lot of new head coaches coming out of division one were very good recruiters, but they weren't really great at technical basketball, whether it be strategy or teaching skills to players and that kind of stuff. So I came out of college really wanting to be a basketball coach, but I tend to steamroll a few of the assistants, and that was didn't make me a very popular person. And I, I was technically smart, but I wasn't socially smart. So you gotta play the game a little bit. You gotta know the right people.
Erin Carson:You gotta build relationships and friendships, and I kind of thought if I got smarter in the topic, that would serve me well. And I think, knowing people and being attentive to humans was more important than I thought at that point. I know it now, but I didn't know it then.
Justin Metzler:Sure. And when does it transition to being more strength training oriented?
Erin Carson:You know, when when I when a few doors closed for me in college basketball, kinda settled in, okay. Like, what's plan b here? Like, how can I lead a life and a professional life where I can have an impact? I like having an impact. I like being successful.
Erin Carson:I know what success looks like and feels like, and I love strength training. And I'm good at it, I have a lot of education in it. And, I realized at that time, not a lot of endurance athletes were doing strength training or what I would deem correct strength training that would serve their performance. You know, you could see a lot of the professional runners come in. They'd grab two pound dumbbells and pretend they were running with them.
Erin Carson:And I'm like, wow. That that's really ineffective and and creates a lot of fatigue. And, you know, is that making you stronger? And and so I was able to see a lot of what was happening and then kinda chart a path on how I maybe could make an impact. And through education, started seeing a bigger picture of understanding movement as opposed to strength and what strategy that you have that could create better movement or more economical movement.
Erin Carson:You know, in in running, you talk about running economy and being comfortable on the bicycle. How can I create, more comfort for the athlete so that they can do what they love with more ease, better, faster? And I think stronger is better. And so gained the trust of a few athletes early, showed some good success, and then it kinda just showed that this is possible. This could be a cool thing.
Justin Metzler:So did you so you're very well known for being sort of in the endurance sport community. Being in Boulder, did the athletes find you, or did you find endurance sport and then sort of pursue those athletes?
Erin Carson:Well, important to note that I worked at a very nice health club where all the athletes really enjoyed working working out. And and, initially, it was mostly runners. So we have Frank Shorter, Kara Goucher. Dave Scott was a big part of our early years at Rally Sports. So there was only two clubs in Boulder, really, at that time.
Erin Carson:And so I had access, and so I had conversations, and I met people. Remember what I didn't do well in my early career? I started just building friendships and not saying, hey. I wanna be your strength coach. I wanna be your strength coach.
Erin Carson:I would just ask a lot of questions, learn a lot. What were their what were their pain points? And not gonna lie, watching Dave Scott prepare for some of his ironmen in Hawaii, Dave was very much ahead of his time lifting heavy weights and getting under load. And I was like, that's smart. That's the smartest guy in the room right there.
Erin Carson:And he was a champion and proven over and over again that through performance that what he was doing was correct. And and nobody even at Ironman was like, well, what does Dave do going in? He must just swim, bike, run all the time. And I'm like, nah. You know?
Erin Carson:Yeah. He did a lot of that, but he did a lot of really good focused strength work in the gym. And so seeing that seeing that outcome, how can I support and broaden the opportunity for endurance athletes to trust and learn and understand and then show it through their performances?
Justin Metzler:Sure. I wanna talk more about rally sport because that was just a very interesting time. I obviously was there for, you know, six, seven years in my career. Talk to me about how you got in there and how it evolved to you owning the gym and having it be sort of yours.
Erin Carson:Yeah. So it's competitive business, and you want people to spend time in the gym. The Boulder is an outdoor community. Right? Everybody loves to ski, rock climb, ride their bikes, do triathlon.
Erin Carson:And every summer, our our membership would go down, like, 40%, and so we'd struggle through the summer. And the owner at the time, Denny, was like, we need to build a nicer pool, a a lap pool, and then we're gonna that's gonna enhance our summer participation. So, he actually spent a a long time planning. We built the best small pool ever. So we
Justin Metzler:It was legendary, that pool.
Erin Carson:Legendary small pool. So we but it was it was terrific, and a and a lot of championships were won not only in triathlon, but also in open water swimming and swimming in general. We we did really, really well with that. And the goal was to just create this more roundedness. And then through my own education as a strength coach for performance, we were like, you know, if you train if you strength train year round, your skiing's gonna be better in the winter.
Erin Carson:If you strength train year round in addition to cycling, you're you're gonna be more comfortable on the bicycle. And so we started to create this this environment and this training kind of philosophy within our club that this was the place to be because we would all of us would support activities. And so I started hiring a bunch of trainers, coaching and teaching a lot of those trainers how to be better trainers and not just train for strength and how much weight can you lift, but speak to our community, speak to our members. And through that, I was able to build a staff and a team of over 30 trainers, all working twenty to thirty hours a week, paying them really, really well so we didn't turn over trainers. And I did a lot of consulting for a lot of gyms around the world, around the country on how to create that kind of team, but it really all of it was strength for performance, and the each each trainer had a passion.
Erin Carson:And so I love endurance sports. I love I I, you know, I like basketball. It served me very well, but I prefer to train a runner over a basketball player. But a lot of my team, my trainers, you know, they love basketball, they love football, or they love skiing. And I'm like, well, then train your people to ski better.
Erin Carson:Train your people to better basketball. And we built an amazing business with with, with that philosophy. And it stabilized the business in a really, really cool way until the building got the building got super expensive to to fix all the time. It was a 45 year old building, concrete building built for racquetball. You know, we we had a good start with the pools, but we started to create a new vision, and we were gonna create a bigger pool, a smaller training facility, more like 25,000 square feet, bigger pool.
Erin Carson:And so we sold. We started being open to sell our land. In February, we we closed. We we signed a deal to sell the land, and I also had all of my investors on board to do the next thing. But then COVID came, and COVID changed the way people interact indoors and exercise, and we went through that together.
Erin Carson:It's something we'll never forget.
Justin Metzler:Absolutely.
Erin Carson:But it also because it changed so dramatically, it turned out that that second club that we were talking about or even the one that we talked about in Longmont, we talked a lot lately about It didn't it didn't come to fruition because it wouldn't have been the it wouldn't have been a good business decision. Sure. And we would have struggled.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. And I think rally sport in itself was such a unique space. Like you said, it was a racquetball gym that was converted into an endurance sport hub with a pool that was super functional, and there was just this unexplicable culture there and sort of vibe that I think would have probably been difficult to replicate elsewhere. Not that it wouldn't have been successful from a bit a business perspective, but I think Rally Sport was very much one of one in its own thing.
Erin Carson:Yeah. We kinda can't tell the real story without giving a huge thank you and thumbs up to Tim O'Donnell and Miranda Carfrey because I knew who they were, and I was a big fan. And, I knew that they were driving twenty minutes across town to go swimming. And I said, you know, you guys should just come and swim at Rally Sport. It's five minutes from your house.
Erin Carson:And so they were like, oh, okay. So they came over, and they started swimming at Rally Sport. And and then if Tim and Renny were doing it, it was where the cool kids would be. And so they they started building and rebuilding our culture at Rally Sport around triathlon. Dave had originally built it, but then Dave left.
Erin Carson:We parted ways, and, he went to Flatirons. And he did an amazing job building that community down there, but then I was able to have a lot of success starting with Tim and Rinne because they're magic. Sure. They're amazing. So Yeah.
Justin Metzler:And then was that where sort of Julie's squad came in and then all the other people sort of followed after that point?
Erin Carson:Yeah. It sounds short, but I think it was over two or three years that that came to fruition. And having somebody like Julie Dibbon's coaching on your deck was it was amazing. I mean, I got to got to go watch you guys swimming all the time, and everybody would come to Boulder for the summer, Craig Alexander, Tim Don. Like, everybody would come, and Rally's Port was where they would come, and so we just all became people together.
Erin Carson:You know? Sure. It was less of a fandom place, although I'm a huge fan still, but it very much became a really strong human opportunity to be around some of the coolest people in the world doing things at a very high level, and that was very attractive, and it was really fun to be around.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. I mean, it was really impactful for me and and Jeanie's career as well to just sort of have it be normal, the standard be normalized. I think the standard of excellence there just because of the people that were there, everyone was a world champion. And so the standard to win races was was just there, and you're not gonna find that sort of anywhere else in the in the country or anywhere else in the world. So it was really cool and definitely impactful in my career and Jeannie's career.
Justin Metzler:I definitely wanna dive into more about your training, strength training philosophy. So Yep. First off, can you tell me a little bit about how in terms of triathletes, define strength training to meet their goals. So you mentioned that you always want the strength training to support the activity, but what does that mean in the real world?
Erin Carson:You know, it means being a good listener. It means asking good questions to athletes and saying, okay. When we look back on this year so we're as you and I were chatting, it's December 15 or something. So I've just gone through a a process with most of my professional athletes and and top age groupers where I've said, okay. Talk me through 2025.
Erin Carson:How did we do? And pretty much everybody was pretty stoked on 2025. And I was like, where are our opportunities? So I can pretty much I'm not gonna you know, we can talk about Jeannie little by little, but everybody's mostly familiar. So I'll talk about Sarah Svensk, and she's a Swedish Swedish athlete who ended up having an extraordinarily good Kona this year.
Erin Carson:But we look at, where she needs to get better. And if you talk to any female triathlete right now, they're like, we need to get better on the bike. And so if my my pitch to Sarah was like, Sarah, are you comfortable on your bike? You know, TT is such an exquisite position, and she's like, most of the time. And most of the time tells me that there's an opportunity on the bike.
Erin Carson:And so I'm gonna start in the early phases of 2026 with Sarah really focusing on getting her more comfort on the bike, and her coach is in charge of making her a better cyclist. So not to be confused. The stronger Sarah gets, the more comfortable she'll be on her bike. The more comfortable she'll be on her bike, the more success her and her sport coach will have in creating a better cyclist. It's not my job.
Erin Carson:I can share in some of the success, but having a really good sport coach help you become a better cyclist is where that focus needs to be, and the coach really likes that I'm gonna stay out of that. I'm not gonna give her a bunch of exercises that look like cycling so that she'll pedal better. Like, that's not how that works. So my goal with Sarah is to give her more core activation, more core freedom. So tightness is a is a big problem from the cycling as she goes into her run.
Erin Carson:So we're focusing on making her more comfortable on the bicycle so that when she gets off the bicycle, she has experienced less tension, less tightness, and can just start freaking running. And then when we really start looking at the run, if if she feels good, she's a very good runner. She showed that in Kona. You know? So comfort and freedom in the body is what strength will bring to a triathlete.
Erin Carson:And triathletes are fun because the biggest problem to solve truly is to go from a horizontal sport of swimming where you need to be able to go through the water very, very well, be able to get on your bike and hold the arrow and climb mountains and go down and feel confident. And then I would just it's always a pivotal moment when you guys get off the bicycle and hopefully get upright with pain free and just start running with freedom in your hips and and legs. So and lower body and freedom in your upper body too. So Sure. These are the opportunities.
Erin Carson:I believe that freedom comes through strength and not over overstrengthening.
Justin Metzler:Sure. Yeah. I'm curious to hear because triathlon is there's so many muscle groups involved. There's, you know, variation between what swimming demands, what cycling demands, what running demands. How much are you thinking about strength training globally versus single sports strength or freedom or doing the reverse action of when it comes to swim, bike, run?
Erin Carson:Well, tight hips are always an issue. Right? So you can look at this understanding that in any sport, football, basketball, running, swimming, probably f one, like, because it's tightness of muscles on the front side of the body. It's difficult to strengthen a glute while your psoas or your hip flexor is tight. So, there's balance.
Erin Carson:Some people don't need more strength. They need more balance. And and because in a in a seated position or and then you add arrow position, there's so much shortness on the front side of the body. There are times when my athletes don't even go under load because they come in and they're so tight, and you're almost reinforcing bad habits. You're taking away the athlete's opportunity to be tall and strong in the position of running by putting them under load when they're not ready to be under load.
Erin Carson:So this is a huge advantage of seeing people in person because I train a lot of people remotely, but I try to see everybody at least once a month, eyes on, and be able to see how they stand, where their eyes are, like the position of the body. So balance is always a precursor to adding a bunch of load, and the harder somebody trains on the bike, the harder they run up a mountain, the tighter they get, and the smaller they get on the front side of the body, the more they're inhibiting the backside of the body. And from my education, practitioners will call this different things. I call it reciprocal inhibition through the National Academy of Sports Medicine and through the NSCA. So in my nomenclature, it's reciprocal inhibition, where there's tightness on one side of the joint, there's gonna be inhibition or lack of function on the back, and we need then to open up the front so that we can in fact strengthen the back.
Erin Carson:And the more frequently we do that, and therein comes the consistency, if you don't do this consistently, you're just gonna have to keep undoing the body before you can do to it. Yeah. Makes sense?
Justin Metzler:100%. I am curious to hear your perspective on athletes and triathletes who have injury histories, and I think a lot of triathletes will struggle with that. I've obviously had a lot. Jeannie's had some now. And as you get older, that becomes something that is more difficult to manage.
Justin Metzler:How do you sort of decipher what is necessary from a strength perspective and then maybe what, like, a physical therapist or a doctor is gonna prescribe? Because I've gone down the rabbit hole of a million physical therapists, and they'll look at me and say, oh, all you need is lateral glute stability.
Erin Carson:And I love those guys.
Justin Metzler:And that's just the common theme, and that's how they are trained. And so I understand from a biomechanical perspective what they're getting after, but I also really resonate with the reciprocal inhibition component of the tightness and all of that. So I guess what's your perspective?
Erin Carson:Tissue tolerance is a thing. Your tissue can only tolerate so much. If you take a personality profile of most of you people, You are achievers. You're very high achievers. And I want I want people to think about the bell curve of life, like, in in the bell curve of athletes.
Erin Carson:There's the people that will never do a triathlon, that will put them all the way on the left. They're not even interested. And then there's the people on the left side of the big part of the bell that they're thinking, they're triathlon curious, or they're endurance sport curious. Yeah, someday I wanna do a marathon. And so they're dabbling.
Erin Carson:You know, they might be running a little bit. And then there's the front side of the bell. And most age groupers are gonna be on the front side of the bell towards the first the final third. You know, they're not they're not the 1%. They don't have huge talent, but we're or or balance.
Erin Carson:Like, there's some people with a lot of talent that prefer to be lawyers or prefer to be business people Totally. Than professional triathletes. So I never wanna take anything away from them, but their drive has driven them to more balance and broadness in their life. The harder you push on tissue when it doesn't want to because it isn't recovered or it hasn't been fed. So we have to look at a nutritional component.
Erin Carson:We have to look at your genetic ability to repair your tissue, and then you have to take somebody who wants and thinks that if some is good, more must be better, and you have to tell them no. You have to say no. You're not helping yourself anymore, and that has proven to be a very, very challenging conversation, and that doesn't always come from me, the strength coach. A lot of times, you know, the sport coach and I will talk, but I see it. Like, a lot of times, I'll see the athlete more frequently than their than their sport coach does, and they come in and they're exhausted.
Erin Carson:And they don't like to even say they're exhausted. So three sports is a lot to keep up with, and then gym, and we always say, then there's all these other protocols, and now we know that sleep is more important. I mean, even in your short life, when I call you, think you was quite young, We have learned how important sleep is and rest to recovery. We've found more importance in fuel what we need to eat to help our body, but each one of us has a different level of recovery. And then there's our nervous system, and that would be the really talented people, the really highly talented people who can run fast, ride hard.
Erin Carson:As they get older, now we have time as a variable. As they get older, they can't get away with what they got away with four years ago, and they just wanna keep repeating. It was what was successful when I was 32. I'm gonna repeat that because I was world champion when I was 32. But when you're 34 and you're doing the same workouts that you did when you were 32, you're now in a 34 year old body, and that body might not need the same thing.
Erin Carson:And so a lot of variables, but personality is a big one and acceptance of timing in our lives how much we can handle and knowing what are our recovery metrics. How do we know if we've spent enough time resting? So injuries, there's always something that someone missed, unless you're getting hit by something, because then you have a whole different story. Trauma is different than a slowly, like, something that came on slowly. And I Tim Don used to say when I whenever he would go for a run, if he felt a nickel, he just stopped running.
Erin Carson:And he called Kelly and he was like, come pick me up, can't run. And, you know, and whether he was right or wrong, I don't know because he ended up his career with trauma. You know, he we we will never know how good Tim Don could have been. Yeah. We know he's an exceptional human.
Erin Carson:So that is cool because he's challenged channeled a lot of that brilliance into other things for other people, and he's helping a lot of other people achieve now too. So, you know, it it comes all in different packages. You gotta pay attention early. And and when bad things happen, you have to circle back around and and say, okay. I'm older.
Erin Carson:I gotta do things a little bit different. I'm not eating enough. Gotta eat more, and I gotta eat more strategically, timing wise. I gotta sleep more. And maybe I'm doing too much.
Erin Carson:Maybe I'm doing too much in the gym. Maybe I'm doing too much on the bike, and maybe I'm not doing enough either. I mean, that that's possible too. Right? Yeah.
Erin Carson:There's so many things, Justin. It's a great great topic.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. I'm I'm curious when you're having conversations with coaches and athletes. If we're gonna assume that the high performers are on that far end of the bell curve, they're the ones who wanna push it to the limit. The coaches, if they are remote coaches and they don't have the access or the availability to be in person, they might not understand recommendations of reduction, noticing the fatigue because athletes are bad at reporting it. Remote coaches don't have anything other than metrics, which only are only are applicable to a degree.
Justin Metzler:What do those conversations look like?
Erin Carson:You can see it. The best coaches I'm really lucky because I get to work with some of the best coaches in the world with some of the best athletes in the world. The best coaches in the world see it in the data. The best coaches in the world will probably see it in the data and then reach out to the athlete and have a conversation. And then they'll get more data from the conversation, and then they'll make a shift.
Erin Carson:And the best coaches in the world build trust, and those top performers, when they trust their coaches, that's when the magic happens. And I think it's the most beautiful thing to see when an athlete trusts their coach and when the coach does what he or she needs to do to build that trust. And that means being collaborative. It it you know, I I'm gonna just gonna be really clear here. I hate it when coaches say trust the process.
Erin Carson:I freaking hate that. Yeah. Because you guys are smarter than that. Like, you deserve a full answer, not trust the process.
Justin Metzler:Couldn't agree
Erin Carson:more. So, yeah, it's usually I'm second in line or third in line as a strength coach. I might be able to alert a sport coach just to look a little closer at something, but I'm I'm been pretty lucky.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. So I guess, like all coaching, training is individualized. It's gonna be very dependent on, yeah, what an athlete needs. But I guess if there are age groupers out there listening who are sort of in that middle bell curve. Right?
Justin Metzler:Like, they're just getting into it or they're taking it pretty seriously, and they don't know what to do on the strength front. Because I think sometimes, at least in my experience with all of my athletes that I've coached over the years, it's sort of they want swim, bike, run, and they want minimum effective dose on the strength. And some of them are like, I just kinda do it whenever, or I'm using now ChatGPT or whatever going on a YouTube video, maybe doing EasyFit Mobility Monday. Yeah. Like, what's the right dose for someone listening?
Justin Metzler:When, how much, and what?
Erin Carson:I love minimum effective dose. It takes a few weeks seeing someone a couple times a week for me to figure that out. It it's not an immediate, thing. It's like a it's like a great chef. You know, you start and you've got this massive soup, and you're just gonna put a bunch of stuff in there and you taste it and you're like, oh, too much salt.
Erin Carson:Like, meh, too much salt. Let's pull the let's pull the salt out, redo the soup. Oh, it's a little bit better. I like that soup. And then all of a sudden it's like, well, now I'm not hungry enough to eat enough protein.
Erin Carson:Oh, let's pull the meat out of the soup. Like, however it is, you'd need to slowly pair it back, and then you have to watch your enthusiasm and enjoyment and output in your training to find the balance. So if your cycling training is going well, you know it. If your run training is going well, you know it. And if you don't know it, you should figure out how to know.
Erin Carson:Like I just had a really good run. Training peaks is lovely because it tells you your first, second, third. It shows you your rankings for different distances. You can see my twenty second best time, my one minute best power, my five minute. Those are the indicators that trainings went well.
Erin Carson:I Mobility Monday for me on YouTube is kind of fun because I'm really consistent what I think. And I think people who appreciate that strength training isn't entertainment will realize that lateral gliding is a good thing, and I probably am gonna do it forever. And just because I did two weeks of lateral gliding, which is a wide stance, anchored feet, and you're just length you're activating your glute meat on one side and you're lengthening the adduct on the other side, that patterning is really important. So to keep coming back to boring things that you've done forever, I'm pretty reliable about boring. So people should, I think, be more bored in the gym.
Erin Carson:So if if you're going to your gym every single day and it's new stuff, that would be a red flag for me, and that should be a red flag for endurance athletes. You know, if you're you're going to the gym, you should have a squat, a lunge, maybe a deadlift. You should do some hanging, whether it's hanging knee raises or some pull ups. There are certain categories that should be be met. They're important part of just being healthy, having good posture, but they shouldn't be super entertaining, and you shouldn't always be doing new things.
Justin Metzler:Sure.
Erin Carson:So a lot of repeatability. You should also not be in the gym, in my opinion, longer than forty, forty five minutes. I think when I met you and Jeannie, you guys were doing, like, a ninety minute gym routine.
Justin Metzler:It's like two I was almost two hours.
Erin Carson:Yeah. I was like, these poor people. I need to help them. So it's it might it might have been one of our early conversations. You guys, you've been here a long time, and and you do swim, bike, run too.
Erin Carson:That's impressive.
Justin Metzler:Like, extensive 10 by five rep back squats.
Erin Carson:Yeah. Yeah. And it was in you know, it also is an important part of your TED Talk. It's an important part of your story. It was important part of your athletic development.
Erin Carson:You just didn't need it anymore, I don't think. Maybe. So, yeah, the the sessions shouldn't be too long. You should also have stuff that you can complete really comfortably in the home because family time and partner time is really important. Yeah.
Erin Carson:I just think you you're gonna if it's important to you to do well in a sport, you should see yourself ascend in the sport. And that's the beauty of being an age grouper because you can see where you rank and where you finish. So even if you're fiftieth or even if you're a hundredth, well, maybe you start coming to eightieth. Well, that's a good sign. You know, you're going the right direction.
Erin Carson:And then the beauty for pros is we have rankings now. We have the pro series. We have PTO, and we have rankings. And we should see athletes move up the rankings and say, okay. We're we're in the we're moving in the right direction.
Erin Carson:So shouldn't be in there too long. It shouldn't be too entertaining, and high rocks is not a good idea for endurance athletes. It's a beautiful, cool thing. Don't get me wrong. I'm a CrossFit fan.
Erin Carson:I'm a high rocks fan. But if you wanna use strength training to be good at running, high rocks might not be your best strategy. Sure.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. I am also curious to get your perspective on how because triathletes like control. A lot of us really want a path towards where we want to go, whether that's in training or whether that's in strength training, and I'll get a lot of athletes who are like, I wanna get to 50 miles of running a week. Yep. And they wanna start at 20 and go 25, thirty, thirty five, 40 Just like that.
Justin Metzler:45, 50. Just like that. As if it were perfect. And I think strength training, a lot of them think similarly where, okay, I'm gonna start with my deadlift at 200 pounds, and I wanna go up 10 pounds until week 12. And I've worked with some strength coaches who also think similarly where it's like, we're gonna do a sixteen week progression to get you to a one rep max deadlift.
Justin Metzler:I have struggled with the application to support swim, bike, run with that approach. How do you think differently and ensure that if we are going to deadlift or we are working towards a North Star goal that you are adjusting that soup with it still being constructive towards where we wanna go?
Erin Carson:A really simple statement. How strong is strong enough? And I have a really unique opportunity having worked with some really high level cyclists, not in triathlon. I've also and I know what they deadlift, and I know how they rank in the world as cyclists. And they don't deadlift very much, but they're the best cyclists in the world.
Erin Carson:I could say that very comfortably about female triathlon. I've worked with arguably one of the best female triathletes, formerly with with Rinny, but also with Taylor. And I know exactly what she lifts. So it's very comfortable for me to say, you don't need continue to go through that progressive overload approach in the weight room. And I think that's a really important thing about staying in my lane.
Erin Carson:You don't need to keep progressing in the weight room. You need to keep progressing on the bicycle. And once you achieve the kind of dead lifting or the kind of lifting that supports the training, so the tendon health, the tissue health, the muscle activation, the balance in the joint, the comfort on the bike, so that the bicycle continues to improve, you don't need to compete with that, with the deadlift. And it's another little saying. I have lots of little sayings, risk and reward.
Erin Carson:The heavier things get and the more technical things get and the more neural demand comes into a lift or a movement, the more risk that comes into the conversation. And I can comfortably say that in my career of now over twenty years of really good focused work with endurance athletes, my athletes have never been hurt in the gym ever. Yeah. And I'm really super stoked about that. And I'm not about to break that record, You know?
Erin Carson:Because even dropping a weight on their foot, they don't I don't even let them touch weights pretty much if I see them in person. I'm moving this stuff around. They're like, oh, I'll help you. I'm like, no. No.
Erin Carson:Don't touch that. Sure. You know? Yeah.
Justin Metzler:So I think strength training as well. Sometimes strength trainers wanna, like, prove their worth and show the metric. You know what I mean? Because it's not in swim, bike, run, as coaches, we can go out there and say, oh, well, you did a race and you improved your bike split. Okay.
Justin Metzler:There's the data that my job is secure. There's nothing like that in the strength training world. It's not like we go and do a deadlift on the end of a triathlon. So do you ever struggle with that a little bit of athletes saying, hey. I don't have something quantifiable to say?
Erin Carson:You do have quantifiable. You just wanna race.
Justin Metzler:There you go.
Erin Carson:Last you've been coming tenth. Now you're coming fifth.
Justin Metzler:Sure.
Erin Carson:I'm pretty good at explaining what happened. You know, you're a more robust, resilient athlete. And Yeah. If people that believe in themselves as athletes, my goal is to help them keep believing in themselves. And they have to like the sessions.
Erin Carson:They have to feel the difference. Working with Solomon now for over a year, I I have a chance to work with some of the top ultra runners in the world. I'm now stepping into the road team a lot. What is really excite those I have top level marathon runners, top level five k and steeplechase runners, top level ultra runners who are running UTMB, they're running for days at a time who have never been in the gym. And it's a clean slate.
Erin Carson:It's an opportunity. And if I teach them decompression breathing, or if I teach them how to understand the power of the diaphragm and and and core activation or maybe even just bring to light where their strengths are already that they don't need much, and they go for a run, and they're like, oh, I did that breathing thing. I feel amazing. Oh, I just keep getting taller, not smaller. Like, ultra runners get short.
Erin Carson:They lose disc height in their spines. So I've been really, really enjoying working with these runners who are it like, it's like they're kids in candy store. Can we do that gym thing again? And I'm like, yeah. Go.
Erin Carson:Like, I'll see you Sunday. Like, it's it's really fun because their their understanding of what happened in the gym looked a lot like football practice. And these are relatively young athletes. They're, like, in their late twenties, and they still, coming out of college, were working with the college football strength coach. Wow.
Erin Carson:And so they they like the you don't have to back squat unless you have back squatted your whole life. I you know, there's some athletes like Jeannie looks amazing with a bar on her back. Rini looks great with a bar on her back. Taylor doesn't wanna back squat, and I don't blame her. I don't I don't think it's a great decision for her.
Erin Carson:So there's there's lots of different ways to do it. And, yeah, it's super fun that adding in something that someone has never done.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. I Yeah. Mean, when we worked together, we never did a back squat. I think we did lots of front squat. We did a lot of Bulgarian split squat, plenty of deadlift.
Justin Metzler:Yep. Those were effective movements for me.
Erin Carson:Yeah.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. Very very interesting. I am curious to hear more about you know, you've talked about how much throughout your career you've worked with elite triathletes and runners. Are there any common threads that you noticed amongst the highest performers physically or psychologically?
Erin Carson:Well, they're everybody's a little different, to be honest. Like, Tim and Renny, they're just trusting. We we have a beautiful relationship. They they come in, and they trust me. And we had a really good run together.
Erin Carson:They did really well. I was I learned a lot from them and and with them, and so they were really trusting. I'm fourteen months into my relationship with Courtney DeWalter. And Courtney, she's like, I'm a little bored. Can you you know, this is somebody that runs for twenty four hours, and she's bored with her gym sessions.
Erin Carson:And I'm like, can he's like, can we do more variety? And so I added more variety into her program, and things are going quite well again, you know, because she loses she needs and wants more stimulus in in the gym. So we're I'm excited for that. Yeah. I think it's it's just becomes part of the day, part of the training week, and it's not something that athletes are looking to get out of their program.
Erin Carson:They don't want more to their program. They do what they're told. The most I'm really lucky because I think they just do what they're told by their sport coaches. They trust they trust us. So if we lay it out and we we get it done.
Erin Carson:Yeah. Yeah.
Justin Metzler:That's that's like you get a lot of people who are pros pros. You know? They know how to be professional athletes. They know how to just come in the gym and sort of work. I am curious because what's the difference between someone like Courtney who you don't work with in person and all of the athletes that you do work with in person?
Justin Metzler:What are the main differences in how you train them and maybe the decision making flowchart for their workouts?
Erin Carson:It's way more fun training training in person. I I really think that even if the listeners if you have a chance to work with a really good hands on, eyes on coach, you should. And really good like, I I have actually called hands on eyes on coaches in Kansas and said, do my programming. I will give it to you for free with this athlete, but watch them. Watch them closely.
Erin Carson:Be there for them. Entertain them. Keep them jazzed, that kind of thing. Yeah. If I got to see Courtney two times a week, we would have a lot more fun.
Erin Carson:It would be a lot more fun, because I I could see what she needed on that day and vibe what she needed because I'd be in her presence and being around somebody is is really cool. I see her I've seen her once or twice a month pretty consistently. Solomon is amazing with the way they support their athletes. It's just it's just better, but I can also use Zoom. So I I do have a chance to see people on Zoom.
Erin Carson:I'm also super accessible through you know, people use WhatsApp to to connect with me and talk to me. And and then I have a big group of people that I see them at least once or twice a week in live sessions and that kind of stuff. So I try as much as possible to make the world as small as possible, but it is amazing how few people love endurance sports and strength and sit in my chair. Like, it's hard for an a strength coach who's never ridden a time trial bike or never experienced the red line running to program that person and to imagine what they must feel like. And so I used to be a triathlete.
Erin Carson:I say used to because I just broke my bike. So I may or may never be another triathlete, but I know what it feels like. And I know when it feels uncomfortable and I know you're laying there on their bars going, I need to sit up. I need to sit up, but I'm faster if I'm aero. I should just stay here.
Erin Carson:And you have this whole conversation for 10 miles at a time, and you're just hot and sweating. Yeah, how can I help people not experiencing that much of that?
Justin Metzler:Sure. If you're getting to a point where you're not maybe gonna be doing as many triathlons, if you're thinking about that, how are you still going to, I guess, challenge yourself to experience those things? Or do you feel like you have enough body of evidence over time to know what it feels like to time trial to suffer to be fatigued from training?
Erin Carson:Yeah. I still love riding my bike. I just don't ride a TT bike anymore because I broke it. I fell off my fell off my kicker. I fell off my kicker.
Erin Carson:Is that pathetic? Sometimes, you know, things happen. Yeah. Well, the sport has changed so much as well. So we're gonna walk a line of building speed and power that we have never walked before.
Erin Carson:We're experiencing such an exciting change. I think Taylor the Taylor effect has has been important. The the how fast the boys are running has been important. So I work with Rudy Von Berg, and Rudy's so he's so transparent in his posts and stuff like that. So if you don't follow Rudy, follow Rudy Von Berg and read his post because he's like, yeah.
Erin Carson:I'm just not fast enough. Like, everything's getting so much faster. So we've gotta walk a little bit closer to the risk, and I understand what that is. And it's also really important that I'm available. So if I was training and trying to win a world championship, I wouldn't be around as much.
Erin Carson:I'd be like, I gotta cancel. I gotta be riding, and that's not my jam. I I think I have a pretty good idea, and I also ask really good questions. Jeannie's a really good example of that because I feel like she's made some really good strides, and I know that you had been coaching her and have and will continue to support her on all levels. But I think she made a really good decision bringing Jared in to help guide in a really systematic approach to her bicycle, and I think we were pretty stoked on how she rode in Indian Wells.
Erin Carson:Yeah. And and there'll be a growth period there. You know? So it may take her another year to regain a a world podium, but I I believe that she will. You know?
Erin Carson:And I'm I love the the journey that we're gonna go on, and we're gonna be patient and and and hopefully get back there.
Justin Metzler:Sure.
Erin Carson:But I believe in her a lot.
Justin Metzler:Of course, I do too. I know. Yeah. I I wanna know as well, like, what are you seeing with these new athletes coming through? I think on the women's side, you've got Taylor who's setting a new standard.
Justin Metzler:You've got the Norwegians and others on the men's side to set a new standard. How do you take athletes like a Rudy, for example, who has been on a world championship podium before but is feeling like he's a little bit behind the eight ball? What's it gonna take to get him on a world championship win, a Kona win? I mean, I'm saying that he was just third in Kona two years ago. So he's there, but I think even himself this year, he's reflecting on 2025 saying, I need to step it up a notch.
Justin Metzler:What are you thinking about from his training or athletes like him that's gonna help people get to that next level?
Erin Carson:Well, I think the first step has already been achieved, the recognition that something has to change. And if nothing changes, nothing changes. The other part of that and heard as part of his team, we discussed this, is don't overreact. Don't try to throw a bunch of new ingredients at Rudy. You know, little little stimulus changes and adjustments can go a long way in a very talented athlete.
Erin Carson:So we look back at that bell curve. The more talented the athlete is, the the less they really need. So we are not gonna overreact. We're not gonna add a bunch more, and we're not gonna freak out. We're just gonna start to add a few more things that will make Rudy or serve Rudy to feel more confidence in his training, and and that's exciting.
Erin Carson:If somebody was a little bit, like, ranked a little bit lower, so he finished, I think, pro series sixth in the world. So a little thing will go a long way. Don't overreact. If somebody was number 26, that's on the cusp of, am I good enough? We need to get that person up into the top 15.
Erin Carson:We're probably gonna add more. We're gonna do more. We're gonna take more risks, add more stimulus, maybe add more load. If somebody's number 66, we might do a complete overhaul. So recognizing where you are in your journey is gonna be a really important part of the decisions that are that are made along made along the way.
Erin Carson:Or if you're an older athlete, it it might be time to take some risks to see if you can get there. You know? I'm I'm I don't think I don't think Jeannie's in that position. I think that there's other circumstances that have led to the her her time of of coming back. But and there's other people that are dealing also with relative energy deficit syndrome, you know, Lionel has been so transparent.
Erin Carson:I love his story. I love him. I wish I knew him. I don't know him. But, Lionel, if you're watching, I love you, man.
Erin Carson:Like, you're my fellow Canadian. But he just speaks his mind, and he speaks from his heart, and I think that's incredibly valuable. Like, people don't don't lie. Like, when when the pros lie about what they're dealing with and how they got there, it doesn't help anybody.
Justin Metzler:Totally.
Erin Carson:So, yeah, I think, I think taking some risks, but also being super smart to see if you're there. And that would be an older athlete who's been there.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. I think this is maybe Jeannie and I's perspective. I think you look at maybe someone like Taylor. You look at someone like Morinda Rudy, for example. These people, even though they might have micro six month setbacks along the way, they have, overarchingly, been incredibly consistent.
Justin Metzler:I think if you look at Jeannie and I, we were very consistent for ten years, and the last three, four years have been a struggle, and now we're trying to build back. What's your advice to athletes like us who have shown that we can maybe get there? Jeannie, in particular, being on a world championship podium, world number seven. Now she's had a big regression. How do we how do you get someone back to that super elite level?
Erin Carson:You have to believe it in your heart, and you also have to recognize the women's field and the men's field are very different. The men's field is so massive. Right? And there's there's t 100. There's short course.
Erin Carson:There's 70.3. I mean, I think in my lifetime, there was there didn't used to be a 70.3. There definitely wasn't t 100. You know, it was either you did the Olympics or you did Ironman. Sure.
Erin Carson:And so there's an exciting opportunity to to be patient. Like, you can you can do a lot of nonpro series 70 threes, start feeling what it feels like to win, start feeling what it feels like to chase people down, and find yourself as an athlete again and believe in it. And then just walk the walk of what you know is important. And if you're over if, you know, the the intangibles become more important, the sleep quality, the peacefulness. You know?
Erin Carson:I'm I look at an athlete more often than not, and when I meet them in the first twenty four hours of meeting an athlete, I'm like, do you meditate? And they're like, what? I'm like, do you meditate? Do you do breath work? And they're like, why would I do that?
Erin Carson:Like and if that's the response, then that's an incredible opportunity because you're gonna work hard. That's usually not the issue that an athlete isn't working hard enough. You know, I've only seen that a couple of times Mhmm. Where somebody was really talented, and they just didn't work hard enough, and so they weren't successful. More often than not, the person is working as hard as they can work.
Erin Carson:They're doing all the tangible things they can do correctly. And then the other question is, well, what are those intangibles? How can I turn from a sympathetic drive, hard training session, and relax so I can rest quicker? And maybe I can rest better than the competition. Maybe I can find more balance.
Erin Carson:That would be an incredible opportunity. That would be an incredible thought process. Like happiness, peacefulness, the ability to breathe and and regulate your nervous system is so important. And so I think with with you and Jeannie knowing you the way I do, I'd say your opportunities, you're always gonna work. You're always gonna do maybe just a little more than you were asked.
Erin Carson:You know? But you aren't kids anymore.
Justin Metzler:Yeah.
Erin Carson:And so your ability to find peace, your ability to find happiness, your ability to close your eyes at night when you go to sleep and just go, what a good day that was. You know? That's probably your biggest opportunity.
Justin Metzler:Sure. If there are athletes out there who are maybe similar to us, and I know there are a lot of athletes out there who maybe are similar, how much do you guide them with those things that maybe aren't directly correlated strength training. If you see an athlete who's like, alright. Well, yeah, we can fix this athlete's deadlift, and we can give them, you know, some foundation training or whatever, that's gonna help them, but they really have a big low hanging fruit on mindfulness or breath work.
Erin Carson:Of my job. It is part of my job.
Justin Metzler:Do you implement that?
Erin Carson:So I'll start with foundation training with doctor Eric Goodman. He's a good friend. He's a good mentor, and the method of his teaching is, in my opinion, spectacular. It is it is an understanding of how the body flows, works, and can be implemented in in all walks of life. I can take it like, let's say you're in college and you have, like, 100 level, and then you then you become a sophomore, you get it.
Erin Carson:Now you're doing 200 level. I'm probably like a sophomore. Like, I'm my leadership for people is enough, but not if they wanna go deeper. If they wanna go deeper, I I have teammates and people that I'll refer to. Let's go deeper.
Erin Carson:You know, if you wanna go up and do graduate level work and breath work, I I'm so proud to be the one that will usher you into that world on a deeper level, but I'm not the one that can do it. Like, I believe in experts. And like I said, I'm gonna stay in my lane and explore possibilities of of how deep somebody wants to go as a human. Sure. You know, we're we're we walk this planet for such a short amount of time relative, and peacefulness and happiness are just so important, Justin.
Erin Carson:And, yeah, you can't work harder to get those things.
Justin Metzler:100%.
Erin Carson:But you can go deeper on some things that will lead you towards those things.
Justin Metzler:Sure. Yeah. 100%. Well, that's very cool. It's amazing insights here.
Justin Metzler:Before we wrap up, I've got some rapid fire questions. Okay. Let's Alright. Number one, athletes. Can you give me one athlete who you had to hold back the most in the gym and one athlete who you had to push and motivate the most?
Erin Carson:Justin Metzler.
Justin Metzler:To pull me back the most.
Erin Carson:Well, I wasn't successful, but, yeah, I tried. Yeah. Then the one that I had to push the most, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe Morgan maybe Morgan Pearson, but Morgan's so talented.
Erin Carson:I was probably wrong.
Justin Metzler:Yeah.
Erin Carson:Yeah. I He ended up doing great. Yeah.
Justin Metzler:Very insanely. Probably, I asked I forget who I had on. Somebody I asked somebody who I they thought was the most talented athlete in town, and they said Taylor and Morgan.
Erin Carson:Yeah. So Probably.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. Yeah. Sounds right. Alright. Number two.
Justin Metzler:Funniest or worst thing that has happened when watching one of the O'Donnell Carfrey kids that you never told mom and dad?
Erin Carson:Oh. Oh gosh. That I never told mom and dad. Oh, well, I was riding bikes with Izzy right before they went to Beaver Creek with the family, and Izzy face planted off of her bike. And it was I I had to tell them.
Erin Carson:I did tell. I mean, I can't not tell a parent what happened. And I went home, and I was like, oh my god. They're gonna have to go to the ER. They're not going to the mountains.
Erin Carson:Everyone's gonna hate me and poor Izzy. I mean, she the the O'Donnell children will have more scars that they will grow through and the but they know, Renee's such a cool mom. She's like, well, they're gonna fall down a lot if they're doing life right. So those are the kids in there. Those kids are are awesome.
Erin Carson:So, yeah, major face plant with Isabelle off the bike. Oh, that was horrid.
Justin Metzler:I'd rather them be out riding in face plant than they at home playing video games or something like percent.
Erin Carson:Yeah. Alright.
Justin Metzler:Best round of golf, score, and location.
Erin Carson:Oh. Best round of golf, 72 on the Big Island at Nanaea. And that's one of those things. If you know, you know. So if you Google it, you'll understand what a magical day that was.
Erin Carson:And I can't even say I did it by myself because I had a caddy. So, yeah, that that was help that much? Yeah. Hit it here. Okay.
Erin Carson:Can can you know, the question is, can you hit it there?
Justin Metzler:Sure.
Erin Carson:So I'm getting good enough that I can try to hit it there. Cool. Yeah. So that was that was pretty magical.
Justin Metzler:What is your least favorite strength exercise that gets a lot of hype?
Erin Carson:Well, I love it, and I hate it, the the hex bar deadlift. You know, it's a everybody thinks it's the golden ticket, and it's a a ticket. It's a good ticket, but there's a lot of other tickets. And I think it's overplayed. Completely overplayed.
Erin Carson:It's a it's a great exercise, but it's very overplayed.
Justin Metzler:What is the most impressive thing you've seen someone do in the gym?
Erin Carson:Oh, Taylor doing pull ups. Taylor came to me, she goes, it's a total flex. I wanna do pull ups. And I I had never like, we worked together, what, long time. We'd never I was like, I I don't like pull ups.
Erin Carson:And Taylor came in, and I'm like, okay. Let's do pull ups. And, yeah, she's a a pull up freak now.
Justin Metzler:It's funny you say that because I remember Jeannie coming home one day
Erin Carson:when Jeannie does better pull ups than Taylor, note to self. Just so
Justin Metzler:you know. Jeannie can rock some pull ups. Yeah. I was in my cast last year after my surgery, and she's like, I think you should be able to do pull ups. How many can you do?
Justin Metzler:And I was like, I don't know. Like, two. So I went in the gym and did two, and it was my mission for, like, a year, and I got up to three by 10. And I was like Yeah. I can do pull ups now.
Justin Metzler:And now after my crash, I can't do them anymore, but I'm still like, once my shoulder gets better
Erin Carson:Well, it's not a dictator of world championships because Taylor won many world championships. Rini won world championships. T o won had a lot of really impressive podiums, and we did zero pull ups. So you would say pull ups might not be they're a flex.
Justin Metzler:Yeah. Totally.
Erin Carson:But you don't need them to win a world champion.
Justin Metzler:It is yeah. It is a good thing to go in the gym and be like, I could bust out 10 pull ups. You know, you got a couple of
Erin Carson:looks. People like it. The runners really like it. They're like, wow. I'm doing pull ups.
Erin Carson:You know? If Emma Coburn is doing pull ups, we should all be doing
Justin Metzler:pull ups. 100%. 100%. Alright. And what's going on the rest of the day?
Erin Carson:The rest of the day. Well, this is crazy. It's December 15. It's literally 63 degrees, I think, in Boulder, Colorado. Super sunny, zero snow, And I think I'm gonna go hit some golf balls.
Justin Metzler:I love it. I might see you over if you're going to Lake Valley, I'm gonna ride, and I'm gonna be riding up Neva. I'll give you a little wave. I sometimes see you when I'm riding over there. I'll give you a little wave, I'm like, I know where Erin's going.
Erin Carson:I'm a I'm a practice freak.
Justin Metzler:She's getting down to 70 next time for sure.
Erin Carson:Yeah. It's a good sport.
Justin Metzler:Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks, Justin. Talking to today.
Erin Carson:Thanks.
Justin Metzler:Alright. We'll see you in the next episode.
Erin Carson:Cheers.