Episode 232: Lessons and Insights From the Haute Route Alps
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Fresh from the Haute Route Alps, Ironman Coach Matt Dixon returns to the podcast to share his thoughts on the experience, the lessons he gleaned from the 7-day event, and how to apply them to your athletic pursuits.
The conversation covers training versus race execution and a look at the principles and elements of Matt’s preparation as a time-starved athlete that supported his performance.
(22:19) "I think I arrived at the race really vibrant and healthy. We always talked about fit and fresh. I think I actually managed to succeed in doing that. And that was really beneficial for me. The challenge was the mental test. Every single day I finished I thought, goodness me, I've just done too much damage to myself today. But the interesting thing about these is not judging yourself, not buckling mentally, and just maintaining a curious mind of what is the body going to pay me back with. And every day the body responded for myself and the rest of our team. And it was -- I just felt fresh every day."
Matt walks us through the Haute Route with a look at his approach to the challenges of the ride and offers his five key takeaways and lessons from the experience.
5 Lessons from the Haute Route:
(26:08) The importance of taking on a scary challenge
(29:13) Prepare effectively without it dominating life
(30:50) The critical importance of training self-management
(33:38) A methodology and Coaching Matters
(35:38) Being a part of something amplifies everything
This episode aims to provide insight into approaching a multi-day event and provides principles and insights you can apply to your training approach towards your athletic challenge.
Episode Timestamps
0:00 - 03:09 Welcome and Episode Introduction
3:20 - The Meat and Potatoes - Episode 232: Lessons and Insights From the Haute Route Alps
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 00:28
And welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and today we are doing a cherry on the cake that was Haute Route 2022, an adventure like no other for myself, and several of my Purple Patch friends. So how was the experience? We're going to do a review of my training versus race execution and some of the lessons that maybe we could draw out of that. But also, most importantly, the theme of today are some of the lessons that I learned that maybe we could apply to each of you no matter what your journey and challenge that you're taking on is. And so I hope that today is less of a personal story of my own accomplishments, and rather some important lessons that you can apply to yourself.
Matt Dixon 01:13
Now, before we dive in, I do just want to give you a little heads up, we're not going to do Matt's News-ings today but I do want to tell you a little bit about an important free webinar that we have coming up. It's titled Free Speed. It's on September the 7th at 5 pm Pacific, and it's one of those for all of you folks that have full races coming up. It's an educational session with me, and a chance for you to ask me questions that you might have about your upcoming racing. The focus of the session itself is less around training methodology and more around race craft. And it's really about building, some accessible and practical strategies for you to go and implement ahead of your race to ensure that your trained fitness, no matter what level you've managed to get to, can actually work for you to create race performance. What we're going to do is go through in-depth swim, bike, and run strategies, as well as dip our toes into components like nutrition and fueling, as well as some global race tactics. Now, this will apply to folks that are doing Ironman races, Ironman, 70.3, even marathon, and beyond. The good news is it's free, the session is going to be recorded, it's going to be sent to all registrants following so if you're unable to attend live in the session, it's okay, you can still get all of the education. The good news is you don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete to attend You are welcome, as are all your friends. So feel free to share. But I would love for you to join me. Oh, and one final point, live attendees. If you do get to come attend live, of course, you get to ask your questions. But also you're going to be in line to win a very special package including a consultation with one of our coaches so that you can really hone in your own individual performance. All you need to do is check out the link we'll put into the show notes. And we hope to see you there. But let's get down and dirty today. Let's do it. Barry, I've missed you. It's nice to be back in the studio, out in the field was a little bit rustic for me, you know that I leave my --- I really like my creature comforts. And so without further ado, guys, we get to do The Meat and Potatoes.
Matt Dixon 03:20
Yes, folks, the meat, and potatoes is the final bookend of our series on Haute Route or hot route, as you might call it if you're an Americano. The first thing we want to go through is the experience of the day. Now, if you haven't been following along, if you didn't get to watch the videos, or listen to our little daily podcast that we did, let's have a little grounding session. Let's talk about the event. And so this is the toughest of the Haute Route events. There's a series that are actually global, this is the seven-day Queen Haute route, it's 800 kilometers or just over 500 miles of climbing, or riding I should say. 22,000 meters, or 70,000 feet of elevation gain. It started in Nice in France on the Côte d'Azur, seven stages from start to finish in Megève, which is very near to Geneva very challenging. There are ultimately about 500 competitors that started and those strayed from the as you can imagine very, very serious amateurs all the way to those that are just simply looking to complete the distance and get ahead of the time cuts and there were time cuts in this. So it was pretty challenging. Globally, it was a race. Now this year, we only learned once we arrived there. This year, the design of the course was particularly tough. And that was because of the setup. The toughest time trial they've ever done that was on this one. So the middle day or at a fifth day actually for this was a 10 Kilometer stage only but it was a very, very tough time trial. At the Col de la Loze very, very challenging. And on top of it, the course layout was, for lack of a better phrase quite cruel. The first two days coming out of Nice heading into Italy and then beyond back into France were just simply brutal, a little bit too long, a little bit too hilly, a little bit too hot. And that really zapped a lot of the riders a lot of the field over the first two days, it was absolutely brutal. Now, it was a magical experience. But I think it's important for me, to be honest here, this was really hard. It really was tough. In fact, when I finished the overall event, the best analogy I could think of is if we took an average Ironman field, so Eco Race, Ironman, Wisconsin, Ironman, Arizona, a typical us Ironman field, and
Matt Dixon 05:59
you look at the population of those athletes, very, very fit individuals, obviously, I would imagine that at least 60% of that total amateur field could not finish this event in the cut-off. And so it's really demanding. And the truth is that it took a lot of very fit folks to their knees. Really challenging. For myself, individually, it turned into a little bit of a race, I had a very good week. And my goal was really survival, navigating it hoping to manage, but I actually had a surprisingly good day on the first day, and then a second good day. And that landed me up in the top 40 competitors. And what that really did for me is each day just kept evolving. And I decided that I was going to not just look to complete but actually compete a little bit around the people, I was never going to be up in the very top people that are just well beyond 50 pounds lighter than me 20 years younger than me and much, much better cyclists than me. But it really shifted from completion to competition in a really fun way. And while I didn't really care about overall results, it did add a little bit of spice, I certainly wrote a little bit harder than I thought I was going to do. Now, if you followed along with this event, and you found it maybe a little bit inspirational, and you thought wow, minor like crack of that, but it's road riding. And we know that there are dangers with road riding traffic, busy dissents, other competitors, etc. I think it's important as well to, for me to highlight one more thing about the experience, which I really wasn't aware of going into the race, which is around timing. And I think this was really, really smart of the organization. And it really changed the dynamics in a positive way. There was a massive danger reduction with how this event was structured, in which the valleys and the climbs you were on the clock, so you were being timed. That was where the cut-offs and the competition in the places were all catered to, at the top of every major col or climb, there would be a feed station. But it also signified typically the end of the timed section. So that became what they called neutral. And what that enabled us to do is to really refuel our bodies, enjoy the views at the top of the cols, maybe even take some of the videos that perhaps you followed along with over the course of the week, but then descend without it being a timed race section. So you could really descend at your own pace, you could enjoy the views navigate through the towns, and that became really special, it also enabled you to really manage energy very, very well. And of course, the risk and danger was dramatically reduced. I never felt like I was in any form of risk of crashing. And that really amplified the results. Now the last two days of the racing actually did have a little bit more downhill sections. And that's where I decided personally to just make a personal decision and build safety and a little bit of a life bigger picture and not really race down those had a little bit of a drop in the overall rankings. But hey, I really enjoyed the overall week. So, who cares? So that's the event. That's the Haute route. It's seven days. It's very challenging. But it really is, I think two sides tougher than I thought it was going to be. And way more magical than I even thought could be possible. It is a life experience. It's something that I highly recommend. And if you did enjoy following us along with that and a new or maybe inspired you don't have to go and do the crazy, crazy seven day there are some wonderful three-day events, some five-day challenges, which I think is really the sweet spot or wonderful duration to really get the experience but also that two days less I think would probably make a big difference as well.
Matt Dixon 09:59
So I really encourage the event. And as we go through the rest of today, I think that what will come out is some of the lessons that I drew from it. So let's go to the reflections on my own approach to training versus the execution and what the actual experience was like, what was the good, bad, and the ugly of that. So the first thing I'll say around my training is that I'm an absolute perfect case study of being time-starved and very, very busy, didn't really have in the traditional sense, the capacity to train for a seven-day multi-stage race like this, while also managing my responsibilities with Purple Patch, and my responsibilities with my family as well, I just didn't really have time for that. So when I look at the overall annual calendar, starting in January, where I really started to get serious for the August event, I managed to average which was very good for me, in total weekly training hours, I averaged about 10 hours a week of training. So that was the body of work that I could put in. Now, if I add on to that some of the clusters of opportunity that I had so far is heading out to Hawaii in January Napa, in May, South Carolina in June, to do some of the Purple Patch training camps, that average weekly hours tipped up to about 11 and a half hours. So I typically did somewhere between 10 to 12, weekly hours of training. The key elements of how I approach, I think there are a few important things that before the event, I believed would be really valuable, but still remains to be seen because I'd never got ready for a multi-day stage, right stage race like this. But my key elements of training, we're number one, a lot of trainer-based work. So during the week, almost exclusively, all of my bike training was on a bike trainer. And those bike trainer sessions, they were the Purple Patch classes that I was actually coaching. And they tend to be on Tuesday, one of the days that I tend to coach some short, short, high-intensity training, one to three-minute very hard intervals, often faster cadence, very challenging sprint work, basically very high intensity. On Thursday, the second trainer day that I got to do it almost every week was lower cadence, what we call strength endurance. So the lower end of range training, a lot of high torque, very heavy work at 40, 50, 60 revolutions per minute. Now, this really acts as the backbone of our training methodology that we use for our cyclists for our triathletes. Very, very important work. And I did that I would say once a week, all the way through from January up until the actual Haute Route itself. And I will say coming in reflection of those there is absolutely no doubt for myself and every one of the Drunken Donkeys as our team name was called every one of the eight of us, all of us said universally that those sessions were absolutely critical in preparation. Both of them 60 minutes in duration, it was really where all of us got all of our higher intensity work over the whole week of training didn't really do much high intensity outside of that. But they were pivotal. And every single participant universally said that the execution cues, making sure that you retain really good posture, because of the coaching I was giving them live on the live and the video on demand sessions, and the strength endurance, low cadence work. Everybody felt that was a huge tool in the toolbox that they could apply to the Alpine climbs that we went through. And so on reflection, I cannot overstate how important that trainer-based work was. A second element for me was the multi-sport lens. And I think that was really important. There were a lot of the group of eight of us about six of us that really leaned into a true multi-sport lends a lot of swimming for the folks. For me, it was mostly trail running. I just didn't have time capacity to do the regular route of riding miles that you might assume you had to do to get ready for one of these. So instead, what I did was sort of piggyback off of that strength endurance concept but apply it to some trail running. So I did a lot of soft surface Hill boughs trail running, and there is no doubt I wondered how it might transfer but the leg strengthening and endurance and resilience that came from that. Probably three runs a week, a couple of around 50 to 70 minutes one a little bit longer, 90 minutes up to about two hours. That was absolutely pivotal on a really time-efficient way. A way to build muscular resilience and certainly some strength. Now, I will add that the soft surface I think really helped, because it didn't promote any injury risk, or at least it reduced injury risk. And on top of it, I think it really helped from allowing me to come off of that trail running and go right into some higher intensity bike the following day. That was really, really important. In fact, I felt tremendously strong and the climbs, including on the time trial day, were the time trial day, it was only 10k. That was the whole stage. But there are a lot of 22% grades on that time trial, and 185 pounds that I away. I'm simply not designed to finish well on that type, of course, but I actually finish highest relative to my competition over the course of that. And I'm pretty convinced that both the strength endurance work we did on the bike, but also the trail running really was was a great weave into the overall recipe. Now, I think it's important if you are going to leverage multi-sport, that you blend it well with your riding, but without doubt, and universally the rest of the group all agreed with that. Now I had two best folks, they my team so far is my brother Peter, who's a very, very fast swimmer, Rob 67 years of age, doesn't have the capacity to do loads of riding miles, Panos and Chris, all of them absolutely leveraged multi-sport, a lot of swimming. And it was really, really beneficial from that side of side of things. The third element in training that I think was really important was what we might label clustered riding. So most of us that were getting ready for this were time-starved and didn't have the ability to go out every weekend and ride 567 hours, we just had families to get back to other responsibilities. But what we did all do was a lot of what we might label clustered riding, maybe a bike trainer workout on Friday, a moderate to a moderately long ride on Saturday, and a shoulder ride or trail run on Sunday. And I think that that resilience development over multiple days and clustering, little blocks of work together helped emotionally from the back to back to back concept of multi-day writing, but also really helped with amplified resilience, more than just simply going out from writing for six hours and thinking great I wrote a century that's done. So having the ability to go back to back probably seven or eight times over the course of the months leading into the actual event was really important. Final component of race week, that I think that we were going to label under the training side of it. But I could not have been successful without this. In fact, this was for me personally, I would say everything fueling and hydration. Having a really concrete plan in place was absolutely my backbone of success. And I have to give a tip of my hat to Andy Blow and the team at Precision Fuel and Hydration here. We have a code actually we'll put into the show notes. If you want to try Precision Fuel and Hydration, it's nothing financial for us. But I think it's such a fantastic suite of products and I love their education. But the education and the structure that I got from Precision Fuel and Hydration, as well as Scott Tindal from FuelIn they're our nutrition partners. I cannot overstate how important it was. And I can break this down into a few components, my pre, and post-ride hydration. So ensuring that I was really hydrated before I went to bed when I first woke up in the morning. And ensuring that I did that every single day enabled me to maintain really good hydration status and return to hydration status. Over the course of the multiple days that was really important. Having a clear strategy around fueling during the race. Now I'm not going to tell you how to do it yourself.
Matt Dixon 19:00
Myself, I went very sugar heavy for the first 90 minutes every day went to more macros. So sandwiches, bars, et cetera over the meat of every diet right and then went back to sugar in the last 90 minutes to two hours. And I will say over the course of the seven stages I didn't have any stomach issues, energy and any energy dips at all. No bonking, no irritability. I was just stable and that was absolutely critical. The third and final component I would say was refueling after every stage immediately getting carbohydrates in a lot of starchy carbohydrates and a lot of protein. I ate much more protein over the course of the week that I thought I could ever handle. Total consumption for you guys that are the nerds, I probably ate 75 gels over the course of the seven stages. I had about 50 bottles of precision. It never got old from a taste standpoint, which is pretty standard for me, but I definitely drank more than 50 bottles of hydration during the actual race week, I think it was important. And I think that the stability of that energy just removed that as a factor. And what that enabled me to do was to stay really healthy over the course of the week and allow my fitness to actually come to fruition rather than my fitness being held back because of energy dips and components like that.
Matt Dixon 20:21
So let's talk about race execution. So I assumed going into a seven-day stage race through the Alps, that I was going to be really taking the approach of management management management. And by surprise, I ended up being a little bit further up the field wrapped up into the what I would label the more serious cyclists, certainly, I would sort of assume sort of better cyclists than me. And of course, with my background in athletics, it doesn't take long til the inner animal comes back out. And suddenly I found myself racing. And I would say, until the last day, if every day had three to four climbs that were ranging between 15 and 25 kilometers in duration, so very long mountain climb stages, I can honestly say that each one of those climbs over the first six days, I just rode every hill as hard as I possibly could. For you metric nerds, I was close to threshold, if not at threshold all the way. And I simply through your curiosity just waited for the implosion. And it never came. And maybe it came on the last day a little bit. I think it was in part mental or, in part physical, I was just enjoying the last day, but really stable energy. And my ability to bounce back was way better than I thought. And I think a huge part of that was that the training that I did fit in life. And it didn't compete where I wasn't burning the candle at both ends, I always stayed really, systemically healthy. And I leveraged Insidetracker, to make sure that I was really had keeping a platform of positive health on that. That was incredibly helpful for me. I made smart decisions around sleep, I never compromised it. So I think I arrived at the race really vibrant and healthy. We always talked about fit and fresh, I think I actually managed to succeed in doing that. And that was really beneficial. For me. The challenge was the mental test. Every single day I finished I thought, goodness me, I've just done too much damage to myself today. But the interesting thing about these is not judging yourself, not buckling mentally, and just maintaining a curious mind of what is the body going to pay me back with. And every day the body responded for myself and the rest of our team. And it was just felt fresh every day. There was a fatigue accumulation over the week, of course, but it was always ready to step up and perform. And so while before the race, I was worried about my ability to finish, I think that my freshness and fitness enabled me to actually race every climb. And this was in real comparison to those that I witnessed in the event that seemed to be really, really struggling with daily recovery. And a lot of that I think were people in my discussions over the course of the week, the other competitors outside of our group that had done massive miles, but maybe come in systemically a little bit tired, maybe didn't have such a concrete plan of fueling and hydration, and definitely had a lot more oscillation in their performance predictability. Every single day. For me, I was somewhere between 30th. And that was in the time trial. But typically between 35th Place and 42nd place every day, just consistent. Versus we had a lot of people that were up and down maybe 20th, one day 75th Another had very low-performance predictability, a lot of stomach issues, a lot of cramps. And I think that was in part to do to in my discussions with them having a life structure and a lot of busy commitments, and then then just dumping training on top and just desperately trying to hit the miles and coming in a little bit tired. So I think that was really the biggest lessons around training and execution that we have.
Matt Dixon 24:31
So I feel like now as a coach having gone through this, I've got a really clear appreciation of how we are able to actually leverage an event like this. In fact, there are elements of training that we did in this for the Haute Route that I would actually apply to our IRONMAN approach for athletes. I think that I have a really clear understanding of how to prepare folks for multi-day challenges like this who are time-starved and I think that can I often be a benefit more than anything. And I also understand how to keep athletes really healthy while being able to be prepared. And I think that was a huge component. I think if we had to highlight it globally, it is a multi-sport approach is beneficial for people that are time-starved, really doubling down on the pillars of performance, sleep, nutrition, recovery, critically important, and just how important the strength endurance element, both low cadence and then for the people that do include running the strength base Hill running, how powerful that was to transfer into long duration climbs that there were.
Matt Dixon 25:37
So to finish today's episode, let's just go away, I've got five key takeaways from my experience of the Haute Route, and then I won't talk about it anymore. We'll get back to regular programming next week, we'll move right back to performance education. But I think that there are five elements from this experience that I had, that you no matter what your goals and quests are, you can and should apply to your own journey. So this is the meat and potatoes of the meat and potatoes if you want to call it that.
Matt Dixon 26:08
Number one, the big lesson, the absolute role of taking on a really scary athletic challenge. I think that, I cannot overstate how beneficial it was, for me as a husband and father, as a business leader. As a coach, how valuable it was, for me to take on something really scary. I was scared of this and a real challenge. It provided a non-negotiable framework in which I had to really organize and optimize effectiveness. And it enabled me to filter out the stuff that is less important. And get laser-focused on the elements that were absolutely critical for me to nail across my training across my Purple Patch work and across my family. And that became really valuable. It created -- it became a priority exercise all the way through this year. And those are lessons that I will absolutely draw and continue on now that this is in the rearview mirror. I also gathered yet again for multiple times, and all of us that took on this challenge, huge lessons of experience, going through something like this that absolutely transfer to life, work, and beyond.
Matt Dixon 27:38
Adversity, management, focus, camaraderie, navigating tough situations, everything that you sort of go through over the course of this week, it's just a great parallel. The athletic journey is a great parallel to the fabric of life and work and life performance. And I think it was really, really important. And so I think that now for me, I'm in a place -- And I think that anyone that takes on a challenge like this, I'm in a place where I can hold those lessons and carry on. And I will say that it took a commitment for me to go and do this commitment from Kelli and Baxter and have some sacrifices of them to enable me to go and do it. But now I get to tilt my focus back, I put my sport and my athletic challenges to the side a little bit, still keeping structure. But now I'm going to shine my light of focus on Purple Patch in my family, and have the sport for the next months to a year as being something supplementary and supportive, but still operating in that structure. And I think that that is really, really valuable. So lesson number one, I'll say it again, it's nothing new, but I've just got to live through it myself again, you are better served by taking on a really big personal challenge. It isn't something that distracts from life and work performance. It adds, and it absolutely amplifies. If executed well, it amplifies your effectiveness across all areas, hugely important.
Matt Dixon 29:13
The second big lesson, which all of us in our team talked about on the last night, you can prepare for whatever that nasty challenge you take on, you can prepare effectively without it dominating your life. And so a big challenge can be daunting, whether it's an IRONMAN, Haute Route, big Ultra Trail run, a marathon, a 5k, whatever it is for you that's really challenging. Whatever the challenge is, the common reaction that we see is I just don't have time with everything else that I've got going on. And the second reaction is, goodness me I'm going to do this but it's going to really pull me away from my priorities and it's going to require half of my life to do well. It doesn't need to be like this. For me 10 to 12 hours a week of training is a lot of training, it's more than I usually do. But I could fit it in by taking some out-of-the-box thinking. And it was also much less than the vast majority of folks that actually signed up registered and participated in that event. We were globally, our team and group were doing much, much less in total in terms of total training hours. And yet, we were already successful. So I believe if you have courage if you keep a broad perspective, and you're willing to focus on consistency, over many, many months, rather than just big, heroic weeks, you're gonna get better results than you ever can imagine, are going to emerge from it. And so I think it's really important.
Matt Dixon 30:50
Lesson number three, is the absolute critical importance of training, self-management. And this is really important. It's going to surprise a lot of people when you hear this, but I rode throughout training, and throughout the Haute Route, without a power meter, and without a heart rate monitor. I didn't train with one, I didn't race with one. Now most of the athletes that I coach, do. And I like to see data, and I encourage athletes to ride with power meters and heart rate monitors, they can be really useful tools. But for me, having no metrics at all was really liberating. And one of the things that it did do is it forced me to build a massive amount, and unbreakable amount of self-awareness, resource management, and pacing instinct. And I think that with so many others I was listening to and the climb first number one, I'm going to ride a low zone to power but because of the altitude, my heart rates going to be middle a zone three, and they were trying to build a bridge out of something that was just dirty variable really challenging. And the truth is that over something that takes seven stages, so much is going to change. You're going from sea level to altitude back to sea level, you've got accumulated fatigue, you've got systemic tiredness, you've got broken sleep because your body is in so much overstress. And so many riders were anchored so deep into their data, they didn't have any inner animal instinct. And so I think that
Matt Dixon 32:27
I wouldn't have changed a thing. But perhaps if I did it again, I am certainly not anti data, I think it's really valuable. But I did notice a lot of ability of folks to not be able to self-manage, and just becoming so obsessed around the data. And I think that if I did it, again, I would use a power meter, I might use a heart rate monitor as well. But I would certainly put it within context of using as a backup to the resource management, the enhanced instinct, the pacing management that I built up over many, many months. And so by no means am I been a Luddite here, but I will say that it was really powerful to have self-awareness. And so if you apply that to you training and racing and an Ironman or a half Ironman or a marathon, use data, use metrics, but don't be shackled by it. Because without self-awareness, an internal compass, of feeling management, always thinking ahead of how your resources are, that data is going to be absolutely useless.
Matt Dixon 33:38
Lesson number four, two to go guys. Lesson number four, the methodology and coaching matters. The challenge is huge. There is no way that you can make something like this easy. You can't train for an Ironman or make it easy. You can't train for a marathon and make it easy. You can't train for Haute Route and make it easy. It's hard. But building training programming that fits into your life fueling and hydration strategies and race craft around a set of distinct strategies absolutely played a huge role for every one of the team members. And so I think that, as I emerged from this Haute Route, and I come out of this event, a big part of success was about what we didn't focus on as much as what to include. And so no matter what you do to get ready for a really challenging event, knowing that they are there is going to be adversity, there's going to be challenges each team member had to work through. But everyone agreed all of our group agreed that the framework of coaching and preparation assisted and helped in making the ability of every rider to make best decisions no matter what adversity they were going through. And so I think that whether you're just trying to win or complete, success is most close with real coaching and support very important. For me myself while I was sort of building my own training program, but I had the training part dialed in. But there's no way I would have been successful as an athlete If it wasn't for Andy blow from Precision, Scott from FuelIn, some of the equipment choices, and bike fit positioning that I had from Chris, from IOG bike fitting, those were my coaches. And I leaned into that, and basically gave myself to them. Was a student as much as I could, and they empower me to implement. And so coaching can come from a lot of different sources, but I don't think any of us would have been successful without coaching.
Matt Dixon 35:38
And the final big lesson for this, which I think is, in many ways, the most important, is having a feeling of being a part of something while you're doing it individually, amplifies everything. And this last one is something to be remembered. I did this. But I was part of a team. The team name was the Drunken Donkeys, which was a very silly name, of course. But we were a collective group, that all of us individually, there is no way that we would have been successful if we didn't have the group dynamic. And I couldn't dream of doing this experience without a group of people. Throughout the training process, the accountability, the camaraderie, the shared experience, and then on the ground every day, I could not, I could not have done this alone. And it was everything, I consistently leaned into the group. And I got way more back than I ever could have dreamed. And we had a really broad mix of riders, we had a 25-year-old, we had a 67-year-old, we had highly competitive to someone that was just looking to get over the timing map before the cut-offs occurred. But we all supported each other, we all shared and had very similar experiences that we could lean on, and the whole journey up to the race and the race experiences, and all of the lessons that we got out of it were all amplified because we felt a part of something.
Matt Dixon 37:10
And so overall, I hope that out of this experience, I hope that you've maybe gained some experience and lessons from our experiences and what we went through. But I hope that you can go from here and find your version of your Haute Route. It might be a 5k. It might be an Ironman, it might be a hiking trip across Ireland, whatever it is, I encourage you to take on a challenge. I encourage you to get coached, become a part of a group, whether it's online, whether it's remote like ours was, or whether it's a small group in your small town that you live in, wherever you are but share the experience. It is going to amplify your health, your life, and your performance across your work family, and your friends, you will become a better human being because of it. And so with that, I get to finally for this year, put the Haute Route to bed. So I really appreciate you guys following along, we got so much support. So many comments were really appreciate it. Now I'm going to get to go to bed. And we will be back with regular programming next week. I'll be right back on with the Purple Patch podcast. I'll see you next time.
Matt Dixon 38:27
Guys, thanks so much for joining. And thank you for listening, I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing, head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there. And you could subscribe, of course, I'd like to ask you, if you will subscribe. Also share it with your friends. And it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. Now any questions that you have, let me know feel free to add a comment and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve, simply email us at info at Purple Patch fitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page. And we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset as we like to call it. And so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience. And we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do. Take care
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
race, climbs, important, haute, training, coaching, day, riding, week, ironman, amplified, patch, absolutely, stage, lessons, purple, challenge, event, experience, challenging