Sole Sisters - Interview w/ Matthew Balzer (Reno Running Co.)

On this weeks show, Justine and Kylie interview Matthew Balzer, the owner of Reno Running Company. They, among other things, discuss the intersection of fitness and community in Northern Nevada. Balzer shares how his childhood experiences with pets and his father’s athleticism led to a lifelong passion for specialty run retail, and eventually acquiring local race directing responsibilities. He explains the technical services his stores provide, such as gate analysis and professional shoe fittings, to support individuals at all fitness levels. They discuss major local events like the Reno Tahoe Odyssey and the importance of weekly track clubs in fostering accountability among residents. Additionally, Balzer reflects on the challenges of entrepreneurship and his personal goals for upcoming triathlon and marathon competitions. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:14

You're listening to Soul Sisters brought to you by Running Scared Media where every step has a story. I'm Justine. Thank you, Matt, for coming on to Soul Sisters. Kyrie and Hi. We've been trying to talk to you for a while because we're in the Reno area and we talk about the different races that our RC Reno Running Company puts on, as well as some of the work they do with two demos and just the running clubs in our community. So we are very excited to be able to chat with you today. Well, it is my pleasure.

unknown 0:48

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

Let's get into it. How did you get into your running and fitness journey, both personally and with Reno Running Company?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Personally, I really just started running. I was a super active kid. I did a lot of different sports. Probably the first runs I really went on were just because we had a lab growing up and the lab needed exercise. I wanted a dog, and my parents said, Well, you're going to exercise the dog if you want the dog. I started running uh with my dog Scamper about a mile every day, I want to say, when I was probably in middle school. And then both my parents were super active. My dad, when I was young, was a marathon runner, so I just kind of had that always showcased for me that he would get up and go for a run. And when I was young, I wanted to be just like my dad. That was kind of the personal journey with starting running. And then it became part of an overall lifelong fitness journey. I got really, really into all sorts of different forms of working out, mountain biking, running, weightlifting. When I was a freshman in high school, and it has been a major part of my life ever since, in a variety of different forms, both like competitively and just purely for enjoyment, and something that I hope to be able to continue with for the rest of my life. I think that's one of the cool things with fitness is that it's something that you can do forever in a variety of different formats. And then as it relates to the business, in college, I went to school in Colorado at the Colorado School of Mines, and I ran track for a few years there. I then started competing in Trathlon after college. And one of the sponsors of this straton team that I was on, still back in Colorado, was a place called Boulder Running Company. Brooks running, the footwear brand sponsored our team through the local retailer, Boulder Running Company, and there were a number of them all throughout the Denver front range. And that's really how I got introduced to what we would call in the industry specialty run retail. Eventually I ended up moving to Reno in 2009, and there just wasn't anything quite like what Boulder Running Company was providing to the local community. My wife and I, we had another completely unrelated business. We just kind of started talking one day about, you know, I wonder if this would be a good idea to try and do the Boulder Running Company thing here in Reno. So I reached out to the owners of one of the Boulder Running Company locations, and I had become friends with the owners of one of those franchise locations for lack of a better term. And just said, hey, what does this look like? And they were super, super helpful on helping us get that original store set up in 2011.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

I already know Justine is taking notes on how to get her future children to become runners. Just give them a dog, tell them they have to run the dog.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Yeah, great idea. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

We've started that with our kids as well. We have a Britney. He is a medium-sized, 40, 45-pound bird dog that we don't hunt, but we run and mountain bike with all the time, and he could easily go 20 miles a day and still be chasing birds and rabbits all over the yard. It's a good running dog for sure.

SPEAKER_03 3:58

Does Reno Running Company operate differently from Boulder Running Company in any way?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Totally different entities. Those owners were great helping us get started, but it's not part of any other franchise. My wife and I own it. I would say the model of specialty run in general across the entire United States is relatively similar. And we all have little nuances about how we do things, but for the most part, it's supporting the local community. So no matter who walks in those doors, if they have active lifestyle goals, if they're training for something, they just want to be more comfortable on their feet, we're welcoming them with open arms. We're listening to what they're trying to accomplish. We make sure that we're measuring their feet, we're offering a gate analysis, we're doing all the things that we believe end up with the highest likelihood of success for somebody to walk out with not only a pair of shoes, but other products that's going to help them on that active journey. And that's what you get from most of these independent, locally owned writing stores all across the country. If we're on vacation somewhere, we love stopping in and being stores and seeing what they do and talking to people about maybe how they do things differently and just trying to refine the offer that we give here. But ultimately we found that's still today, now 15 years down the road, is our number one source of growth is that people come in, they receive what they expected that they were going to get because they were told by somebody else that they're gonna measure your feet, they're gonna listen to you, they're gonna offer gate analysis, you're gonna get to try on a bunch of shoes, you can talk about all sorts of other things. They knew how to help me get over an injury, et cetera, et cetera. And then they go out and they tell that story to the next person. We're pretty maniacal about making sure that no matter who comes in and who they work with on our team, that they're getting that very consistent customer experience that they might have heard about from a friend or from a doctor or family member.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Yeah, I remember my first time shopping at Reno Running Company. I was so nervous to do the treadmill run. I don't know why I'm embarrassed to run on a treadmill in front of people. I just got overcome the fear. I really did not know how to start with getting a running shoe when I first got into running. I like they all kind of were the same. And I don't know who helped me, but they were great and made me feel so comfortable and really showed me how I was stepping on my foot and made me realize, oh, I'm kind of stepping weird and helped me get like a good shoe so that I was not twisting my foot so much, I was kind of like going on an angle. It's very interesting, and it's definitely not something that you would get if you just went to any other big department store for running shoes. So I would say if someone's listening and they're kind of nervous to get such a personal shopping experience, it's actually fantastic. And whoever's helping you, I'm sure, will know how to make you feel comfortable because they did for me. It was great.

SPEAKER_03 6:39

I also started off running by going and getting a pair of shoes from Reno Running Company. So that was my first experience on how to shop for running shoes. Similar to when you talk to people who aren't runners and you kind of have to explain to them like what pacing is and like how running isn't just sprinting as hard as you can, and that's why you don't believe you can run a mile. There's a way to do it. There's a right way to shop for running shoes and to measure your feet even. You really shouldn't buy the same size that you wear as a running shoe. Like you should always size up a little bit or have that like toe broom. That's something that's like changed the way I shop for shoes now in general, but it's something I didn't know before I went into Reno Running Company.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

That's awesome to hear. And honestly, it's probably the number one hurdle that we have with customers is that the name of a business has running in it. And by far, the vast majority of our customers do not consider themselves a runner, even though they run, and some of them don't, and that's great too. But just walking into a store that has running company and getting on that treadmill and putting yourself out there, understanding that you think like, oh, maybe I'm asking a dumb question and they're probably just working with runners and everybody knows these answers. No, nobody knows these answers. Most people are wearing the wrong shoe size. Most people have no idea what shoe would be good for them, and that's why any independent running store really exists, is to help people through that journey.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

So, how did you add on the addition of race directing and coordinating things for the community?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

So we have been sponsors of pretty much every major race in the Reno area for quite a number of years. For us, building community, so the word community is super important, trying to to get out there and put on whether they're just fun community-based runs, whether they're demo runs, track days, Sunday mornings, or showing up at big races and putting our tent up and cheering people on and just being a part of that race day celebration experience. We just have always been out there as often as we can. And so being a sponsor, we got to know the race directors from the couple of larger race event organizers here in Reno. Eric LaRude and Stephanie LaRude, who were the founders and owners of Race 178. They approached us, gosh, I think it's been five years ago. They were ready to move on to the next chapter of their life and just asked if we would have any interest in taking over the race business. Not to say that they're anywhere close, but we were already showing up at all the races.

unknown 9:01

Uh, big differences I've learned between race directing and just being a sponsorship that gets to set up a tent and then leave at the end of the day with the participants. Maybe naively, we decided that that would be kind of a cool thing to venture into.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

It was the right time in our business. We felt like the maturity of the retail stores and the staff that we had that were involved with all the day-to-day of management, all the way down to customer experience at the retail stores was really, really good. And so that would give me enough freedom to jump into what does it look like to be a race director. So we decided to to kind of make that jump and super glad that we did. It was a whole lot more work than I could have ever imagined. You know, I'm glad I took on a lot of that race directing role in the initial years so that I had the chance to learn firsthand all the nuances of event directing. And especially just the fact that when we're doing this with retail, it's a very, very intimate one-on-one customer experience, right? And you get to know that individual very well. When you go to race directing, it's like you're now responsible for 2,000 people all at the same time, right? So you're you're responsible for the good time that they're either going to have or not, or safety. And once you get into it, you realize you're like, wow, this is actually a lot. There's a lot writing on this event, all going to plan and everybody making it back safely with a smile on their face. We learned that, and then one of the other race directors, Sam and Olivia Baugh, who had kind of the other half of the races now in town, they asked us if we would take over the majority of their race business. And so just in this like two-year process, we ended up acquiring most of the major races in the area, just trying to grow them as as much as we could. We say that the mission of the running stores is helping people achieve their active lifestyle goals, and the race business is celebration of that active journey. For us, we get to see people like the two of you when you first came in and started and you were getting that first pair of shoes, and you know, maybe it was training for a race, or maybe it was just living a more active lifestyle, but we get to see you from that very first day to that sense of accomplishment when you marked off the bucket list that you did your first 5k, 10k, half marathon, or even the Reno Saho officer. We currently have seven races that we fully own and produce. So we're responsible for every part of them. We have a team of people, three full-time people, plus myself and a couple of part-timers that just work on races year-round. And so if you think about that workload and the amount of hours that go into it, it's probably close to 80% of the year's workload is spent on RTO.

unknown 11:45

And then the other six races combined make up the last 20%.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

RTO is is a whole thing in of itself, just the amount of permits, the amount of stakeholders as far as negotiating, you know, whose parking lots we can use to park vans in or for people to sleep in, and all of that just it's a lot versus the rest of our races are very traditional, anything from 5k to half marathon and lots of different distances in between. It's a lot more straightforward. Single day races versus a multi-day team caravanning around 178 miles through Reno, Tahoe, and the surrounding area.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Anything similar to that event, or was this something you introduced to you when you came to Reno?

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Totally new introduced to me when I came to Reno. I moved here in June and so RTO had just happened, and then I ran on a couple of teams those first few years that I was in town, and I had never heard of anything like it with the popularity of the RTO for people here in Reno at the time. It was kind of like anybody that was a runner was talking about it, and so I jumped on teams those first few years. I've only actually run two. My wife and I, we ran those first two together on Teams together, and then Amy has since continued running on Teams most years. I was always a part of RTO from a sponsorship standpoint, so managing our booth before we actually owned the event, I was always there, but just not running after we opened up the stores in 2011. The calendar really it starts for us with Leprechaun Race in the middle of March, so that's kind of the St.

unknown 13:21

Patty's Day themes.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

By participation number, that tends to be one of our biggest races. In the 3,000 next year, we'll probably up that to like 3,500. We've been really fortunate that the last few years, all of our races have sold out and they sell out quicker every year than the year before, even though we keep pupping the caps on them. Leperton Race is very much a fast course, so there are some fast runners that participate in it so that they can get a nice fast 5K time. But the vast majority, 99% of people that participate in that, is it's just a fun family event. People dress up, bring the kids, push a scroller, nice little festival at the end. Biggest little half has 5k, 10k half marathon. The half marathon is kind of that perfect a few three to four weeks, depending on the year before RTO, is a really good time to see if you've got the fitness to run a half marathon, because that's usually what we say you need to do reasonably well and comfortable RTO. And then RTO is the Friday, Saturday after Memorial Day every year. And then we take a break in the summer. There are some other races around the Reno-Tahoe area, a lot up in Tahoe in the summer. We don't actually put any on until journal jog, which is the oldest race in northern Nevada in the fall. This will be the 55th year of journal jog, so that's the end of August. And then we do rock Reno half marathon, also has a 5K the first weekend of October. That one pairs really well with training for CIM, the California International Marathon. CIM is not one of our races, but it's by far the most popular marathon for anybody in this region that they would be training for. We have that half marathon distance. And then Dirty Wookiee, which is another just fun family Halloween-themed costume. Everybody dress up in a big festival party afterwards. In September, we put on a race in El Dorado Hills. We actually have a couple of running stores over in California, in El Dorado Hills, and Rockland, Gold Country Run and Sport, and we do a race for that side of the hill in September. So I would say, is it perfectly like thought out or is the calendar totally full? I think at this point, the calendar just tends to be full based off of the bandwidth of our team. Adding more races would require adding more people to the team, which we're not opposed to, but we just want to make sure we do that in a really meaningful way and thoughtful way. One of the races that we've come in and out of that we would probably be most likely to add back to the calendar again is the Reno 10 Miler. That's just as it sounds, it's a 10-mile race with a relay option. So you can do it as a two or a three-person relay. It's one we haven't done for the last couple of years, but would probably be the first one that we would add back again.

SPEAKER_03 16:01

I remember running that one very hard.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

It's very hard. Depending on when you did it, it's always up and around the university. Some years we've actually started it on the university campus. Some years it's been down in Reno and gone up to the university campus. And for anybody familiar with the area, the University of Nevada campus is beautiful, but it is hilly. So running around there, there's just no way to not get in a lot of elevation.

SPEAKER_03 16:26

Soul Sisters runs out of Reno, Nevada. You know what else runs in our area? DJ Trivia! Both Kylie and I love playing at different bar locations throughout the Sierra Nevadas. From Minden to Carson City, Reno to Sparks, Cold Springs, and everything in between. There's a game that's running distance near you. Wait, I'm not running. And if you're in the northern Nevada area like us, DJ Trivia just added weekend games. So now trivia runs can happen every day.

SPEAKER_02 16:52

I'm not liking where this is going. Guess I'll just have to check out DJ Trivia.com and find the game closest to me.

SPEAKER_03 16:57

DJ Trivia is across the US. So you can check online and find the game near you too. Unless you're Kylie, there's no running required. Is there anything that you learned along the way when it came to starting a business, scaling it in the way that you have?

SPEAKER_00 17:13

This is probably my favorite question, just because I'm so passionate about this. For us, owning, starting businesses, acquiring businesses, like being our own bosses has been an awesome journey. Not without its challenges, but I'd probably be a really, really awful employee. So having the ability to do this on our own is great. The number one thing I think that I've learned along the way is just putting yourself in contact with people that have have done what you're looking to do. So just trying to find other business owners and just not being afraid to ask questions or ask for help. I'm not great at it, but I tend to be a little more protective with my time. We've got a pretty busy schedule and I have to leave time for personal and for family, of course. But the one thing that I will virtually always say yes to is if somebody, especially if it's a current or former employee, if somebody comes to us and says, hey, I'm thinking about starting a business or I'm thinking about starting this event, would you have time to grab coffee? It's like I will say yes to that every single time. I think that small business and anybody doing things that they're passionate about is just one of the greatest things about the the US economy and job growth and opportunity. So I'm always happy to do that. And I say that because the vast majority of people that are in my position owning a business will typically give their time to somebody else who has that same interest. So just don't be afraid to ask questions or ask for help. You'll probably get a whole lot more information than you ever thought you would.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

That makes me think about how, especially when I've signed up for my first marathon, being a part of a running club, and for me that was McKeller Running Club here locally, also going to some of those early morning Saturday, Sunday Reno running company store runs. Just getting into the running community and getting to ask people when you're trying something new and doing something hard and for the first time. Everyone is so happy to give you advice, and it's always great to connect with people who you look up to and can be inspired from. It's cool that you say that too, just about having questions about running your own business or putting on an event on your own and how that relates to running.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Justine's more of a runner than I am, and I'm kind of more of the reader, that's our dynamic. And I'm thinking about one of the new bookstores that just opened up in town Hollow and Quill and the support that the other independent bookstores have shown this one, even though you would think like, oh, they're competing businesses because they're kind of selling the same product, which is books. But when it comes to something like an independently owned business that's serving the community, it's really great because they all kind of come together in that way. And so I think it's wonderful for you to say like that's the one thing that you will always a hundred percent make sure you're making time for is helping people trying to kind of achieve similar things to you because I think it shows the community is definitely the number one perspective when it comes to these sorts of businesses like Reno Running Coat or our local independent bookstores.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. That community of small business owners is so sharing, like you said, if it looks like it's going to be a competitive business, they're usually just there for love and passion, and they're happy to help somebody else achieve that passion. And ultimately, I think most of us understand that by having more people in town interested in reading books in that case or interested in running is a good thing for everybody involved in that industry.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

So shout out Hollow and Quill again. They do a lot of events and collabs with the other bookstores, and that kind of makes me think of Reno Running Company. You guys just did a trail series shoe demo with ACG? Yeah, so ACG, all conditions gear.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

That's always just been, I think, a fun way that we've looked at bringing additional people into the store as well as providing a community service. Like, what better way to help you find a perfect shoe than getting to run in a bunch of different ones? What we did with this trail series with Nike slash ACG. Nike is the title sponsor now of Broken Arrow. Again, not one of our events, but a truly world-class event that happens here in our region. So we thought, hey, it'd be really cool to put on this trail run series. We could structure it such that it was training for the types of altitude and grade that people would encounter if they were registered and running broken arrow and give people the opportunity to run in a bunch of new Nike ACG shoes. We were doing it in areas that required permits and the amount of people that were showing up, we kind of had to have all of our ducks in a row, but just getting fun ways for people to get out there and build community in the running space certainly helped by the shoe demo things. The favorite consistent thing that we do every single week, which is still something that I, for the most part, have held on to is our Wednesday morning track. 6 a.m. every Wednesday morning of the year, rain, snow, or shine. We meet up at the Hub Coffee on Riverside. We jog about a mile down to Reno High School track. We do about anywhere from two to three miles of speed work, jog back, and then Hub donates free coffee for everybody to hang out and enjoy. I think the reason why that one is my favorite, that really started, gosh, probably eight or nine years ago. Myself and a couple of friends just, as we were looking for motivation to still date training and work toward souls in specific events, we thought, like, let's just get together every single week and and do track. And it's like, if you're there, I'll be there. There were a few of us, four or five or six that would show up. We would just be accountable to each other. And then for the first couple of years, it just it grew a little bit. And somebody else would hear about it, hey, can I show up great? And so then we maybe have eight and we maybe had ten. And then all of a sudden, it just kind of became a thing where everybody ended up bringing a friend or two, and suddenly we had 50 people there. It was just so cool to see this really, really diverse group of people that were all willing to get up at 5 30 a.m. so that they could be a track at 6 a.m. on a Wednesday and just show up week after week. And it was the same thing for each one of them where they had their group of friends within the larger group that is like, well, I'm gonna be here, so you better be here. And there were just enough of those small groups that all of a sudden it's like 50, 60, 70 people with pen track every single week now. It's hard as an adult, you know, you do that as a kid, right? You go maybe you ran track in middle school or high school, but most of us wouldn't sign up to run like really, really fast or as fast as we can, right?

unknown 23:39

Do something really hard every week of the year, but this group of people does. And so I just love seeing that.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

It's so inspiring, and it has kept me doing at least one hard run a week for years longer than I ever would have done without this group of people. That's kind of a consistent one. And then favorite event, it's hard to not say the RTO, but maybe for a reason that most people wouldn't think. And my reason why I love the RTO more than anything is it's a pretty big list for most of the people that participate in the RTO. Like it's a big deal for number one, but it's a really big deal for the type of people that come and do the RTO, where you're running three different times over like a 24 to 30 hour period, might be four or five, six miles each time you're exhausted, lack of sleep, you're accountable to a team, you might be running faster than you should. What happens is that for a month or two leading up to RTO, you see all these random people that may not otherwise be running in the middle of the day over Windy Hill in the middle of town, and you just know that they're training for the RTO, right?

unknown 24:44

Or you see on Strava a whole bunch of people running in the middle of the night.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

They're like, why are they running in the middle of the night with headlamp salts? Because they're training for the RTO. So it just gets people out of their comfort zone of just like, yeah, I can do the same thing two or three days a week. All of a sudden, once RTO comes, everybody comes out of the woodwork and starts training for their legs because they're accountable to their team.

SPEAKER_03 25:04

I love that about the RTO too. It almost seems like everybody in Reno knows somebody or is doing the RTO themselves. It almost like unifies Reno. I completely agree. You know that feeling when you finally find a shoe that actually fits? Not just sort of fits, but actually fits. That's what HEDA set out to build. The Alma was engineered from the ground up for women's feet. Narrower heel, roomier toe box, zero Achilles pressure. Three models to match wherever you are in your running journey. Use code HCN-run scared for 20% off at HEDA's.com. Your feet will thank you, and your runs will too.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

I I trail run a lot, especially now. Like for the last few years, I do the vast majority of my running on trails. I've had my fair share of bear encounters. One where I was going down this trail and it was up in Truckee and there were lots of switchbacks. Every time I'd come around a switchback, there'd be like this cloud of dust, right? Like somebody was in front of me, but I never saw this person in front of me around a switchback all of a sudden. I mean, literally a foot in front of me, this bear was just barreling down the hill, turned onto the trail, and started running the trail right in front of me. And there was this baby bear. And so for a second I thought, wow, this is like the coolest thing in the world. I'm running with this baby bear until I realized that Mama Bear was probably somewhere very, very close and that this could end really badly. So I started going the other direction. But nothing too crazy. From a running scared standpoint, I did this race. So back in 2013, I was racing a fairly big triathlon, and it was uh a sterotraath on so off-road triathlon, and I was off the bike in first, and you start with just this hellacious climb, and so I'm running up this ski hill, and then you get about halfway up the ski hill and you turn left on some single track. And really, the majority of the real painful part of that run is over in like the first mile as you go straight up the ski hill. And so, of course, I let myself relax and think, I got this. This is in the bag now. I'm leading, and literally as soon as I step onto the single track, like the first step of flat ground, I roll my ankle so bad to the point where you just in that instance, everything that floods your mind is like, oh my god, like this whole year of training, everything is gone away. Like it all just ends with that rock right there. I did end up persevering through that. I probably took me longer than it should have, just in terms of trying to talk myself into a more positive mindset. I think that was probably the first thing I thought of, but the whole like running scared thing is that things will happen. You could be out there having the best day, like in this case, I was having the race of my life, and it seemed like it was all just gonna end immediately. But things are more complex than that, and you can fight through and be resilient. Took me a little longer than I wanted to, but I did ultimately ended up doing well with a very painful ankle at the end.

unknown 27:57

But it's amazing what you can get through in a relatively short period of time if it's important enough to you.

SPEAKER_03 28:02

That's such a good way of looking at it. I was gonna say you're too nonchalant about the bear. I know. That might have been the end of me. And that was brushed past too much.

unknown 28:12

That was a terrified running story, not even just scared.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

It was so cool that it just jumped around right in front of me on the trail. I mean, that's probably my own naivety that I even thought it was cool for it was probably a second or two seconds until I thought, ooh, Mama Bear is probably close. I never actually saw Mama Bear, thankfully.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

Did you have any bear spray on you or something?

SPEAKER_00 28:33

No, no, yeah, nothing. Just uh you know, my feet to carry me away that would have uh been no defense against uh Mama Bear trying to protect her cub.

SPEAKER_03 28:42

Kylie and I just did a race in Canada. It was near Banff, it was in Canmore. They have black bears, grizzly bears, they have everything, like wolves, mountain lions, but part of the trail race rules were that every person who was running had to carry their own bear spray canister. I feel like I've done enough hard races that I no longer the night before have a hard time sleeping, worried about, similar to your running scared story. Like what if something goes wrong, and then my whole training and everything I've worked up to this point is ruined because I've had enough of those experiences to know I will get through it. Maybe slower than I thought, but whatever. But the addition of the bear spray needing to be carried really made me scared all over again.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Yeah, I can see that. I mean, there's a big difference between Tahoe bears and uh Canadian Alaskan grizzly bears. In my past, I raced a lot. I really kind of stopped racing in 2017, and since then it has just been fitness and lifestyle just purely for enjoyment as our kids get older, doing stuff with them, exercising the dog mentally and physically exercising myself and just having a way to disconnect and have some either time alone or time for my wife and I to go trail run together. But this year actually is since 2017, is the first year that I have a big event on the calendar. I actually have two. In second weekend of October, I'm doing Xtera World Championships, which happens to be in the mountains in New Mexico this year. So it's it's back in the United States after a few years in Europe. So that's an offer of draathon, so swim bike and run, but it's mountain bike and trail running. And then I was invited by New Balance to run the New York City Marathon, and I've run a couple marathons, but no marathon majors, like none of the huge ones. So that is, I think, just like a really interesting bucket list race to go and experience that. And that'll be, I believe, the race dates November 1st. So two big ones at the end of the year or in the fall here.

SPEAKER_03 30:49

How are you training for your triathlon if you also have to train for a marathon? Like that seems kind of crazy.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

You know, I need to sit down and figure that out. Not uh I've honestly uh on my run this morning, I was thinking, what is the best way to put all of this together? And I don't think like I can't focus and expect to get a hundred percent out of both of them. So first I need to define what my goal is, whether it's do I want to do the best that I can at one and just have a good experience and survive the other, or do I want to try and thread the needle of maximizing both? I I don't know what my answer is there yet, but the one confession that I'll have to make is just I'll cycle less than I would if I just had the triathlon. Hopefully try and elevate my running a little bit more, knowing that I'm gonna give up a little bit on the bike. The bike can just take so much time. You're out there for a long time. So time right now is a little hard to come by and trying to do both the marathon and the triathlon to its fullest probably isn't gonna happen. So more running than biking, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

What's the triathlon distance?

SPEAKER_00 31:53

It'd be considered the Olympic distance. So it's a 1500 meter swim. Since it's off-road bike, the mountain bike portions are somewhere in the 30k range of biking, 18 to 20 miles. It's it's really it's just you're at the mercy of the trail system, right? Because it's you can't really do like an out and back on single track like you could on a road cycling or a road running race. And then the run is usually around 10k. They're so challenging that if you were a road travel and doing Olympic distance, really good time would be two hours, then an exterra for like the same distance would be about three hours just because of the mountain bike and the trail run.

SPEAKER_03 32:31

Wow, I can only imagine. That's so hard. Is there anything Reno Running Company is looking forward to in the future?

SPEAKER_00 32:38

So we're always looking forward to just bringing more customers into our community and our tribe, having running in the name. Like we know the number one hurdle is just that first step in the door, right? Of getting somebody comfortable walking in and experiencing everything that we have to offer for them. So we're always just looking for ways to lower that barrier of entry and just welcome more people into the folds. I've done the math on it a few different times, and we end up serving somewhere between three and a half to five percent of the total pereno population. And so I just know that there are more people than that that could benefit from having a great pair of shoes or just a great conversation about living a more healthy, active lifestyle. And so really we're just trying to reach as many of those people as we can. And that right now is I would say is where we're both in terms of the race business, retail business, that's what we're looking for in terms of growth, is just how can we have a bigger positive influence on our local communities. If you're the not a runner type, put that in quotes, but you're still looking for a place to get a really great sense of community, find the right products, answer your questions, we are here for you. Whether that's you find us through signing up for a run and taking the leap and trying your first 5K with probably hundreds of other people that are also trying their own 5K so you're in good company, or it's walking through one of our doors. We're really, really passionate about helping people live a more active lifestyle and achieving those active lifestyle goals. We are happy to help whenever they are ready.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

I've never run the RKO, but I told Justine I would do it one time before 2030. Whoa. So you'll see me out there. I will hold you to that.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

Oh no, I can't let Matt down. I'll be there. I'll be there.

unknown 34:35

Thank you, Matt, once again for joining us.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

I'm sure we'll see you somewhere around town. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. We hope you have a wonderful run, whichever one you are doing next.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Thank you both. It's been a pleasure.