TCO 167 | Gaining Back Your Footing

167: Resale Prices of Peloton Clothing Skyrocket plus our interview with Todd Bohannon

TCO 167 | Gaining Back Your Footing

 

We give you an update on the Leanne Hainsby situation.

Peloton wins a battle in the “Purge” lawsuit.

Resale prices of Peloton clothes will shock you.

The New York Times talks about BLM and the world of boutique fitness.

Vox finally comes around on Peloton.

Jenn Sherman is featured in New Jersey Monthly Magazine.

Dr. Jenn Mann – What to do when a celebrity you love says something you hate?

Motley Fool is treating Lululemon’s acquisition of Mirror with skepticism.

Garmin is held hostage by ransomware.

CNBC writes about how few people are planning to return to the gym.

Peloton 4 Parkinsons has been rescheduled and you can help!

Jess King and Matty Maggiacomo are celebrating Spotify Housework classes with specially curated playlists.

New Artist Series with Common.

Peloton adds 16 new family classes.

All this plus our interview with Todd Bohannon!

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Resale Prices of Peloton Clothing Skyrocket plus our interview with Todd Bohannon

How is your mood this week?

I didn’t get to do a ride today, but for completely different reasons.

You can blame this one on me though.

I can blame it on your son.

I guess then indirectly because I am at least 50% responsible for his existence.

He didn’t do anything on purpose.

He’s been trying to take the written exam for his driver’s license, and he has been struggling, and then beating himself up because of his struggles.

I’m a good step-mom and I walked him through his entire guide, quizzing him.

That’s some good times. Now, you know all sorts of things like how many feet in front of a semi you’re supposed to turn on your high beams or how far the flag should stick out.

If it’s more than 5 feet, you need a flag.

What pray tell do you have in store for people this week?

We’ve got an update on the controversy we talked about last week. We’ve got another update on the class action lawsuit that up until last week, I had completely forgotten about. We’ve got to talk about Peloton clothes, there’s a whole thing. We had some instructors in the news. We’ve got to talk about that. Then we’ll have our Dr. Jenn segment and some competitor news, I guess actually other connected fitness news. Then some new stuff coming up with Peloton.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs, don’t forget we are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, TuneIn, we’re available in all the places. Wherever you’re getting it from, be sure and subscribe, so you’ll never miss an episode. Check out our Facebook page, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. You can subscribe to our newsletter at theclipout.com. You’ll also get a direct link, if it’s available at that point to our YouTube video of the week, because these episodes are now full YouTube videos over at YouTube.com/TheClipOut. It was a little late this week because it’s growing pains, but we’ll get into a rhythm. You could also leave us a review. We have a new review.

We didn’t do it last week because we were in such a rush and you couldn’t get Apple Podcasts on your computer.

This is from DayOldNews. They said, “Just got my bike and went searching for a podcast to enhance my entrance into this new exercise world. These hosts have so much fun together and do a great job of blending breaking news with informative, fun interviews of riders. They include a great question about tips for newbies that has been helpful for me. There is a lot of terminology that I’m trying to catch up on, so it would be awesome if occasionally they could reiterate what things like HRI or Power Zone are for this clueless newb, but very much enjoying what I’m learning.”

That’s fair.

I feel like over time, we’ve gotten worse at that. Right in the beginning, I didn’t know. Every time you said something, I was like, “What the hell does that mean?”

Back then, we had a lot less episodes. If you wanted to go back and catch up, you could, but now we’re 167 in. That’s a lot.

That is quite the task.

If you’re just starting now, it’s like, “I wouldn’t want to go back and listen to 167.”

We will try to get better. If we do something like that, always shoot us a message or hop over to The Clip Out group. If we don’t answer, I’m sure someone will. It’s not like the OPP, if it is, we’ll be mean to them for you. Anyway, there’s all of that. Let’s dig in, shall we?

Last week we talked about Leanne Hainsby. A quick recap, she shared a picture that was supportive of Black Lives Matter that showed an image of a civil rights activist talking to an older white gentleman. It turns out he was a Holocaust denier. Someone sent her a message that said, “FYI, not a good guy.” She did not reply. Then she blocked that person.

She didn’t reply. She just didn’t remove the post and then she blocked them.

That person reached out to Peloton and then she issued an apology. I think we should issue our own correction here. We had a little mistake last week where we thought the original picture was a post and then she apologized in the story, but they both existed within the story ecosystem.

That is relevant because they disappear on their own after 24 hours.

We were at the time under the impression that the original post was permanent, but the apology was temporary. That is not true. They both went out in the Story thing. We apologize for that. I just wanted to set the record straight on that. Anyway, that’s where we left it last week and some quick updates on where we stand this week.

As it turns out, Leanne Hainsby had a Peloton Facebook group, like all the instructors do like a fan page type of thing, not owned by Peloton. As it turns out, three of the admins that were running the group, they all happen to be Jewish. When they posted their feelings about it, there was a lot of back and forth. Lots people did not agree that these people had any right to be upset. They ended up closing the group. Leanne Hainsby’s Invaders no longer exist. On the bright side, Leanne never called them out or interacted with them in any way whatsoever. Now, there’s a new group and Leanne’s all over that one. None of those leaders happen to be Jewish, so whatever that’s worth. Still silence from Leanne. We do have one more update late-breaking this afternoon that the person that this all started with was actually a couple. They have been speaking with Peloton directly today. No updates on what that conversation consisted of, but it did take place. There was also some back and forth with the UK ladies group that they got wrapped into it, because some of the people that were upset over in the invaders group, ran the UK ladies group. They started booting out people who had expressed their upsetness at Leanne.

Some of those people that got booted had expressed their upsetness in other groups and they weren’t bringing it to that page.

Thank you for clarifying. Yes.

It was like they weren’t, for lack of a better word, disrupting, sharing their opinion within the UK ladies group that they still got removed from it.

The good news there is that since then, I don’t know the conversations that took place, but I do know one of the admins took it upon herself to rise above all of this, reach out and put those two ladies back in the group. Good for her, that was really nice.

Anyway, we’re not trying to dwell on it or beat a dead horse as much as we love beating dead horses. They have it coming, damn dead horses.

Leave those horses alone.

That was a pretty big story. We got a lot of feedback on it and it just felt weird not giving some new updates. We just wanted to address them. There you go. Moving on, there are updates in the class action lawsuit. This is about the music purge situation.

Last week, I brought this up because I came across an article talking about that. First of all, this class action lawsuit still existed, which I had completely forgotten about. Also I left it with that Peloton had requested that several of these members be deposed and the judge was going to weigh in with his summary. He was going to say yes or no. Since then, I understand that the judge has said, “Yes, Peloton does get to depose them.” It looks like the other side was at least accused of cherry picking the people that they wanted to represent. To say like they had a “worst” experience for whatever reason. It’s really dense and we’re not lawyers.

From what I can gather as a lay person, because regardless of what I might’ve said before, I’m not a lawyer. I feel like I should say that out loud just to cover our butts. The way the class action lawsuit works is you pick a handful of names of actual real-life people and then they stand in for everyone. If a settlement is reached, then they notify the world through blanket statements. Then the people, if they feel they’ve been aggrieved, they can then try to attach themselves to this and get whatever the settlement is, whether it’s three free months or $2 check six years from now. There are a lot of these things that divvy it all up. Peloton wanted to depose the people mentioned and the other side did not want them deposed. The argument seemed to be that there’s no need to, and it puts too much burden on them and they didn’t know that they were going to have to get deposed. Peloton is like, clearly they knew they were going to get deposed because any good lawyer has an ethical duty to inform these people of what it means to put your name on a lawsuit, because if they don’t want to be deposed, they don’t have to be a part of this and they could still benefit from the settlement, just like any other person does in a class action lawsuit. It seems like the judge at least largely accepted that argument and is going to let them depose a select few.

That was common sense.

There will be small setbacks along the way, but things will slowly get better. Just keep moving forward. Click To Tweet

It sounds like the three people who are named as plaintiffs, all bought their bike in November of 2018. I think Peloton is trying to make the argument of you’re trying to say that there should be a settlement based on this loss that you suffered by these classes being purged. Because all three people bought their bikes at the same time, but not everyone did that would potentially partake in the suit that it’s apples to oranges in terms of what the value is.

If you buy your bike in 2016, that’s a different value than 2018, which is a different value than 2019.

You had all that time of usage before. Now you might be looking at pennies versus some, if it even has a real, tangible value, which I would argue that it does not.

Maybe I’m hearing what I want to hear, but what I want to hear is that this probably isn’t going to go the way the people in the class action lawsuit thought it was going to go.

Probably not but it’s really hard to say because ultimately all the judge really did is say, “You can talk to these people and ask them questions about their experience.”

Now that we’re going to be able to get more details that Peloton is going to ask instead of the choice questions that of course their own counsel is going to ask, it’s going to be a very different story of information. If they depose them, then doesn’t it typically follow that whatever is deposed can also be included in that lawsuit versus if they hadn’t been deposed and then anything would be hearsay at that point.

I think that’s how that works. I would think of one of them in the deposition says something dumb like, “I still use the bike all the time. I love it.” That’s going to be problematic for their side.

That’s going to be the case. This class action lawsuit out there might actually be causing Peloton to not put those classes back up. For all you guys that say, “Why haven’t you put the classes back?” This could be one of the reasons.

That’s true. They might just figure that there’s no upside to putting these back because it might be seen as an admission that they had value. In the same way that a lot of times people when they’re getting sued, if they say, “I’m sorry,” it’s an admission of guilt.

Even if you’re just sorry that the circumstances occurred, like you’re not taking responsibility.

People complain about that all the time in the civil system, how it ratchets up things because they won’t even apologize to me. It’s like if they apologize to you, they’re going to get sued for more. Anyway, there’s a legal corner. Let’s shift gears again.

Let’s talk about some fun stuff. This cray cray. This is my favorite story of the week.

Prices for Peloton clothes, not in the boutique, but on the secondary one.

Let me just say to all of you ladies out there, if your husbands give you crap about buying Peloton clothes, I want you to make sure they’re not reading right now. You don’t want them to read this. I’m just warning ladies before we go into this, get rid of the husband or your partner, whoever in your family that gets upset.

While you’re reading this, she’s not advocating that you just leave your husband, just to be clear.

Here’s the deal. In the Buy, Sell, Trade group, I was sent this story this week. There’s a leopard set of clothes that are Peloton. They have a leopard print. I don’t remember what month they came out, but it’s been a while. It’s been several months. It was not even one that I bought. It wasn’t something that ever interested me. Here’s the funny thing, they sold. I want to be very clear about this. They were on the Buy, Sell, Trade group in excellent used condition. Let me be very clear. They had been worn, a bra and leggings sold for $620.

What was the original retail on that?

$88 for a pair of leggings is the going rate for with pair, and this was a with outfit. It’s usually around $58, $68 for a bra.

This wasn’t some creepy pervy thing where it’s like, “How long have you been wearing them for?”

You could wonder that, but then a few minutes later, there was another pair of the cheetah leggings that they marked rare, that sold for another $700, and again, used. I want to be clear, this didn’t just list and no one bought it. These were sold for this amount. What is happening?

That’s insane. I’m going to tell you this right now. First off, I know I tease you by buying stuff in the boutique, but just to be clear, you make more money than I do, so buy whatever you want. I will still continue to tease you about it. I will say, I am no longer going to tease you about buying clothes from the boutique. What I am going to teach you about is not then selling those clothes.

I was like, “I’m just going to buy two of everything. I’m going to spend more money, but then I’m going to make it back in six months.”

It’s like how comic books used to be back in the day when they put out a special cover with a hologram on it or foil, you buy two of those bad boys.

It kirks me up because everyone’s like, “It’s rare.” It’s rare since when? They’re all rare. You could say that about any Peloton outfit. They’re saying, “It’s this print.”

I think if people want certain things, you see it in the shoe market all the time with Air Jordans and special brands of sneakers. That’s a real thing.

I haven’t really talked about it, but I’ve been hearing over and over again that there are many people on the first day that this stuff is out. They’re going and buying multiple sets, and then they turn around and sell them on the Buy, Sell, Trade group. They’re marking them up quite a bit. People have called for Peloton to reduce the amount that you can buy at any one time. Don’t let people buy five sets. You work in the content industry, you know how difficult it is to keep people from doing that. You can sign in with multiple accounts. There are many ways around it. If somebody wants to get it, they can.

TCO 167 | Gaining Back Your Footing

 

I know I was joking about comic books, but it’s the same problem they had in the comic book world where people would come in and buy 10, 15, 20 copies of a book so they could turn around and flip it. There are a lot of books that to this day, aren’t worth as much money as they should be because the print runs got so large on books because it was inflated. They knew they were going to sell so many because it was a hologram cover. They restarted the number and it went back to one and people wanted to have an X-Men number one. If they up the quantities too much, they could find themselves in that same boat of now they flooded the market with this stuff, and they’re competing against themselves on the secondary. Why go buy a new pair of leggings for $88 if somebody bought 20 of them, and now they’re dumping them for $20 each because they’re just sick of looking at it?

It’s another sign of the times. I miss the good old days where you just went in and you got your stuff and it was your special moment. I would never part with my Peloton clothes because most of my Peloton outfits represent a special ride or a special time. There are memories associated with them and I enjoy wearing them. If there’s something I don’t enjoy, I would get rid of that. There’s very little with my Peloton clothes that I feel that way about. I just think it’s funny.

The New York Times had an article.

It featured Tunde and Alex in this article. It was about Black Lives Matter in general. When I say in general, I mean that was the overall topic, but how that fits in with boutique fitness, how it’s affecting companies like Peloton. It also talked about SoulCycle because you have these two very different paths happening right now. On the one hand, you have Peloton and you have people like Tunde, Alex and Chase, all of our instructors. They focused on Tunde and Alex, but we have several instructors that are very focused on furthering the Black Lives Matter cause. They talked about how they’re taking their platforms and they are furthering what is happening within the entire conversation. They’re taking it to new level. For example, Tunde has started that Speak series that I told you about. She brings in women of color. I haven’t seen any men, so I’m pretty sure it’s just women. She talks to them about their experiences.

When she did the original SpeakUp ride, there was a quote that she gave that was like, “You should seek to hear people’s experiences the way they see them, not the way you see them.” That stuck with her. That was really powerful. That inspired her to start the Speak series, which now is apparently inspiring an entire website. It is moving beyond that. She’s growing with it. She’s really passionate about it. Alex has taken his, and he is creating an entire people of color’s line of products that is going to use his tagline, “Be better, do better, look better,” all of the things that he says, I’m totally screwing it up right now. It’s taking his message and going down that road. Peloton has been supporting that. They’ve been very supportive of not only Black Lives Matter, but also their instructors, the people who work for them.

Now on the other hand, right after Soeuraya quit, several other instructors quit after her. I have heard more than four. Over here on the SoulCycle side, these instructors are claiming that SoulCycle is doing nothing behind the scenes. They’re not donating money. They’re not speaking words that make them feel supported. They’re not putting practices in place that are protective of their cultures. They’re saying, “You don’t get to feature us as a diverse group of people that work for you, and then not do anything to support our diversity. You’re using us.” They all quit. What a difference.

I’m hesitating now because all of the conversations that I’ve heard on my social media are going through my head right now. There are some interesting takes on this. There are people that don’t think that any of this is a big deal. There are people that think that SoulCycle has no right. If they said they support it, they support it and that’s all they should have to do. I don’t even know what words to use for that, but what I will say, I’m trying to be very careful here too. I don’t want to offend anybody. I really appreciate that Peloton stands behind their instructors when they say they will, that they’re not just putting it on a piece of paper. I am so proud of our instructors for using their platform for good, for spreading that message. I know people don’t realize it, but it takes a certain amount of bravery to speak up for what you believe in. I guarantee you, I don’t know how many of you guys put yourselves out there, but let me tell you, it’s a constant barrage. I do it on a very small level compared to what they’re doing.

If you say anything beyond just a simple platitude, there’s somebody that’s going to light you up.

It’s exhausting and it is soul crushing. You can say something that you mean from the bottom of your heart, and people can find ways to twist it into something ugly, and it’s exhausting. My hats off to all of the people fighting the good fight. Keep doing that.

Vox.com had a review of Peloton that was a mea culpa of sorts.

They start with this article going back all the way to the commercial. He was talking about how he compared to it at the time. Alex compared it to the commercial to a Bavarian fairytale created to incite obedience in children calling it more a threat than a gift. That was their quote. He says, “Now that we’re five months into shutdowns and gyms are shut down indefinitely, I’ve come to the conclusion, I would gladly accept $2,000 of exercise equipment from any man who would want to gift it to me.” I think Alex is a woman. That could go either way. Alex used money that they had saved to buy a Peloton bike as a quarantine purchase. Over the last couple of months, they have taken 85 classes or so with multiple instructors. They’re here to report that while Peloton they can agree that the commercial was a little off, they can also admit they were a little wrong about Peloton.

I see this comment a lot on Twitter from people when I’m looking for things to talk about and I searched Peloton as well.

You mentioned that about celebrity types.

I’ve seen a lot of people have this comment like, “I was making fun of that commercial and now I got one.” They’re like, “This thing is great, deal changer.” They’re still thinking the commercial didn’t strike quite the tone that they were hoping for, but they also understand why people have a passion for it in a way that they didn’t previously. They’re like, “It’s pretty awesome.”

I think that’s pretty cool. I would like to give the writer credit because it’s not always easy to say that you were wrong or even that you didn’t have all the information. Now you have new information and you’re able to change your views. How about that? It’s magic. If only everybody could do that.

Jenn Sherman was featured.

Thank you, Tammy, for sending that. It was a nice little one-column page. It was a sidebar about Jenn Sherman. That’s pretty cool how she used Peloton and her whole history if you will. It was a tiny print, so you had to really zoom on Facebook. I didn’t read it that in depth, but very cool.

Joining us again is Dr. Jenn Mann. You may know her from VH1’s Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn or VH1’s Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn, her long running radio show, The Dr. Jenn Show. She’s written four bestselling books including The Relationship Fix: Dr. Jenn’s 6-Step Guide to Improving Communication, Connection & Intimacy. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Jenn.

Don’t forget, ‘Peloton addict.” That’s part of my credentials.

We were doing this out of the kindness of your heart because you have love and passion for Peloton.

Love and passion is putting it mildly. I think it’s a bit of an obsession. You guys get it.

One of us do. I’m adjacent to getting it.

He’s a supporter of getting it.

He’s used to observing the obsession, you just haven’t partaken yet.

I abstained. Speaking of that obsession about something, you have a great deal of passion for it leads us into this week’s topic. There’s been all this stuff going on with Leanne Hainsby, and we’re not necessarily asking you to comment or drill down on that specifically. Do you have any thoughts on how do you handle it when a coach, an instructor, an artist, a sports figure, someone that you are a fan of, someone you look up to, you admire, you enjoy their work, does something offensive to your sensibilities on a very core level. How do you deal with that? Where is the line between separating art and artists? When is it appropriate? When is it no longer appropriate?

The bubble has been burst. How do we handle it?

First of all, we tend to put people, and our Peloton instructors included, on a pedestal because these are superhuman, incredibly fit, motivated, motivational, inspiring humans. It’s very easy to forget that they are flawed human beings, just like any one of us and that they are going to make mistakes just as we do. That some of them may reveal something significant about their character or their philosophy that we find offensive, such as someone who their classes were taken down and is no longer a Peloton instructor. Or it may be something that we look at and we go, “This person made a mistake. This isn’t necessarily something that reveals her character,” or we may even look at it and say, “This is someone who hasn’t clicked for them yet.” What we have to really do is assess all of these things on a more nuanced level, and to look at intent, character, to look at the bigger picture because we do get attached to our instructors. We get attached to their classes and we also are very inspired by them. It’s always a tricky line to walk to say like, “This person really inspires me, but I don’t agree with their stance on X, Y and Z. That’s very important to me.” We have to figure out how to make that shift in our own hearts and our own psyches.

Do you have any thoughts on just high level? It’s going to apply to a whole host of things. Where is the line for people? At what point is someone being overly sensitive versus this is a legitimate thing? I know that’s case-by-case, but are there certain aspects or feelings that someone could point to that’s like, “This one is a bigger deal than this other one?”

I think you ask a great question. I’m assuming that you’ve already shared with your audience all about the history behind what happened with Leanne. I am Jewish and I also happen to love Leanne’s classes. I think that they are terrific. From what I have observed, and I don’t have all of the details, there’s always more to be revealed, but it sounds like she was really trying to be sensitive to one cause and didn’t realize she was being insensitive to another cause. It didn’t seem to click for her. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. Understand, I am someone who’s been working as a therapist for three decades, that part of my job requires enormous compassion for people.

I also really get the people are flawed. I also get that there is a process of education for most people, especially on topics that are not familiar to them, on topics that they haven’t been educated on. I tend to try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I also really get that this is a button pusher. That this is a sensitive topic and that it is something that also shows something about her inability to translate her social justice desires and passions from one group to another. Giving the benefit of the doubt, which I try to do, I think it shows a real lack of understanding that hopefully will start to click in, as it seems like this has snowballed. My hope for her is that she’s able to have it click and go, “I really screwed up. I get it now,” and to make a better amends when it comes to how she handled this.

A good takeaway is in situations like that, it’s important to try and let the aggrieved party know that you’ve heard them.

In my book, The Relationship Fix, I talk a lot about how to make amends. Part of what’s significant to make an effective amend is to understand the harm that you have caused and to be able to express that to those who have been harmed. To just say, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.” That’s just words. We can all pair with words. Whenever I see parents say, “Say you’re sorry that you did that.” I always say, “Don’t say that because you’re just teaching someone to pair words.” What matters is that it sinks in that there is an understanding and a shift internally in the person in order for the amends to be helpful and healing to those who have been harmed.”

I think that’s a really good point.

Thank you so much for taking time to join us. Where can people find you?

People can find me on social media, @DrJennMann and also on my website, DoctorJenn.com.

The Motley Fool had an article.

They did and I’m laughing already because I want to point out because I’ve had many people send it to me, and I know they were very hot and cold about Peloton. I thought that this article was interesting because it talks about Lululemon and Mirror acquisition. It talked about three reasons that it may not work out so well. I didn’t agree with some of the reasons, but I agreed with some. One of the reasons that I agreed with them is they talked about how Peloton already has so much market share that assuming that you can buy Mirror and then turn it into something that can actively compete with Peloton in this space is not necessarily true.

It’s like it’s 1983 and you’re like, “We got to catch up with Atari, let’s buy ColecoVision.”

This is a weird one because Mirror can be a competitor of Peloton. It also can be a compliment depending on how you use Peloton. If you use Peloton only the bike and you don’t use any of the other classes, any of the other content, because for whatever reason you don’t like it, you don’t have the equipment, whatever.

Or if you feel like throwing away money.

I know early on when Mirror and Tonal came out, I was trying to understand what the difference between Mirror and Tonal was right back then. I talked to one of our audience, and she’s been on the podcast. We’ve interviewed her, Krissy Blackwood. We talked to her and she had bought a Mirror and she loves it. At the time, Peloton didn’t have as much content out besides the bike when she bought her Mirror. I think there’s that part of it. Also, she really loved the live class aspect of Mirror because it’s very similar to Peloton in that it’s competitive. You’re seeing the instructor on the screen. They’re giving you feedback. They’re giving you shout-outs. You can follow along with other people. It’s got that Peloton-esque aspect. However, on the flip side, it’s all moves that you can do without weights. If weight training is your thing, then I don’t know that you would want to buy this as opposed to just doing the weight videos with Peloton or one of the other services out there.

However, on the flip side, Lululemon, they’re saying could go down the way of Under Armour and buy this whole thing and then not use it for cool stuff. In my mind, they have the opportunity to put lots of cool stuff on it like trying on clothes and those kinds of things or doing personal training. They could go a bunch of different ways, but who knows if they will? If they don’t, now they’ve just sunk all this money into it and they’re expecting that they’re going to get all this money from new users, which I don’t know that they will because it’s not just Peloton, they’re competing against. There’s a ton of new products coming to market. I felt like even though I don’t necessarily agree with Motley Fool in general, I feel like it’s not a done deal. This is not necessarily a slam dunk.

I would agree because I don’t feel like whatever Mirror’s going to be, I don’t feel like it’s there yet. I can buy a Harley Davidson, but I don’t know how to drive one. It’s not going to do any good. You’ll be able to beat me on your bicycle because I’m not going to know it doesn’t matter. I’m not entirely convinced that Lululemon knows what they’re doing.

I don’t know. Time will tell.

However badly your day is going, it’s probably not going as badly as the people who work at Garmin.

If you haven’t heard, I thought this was an interesting story. I feel like most people know about ransomware. If you don’t, you probably want to google it because I’m going to talk about things that you’re not aware of. In general, it means that somebody took some of your information.

They basically hijack your computer and they’ll sell it back to you.

They’ve been doing this to pretty small companies for a couple of years.

Always be willing to raise the goal. Click To Tweet

They do it to a lot of local governments. I had to take a cyber security online course at work because I work for a county and it’s happening to municipalities a lot where they’ll come in and they’ll look at all this personal information because the government needs that for taxes and whatnot. They’re very concerned about us falling victim to ransomware.

They’re asking for a little enough money. You’re going to want your information back more than you’re going to want the money.

It’s also time-sensitive. Every day you don’t have access to that, it’s costing you money. While it might be a large sum of money to an average person, to a business it’s cheaper to pay it.

The interesting thing is that they attacked Garmin. Garmin is a Kansas-based company, for those of you that don’t know. All of their services were down. I didn’t realize how many services they have. They are not just watches and bike computers. They also do boat ramp data. They do flight data. They do all kinds of data because they started with GPS. That was where they started. Those data flight plans, that’s their bread and butter. It just happens to work within the fitness community also. These entire services were down all weekend. I think it started on Thursday and nothing was working. They started bringing services back, and I never heard if they paid or what they did to get it back. I don’t know. They had shut down everything for several days. They were trying to keep it from spreading any further. It could spread just from computer to computer. It’s crazy stuff. It sounds like they have it under control now, but I just thought it was interesting. They’re getting bolder.

CNBC had an article about how people aren’t going to renew their gym membership. I feel like we’ve seen a new version of this article every week.

I just mentioned it when we were recording our Tonal episode. I didn’t have this in front of me when we were doing that, but somebody posted this in The Clip Out. I was right though, the percentage of Americans that plan to not renew their gym memberships after COVID-19 was 59%.

That’s good news for Halloween pop-up stores, I guess

They’re saying 56% say that the pandemic helped them find more affordable ways to get exercise and live a healthier lifestyle.

Not just affordable, but convenient.

The respondents in average spent about $177 a month on things like gym membership, fitness classes and personal training. I’m glad I don’t have to answer that survey. That’s very interesting stuff.

We should probably get in a quick plug for Peloton 4 Parkinson’s.

We had Eric Tostrud on. He was going to be doing the fifth year, but then COVID and he couldn’t do it. It’s back on, it’s coming up on Friday, August 28th. That’s going to be the big day. This link is out in The Clip Out group. Good luck to Eric and his team.

A whole bunch of new stuff, if you like house music.

Do you remember several months ago that Olivia Amato took over the Spotify EDM channel called Mint? This time around, it’s the Spotify playlist called House Work. Jess King and Matty Maggiacomo are going to curate playlist for the Spotify House Work playlist. The classes that they did took place already, it was on July 28th for Jess’ ride at 6:00 PM Eastern. Then Matty did a run on July 28th at 7:00 PM Eastern, but those playlists are available on Spotify. Then we have something else exciting. This one is tonight, a new artist series. Rapper, activist and actor, Common, is teaming up with our Peloton group. We have Tunde doing a ride on the 29th at 7:30 PM. Chase Tucker is doing a Bootcamp on the 29th at 7:00 PM Eastern. Chelsea Jackson Roberts is doing a Yoga Flow at 6:00 PM Eastern on the 29th. Jess Sims is doing a run on the 30th at 10:30 AM Eastern. Adrian Williams is doing a full body strength on July 30 at 7:00 PM Eastern.

If that’s not enough for you, if you want something for the kids, there are sixteen new family classes added.

There’s new fit Family Yoga, which is led by Kristin McGee. Family-Friendly Meditations with Chelsea Jackson Roberts. Anna Greenberg is also doing some of the meditations. Jess Sims is doing cardio classes.

Todd Bohannon is joining us. How are you doing?

I’m great. Thank you for having me.

I understand that you have always been a super active person. Tell us about yourself. Give us some history.

I was an athlete. I grew up playing a bunch of sports type of kid where my dad coached a lot of our teams, whether it be Little League or I played soccer growing up. When I got to high school, I played soccer. I was a swimmer and I ran track. Swimming was my main sport in high school. I went on to swim in college at the Division Three level at Tufts University. Following college, I continued to stay in the sport of swimming through coaching. I’ve always through one way or another had a tie to the athletic world. My relationship to fitness has been tied to that in one way or the other.

Whether it’s through my own fitness, which is come and gone over the years or whether it’s working with some of the young athletes that I’ve worked with over the course of years to guide them through. Not only physically training them through the sports, swimming, but a lot of the life lessons that you can learn through such a difficult sport. I’m an athlete growing up. There are always better athletes out there, but when you’re a kid and you have to identify as something that’s identified.

You qualify as athlete. That’s a lot of stuff. You listed off a lot of things.

If you noticed that I didn’t necessarily say that I was a good athlete. I was decent, but there’s always somebody better. That’s one thing that I always teach my kids. Sometimes they go a little bit of a big head or they get a little too big for their britches and the sport of swimming is perfect for that because you don’t even have to put them on the same basketball court as somebody else. You can literally go into a database of time and say, “You think that you are hot stuff, but this kid over here is probably working twice as hard as you and look at their times.” It redirects them back towards practice and their training gets them refocused. There’s always somebody out there. Matt says that a lot in his classes.

You remind the kids, “You’re a big fish in a little pool.”

You can compare yourself all day long. Something changed along the way, you had some pretty big events happen. Would you like to talk about those?

I’ve got a couple of injuries. I’m accident prone, which is interesting because I’m a careful person. I learned how to ski in college, but I go down the mountain very slowly. I’m not the type of person to go bombing down the mountain. A few years ago, I was involved in a weird accident. I’ve been a sleepwalker my whole life. It’s always been the type of thing where I would do funny or weird things. My family would give me a little bit of grief about it or have a little bit of a laugh the next morning. I was living on the island in Nantucket where I lived for three years. I was living on my own on the third floor of a building. In the middle of the night while completely asleep, I sleepwalked out of a third-story window. I fell 25 feet out of this window and I did not wake up until I hit the ground.

I have zero recollection of going out of the window or anything prior to waking up on the ground, realizing that something terrible happened. This was in the middle of May somewhere around 3:00 or 4:00 AM. Unfortunately, I was living alone at the time. I have some roommates join me, but they hadn’t come yet. A neighbor next door had heard me calling for help and the EMTs came and scooped me up. I was living on the island in Nantucket and in that comes a lot of challenges sometimes. They have a hospital there.

If you’re on an island, then sometimes getting resources to you is going to be problematic.

They built a brand-new hospital. They have good medical care there for a lot of things. I had significant damage to my leg. I had multiple fractures in my leg as well as a lot of other injuries that they were concerned about, internal organs. They were concerned about my neck, head and concussions. It also happened to be foggy that night, which sounds a weird detail to include in the story. When you live on an island, it’s important. Normally, people get medevaced by a private company off of the island when you have an accident like that. I got flown by the US Coast Guard off of the island because they’re good at flying in bad weather.

They flew me to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, which is one of the best hospitals in the world, which I was very lucky to go to. The injuries that I sustained were I broke both bones in my leg. I broke a bone in my foot. The worst injuries long-term was I broke the bone in my heel called calcaneus which is funny because every doctor said to me, “It’s hard to break that bone. You usually have to fall from certain heights to do that.” I said, “That’s exactly what happened.” I also injured my shoulder so I had what’s called an avulsion fracture in my shoulder. It is when the tendon pulls a piece of bone off of the main part of the bone. It holds a little chunk off of the bone. That bothered me for about a year. It pulled the bone right where the rotator cuff attached. Anybody who’s ever had a rotator cuff injury knows it’s difficult to recover from. The Coast Guard flew me to Boston.

TCO 167 | Gaining Back Your Footing

 

Were you awake enough to enjoy that? I would think you’d be in shocking pain. Were you in a place in your head that you could enjoy that at that moment? I couldn’t then and I was trying to picture that.

By the time they got me to the helicopter, they had gotten me a little more comfortable. There were a couple of details that I do remember that were funny. First of all, they’re wheeling me into the helicopter in like a gurney or same type of thing you would be wheeled into an ambulance. They wheel me underneath the rotors, which are already spinning. I remember thinking that I had to duck when I’m under the rotors, which is stupid when you think about it, but you look up above you and it’s like, “That’s certain death, but that touches me.” I’m on this gurney trying to duck. The other detail is there was this guy sitting next to me in a full helmet and with his face shield over that was tinted. He looked like he was straight out of like, “Top Gun.” I remember thinking like, “This guy looks so badass. This is such a cool job.” He had the stupid look and mustache too. I didn’t know if he like lost a bet or something, but he looked cool with his helmet on. I was like, “I’ve got to give it to you.”

When the Coast Guard does the flight instead of the medevac, does that get you out of the copay? Do you still get to pay for that?

It’s free.

If you had to fall of a good foggy night, it sounds like it saved you a flight out.

I never paid the bill. I couldn’t pay that bill.

They’re expensive. My mom had to have it once. It was tens of thousands of dollars or probably more.

You hear about people medevaced off of cruise ships and things.

When you sleepwalked out of the window, was the window open or did you go through glass?

It was 90 degrees that night in June 30th and it’s pretty warm. I was on the third floor and it was like an attic. It was a screen window. I have a picture of the outside of the house. If you zoom in to the window, you can see the screen pushed out. The theory is that I kicked through the screen and then went out feet first. If I went out head first, I don’t know.

With your heel being broken like that, it sounds like you dropped down.

I don’t even understand how you go through a window standing with your feet. I could see straddling the window, but I’m trying to picture it like, did you jump out Matrix style and you don’t know?

That’s the weird thing. The three of us are sitting here and trying to figure this out. I have as much of an idea about this as you because I was asleep. That’s what’s so bizarre. I don’t remember what dream. Sometimes, I’ll have a certain dream and then I’ll be half awake. I remember one time I had this dream that the house was on fire, looking down at the floor and I was half awake. I visually thought I was seeing smoke come up from the floor. I can remember things like that sometimes. That night, I have no recollection of what dream I was having. I have no idea.

When you came to, did you know what had happened? I know you don’t know the events that transpired, but were you like, “What is this all about?”

Were you like, “I definitely was sleepwalking and somehow did something?”

I figured it out quickly. I knew that my leg was broken. I don’t know how to explain it, but I had a feeling of what happened. I remember my first thought and it was like, “I wish that didn’t happen.” If something happens in your life and you’re like, “Can we turn the DVR back five minutes?”

Have you ever heard of a comedian by the name of Mike Birbiglia? He had a movie similar, Sleepwalk With Me. If you don’t want to watch the movie, there’s an episode of This American Life where they turned it into the movie where he tells his journey with sleepwalking and he had something similar happen to him.

I have seen the movie. I believe that he premiered that at the Nantucket Film Festival many years ago or at least showed it.

Did he steal your story?

No, because this happened first. A few years ago, I attended the Nantucket Film Festival. This is after Mike Birbiglia, 1 or 2 years after he premiered. I’m sitting in this theater and my fiancée is next to me. Mike Birbiglia sits down next to her. I’m like, “I know who that is. I know what happened. We’re going to be best friends. We have this shared experience. How many people have done it?” I reach over her and tap him on the knee, which was probably the worst possible thing I could have done. I look at him and I go, “I wanted to let you know that I slept walk out of a window a few years ago and I’m fine now, but I can relate to your story.” He looks right at me and he goes, “I’m glad you’re okay,” and looked the other way. It’s fine. I’m not saying he’s a bad guy. I probably messed up and then I touched his leg. He’s probably like, “Who’s this person touching me?” The guy is a celebrity. What makes me laugh though, is that if you’re the person sitting behind Mike Birbiglia and you have no idea maybe who he is. You see me say that to him and he’s like, “What is going on here?”

I bet you after that movie and that was a well-known routine in his act because it’s very memorable and unique, but I bet he gets that a lot. There aren’t a lot of people who probably have been through what you’ve been through, but I bet you a good chunk of the ones who have probably reached out to him.

Who knows what kind of day he was having? It’s like somebody reaches out to you, you’re trying to make a connection, shut down. Even you can tell he doesn’t ride a Peloton because of his attitude. I wasn’t making a joke about anything else, to be clear.

That was before the movie started. The whole time I’m thinking into my seat like, “I can’t go to the bathroom. I can’t move. I’m an idiot.” I go to Boston and I didn’t have surgery. I had to have surgery to put a plate in my leg to stabilize the tibia and fibula, the two main bones in your lower leg. That didn’t happen for two full days. The worst part about that is every morning they would wake me up and say, “There’s a possibility that you’re having surgery. You can’t eat and drink.” I would make it all the way to like 4:00 PM and they’re like, “It’s not going to happen. Now, you can have something to eat or drink.”

I had nurses sneaking me ice chips, like, “We’re sure you’re thirsty.” I’m half out of it because I’m on every drug they can possibly give. This is a major hospital. It’s one of the best hospitals in the world. They’re flying people in with helicopters that are getting put in front of me for surgery because they’re in worse shape than I was. I had surgery. I was there for a couple of days. I went to a rehab facility back on Cape Cod where I grew up where my parents lived. I was there for six weeks and working on a lot of different stuff, not even rehabbing my leg that I had injured, but how to get through life, move around in a safe way.

I was on crutches for a total of six months. I had either a cast or a boot for that entire time. Every time I would go back to the doctor, they would have to cut the cast off and give me a new one. The way they would give me the cast, it would be tight on my leg, but my leg was atrophying at such a significant rate. By the time that I would go back to the doctor, the cast would be like rattling around, so they’d have to cut it off. They’d have to give me a new one that would fit. By the time that I finally got a boot, my leg was skinny, less than half the size of the other one. It was pathetic and looked bad.

I went back to Nantucket. I was a full-time swimming coach there. I worked at the local community pool. I’m an aquatics director. Once I got back on crutches, I went back to the island and I started coaching again. I wasn’t able to coach on a pool deck on crutches. It’s super dangerous because it’s wet tile floor and crutches, which is not going to work out well. I had a wheelchair that I was coaching from which people are like, “That must’ve been tough.” I was like, “No, it was awesome.” I was zooming around the pool deck, spinning around, making the little kids laugh. We had a big seminar at this program, teaching swimming lessons going up and down the pool deck on a wheelchair.

It’s not to make light of using the wheelchair for people who need to use it. On a wet pool deck, it was a way for me to still stay engaged with the kids. I wouldn’t have been able to when I was on crutches. I used it as my office chair for a little over a year afterwards because it was comfortable. I used to go bombing around in that thing. One of the older kids would be melted off or not listening. I would go flying up to the full deck, flying up to the edge of the pool and slam on the brakes and get all heated. They would say, “Todd’s the man.”

I feel like you took an opportunity to make it into as positive. You took a situation that could have been depressing.

You don’t have a choice at that point. People would say to me like, “We’re impressed with your attitude,” this and that. It was nice to hear that from people. It was encouraging. At the same point too, it was my reality. If you’re going to feel bad for yourself, there were 2 or 3 days to do that. Once I got to the rehab facility and it was time to start doing work to get better and to get myself to the point where I could live on my own again, take care of myself, move around the house in a safe way, use crutches, go back to work with the kids and athletes that I was working with and do what I enjoyed and loved.

There were goals that I had and you didn’t necessarily have time to feel bad for yourself. It constantly got better. There were small setbacks along the way, but things slowly got better. You kept moving forward. After a while, I don’t think I realized how much pain I was in or how miserable I was because it was better than it was two weeks before. The swelling that I would get in my foot. Especially, once I started using crutches and cane, the swelling that I would get once I started walking again was dramatic. You had to push through it. I had work. I had the kids that I was coaching. If you have a 7 or 8-year-old kid, either in swimming lessons or on some teams who you’re coaching on the pool deck, they don’t necessarily care that you’re in pain. They’re on swimming lessons. They want to have fun.

You can take the word necessarily out of that sentence because kids don’t care.

They’re not wired to care about that stuff.

Do you feel this changed your perspective on fitness at all?

After college, I’d always gone up and down with my weight. The biggest part of that was not eating correctly important nutrition. After this accident, what I realized was one of the biggest things that I could do for myself was to lose weight and to take some pressure off of my foot. Sometimes I refer to my foot or my ankle. One of the biggest lasting effects I have was from that calcaneus fracture and from the joint that sits right above it, a lot of cartilage damage. When you have an injury to your foot, it’s simple logic to things. The more weight I can lose, the better it’s going to be for my foot moving forward.

It’s joint issues.

I set off on a mission and it wasn’t day one of straight the line down in this circumstance. It was a journey. I slowly got ahead of steam and what I ended up starting with is I would go on walks once I got to the point where I could do that without a common swelling. I would make a conscious decision of like, “I’m going to go for a 2-mile walk and at the end of it, this is going to stuck.” I’m going to have a ton of swelling and have to ice afterwards. I’m going to barely be able to walk when I go to bed.

I need to exercise, look at the long-term here and working towards this long-term goal, even if it means that this is going to be miserable for me tonight, tomorrow morning, which a lot of people can relate to in terms of a lot of the workouts that we’re doing on Peloton or whatever in the moment sucks. It helps us reach long-term goals. A lot of people look at working out and fitness. I don’t like to look at the number on the scale or I don’t like to think about weight. At certain points, it was about a number on a scale because it was the physics to me. I needed to get weight off of my foot. When I had my accident, I was 270 pounds. Now, I’m 192 pounds.

If you think what my injury would be like if I still had that 80 pounds that I’m carrying around every day. Another big thing for me is that I got my nutrition in order and I did Weight Watchers for that. Some people would say in a short-term or fad diet or whatever. What it did for me was it taught me how to eat. It taught me that I needed to cut out a lot of the carbs and the sugars that I was eating. It allowed me to develop a routine in my eating and certain healthy foods or healthy options. Even now, if I don’t necessarily track everything in their system, there’s a lot of education that I went through with that process that I still apply to my everyday nutrition plan.

Weight Watchers helps people keep in mind the portion control. That’s something that I struggle with. I’ve never done Weight Watchers, but the idea of like, “It’s made for you, eat this and then you’re done.” There are no seconds to go back and forth.

One thing that I struggled with after my accident, that was one of the hardest mental aspects of it for me. I didn’t feel athletic. I have certain lasting effects of this injury that will be with me forever. If you met me in person now, you may or may not notice any of those. I surely feel them on a daily basis when I wake up. I was 33 years old when this accident happened. It was hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact of, “Am I athletic anymore? Am I broken?” There are certain parts of me that maybe I’m never going to get back. I wasn’t in good shape. I always had it in the back of my mind that I could be if I want.

You’re always saying there’s a difference between choosing not to and being told that this is no longer an option.

One of my favorite things that the Peloton instructors talk about is that, “This is something you get to do. You don’t have to do it now.” Those of us who do exercise. We choose to do it. Nobody’s making us. Most of us appreciate that our bodies can still do that. I get what you’re saying. I would think that if it were me, because I’m a little bit negative, I would have felt very powerless. If somebody took the option away from me and that would make me angry, it wouldn’t feel like it was an option to be active anymore.

A good analogy is what’s going on in the world with the quarantine, shelter in place. Let’s not kid ourselves, most nights, I’m going to come home, sit down and watch TV. Knowing that’s the only option that I have, I get frustrated.

I can remember lying in the emergency room. When I first got into Boston and they were telling me about my heel fracture. I remember looking down at my foot and seeing it ballooned up. I looked over at the doctor and said, “What’s wrong with my foot?” They’re like, “You broke your heel.” The two bones that are broken in my leg hurt so bad, I didn’t even realize that my foot hurt. They explained to me that heel fracture and then they said, “You might have a limp for the rest of your life.” It was weird to me because I’ve broken a handful of bones, 5 or 6 prior to this in my life, collarbone, a couple of times. I remember looking at the guy being like, “What do you mean? A bone breaks and it healed. Just put it back together, like it’s a construction project.”

That was the little tapping. In the back of my mind, something that’s always out there and available to me, I’ve always had this thought about, “It would be cool to run a marathon.” I’ve always had that thought since I was a little kid. Growing up in Massachusetts, I remember sitting on the floor of our living room with my mother watching the Boston Marathon every year and being fascinated by it. It was always something that was on a bucket list when I was 270 pounds. Was I actively pursuing that? No.

It’s like, somebody taking that, it’s a different story.

Have a goal of where you're trying to go, but don't make it something that you can't ever achieve. Click To Tweet

That’s something that I could not do now, but there are other things that I could do. I’m much healthier now than I was when I had the opportunity to run a marathon, but I wasn’t choosing to take that opportunity. I’m healthier in terms of resting heart rate, lower blood pressure and living longer.

Where does the Peloton fit into this journey?

My fiancée and I started dating in January of 2018. It’s after my accident and I like to say, I had stopped limping right before we met. Afterwards, she’s like, “No, you were still limping.” A few months into dating, I’m going all these walks and it’s progressing physically to try to do more. She goes, “I’ve always enjoyed doing spinning. Why don’t you go spin? There was a local studio in Nantucket.” The biggest issue that I have with my foot is side-to-side motion. The joint that I have issue with my foot right above the heel bone is the joint that gives you side-to-side motion in your foot.

With spinning, you don’t need a lot of side-to-side motion. She’s like, “This would be perfect for you.” We went, it was hard. I almost threw up but I loved it. I continued to go to the studio in Nantucket, which was awesome. The two ladies that I took classes, where there were mothers of kids that I coached on the swim team, they are the toughest chicks you’ll ever meet in your life. One of them is Irish, from Ireland. She’s about 4’10”. She could 100% beat me up.

The way that they coach these classes were very similar to how I coach swimming. It wasn’t a spin studio where they didn’t baby you and it wasn’t a ton of tap back and dancing. I was the only guy in the class and everybody else was other mothers from the swim team, to be honest with you. They were tough and it was athletic. It was a workout. It was like we were training for something and I loved it. I started feeling athletic again. That was the turning point. It’s one thing to go on a 2 or 3-miles walk. To get on a piece of equipment and feel like I was training was awesome for me.

They also had this class there called Ride and Rent. We would do 45 minutes on the second floor of the building on the spin bike, go downstairs and we would do 30 minutes. It would be half of a hit, like CrossFit type of class and it was rough. The bunch of AMRAPs, we’d be doing fall slams, rowing, battle ropes, but it was awesome. I struggled with it in the beginning and there were certain exercises I had to modify, but I felt how I felt in college. I was being athletic and I don’t know what I was training for. I wasn’t training for anything, but I was training for something.

That was great and then we moved. We couldn’t take the boat to go back to class. We live in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There are two spin studios here. The first one I went to, it was like, I walk in and Kelly, my fiancée got me. There’s a $30 sale where you get three classes, like a third pack. It’s going to be great. The second day I moved up here, we got it. I went and it was like all college girls. The instructor was like whipping her ponytail around. I felt dirty when I left. They had a blast. It was like those classes where they do like pole dancing for fitness, that’s what it felt like.

I came home and I was like, “Kelly, I don’t think I cheated on you.” I didn’t go back. There was this other studio which was nice. That’s where all the moms go. I was like, “I got along with moms.” I was pretty into that. First of all, both places wouldn’t let me use my watch to get to look at my heart rate. It’s like, “What are we doing here?” There was this one lady who was their instructor and she was walking around the room. First of all, I hate that. I’m like, “Can you get on the bike and ride? I’m riding, you ride.” She walks over to me and she’d already picked on me about looking on my watch. My hands are on the handlebars in whenever those positions are, third. She puts her hand on top of mine and she goes, “I’m transferring my energy to you.” At that very moment, I was like, “I’m out. What is this? Is this Reiki?” No offense to Reiki, but I’m not into that.

Even if you were, that’s not what you went there for. That wasn’t your purpose for being there.

It’s like, “Get on the bike.” Kelly starts going, “We need a Peloton.” I would give her a hard time. I have a background in banking before I was coaching. We split the financial decisions and stuff.

When you run the numbers, it is a responsible financial decision.

I will run the numbers and then we will both analyze them. My fiancée is a Type 1 diabetic and we had to go to the hospital. She was fine. It wasn’t a big deal. It happens every once in a while. We went to do a copay and they said, “If you pay it now, there’s a discount.” She looks at me and she goes, “I saved this $40.” I was like, “No.”

Using that logic, maybe I should get sick now and get a group rate.

She keeps saying, “We need a Peloton.” I’m like, “We need air and water.” Now, I agree with her, we do need a Peloton. If our Peloton burned down, we need a new one. She’s saying this for months and then quarantine started to kick in and I was like, “You’re right we need it.” My brother got one, and then I was like, “We’re in.” We got ours in ten days. Ours got delivered on Tax Day. If we had ordered it a week later, we would have been 4 or 5 weeks. Kelly did call them 7 times in 4 days. Their recording says, “Don’t call us,” and she’s like, “I’m going to call them again.” We got the Peloton this April 2020. I’ve missed five days since then.

You’re getting ready to take on a big Peloton challenge.

I’ve been doing the Power Zone Challenges. I’m about finished with my second one. What I was looking for is, “I want something after the challenge to look forward to. Something that’s going to scare me.” I mentioned before, “I would have loved to run a marathon.” It’s like, you can’t roll out of bed and do it. I can’t run a marathon. It’s not in the card. I have seen people post about the Haleakala Climb, the five-hour climb that Christine put together. I’m like, “I want to do that. It’s five hours. I’ve never done anything physically like that for more than two hours, but I’ll figure it out, train for it and I’ll do it. If I’m going to do this, why don’t I do it for charity?” People run 5Ks or 10Ks, people around here in Massachusetts, run the Boston Marathon, the vast majority of people running the Boston Marathon are doing it for charity. I spoke with a family friend of ours, who I’ve been getting very close to, my buddy, Michael. He has Down Syndrome. He’s my golfing partner as well as a couple of other activities, mini golf and some other stuff.

I spoke to his mom and said, “What organization is Michael part of? I’m going to do this ride. I want to do it for charity. I’d love to support Michael and the organization that he’s a part of.” She gave me two organizations he works with. One of them is called Friends in Action. It’s an organization here in New Hampshire that works with people with a developmental disability and provides mostly social opportunities for them, but also some educational opportunities. What their goal is to help people with developmental disability connect with each other. They started in 2000 through the portion of school system, but it’s since expanded outside of the school system to cover the Seacoast Area in New Hampshire, which is the part of New Hampshire that touches the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s what they identified and this is a sentence from the website, which was heartbreaking to me, is that people with disabilities back in 2000, when it started, their parents identified that they feel like they didn’t have enough friends. They were sometimes included in activities by some of their neighbors or their family friends, but then as they got older, especially in middle school and high school, and a lot of the friends that you had in middle school and high school, maybe you’re on the same sports teams or maybe it’s through a different club that you’re in, but people with disabilities, they’re less and less involved in those activities as they get older.

They felt socially isolated and this resonated with me because of what we’re going through with quarantine. Many of us feel socially isolated. If you go on social media and people were freaking out about how they weren’t able to have a drink with their friend at the local hangout. When I’ve read about this on their website, I was like, “That is the charity I want to support.” I picked that charity and I met with their executive director and learned about some of the programs that they offer. I’m going to be doing the five-hour Haleakala Climb on August 8, 2020. There’s a small team of us who are going to be doing it. We found each other through Facebook organically. We’ve been receiving some coaching. One of the members of the group was working with one of the coaches that works with like Matt Wilpers through his website. He offered to set up a program for us. When I heard that, I was like, “That’s a good idea because I have no idea what I’m doing.”

His name is Greg. What I understand when Matt first started getting into cycling, Greg was Matt’s coach. Greg knows what he’s doing and he set up a training program for us, which is we’re leading up until the climb. We had a Zoom call, 7 or 8 of us got on and we’re supporting each other. I did a 2-hour and 45-minute ride that he put together on just ride, which was kind of wild staring on a black screen. I have a TV set up and they’ve been showing reruns of the Tour de France. I put on the Tour de France and I’m in my zone two and half the walk that they’re pedaling out, I’m probably giving myself too much credit.

They’re ridiculous fast and easily doing 300 to 400.

Whenever I see that I’m like, “Who pedals downhill? What’s wrong with you people?” How can people help you with your fundraiser?

How can the community get involved?

If you go on GoFundMe and you search for Friends In Action or Todd Bohannon it will come up. If people are able to donate even the smallest of donations would go a long way. I know the Peloton community is a close-knit community. This is such a great cause and I’m excited to not only be able to support this charity but also be able to support my friend, Michael, who has made a big impact in my life during the stressful time and all this COVID-19 madness. I’m about at 50% of my goal and I’m always willing to raise the goal. I’d be super excited.

I will post it out on The Clip Out Facebook page. If you want send that to me, I’ll post it there in the group.

We can include it in the weekly newsletter that people can sign up for at theclipout.com.

We talked a lot about your background, let me do some fast questions for you. We’ll do a rapid fire. Who’s your favorite Peloton instructor?

I love Olivia. Olivia does not get enough credit.

TCO 167 | Gaining Back Your Footing

 

Here’s my thing with Olivia. She’s a fantastic instructor and incredibly tough. On the bike, she changes cadences and stuff a lot. It feels like, I can’t get in the zone. I can’t get in a groove because it’s like, I constantly am like shifting gears.

Here’s what I like about Olivia. This will be a response to what you said. First of all, she doesn’t sit there and yell at me the whole time. I understand there are different instructors. I don’t think there’s a single bad instructor in Peloton 100%. There are different flavors to everybody. The ones that don’t vibe with me are the people who like yell at me through the screen. I’m like, “I got it. I’m here. I work pretty hard.” Olivia tells you what to do and is like, “I’m doing it. You’re doing it. This is what I expect.” That’s the way I coach. The other thing I love about Olivia is I don’t think there’s any other instructor other than Robin, who does as much as she does. She does the tread, the bikes, the floor, her core classes will murder you.

She’s tougher than Robin on the treadmill. As far as runs go, Olivia is tougher.

Her nickname is Glitter Depth Barry. She posted in Instagram and I commented on it like an idiot. I was like, “The Glitter Death Barry is back,” because it was their first ride back, thinking she would never see it. She replies, “Thanks. Be on the leaderboard.” I was like, “What?” That was like, “I hope that you know I meant that with the utmost respect.” If you look at her Instagram, she does the other thing alone. In the first 100 comments, she replied. I wanted to get on a podcast to tell Olivia and say, “I lost some shit.” I will go on Facebook groups and be like, “I know you all are giving Olivia a hard time, back up.” There are people on certain Facebook groups who are grown men with FTPs of 350 watts who are terrified of her.

She is tough. I have not taken one of her Power Zone classes though. Power Zone is about having an effort for a certain amount of time. I don’t know if that might translate better for me because I’m talking about a general class. It was all over the place. I remember there was a Jenn Sherman class that I took. It was one of the most beloved Jenn Sherman rides that there is, it’s the TV show ride. This is a super unpopular opinion. I will get comments for saying this, but I didn’t like that ride very much. I liked what was happening, but it kept changing every 30 to 90 seconds. It took me out of my headspace because it was constantly changing versus like a longer song.

Not everybody’s for everybody.

What is your leaderboard name?

My leaderboard name is ASAP Todd.

Why ASAP?

I like ASAP Ferg, which is funny because in a previous episode of yours, you guys both said like, “Tunde is doing a collaboration with ASAP Ferg,” and you were both like, “We have no idea who that is.” He’s a rapper.

I’m a rock guy. I like classic rock and alternative rock.

I didn’t know who Lizzo was either. Now, I love Lizzo. I can tell you’ve been listening, he’s like on it.

The very first ride that I did when we got the bike, was that ASAP Ferg Tunde ride.

That’s going to stay with you forever.

I don’t want to change my leaderboard name to anything else because I feel like it’s like a homage to my first ride.

That is a great reason to have a leaderboard name. Last question, three pieces of advice for newbies.

Invest in other people. If you are joining on a Facebook group thinking, “What am I getting out of this?” Maybe you’re there for the wrong reason. Be positive. Everybody’s coming into it from different circumstances. If you go on different groups and talk about how hard something is, it’s not going to help anybody. A lot of people get turned off, especially some of the groups where there are certain challenges or certain prescribed workouts that people are doing collectively. People will go on in the morning and say, “I didn’t do the workout because other people said it was hard,” which bothers me sometimes. The last one is push yourself and have a long-term goal or intermediate goals.

Have a goal of where you’re trying to go. Maybe it’s, “I want to get to a certain output,” but that doesn’t have to be in my class that you’re doing this afternoon. It could be by Christmas or in the next three months, I want to try to get my PR to X, Y, and Z or during Power Zone and get my FTP to X, Y, and Z. Have something that you can chip away at and work toward like going to happen overnight. Don’t make it something that you can’t ever achieve, but have something that you can work towards that when you get there, it’s going to be difficult. It’s going to have something that’s taken a lot of work, but that it feels good that you accomplished.

What things have you put in place to prevent sleepwalking like that again and injuring yourself? Are there things you can do to make it safer for yourself?

The number one thing that I have done is that I got engaged to my fiancée, I have someone else in the bed with me and if I start to get up and move around, she wakes me up.

What if she’s a sound sleeper? Did you pick your fiancée based on that?

People came up with the craziest suggestions. One person that’s like, “You could attach a surfboard leash to you and also to the bed.” I was like, “That’s going to hurt me worse than what happened.”

It’s good to have a second purpose for a pair of handcuffs in the bedroom.

I’m going to wake up entangled. Some people suggested you could get a bed alarm. If you get out of bed, it takes the pressure off. It isn’t the worst idea, but if I get out of bed normally and the bed alarm goes off and it wakes up Kelly. It’s going to be a week and then nothing’s going to be on the front lawn.

I’m telling you now the older you get, the more you’re going to get out of bed to pee.

Sleepwalking is an interesting thing because after this happened, I tried to do a lot of research into what I can do to prevent it or treatments or whatever. There isn’t a lot. They don’t know much about it at all. Somebody said, “We can go do a sleep study and you can hope that something happens while you’re there and you’re hooked up to all this stuff.” There are these medications they’ve been shown. I wasn’t on any of the medications that have been part of lawsuits in the past.

I’m glad you have someone there to keep an eye on you.

I have to say from coming from a healthcare background, the bed alarm things, those are getting better. They have vibrating ones and different things like that. You might want to look into different fitness trackers. Maybe there are different ways that it could vibrate when it wakes you up or something like that, something like if you’re moving too much, but you’re not truly awake. Do you ever use a sleep tracker? Does it keep tracking that you’re asleep even when you’re up and walking?

I started using one. It’s on my Apple watch. Sorry I’m not an Android person. I’m an Apple person.

One of the things I love about the WHOOP is that it’s accurate on sleep tracking. It’s the most accurate I’ve ever used of anything, way better than Garmin or Fitbit, which Fitbit was better than Garmin quite honestly. This thing pinpoints the sleep. I’m curious what that does for sleepwalking. I’m going to contact WHOOP and see if they have any data on sleepwalking.

From what I hear from WHOOP, it’s far and away better than other tracking devices in a lot of areas. I have heard that they’ve even alerted people that they might have COVID.

It’s true because it tracks your respiratory rate. Your respiratory rate is almost always the same. When it goes up and it goes up severely, that’s some kind of factor. They said that a lot of other illnesses don’t cause your respiratory rate to go up. The flu doesn’t necessarily make your respiratory rate go up the way COVID does. It’s been fascinating. It’s a good company.

Where can people find you on social media?

I am Todd N. Bohannon on Facebook. My Instagram is @ToddB121.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to join us. We appreciate it.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Goodluck with the fundraiser regardless of what happens. I’ll try to stay in contact so I know.

That brings this one to a close. What to pray tell do you have in store for people next week?

Another special treat. We have so many great interviews with people. We are talking to Vivian Feeney. She is 85 years young riding that Peloton. We’re going to hear all about her journey to Peloton and how many rides she’s done and just all about her.

She didn’t start riding until she was 85?

She started riding when the pandemic hit.

Until next week, where can people find you?

People can find me at Facebook.com/CrystalDOKeefe. They can find me on Instagram, Twitter, on the Bike and of course the Tread, @ClipOutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter, @RogerQBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/TomOKeefe. You can find the show online at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. Wherever you get your podcast from, please subscribe. It’s one of the easiest things that you should do to help the show out and you’ll never miss an episode. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

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