Full Video Transcript

welcome to another episode of the uphill goat this is episode number 120. as always this is your host Andrew Conover today we have a special a special guest and friend Teemo mostert who is the head coach of the American Fork cross-country running team he has had 10 state championship wins in the past 14 years two second place finishes the national championships and a number of tops head finishes at Nationals as well he is one of the most successful running coaches to ever coach and he has set number of athletes to the college level and professional level who are are running some of the best in the world and I really hope that you enjoyed this show and our conversation about training nutrition visualization the mental side of racing the themes that he have found to be most important hi Andrew hey Timo how are you doing great you’re dead it’s been a while how’s life oh it’s doing great I had practice this morning things are going good nice how’s the team looking this year uh we’ve got six Varsity guys back so we should be all right nice that’s sweet am I fun and are you still teaching as well or just coaching now no I retired during covid I’m teaching so just coaching very nice that’s awesome well thanks so much for joining me on the show here this is uh this will be fun to catch up and kind of dive into some of your coaching and and story but maybe it’s a start I’d love to kind of hear what got you into running your story with running and how you ended up coaching in that kind of whole process wow um well back in the 70s you know we only had two channels of TV and so I I grew up in Western Illinois and uh so we were active in sports year round always outside outdoors and uh in sixth grade we had a a School District track meet all the great schools and and I thought it was a lot of fun so when I got to Junior High I um you know still full-time Sports a year round and then uh in the spring was track season so I joined the track team and and uh ran the 880. now we do the 800 meters it’s metric instead of imperial measurement but I did the 880 in junior high and cross-country coach came to a meet and said hey you’re going to run across country and I was too small to I played full in the spring in junior high and are in the in the fall in junior high played football and I realized well I’m less than five feet tall weigh about 95 pounds so I don’t think I’m going to play a lot of football even if I go out for the team so I started running cross country then um ran all through High School ran Junior College before my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ in our day Saints came back um off my mission and ran at BYU I started out in college in engineering and then just had this surgery I want a coach so I changed my major to math and assistant secondary education and and got my degree and to teach mathematics and uh just started coaching right out of college 36 years later I’m still coaching wow did you start right at American Fork High School no I I was at I first got hired out of BYU at Murray High School and was there for 10 years oh wow and uh not a big city guy and Salt Lake was really big so uh didn’t like the travel and and all the traffic and the pollution and so I was glad to make it back down to Utah County nice okay that’s great and so and you’re from Illinois then you grew up your whole life in Illinois yeah most of it yeah yeah that’s really cool so for those who don’t know I first met Timo my sophomore year in high school I believe when he was my math teacher in high school and it was great great teacher great coach um so obviously you’ve coached for a long time now you’ve seen a lot of different athletes uh you’ve really kind of you you’re you have a system down you produce some of the best cross-country athletes in the nation and World regularly tell us maybe a little bit about a week in training what does a week look like for your varsity runners well um first thing is uh for a coach to get his athletes to be really good you have to have a basic philosophy of what’s going to make them fast and what’s going to allow them to train at an optimal level because I’m sure your your podcast is mainly to mountain bikers yeah correct that’s your sport right so exactly so I try to put this in context where maybe it has applicability to any type of endurance sport um and so uh when I was a young coach I was kind of back in the 80s and 90s the the philosophy was low volume high intensity we found out I found out personally that that I wasn’t getting the results that were satisfying to me and so doing research talking to other coaches um experimenting on myself and then taking what I found worked well and going back to the training I had in the 70s as an athlete I changed my philosophy around build to build the aerobic engine that’s what our philosophies based around and so what we’re trying to do is run optimal paces um for enough mileage that’s going to affect the biggest or get the most bang for our buck you know for uh for a person in in business that would be uh Roe right return on investment Roi return on investment yeah we want to get the maximal return for the investment that we’re putting in and so we do a lot of aerobic work I’ve gotten away from doing a tremendous amount of anaerobic work it tears the guys legs up and and we just weren’t getting the results were actually a lot faster now doing aerobic work than we were doing a tremendous amount of anaerobic work so during the summer a typical week uh would be we do a a famous run called the grinder on Mondays it’s uh uh we run about three miles over to Pleasant Grove and then we have a 1.3 mile uphill which is 11th East starts at Canyon Road and goes up the hill for 1.3 miles with 400 feet of elevation change so it’s pretty intense and uh then the varsity the older guys will go over uh up to a little Pinnacle right by the forest service road they’re right above uh Pleasant Grove’s mountain biking course which you’re well familiar with yeah and so we call it Mountain Dew Hill um and it goes up to 5280 feet so another 180 feet and uh so I so it’s about 10.8 miles total for the boys on Monday and then all my older boys they also do every day a half a half hour recovery run during the school year we do that in the morning with our workouts in the afternoon but during the summer especially when it’s hot we’ll do our workout in the morning and the recovery run in the afternoon and so on Mondays they’re getting between 12 and 15 miles of of running total Tuesday this morning we did uh a six mile run and our usual runs which I call intermediate runs between five and eight miles we try to do at what’s called aerobic threshold pace so it’s the maximal pace that you can hold forever if you had the energy stores obviously you you can Bonk out by not having enough uh glycogen stored up in your muscle tissue but so we tried it and this is the key to our training is we try to hit aerobic threshold pace for as many miles as possible during the week it’s usually between 20 and 25 30 miles uh they’ll do a recovery run tonight tomorrow we meet with the whole team and I think we have a five Miler plan this is only the third week of training and so the young guys are doing I’m gradually building up their mileage um a safe rule is uh 10 increase per week so if they started at 30 miles then this week they’re they’re close to being able to get 36 to 37 miles total and we’ll build up we want to average the varsity boys are already doing the recovery run so they’re trying to average about 60 miles a week or over the summer okay and during the entire year um that translates in biking I I use a basic rule it’s about two and a half to three miles of biking for one mile of running yeah so you know 150 to 180 miles might be a considered a really good week for a biker um for Runner you know like I said for our high school boys is about 60. um we have a lot of boys running in college right now and they’re they’re getting 80 to 120 miles a week depending on how old they are and how much experience they’ve had at the college level um and uh so that’s our guidelines so on Wednesday we’ll do right now we’re just in base phase so we’re doing intermediate runs Tuesday through Friday Friday we like to go somewhere and do a trail run oh fun um to get out of town and just make it fun for the kids we’ll we’ll go up to uh everything well let’s see we did the art dye Park uh we did the section that goes up from lumpy Kai to um American Fork Canyon last Friday the Friday before we did the Jordan River Trail down by Willow Park in Lehigh um this week we’re going to do the art guy Trail up to where there used to be a Green Gate up on the North side of the seminary building at Lone Peak okay uh next week we’ll do Provo Canyon and do Bridal belt Falls we’ll do Trail runs um up on the back side of Timpanogos we have a camp in July where we we uh we we go up American Fork cam Canyon and camp out for three days and run twice a day up there well that’s usually how our and then Saturday is um our long run long runs between 70 and 90 minutes once again we’re trying to hit aerobic threshold pace so we’re just trying to uh and the long run 70 to 90 minutes is is enough of a stimulus to get capillarization in our lungs and muscle tissue you know capillaries are the small blood vessel vessels so if we can build the number of capillaries then we your body can be more efficient transporting oxygen through your blood system to your muscle tissue so that improves the aerobic engine and that’s that’s our goal later in the summer we’ll start doing longer repeats uh three by one mile six by eight hundred five by one thousand meters four by twelve hundred meters something longer with plenty of rest and we try to start at about three mile race Pace since our races are three miles or five thousand meters uh in High School cross country so um we’ll try to do about three miles of intensity with lots of rest and we’ll start at three mile race base and go negative splits so they start developing the mindset of of being to go faster when they’re tired and uh that helps them also understand that they can’t go out way fast they want to go out at their goal pace and then hit negative splits and so building the aerobic engine has allowed us to do that so that’s what a typical week uh looks like we also do later um what we used to call in the 70s anaerobic threshold runs I personally call them power runs with my athletes so we’re going about in running we’re going about a minute slower than our two mile personal best so it’s uh it’s anaerobic threshold so we’re trying to get the body adapted to being able to um clear out black blood lactate get rid of the acidosis efficiently uh but not push into the racing uh we’re not feeling like we’re racing we’re feeling like we’re running with power and so that allows us um to to do that so those are kind of the most important workouts that we do during the year but the whole emphasis and the whole philosophy is based on is if we improve our improve our aerobic engine uh then we’ll be able to race faster than everybody else and hold pace and actually go negative splits and blow them away with our Pace wow yeah no that’s it’s super cool how congruent that is with cycling training how for we kind of follow the 80 20 principle or even even 85 15 a lot of times with you know the vast majority of our training being focused on that aerobic engine as well um do you do any sort of in running and running 80 20 that 20 would be a little too much really yeah okay and so you know we might have well hardly anything at the end of repeat workouts we’ll do stride laps and so they’re jogging the turns on the track and then accelerating to full Sprint so that’s um that helps us with our kick and also with the with our eyelactic anaerobic systems but 20 20 of our mileage at anaerobic Paces you know VO2 max are faster would be just way too much and so yeah um that’s some of the philosophy back from the seven from the 80s and 90s and even back in the 60s there were some guys that espoused that but um it might work better with mountain biking but for for running High School Runners at 20 percent anaerobic would be way too much too high yeah yeah a lot super interesting do you do any sort of tests to figure out their aerobic threshold pace is obviously it’d be different for for me versus your top Varsity Runner who you know versus people with different speeds will have different aerobic pace is that correct yeah so um anything to figure that out I just you know there’s there’s many different tables you can find online like with Dr Tom Schwartz Tin Man um he has tables for for all your different Paces that you want I just use with my Runners I just use some basic rules like I said for our anaerobic threshold or power run Pace we’ll do our two mile personal best plus a minute so 30 seconds per mile slower um for our intermediate runs where we want our anaerobic threshold usually what we do is we take our three mile race Pace per mile and add 45 seconds to it so a kid who’s about 16 minutes would be about 605 Pace per mile yeah and then what about for the aerobic workouts well that that’s for that’s our aerobic oh gotcha okay threshold so that’s for our intermediate runs in our long run yeah okay that makes sense and our our every runs are usually slow you know they might start even round numb and Pace eight minute passages should be easy conversational Pace to loosen up the body get out residual Gunk from the from the muscle tissue and from the bloodstream and and uh so almost half of our total mileage if you count up their recovery runs plus warm-ups and cooldowns from workouts and their warm-up miles on their intermediate runs because we’ll go easy for about a mile and then start pushing into our aerobic threshold pace so almost uh 45 to 50 percent of our mileage is very easy miles okay and the other is mainly we’re trying to get as many miles as possible at aerobic threshold and that’s what’s building our engine yeah that’s super cool um so the recovery runs the other one do a recovery run every day yeah wow so just 30 minutes on their own or with a friend it’s not not as a team no we we do it together we do yeah during the school year we always met at 6 30 in the morning and went for a half hour and then they could shower eat get ready for the school day yeah um so they got all the good parking spots in the high school parking lot nice yeah that’s awesome that’s super interesting I’d be curious to experiment with that myself for cycling um what led to having them do that recovery run every day starting back to my first two High School had me do morning Runs run doubles okay and so it’s something I grew up with and I needed a way to get investment by my athletes to understand how it was important um you know if we want to try to get all the top teams in the US get around 60 miles a week there’s some schools and teams that get more now if you’re running singles and you’re trying to get 60 a week that’s 10 miles a day right but if we can break that up in like four in the morning and six in the afternoon we’re we’re still getting uh our mileage in um the uh the morning runs as well as recovery it’s really good for uh psychologically of relaxing getting loose um there’s a lot of um a lot of body chemicals brain chemicals that release in the morning um from doing exercise in the morning which helps them actually in school and and it also helps with recovery so so to insist that we’re gonna keep it easy uh we’re getting our mileage in it’s low impact or it’s less impact than hammering everything and uh like I said it’s a win-win for the for the for our program and it’s really been beneficial instead of having to go 10 to 12 miles every afternoon right yeah it makes a lot of sense um it probably helps the team kind of just bonds there to be able to just talk more while they’re running I’ve did kind of the time together super cool that’s uh yeah I’m I’m going to probably start researching and experimenting that from a cycling standpoint I think that would be a tool to implement um let’s do I’m curious do you do any sort of like psychological sport psychology themes with your team to help them with the mental side of racing absolutely um we talk a lot about um mindset how if you have a hard workout uh what’s your goal are you just going to survive the workout or you want to conquer the workout and conquering doesn’t mean going way harder than your body’s capable of doing it’s hitting the correct Paces to get the optimal adaptation um so we talk a lot about that mindset of of conquering um when it comes to race time are you going to run a race or are you going to race that’s you know you always want to have this feeling and that’s why we emphasize negative splits in practice because you race how you train right and so whatever Behavior you want to see in your competitions or if you’re a a cycling coach or a running coach whatever behaviors you want to see on race day you’re going to need to practice them so they become second nature to your athletes and um so we talk a lot about mindset what we should be thinking about in practice Nano carry over an event um their competitions but also usually the morning of race day um I will do a visualization section with them and uh that that’s very helpful for them it calms them down you know you don’t want to be too high if you know that yurkus Dodson rule of law which your says that your amount of anxiety or tension um if if it goes up too high your performance level drops so it’s it’s also called the inverted youth theorem not not enough anxiety and you have low performance okay because you haven’t gotten your your yourself physically and mentally prepared to race too much anxiety in your tight and you can’t race tight and so so it looks like an upside down you that’s why it’s called also the inverted U theorem and so we want to get them uh pretty centered um so we’ll do that in our visualization we’ll actually visualize our entire race whether it’s in track on the track or across country course so I have to know the cross-country course to help them um and we’ll visualize the entire race and uh we actually have three components that we work on in our visualization sessions we’ll lay down in a dark room like the yoga room over at the high school with the lights off or lay down on yoga mats and I will talk and they’ll they’ll go through so we start with visualization of the race and then we do what’s called Progressive relaxation where you T take each component of the body and you tighten up like you start with your hands and you tighten it really tight and then you relax it out and then the third part is energization where we visualize ourselves being like a battery and we’re energizing ourselves so we we’re full of energy and we’re prepared for our race and so um if you watch our team at any race we don’t there’s a lot of teams at the starting line that jump up and down screaming you know their team cheer whatever and we don’t do that at all because what it does is it Jacks them up and then they go out too fast because they’re all jacked up right and we want to be level-headed we want to be concentrating on on the thing and if you watch a professional track meet or like the NCAA championships was this last weekend everybody is calm relaxed trying to stay loose I’m trying to stay in the zone or get in the zone without jacking themselves up too high and getting because that tightens you up but it also you you lose the opportunity to run your race your your not going to run your race you’re going to run either somebody else’s races or the wrong Race by going up too fast so we do a lot of visualization and well also during practice you know we’re like I said you race how you train so the specific behaviors that we want to see on race day we’re actually practicing and talking about this is important for us that’s why we do stridelapse it’s going to help us with our kick it’s going to help us and at the end of repeat workouts we’ll do a kick simulation on the last repeat where they are practicing their kicks so when they get to me they know it’s going to be there you have 60 seconds of anaerobic capacity at the end of a race to use it’s in reserve you’ve been using your Aerobic System so we have to talk about these things we practice it so that hopefully all those little components that that contribute to a great race and PRS or a championship they’ve been in place from the first day of practice we did stridelapse our first practice two weeks ago so getting them in that mindset getting them to understand every single thing we do it’s been scientifically proven to work and we’re going to be consistent at doing them and that consistency is key to to helping them uh achieve their their eventual goals well yeah you said a lot of really great things there I love the focus on visualization that’s something I try to do as well as I’m falling asleep generally the night before race I’ll I’ll kind of go through the entire course imagine each section really go through the difficult sections of a course imagine writing it perfectly over and over again um and having a good start you know doing every everything that I would like to do well in a race I’m curious kind of Shifting Gears a little bit what does strategy look like in a running race like in biking there’s there’s elements of you know placement that are really important going into single track and drafting can be important depending on the course um where like and then but then there’s also the element of just racing your race like you were talking about not really like sometimes depending on the course I’ll focus on racing the course rather than the competitors curious on your thoughts on that the things that you’ve experienced and seen to work best for your athletes oh definitely uh you got to know the course um like you said if they’re single track um you might have to put in a search to get ahead of a group because if you’re stuck behind the group then you slow down when they slow down right lose your momentum so you need to know the course you need to know where there are places to attack um some strategic places other than that on a lot of courses um and we’ll Scout them out even even Nationals course or or our regionals course in Arizona we’ll go through and I will go go on it with the boys and we’ll stop at different points and talk about what should be our strategy here um but definitely yeah if you you need to know your opponents and what their common well what their characteristics are of how they race because I know for a fact that there are certain teams in this state who their coaches teach them to go out way hard and so we can use that to our advantage or if there are teams that run certain sections a specific way um and we don’t want to do what they do if it’s going to be detrimental to the overall race we want to have our strategy and if we follow our strategy we will have an advantage over over them wow and and so definitely those those things and once again you’ve got to practice that in practice and the thing about visualization like yesterday morning we did the grinder I had the guys just a couple minutes and we do this sometimes it in repeat workouts and other workouts just take a couple minutes relax and think about what you want to accomplish that day maybe a a spot on the hill that’s tough for you and how you’re going to conquer it once again getting that that mindset of Conquering the workout instead of just surviving it wow do you still uh leave your athletes T-shirts if they hit certain time segments on on the grinder yeah yeah we still give out I conquered the grinder T-shirts if they break nine minutes okay nine minutes and also a few years ago I was teaching at a coach’s clinic in Boulder Colorado the boulder clinics and a coach from Illinois was talking about uh he had a national championship team in 2007 and his top boy won that race and was uh a phenomenal Collegiate and post-collegiate Runner after that and he called them aerobic monsters and so I got t-shirts made up called aerobic monster and so if the athletes can break 15 minutes for three miles at altitude or 9 20 in the 3200 or 420 in the 1600 at altitude then they earn aerobic monster status nice and uh you know incentives like that but also it it makes them know that hey I’m pretty Elite and I can do good things and and college coaches are gonna uh want me on their teams and and I’m going to get some opportunities to get maybe part of my education paid for right um and be able to keep enjoying this this great sport huh that’s fantastic if I go break nine on the grinder would you give me a t-shirt if you’re uh no because you’re out of high school shots um we had actually a team from from Nevada um they’re they’re training with us this week their coach brought him up and they’ve been training so they went and did the grinder with us this morning well I give them a t-shirt no it’s just for our team but I gave them I had a big box of old extra T-shirts from past years and stuff so I let them go through and get a caveman cross country t-shirt from Ohio this year but no I conquered the grinder t-shirts are just special for our athletes on our team yeah that makes sense if everybody came and did the grinder with us Brooke now I got a t-shirt I’d be bankrupt we’ve had teams from California from Kansas really from Nevada from Oregon come train with us so and individuals from all over the United States that’s super yeah wow you guys are definitely a team to come train with the sounds like a lot of people come to you do you ever go to other teams to train with them or does it just teams come to you um we have in the past we to when we were in the we would go uh invite them for a run then we go and run we used to do that with Westlake and with a couple other high schools we just go like one day and run with them or have them come and run with us for one day but um like I said we do get teams or individuals from around the nation come to and especially want to do the grinder there’s a video on YouTube of of that flow track did in 2016 of our team doing the grinder and it’s got over 300 000 views so wow so it’s really well known by a lot of coaches a lot of athletes around the world you’ve made it famous for sure that’s and you do it every Monday every Monday during the summer yeah when we’re racing we don’t do it because it would be too much you know we’re not trying to prepare for a race but in the preseason and then the postseason in between we’ve got a three-week block between a three and a half week block between State and regionals um they’ll do the grinder that and then um during indoor track and and in the preseason of outdoor track we go back and do the grinder our last one in track is during spring break weekend uh week we’ll do the grinder that Monday yeah well it’s a staple yeah nice that’s awesome what does training look like on a race week for you guys obviously we wouldn’t do the grinder on Monday we might do move our repeats from Wednesday or Thursday or our power run to maybe a Monday and then a Wednesday for racing on Saturday or even Friday we might do you know three by one mile on Monday and then a power run on Wednesday um tried and then you know intermediate runs the day before a race we’re we’re obviously not going to do aerobic threshold Pace we’re trying to get our body ready we’ll still get our volume in but it’ll be it’ll be uh I call it follow coach Pace nice I used to run with the guys and now I’m on a I’m sold I’m on a bicycle and so I’ll just make sure the pace is a little easier maybe seven minute pace or 7 30 pace and and cut down the mileage in the afternoon to four to five miles um so they’re still getting eight to nine miles the day before me but their legs are loosened up they and we’ll go to a park somewhere and we’ll sit and talk and get all the logistics about the meat out of the way I’ll assigned athletes um to lead warm-ups and cooldowns for each event group because you might have JV races a freshman race or a frost soft race a junior senior race and then the varsity race so so we plan on all that we’ll discuss on what to bring um how to prepare your your meal the night before the the pre-race meal in the morning and uh hydration and we’ll talk about all of the logistical things that will Aid them in being prepared for their race packing up their bag what they need to bring you know gear wise um so that there are no surprises there if they’re there to race they’re there to to uh and they’re prepared to do everything right and you do that before every race yeah yeah because usually I’m pretty busy at races either I’m officiating you know in track I might be a fishing or I might be the announcer so these boys you you give them ownership for their preparation they know what to do they go out and do it they execute their race plan um because they might not see me more than two or three minutes after we get off the bus right and so uh I teach them to be independent and uh and also gives them responsibilities we usually have great team captains to take care of Varsity or if a team captain happens to be JV he can take care of that group but you know we start him early if you’re a freshman race I’ll put some freshmen or two freshmen in charge of warm-ups and cooldowns they know exactly what to do because we’ve practiced it our warm-ups and cooldowns on race day are the same as in in practice so they know exactly what to do yeah so you do the same do you just do that warm-up for hard days or do you do those for every every run well yeah usually if you’re gonna do a warm-up um we don’t warm up before our intermediate runs for our long run yeah just get into the run and have an easy first smile and then get into it and we do all our team stretches after after our workouts before we and before we go into the weight room for a lifting session or a course session okay um but yeah both uh what we do for meat days is exactly what we do on uh our like a repeat workout like we’re doing five five one thousand so we’ll do a mile warm-up with uh and in the middle of it a mile to a mile and a half warm up and in the middle of it we’ll throw in a really hard 200 meters to get vasodilation going yeah and then you know at least two to two to three miles cool down afterwards and a team stretch so uh we modeled that in practice and so they’re comfortable with it once again what you’re trying to do on race day is is make sure they’re not too anxious and so familiarity with what to do leads to less anxiety release anxiety yeah interesting and how often do you do strength and core work we lift Monday Wednesday Friday and we do core Tuesday Thursday and then every morning after our morning run we’ll go in and do 10 pull-ups 20 dips and 40 crunches for General strength okay so what does and what would a normal strength session look like for you guys um we do four um we just do four lifts we try to do two to three sets of eight to twelve reps we’ll do bench press we’ll do dumbbell Runners which is you take dumbbells 90 degrees and so just like our driving motion if you’re driving up hills or sprinting you want to have that same motion so we’re working the deltoids and it also helps the core because we’re doing everything with dumbbells standing up we’ll do forearm curls not bicep curls because it helps strengthen the wrists and the forearms a little bit better which once again are very important for um in in running especially sprinting uh your kick and and running when you’re when you’re fatigued your arms usually go fast and so we want that strength and then we do a triceps exercise usually back scratchers you know with a tricep we want to so it sounds like all we’re doing is a lot of upper body work we don’t do because we’re running hills so often I don’t see a point of doing lunges or or squats or or any Olympic lifting I know some programs that maybe feel like they need to do that but because we run so many Hills you know if we go north from the high school or east from high school we’re going to hit Hills right pretty soon and so um those are the four exercises that that we work on and um they all work core because three of those exercises you’re standing and so you’re stabilizing your body that’s why I like uh using uh free weights and and not machines because it does work the core as well as the target areas that you’re working on so you do really you’ll focus on the upper body Legion of tour and all of your workouts and you do core you do towards Tuesday and Thursday and Thursday yeah it’s kind of like an eight minute abs type okay routine a lot of crutches obliques planks uh you know bicycles um yeah around the world it takes you know it’s kind of like an eight minute abs thing we started that about 15 years ago and it’s been real effective I couldn’t get investment in the boys trying to get them to do core more than just some crunches and 40 crunches a day is definitely not enough that’s what we’re doing in the morning boys are doing that I always do 100 crunches every morning and every evening so I’m old and trying to get rid of the gut and it doesn’t work but at least I got a strength underneath wow that’s a lot say the eight minute and then other engagement as well I’m curious Timo what keeps you motivated You’ve Won how many state championships have you won as a team 10 and 10 10 in Cross Country have you won a national championship yet no we’ve have three second places we’ve had um 12 top 10 finishes at Nationals wow okay and how many of those 10 state championship wins like how many have been in the last 10 years um let’s see our first one was in 2009 so 10 state championships in the in 14 years yeah you’re basically winning every year now like it’s I remember like when I was in high school it was like if they didn’t win it was surprising you know you guys are just dominating um is that still exciting for you are you are you do you have a goal to win a National Championship what are kind of your hopes as a coach well definitely it’s always exciting because it’s always a new group of boys you know the the boys that were on that first team 2009 um they’re like 30 years old 31 you know they’re they’re old guys they have families um they’re some of them you know we’ve got one that’s one or two that are still running professional who got a lot of guys in college racing um some have graduated and you know they’re they’re married they have careers um they might still be doing some some racing but it’s a new group every year and so it’s exciting to see how how far we can go out how much can we improve um and definitely you know our goal every year is is to be state champions first and foremost um but then to be on the polymer or be national champions um yeah you ought to shoot high but then you definitely have to make sure that you have a plan in place that you’re getting the correct training to make that a a viable goal and not just oh because I remember when I was a young coach uh our our goal every year is to be state champions but I wasn’t giving them the correct training and and so we had a one second place finish my first 10 years coaching but where we did not have any stage I didn’t win my first state championship until uh 22nd my 22nd year coaching wow so I had to get the clear training that would allow the athletes to realize their goals yeah do you and do you ever have a problem daily enough athletes that are willing to fully commit and be all in with racing or do you always have enough of a pool that that’s not a problem you have to think long term because uh just because you have kids who are invested doesn’t mean that they’re they’re physically prepared to go fast enough to beat the competition yeah um it might take we had a kid on Varsity this year he’s he was a senior and he finally made Varsity you know he wasn’t fast enough last year to help us contribute in any way but this year um he got a vision of what he himself could be and he was able to run fast enough to contribute on Varsity um and he wasn’t thinking running in college but now because of the success he had this year he was able to get a scholarship to go run in college well that’s something that a year ago he wasn’t even thinking about so yeah you have to provide them with the with the support with the correct training and the opportunities and uh um I always tell the kids I cannot motivate you I’ll try to inspire you but it’s impossible for me to motivate you you have to be self-motivating and if they can be self-motivated then they’re going to be way more successful and especially if if they consider the team goals first before their individual goals because you don’t have control over what anybody else is doing even the members of your team right your teammates uh you have no control over how much they’re progressing or anything so if you concentrate on your own training but with the site the vision that I’m contributing to the team I want to contribute to the success of the team um that that’s when great things can happen yeah okay I yeah that’s that’s super cool are you planning on staying with caveman until you retired for dead then or what are your your long-term plans yeah oh definitely yeah I don’t know why but since I retired from teaching a lot of coaches I think they just don’t want to coach against me anymore they’re like when are you retiring I’m like I just finally say I’ll probably get fired before I’m retire you’ll just retire with your death probably as well then wow that’s super amazing what a what a blessing for American forked High School to have you as as their head coach for so long now and moving forward that’s that’s super great do you ever do you still work ever with the athletes that move on and start racing in college or professionally um no I don’t provide them for any training I’ll talk to them when I see him you know I I like going down to meets at BYU because we have a lot of athletes over the years who’ve been able to go there and and it’s really neat to see their progression and and uh and their their success and uh be able to talk to them and see how their training is going and and remind them of the things that got him there and if they just stick stick with those basic fundamentals that they’re going to continue to have success yeah yeah that’s amazing um one thing that I loved about your classroom is that there were coats all over the walls about all kinds of stuff um I’m curious do you have a favorite quote something that guides you um oh this morning on my bike ride I just thought love one another and and that because I saw black lives matter flag and somebody’s window and I’m just like uh why don’t we just love one another don’t worry about skin color or just just be nice to everybody and love one another and if and if if you’re trying to love others um it always comes back fourfold and so um you know that’s why I emphasize the team so much and and when the athletes invest themselves in their teammates in their team like I said they have greater success yeah absolutely yeah that’s I love that love one another definitely is good fundamental principle for life um one thing that I find really interesting too about you Teemo is that you’re also part of a band right we have fun I’ve had fun over the years yeah nice and you play the guitar yeah okay electric guitar bass all of them yeah drums okay bass guitars yeah you do all kinds of stuff that’s awesome yep we just had cave stock a few weeks three weeks ago and uh there’s a lot of fun our teacher band teenager lobotomy played and I hosted and Matt was the master Ceremonies for I don’t know how many years and uh we had a lot of fun Mr Lynn and Mr slabaugh or currently playing in the band would wow it’s fun yeah do you participate in that every year then yeah really cool ever since you’ve been at AF yeah since uh the some or the spring of 1999 nice yep since Kane’s dog started okay oh that was when Kickstart start started huh I think it was they might have had one the year before I got here in 98 but yeah so you like host the teacher band then every year you like yeah open yeah okay yep I think that’s one of the best events AFI does it’s so fun such a good one so that’s great um well maybe to wrap up is there anything that you would want are my listeners to know anything you’d want to kind of share to the world anything you feel has been really valuable to you in your life well I I think you know in context of your sport mountain biking because I’ve owned mountain bikes for 30 years and you know that’s when I’m on every day yeah I’m already since Memorial Day I’ve gotten over 300 miles so far this summer um it since I can’t run I’m gonna do something to keep in shape um but the most important thing is is love the sport never lose your love for the sport and if you understand your training and what you’re doing um and do it to for enjoyment then the personal best the personal records the the success will be there and you’re going to savor those experiences you know we take it I tell the boys just trust in your training enjoy it one day at a time some days are harder than others but if you have that conquer attitude not a survive attitude you’re going to enjoy the experience and you’re going to come away with memories for your for the rest of your life and it’s going to be one of your favorite times I mean my still my best friends from our my best friends from my teams from high school and from college wow and we had a we had a track team reunion at BYU about a month ago after their track Invitational and I saw some friends there that I hadn’t seen in many years and uh I just and then I had dinner with the buddy who brought his kids down from his from Alaska to run to the BYU Invitational and so we went out for dinner and had a great time I hadn’t seen him and 30 years 25 years so um those connections the personal connections with your teammates with your coach um even with your competitors is is something to savor and enjoy and uh always count your blessings that that you have these opportunities and that you can you’re capable of doing things that most people you know haven’t caught a vision of how how fun life can be if you put a tremendous amount of effort into something that’s worthwhile and sports is one of those things that enriches life yeah beautifully said thank you so much Tima that’s uh it’s been a pleasure talking to you for the past hour or so and hearing your fundamentals and success as a coach you can I think from this conversation there’s been a lot that’s been shared that shows why you’ve been such a successful coach your ability to really focus on racing and training your own race and focusing on having fun and and making it something special and the and then just the foolproof scientific training right that that gets the job done so um I loved having you as a teacher loved having you on the show but I hope I hope that you have another successful Race season this fall oh thank you thanks for having me on I hope hope something I said will resonate with your listeners and and uh whether they’re runners or triathletes or mountain bikers that that’ll they’ll benefit from something I said absolutely there’s a lot of a lot of wisdom shared so I’m sure they will