Mike Ricci (00:01.422)
Hi, Coach Mike Ricci here with the D3 Podcast, Trust the Process with Infinite Nutrition owner, Michael Follin coming to us from Cincinnati, Ohio. How you doing, Michael? Awesome.

Michael (00:10.841)
Do it awesome. The triathlon, the triathlon Mecca of the world, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Mike Ricci (00:15.886)
That's right. That's right. Yeah. I've known Michael since forever. Actually, when he started Infinite and that was back in 2003, 2004, probably really got the real first full year for them. They're all over the world. He can tell us how many countries they're in and maybe what countries they aren't in. It's probably easier because they're everywhere. Great product, tons of athletes. They've got a great team on that side. My best thing about Infinite is every time I email somebody, I get an email back in like 30 seconds, which is, you know, unbelievable customer service.

Michael, you're a 10 time Ironman finisher, is that right? Yeah, and how many cone is, two? Two cone is right.

Michael (00:50.104)
Yes, I did 10 of those bad boys. Two, yeah, 97 and, 97 in 2004.

Mike Ricci (00:57.518)
Right, and probably you can tell us the winds were, you know, hellacious and your mouth was dry and you were trying to...

Michael (01:04.472)
It was like 75 degrees and cool, no wind, it was great. It was a very pleasurable day. Now the 97 was the hell regal year and it was headwind, headwind both ways. Just awful. And then that was Heather, I think, won that year. And then yeah, 2004, it was just typical, hot, you know, no clouds, no clouds. They all stay up on the mountain. It was just like, great, awesome. It was awesome. I loved it.

Mike Ricci (01:12.718)
Yes.

Mike Ricci (01:20.91)
That was Heather Yeo.

Mike Ricci (01:30.062)
That's awesome. That's awesome. And then you hung it up after that, huh?

That's fantastic. So let's go back a little bit. I know, I mean, I think we met like on a message board, like, you know, not 100 years ago, but like probably 20 or plus, and you are looking, what's that?

Michael (01:36.92)
Say that again?

Michael (01:46.008)
Was that Gordon? Gordon's board? Was that Gordon's board?

Mike Ricci (01:50.51)
No, I think it was one of those original chat boards before Gordo. There was those chat boards you can get on. I forget the name of them, but they were out there and you could do triathlon or whatever, right?

Michael (01:57.592)
Yep.

Yeah. But Iron Man had a bunch of those too, that they had Iron Man Lake Blasted for Canada forums that were back in the olden days.

Mike Ricci (02:05.55)
Yep.

Mike Ricci (02:09.822)
Right. And you are kind of searching for a way to figure out all this nutrition instead of having like, you know, at the time I had like some concoction that had like seven different things in it, plus gels, plus salt pills, plus, you know, you're, you're packed down like a guy, a mule going up Everest, right? With all these different things, trying to finish an Ironman. And you had the idea of, you know, what if I can get rid of the pills? What if I can have something with the sodium and tell me about the process of how you kind of figured that all out. Cause I mean, it's pretty amazing that.

I think you were the first guy to come to market with all this stuff in one bottle to say, here's what you need. I mean, you don't need to have 20 things, but you can put it in a bottle and here you go, right?

Michael (02:46.808)
Yeah, I mean, we, we kind of like to think of ourselves as the company for idiots for the most part, which is that anytime you're out there doing something, be it something long, gravel, tri, mountain bike, ultras, whatever, it's, it's very difficult to do something like that while trying to do a science experiment. And that's essentially what you're doing by mixing all these different things. You don't really know what the density of what's going on in your gut. Sometimes it works.

Other times you run into real problems because you put too much in there. Then your body has to go into digestive mode. It diverts blood down there. It actually is pulling water out of your system to dilute it in order to get things to pass. You get super bloaty, feel like pregnant. That's the situation that you never really want to be in. So my original partner and myself, we actually, he had a science background. I sort of had the endurance background and came up with a platform, which is pretty intact to this day. We haven't really changed it.

it that much, but it just gives the athlete ability to come in and custom make something that's going to be made for them that's going to taste exactly how they want and flavor is a huge component. If it doesn't taste good seven hours into your day, you're not going to drink it. You just won't. And so you have to have it. Go ahead.

Mike Ricci (03:58.35)
Right, right. And for the people that are unfamiliar with Infinite, my favorite thing when I go to order a product is I can use those little sliders to say I want the flavor to be a little stronger, a little less, more salt, how much protein I want in it. I mean, that's amazing to me. Was that from the beginning that you were able to do that? Wow.

Michael (04:19.8)
Yeah, that was the whole concept that, you know, the old stereo slider bars back when we grew up, volume, remember those things. That was sort of the ability to give on -demand manufacturing to athletes where they can come up with their own nutrition solutions.

And then have that truly work and we've been doing it for 20 years. So it's not like, well, can that really work? Yeah, we've been doing it for 24 hour racing. We had guys right. I had a guy go 49 hours on straight infinite. Now I think that's crazy and insane, but they do it. And so it's just a question of getting the right amount of calories.

the right amount of salt, making it taste the way you want. And then the nutrition side of everything that we do gets way simpler. And so that was the original concept. I...

We had the concept and then I was in Hawaii and met with Joe Friel and Joe, I kind of laid it out with Joe. I said, Joe, this is what I'm thinking of doing. And Joe gave me the feedback of it's a great idea and I can't believe anybody hasn't done it yet. So you get Joe saying that, you know, I'm walking like three feet off the ground, leaving that meeting.

Mike Ricci (05:27.95)
Yeah.

Michael (05:28.856)
And then Mark Allen kind of had the same thing and Mark and Joe were two earlier adapters and big advocates. And then, you know, the whole ultra ultra fit group then, and it all Karen Buxton, all those people, it just sort of went like that. And then, yeah, it's, it's, it's been a trip. I mean, it's been for 20 years to be able to, you know, to live in our world and work with athletes and help people do things that they really want to achieve is it's pretty lucky. It's, it's very cool.

Mike Ricci (05:58.318)
Yeah, totally. Do you, so not without giving away the farm, when you have somebody that says, okay, I want, you know, 8 % flavor versus someone who wants, you know, 50 % flavor. How do you mix that product like that? I know you hand mix a lot of things and is this, like, how do you make it so you know, is it a, are you using like quarter cup or tablespoons and like, how are you mixing it all so it all works?

Michael (06:20.92)
Actually, technically, no, we have one scale weight systems that measure everything. So everything is measured. The hardest part for us is believe it or not that scoop. Cause we do weight, weight's not a problem, right? We can nail weights that to the quarter gram, easy, no problem. Boom, boom, boom. But volumes changes on, on scoop sizes. So when you're doing a custom product, sometimes that can be a little bit cumbersome, but that's just, it's a handmade product. I mean, it's, it's, it's.

Mike Ricci (06:24.878)
Get away.

Michael (06:51.416)
It's not some big factory out there. We do this and we do really, the customer service side has always been important to us is that if we want, we're a service company. We're not really a manufacturer, I guess, is that we're much more, probably like and similar to what your coaching business is than anything.

Mike Ricci (07:13.87)
Yep, yep. Cool. So let's talk about the evolution. So when we started back in let's say 2000, 2005, something like that, and we started to nail in nutrition more, we were talking like 50 to 60 to 80 grams per hour of a carbohydrate, right? Times four grams, so you're talking 200 to 320 calories, depending on your size and what your stomach can handle and all that. Now, here we are in 2024.

Michael (07:31.544)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Mike Ricci (07:43.054)
talking about 120 grams, right? So talk to me a little bit about the evolution and maybe the science behind that and what we've seen in the studies that show, you know, as power going up or people, you know, pace is better and all that.

Michael (07:45.336)
Yeah.

Michael (07:55.776)
Yeah, there's two things that have really changed in the last 10 years. One is the carbs and the other one is the wearables, the wearable technology. That's another one that's just a huge one.

On the carb side, when we started the Yunderup studies, which was the go -to study on the oxidization of carbohydrate, is that you could max out, it all had to do with blending carbohydrates. The more types of carbs that you blend together, the higher the absorption rate as far as what your body's actually able to increase, because you have certain receptors that are pulling out certain types of carbs. So by blending them, you're engaging all of those receptors to absorb all of the calories.

Mike Ricci (08:33.102)
All right, so if we need to stop, you're right there.

Michael (08:38.776)
Hmm.

Mike Ricci (08:38.99)
So we're talking like sucrose, fructose, and what else?

Michael (08:43.512)
Sucrose, glucose are the primary two. Multidactyline is broken down into glucose. So sucrose and glucose are the two mains. Those are absorbed through your gut. What's happened is, and those numbers were the original studies by Yasker, were about 1 .25 grams per kilo of body weight. That was sort of max absorption using multiple carbohydrates through your gut.

What's happened, and this really started down in Australia about five years ago, Yasker again is the guy, he is amazing, but he's down there and they're combining fructose with glucose and sucrose. Fructose is a different method of absorption. So fructose is actually pushing through your liver as opposed to getting absorbed through your gastric, through your stomach and your upper intestines. So.

Mike Ricci (09:16.91)
Mm -hmm.

Michael (09:35.928)
It's a different pathway. So by doing that, it's allowing your body to absorb a lot more calories. There are people that are comfortably absorbing 120 calories an hour. That's like a half a cup of sugar. It is a big, big number. But the math, and I've been really hesitant on this thing, the other thing is it's sweet. So from a flavor perspective, you gotta be aware of that fact.

Mike Ricci (09:52.078)
120 grams.

Michael (10:04.92)
But they're showing huge power gains, like 10, 12%. And people are absorbing it, so you can't ignore that. When you're getting those kind of power numbers coming out of people and their fatigue times are longer and their time to exhaustion is longer, you can't ignore it. So.

The, the, now the evolution has gone from 60 80. Now we're up with a 90 to 120, using a combination of glucose, sucrose, multidextrin and fructose. And so that's been the evolution and it's been wild to watch. I mean, you know, the art, art business member, G push. I mean, there's always, there's, there's fads, right? Low carb. I mean, we, you and I fought that one for 10 years. I was like, look, people stop.

Mike Ricci (10:50.734)
Right.

Michael (10:53.272)
You need carbs. You can't race on no sugar. Anyway, so we fought that. That's gone away. Thank goodness. Now we've gone completely the other direction, which is like super carb time. Now I don't think this one's a fad. I don't. I actually think this one's here to stay. I do worry a little bit about what that's going to do to your liver pushing that much sugar through it over a period of years. I do worry about that, but...

Mike Ricci (11:19.726)
That's a good point. Yeah.

Michael (11:22.2)
I mean, that's how they make pate with goose, I'm just saying. So it's fatty liver. And so I do worry a little bit about that. But from a performance standpoint, it works. But as you know, as a coach, you got to test on this. It works for some people. It does work for everybody. And the only way to know that is to go out there and really kick the tires hard and see if it works for you.

Mike Ricci (11:35.84)
lot of testing.

Mike Ricci (11:43.982)
Right. So interestingly, back in 2008, I had an athlete do Ironman Coeur d 'Alene. This guy's 185 pounds, going for a Kona slot. And we had a nutrition plan and he gets off the bike. He biked 520 something and ran 312. 185 pound guys running 312. I mean, it's pretty solid. I think he went 920 or 925 or something like that overall. And I said, man, you had a great race. What did you do? He said, I ate everything in sight on the bike.

Michael (12:03.032)
Thank you.

Mike Ricci (12:11.566)
I think I took in 500 calories an hour. I'm like, well, that's impossible. Your stomach would have imploded. He's like, no, I just felt amazing on the run. All I took in was some water and some Coke here and there. I felt fully charged. And I really thought he was just a one -off, right? Like he's just a freak of nature that can just take in all these calories. But maybe that was a sign that I should have said, man, maybe this is something that's possible for more people than just one person, right? So we've seen it here and there, like in real life, we've just never recognized that, wow, this could be something that's actually.

would work, right? And as you said, some of the studies are saying, look, there's higher power numbers, longer time till exhaustion. I mean, all these things point to this is what we should be doing, right? So it's amazing how things evolve. It really is. And I think that, you know, I used to know this guy that worked in a science lab and he said, you know, in terms of science, in terms of science and nutrition, we know like less than 1 % at this point. Like we just don't, every person is an experiment of one.

You know, there's no way we can just put everybody in a box and say this works for everybody. But when you get something like this and you get some data with some hard numbers, now you're saying, okay, so maybe this will work for 75 or 80 % of the population, right? So, and they gotta try it. I mean, they gotta try it.

Michael (13:23.05)
Yep.

Yeah. And another kind of a weird one was that back in the day, day, I worked with Bjorn Anderson, you know, and Bjorn was a 700 watt guy. He really could push bike. He pushed.

Mike Ricci (13:31.566)
Mm -hmm.

Mike Ricci (13:38.254)
And he would push 55 to 65 RPMs on the bike. I mean, it was crazy.

Michael (13:42.488)
Yeah, but he was 700 carats an hour and I kept trying to talk him out of it. Like, Bjorn, you can't do that. And he goes, no, I want 700 calories an hour. And I'm like, all right, dude. And he did it. And so maybe I should have been ahead of the curve too, because yeah, there. So now it's, it's sort of, it's really evolved and it's really exciting. So obviously we had infinite.

Mike Ricci (13:56.718)
No.

Michael (14:05.912)
do the custom thing where you can do a 90 or 120 gram mix, but you can adjust the salt levels, you can adjust the flavor levels and do all that to try to get it to the point where it tastes good. And no other company does that. So it's, I mean, the 120 is a lot. You just, you gotta try it, see if it works for you.

Mike Ricci (14:25.422)
And do you recommend like just dialing down the flavor on that because it's going to be a little strong with all that sugar?

Michael (14:31.64)
No, not really, because it's going to be sweet. It's mainly bump the salt up. If you can salt it, salty is good. And the thing that's interesting is from a just sort of flavor perspective, we as endurance athletes, what we are craving in the run is pretzels, it's potato chips, it's pepperoni pizza, it's salty stuff. You're not craving cookies and cupcakes. It's candy. What you're looking for is salt. And what drives people...

Mike Ricci (14:36.206)
Bump this note up, okay.

Michael (14:59.416)
to really drink a lot is salt. So having a salt background while sounds a little bit counterintuitive when it comes to endurance, when that liquid gets warm, you can drink the chicken soup, no problem. So warm, salty liquid is still super drinkable and it just goes down. So I think people consume a lot more of it because it's got that salty deliciousness you're looking for, especially on hot long days.

Mike Ricci (15:25.55)
That makes sense. That makes sense. So there's a new product in the market. We don't have to talk names or anything, but they're going away from the normal stuff and kind of putting Stevia in their product. Like, what's your thought on that? I mean, I've seen so much backlash on this and, you know, for, I mean, athletes to be using that over 10, 12, 14 hour race, it just, to me, it seems absurd.

Michael (15:48.024)
I just don't understand why. It makes, I mean, okay, fine, you need sweetness, but why wouldn't you put in something that, number one's natural, and I know it's natural, but not really, and that's actually gonna be additive. You want calories, right? I just, for the life of me, I do not, I just don't understand it, and I don't understand the high flavor, I mean.

It's a super nichey market to go after high flavor, but nobody wants high flavor when it's hot. Nobody wants high flavor after you've been going for three or four hours. I mean, regular Gatorade, you got to cut it with water. This is stronger. I'm just missing it. And plus it's just not enough calories.

Mike Ricci (16:27.662)
Is it a cheaper filler? Is that the idea?

Michael (16:33.08)
No, I don't flavor. If I had to take a wild -ass guess, they work with a flavor scientist that's not an athlete. That's my guess.

Mike Ricci (16:42.542)
Got it. All right. Well, let's fast forward a little bit. So here we are. You guys have been doing some, I've sent my athletes to you for at least 10 years now to say, hey, call up Infinite. They'll set up your sliders for you. They'll talk you through the whole thing. If you don't like it, you can send it back within a couple of weeks. They'll redo it for you. No money lost on you. And that's great. But now you guys have come, I will say, to see the light, Michael, to get paid.

this great service. And now you've brought in the way to measure the salt loss, the fluid loss and add all this together, which is your new service. Let's let's talk about that a little bit because I'm stoked. I'm completely stoked for this.

Michael (17:25.88)
Thank you. Yeah, it's really exciting. So we've been doing this forever. We've worked with a lot of race car drivers, Indy, MassCar, because we're close to Indianapolis. We've got a great relationship with a company called PitFit up there. I've got to know Kanan and all just really cool stuff. But we've been doing sodium sweat rate testing and coordination with them for years. And so we're like, look, we can do and set up formulas for free, which we do still to this day. That's not a problem. But people...

with the innovations and wearable technology, you know, you have these patches now that you can monitor sweat rate, gets really solid sodium numbers. We can then help people with their actual race, you know, for the nutrition side, for their training and the racing, get them all set up on the custom side, but that's all going to be based off of data. We haven't had that, you know, it used to be, do you sweat a lot? Do you cramp a lot? That's sort of where you get to your salt number. Now I can get a salt number.

And I can do it easily and they can send us the files and then we can literally create mixes based off of the data.

So, you know, it used to be kind of, well, we'll do, you know, move this here and then we test it out. Now it's like, all right, we can, we can get really good. as far as that there's the next patch is the one that we, we feel like is the best in class out there. seems to be the one that works the best interface and certainly the data being able to get that. So what we're doing is working with coaches and individual athletes where we'll help them. They'll get all their data with supplying with sample workouts where we're going to get.

get the best data from, then interpret that data, provide a nutrition roadmap back to them.

Michael (19:04.92)
That's going to give them all of their numbers. There's sweat, rate, sodium, potassium, and then what are the steps that you need based off of your information to how do you fix your issues or this is the plan that you need. And then we'll actually do custom mixes off of that. And then if depending on what package you do, there's either one meeting or two and in two meetings, I mean, you'll be set for the summer. I mean, boom. Then we provide that roadmap back to the coaches too. So they then can take the data, look at it, and then help their athlete with their

training based off of the numbers that they're saying. So it's a really good situation. I think we can help the coaches as far as getting really good data back to them for their athletes. We can get their athletes set up based off the data on custom formulas made specifically for them and they're going to race better. They're going to definitely race better. So I get a happy coach. I got a happy athlete and that's sort of the system. So we've...

It's just adding in to what Infinite already does. And I think we can provide really good value for people for not a lot of money where they're really going to be dialed in for the summer.

Mike Ricci (20:11.662)
That's awesome. So let's just take a step back. So tell me how often should I test? Should I test in the spring, the summer, or the fall? Should I just test once? Because I mean, obviously, I live here where it's dry. So we have 20 % humidity, not super humid. But it can get hot, right? Where you are, it's humid and hot, right? You get the 90 plus humidity days. And it might only be 80 degrees, but you're soaking wet. So if I live in, let's just say I live in the Midwest.

Do I want to test a couple times a year? Do these things change much? Or do I just want to do it once it gets hot, early July, and then I'm set for the season?

Michael (20:48.536)
Yeah, I would do it. You definitely want to test. I know that there's other companies out there that say your sodium numbers are stagnant. That's not true. That's not. If you get your sodium tested once, that doesn't mean that's what you excrete all the time. And that's the problem with some of these salt -based solutions out there is that salt's variable. If you go have sushi and you drink a bunch of soy sauce, your salt numbers are going to be through the roof the next day. So it's very variable.

So I think that, hang on a second, what were we talking about? I got lost. You're gonna have to edit that one, Michael, sorry.

Mike Ricci (21:25.422)
That's OK. Just how often should you test her in the air?

Michael (21:29.304)
Right, thank you. So salt is very variable.

We typically are giving our athletes an indoor workout and outdoor workout and recommending testing throughout the year. Cause salt numbers change, your sweat rate changes, your sweat rate changes as you become fitter. Your everything kind of changes. The more fit you become, your body just sort of changes and it's important to kind of know what's going on. So, testing ought to be done. I think early season to get a good handle, but just on a continuing basis with the next patch, you get four patches with the actual.

mixed unit and then you can get four refills. That's eight tests over a 90, 120 day period of time. I think that's enough to get a really solid handle on what you're doing. But it's funny, I mean, I know you know this, but I talk in front of groups and I'll be talking in front of 100 people and I'll ask, how many people know their sweat rate? And I'll get like five hands or how many people know what your salt number is? They just don't know. And so it's like driving a car without.

have a gas gauge. It just doesn't, it's not good. You can do better.

Mike Ricci (22:35.342)
I agree. I agree. So do you, what is, if you can tell us, what is the typical test you have people do? Is it an hour run at zone two? Is it an hour bike? Or what do you do to see what the sweat loss is and how much?

Michael (22:48.568)
Yeah, Colin, right. Colin is the guy that's, he's my registered dietitian, sports nutritionist. He's, he's a phenomenal athlete, race pro, Olympics. He's, he's great. So, it's going to be just pretty much exactly what you said. A lot of them are going to be centered around a one hour, effort. And one of the reasons why you do it that way is that we can do.

some side -by -side testing with our athletes on the 100 gram or 120 gram too to see if we get any changes on a one hour effort between on a couple of things. Caffeine is the one that's highly variable to athletes. Some people affect, caffeine affects them very positively. They get.

the same sort of results in terms of power and VO2 max and increases with caffeine. But if you don't process caffeine well, it's a negative effect on some people. So everybody thinks, I got to take caffeine. Well, no, is that you really need to test that to find out whether you're somebody that processes caffeine well. That's all genetic. It's based off your DNA. So that's a...

one hour time trial with caffeine without one with high carb mix one without and that way we're gauging in on what's really working for them at for them in particular. So yeah, and then I think one other one would just be this. I'm sure Collins got a longer workout in there too. If you're an endurance athlete, we want you to go do something for three, four hours and give us the numbers on that too. Yeah.

Mike Ricci (24:21.486)
It makes sense. I'm glad you brought up the caffeine. You know, there's always been talk of how much caffeine per hour. Like you said, it depends on how your body modulates it and all that. But there was a woman a few years ago, I think she was top five at Kona. She was taking in 100 milligrams an hour of caffeine. I mean, that's a thousand milligrams over a day, which seems like a heart attack waiting to happen to me. But apparently she used it all up. She had a great race, you know, top five. Is there an average that you see for people that are

that do tolerate it well? You gotta think about if you drink a morning coffee, that's your starting point, right? And then you gotta add on to that. But are we talking 50 grams, 50 milligrams an hour, 25 milligrams an hour?

Michael (25:03.224)
It's really interesting, Mike. They have, if you have had a sports related DNA test done, that will show up on, on the test. So any of these companies, AxGen is one, and there's some other ones that we'll eventually start tying into because you get some really interesting markers that come out of DNA. Caffeine sensitivity is one. Whether you should have a vegan protein based diet.

is another one that's very susceptible to concussions is another one susceptibility to soft tissue knee injuries. There's a lot of really interesting data that you can pull off of those genetic tests, caffeine being one of them. So that would be the first place I'd look. And then the second would be just exactly that doing a high by a hundred milligrams is the number I'd probably start with.

but do a one hour time trial with and one hour time trial without and see what happens.

Mike Ricci (26:03.278)
Nice, I like it. Okay, so let's say I'm a beginner triathlete. I call you up, Michael. We're gonna talk about nutrition. I'm doing my first Ironman. I'm doing my first 70 .3. What's your advice? Where do we start? And how do I make sure I get to the start line with like, you know, 90 to 95 % chance of success that my nutrition is gonna work.

Michael (26:22.712)
Yeah, really easy. Just go to the, we've launched this coaching service. The one I would recommend would be the platinum, which is going to give you two coaching sessions. We'll help you get set up. You get the next patch included with a set of refills. So you get eight workouts. There's all just very easy to upload into our system. Then we set up a meeting. We'll go through all of your data with you. So you'll know exactly what you're doing with. And at that point.

We'll create customs mixes based off of that data. And then on that second and final one, we'll confirm that all the mixes are working great, that we don't have to make any adjustments. We go over all your race day planning, all of your training planning, and what you need to do and how to execute with infinite. Again, we're simple, bottle an hour. That's as complicated as we get. So the execution part of it's pretty simple. But then at that point, your...

Mike Ricci (27:08.75)
Love it, love it.

Michael (27:13.752)
for beginning trial, especially if you're an ultra person, if you're an Ironman, if you're doing the longer gravel, like the unbound kind of stuff, it's money well spent because it's a couple of hundred bucks, but it will really change the way that you train. And I think it'll really affect your performance a ton.

Mike Ricci (27:33.07)
Yep, love it. You know, I always, I always kind of chuckle when I get an athlete and they, you know, $8 ,000 bicycle and they're going to spend three or four grand to go on an Ironman and barely paying for coaching. And then they want to just rely on a bunch of gels for their nutrition. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, we need to know what your sweat rate is, you know, how much salt you're losing and really dial this in correctly because you're putting all this work in 10, 12, 15, 18 hours a week. Plus all the money involved.

away from your family. Like let's let's dial it in and do it right. Why? Why would we just take a guess at this right? I mean, it's just it's kind of silly. Sometimes the smartest people are not the smartest people.

Michael (28:07.64)
Yeah, it's kind of like... I... Dude, I raised for 20 years before we started the company. I thought that a raspberry muffin was the secret sauce at Iron Man Lake Plaza one year. It was not the secret sauce, let me tell you. I mean...

Yeah, we did, but we didn't know what we were doing. So, but yeah, it's so much, it's just so much simpler just to, you know, get it dialed in, drink your stuff. Don't worry about it. It's just brainless.

Mike Ricci (28:33.23)
Yeah, I remember. I mean, yeah.

Mike Ricci (28:39.886)
Yep. I think my original formula for Ironman was something like four scoops of Cytomax, four scoops of R4, plus some Lecithin in there for fat burning. You know, the thing was like sludge, like trying to drink it out of a straw in the aerobottle. I mean, it just, you know, it was...

Michael (28:53.92)
And if you throw some glycerin in there too, that was a big thing back in the day too.

Mike Ricci (28:58.082)
Yeah, blistering. Yep, that was in there for sure. Awesome. All right. Well, thanks for coming on. This has been really helpful and super educational for our listeners. I want to throw three questions at you though, at the end here. Are you ready? OK. What's your favorite song to strum on the guitar?

Michael (29:11.796)
Yes.

Michael (29:17.4)
wow.

Michael (29:22.776)
Fire in the Mountain, grateful to it.

Mike Ricci (29:24.75)
Alright, awesome. How about best football player to come out of the Ohio State University?

Michael (29:30.84)
Orlando pace.

Mike Ricci (29:32.814)
Linda Pace, okay. And who's your favorite triathlete of all time that's not named Mark Allen?

Michael (29:38.168)
You can't pull Mark off the table! Ohhhh boyyyy

Mike Ricci (29:40.206)
I'm out.

Mike Ricci (29:46.51)
But who's your favorite new generation triathlete? How's that?

Michael (29:49.272)
I love Dee Dee. I gotta give a shout out to Dee Dee. But I would have to say, I mean, thanks God, just because he's Dave Scott.

Mike Ricci (29:57.87)
Yeah, because he's Dave Scott. Awesome. All right. Well, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. And we'll talk soon. And I got to get some athlete. I got to get your phone lines fired up over there. Get some athletes calling you up to get this service kicked in. And so we can dial in this nutrition for the summer.

Michael (29:59.672)
Because he's Dave Scott.

Michael (30:15.672)
Bye, Michael. It's just better catching up with you, buddy. It's good to see you. See ya.

Mike Ricci (30:17.102)
All right, you too. Thanks, buddy.

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