Coach First, Tech Second: Tim Surface on Building Final Surge to Save Coaches Time (and Make Athletes Better)

THE RUNNING EFFECT PODCAST

Dominic Schlueter

Sports, Running

4.9 • 822 Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Final Surge: https://www.finalsurge.com (RUNNINGEFFECT20)

Tim Surface’s path runs straight through the heart of the sport of running.

Tim is a University of Tulsa Academic All-American who kept competing after college, carving out a 2:24:39 marathon at Chicago and logging PRs of 1:09:12 for the half and 30:35 for 10,000m, before channeling that discipline into coaching and product building.

Today, from Raleigh, he wears two hats: that of a high-school coach at North Raleigh Christian Academy and co-founder/CEO of Final Surge, where he’s bringing an athlete’s empathy and a coach’s realism to endurance tech.

His north star is simple: save coaches time so they can spend it with athletes. That philosophy shows up in practical tools like attendance and roster features for teams, deep device integrations, and a mobile Structured Workout Builder that letscoaches create, edit, and sync sessions on the fly.

Tim is here to help guide coaches on how to communicate clearly and keep the human side of coaching front and center.

Tim has a great perspective on what high-school athletes truly need in 2025, how to cut noise from data, and where endurance technology is headed next.

This is a story of mileage becoming momentum—of a runner who never stopped building—and a playbook for coaches and athletes who want their tools to work as hard as they do.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Before we hop into today's conversation with one of the best coaches in the sport of running,
0:05.0	I want to tell you a quick note that today's podcast is brought to you by Final Surge.
0:09.6	And over the next couple of weeks, we will be documenting and chronicling some of the top
0:13.5	coaches in the country across professional, collegiate, and high school sports teams.
0:18.1	And we're calling this Final Surge sessions, because whether you're a coach,
0:21.6	athlete, or entire team, Final Surge is the one platform built specifically for runners.
0:27.2	It lets coaches easily deliver workouts, track results, and analyze progress, all in one clean
0:32.0	dashboard. It syncs seamlessly with your GPS watch, Garmin, Coros, Apple Watch, Strava,
0:39.2	you name it. No more juggling apps to stay organized. Final Surge brings training plans, messaging, and attendance tracking.
0:44.0	Super cool into one simple place, perfect for any high school, college, or professional team.
0:50.1	If you're a high school or college coach listening, head to final surge.com slash schools for
0:54.5	discounted pricing, up to 35% off.
0:57.4	And then for anyone else listening to this, you can get 20% off your first coaching package
1:02.3	with code running effect 20, all capital running effect 20 at checkout.
1:06.9	Smarter training starts with smarter tools and final search is where that begins.
1:10.5	I hope you guys enjoy this conversation with one of the top coaches in the country.
1:19.1	There's always ways to do what you love and make a job out of it.
1:23.0	Get creative, but as long as you're passionate about something, you can absolutely be successful about it. So follow what your passion is and it'll work out. Just, you know,
1:32.2	keep putting in the hard work and, you know, eventually something will, a door will open up or,
1:37.2	you know, an idea will come to you and, you know, new doors open up all the time for us
1:41.0	just because we're putting ourselves out there.
1:54.5	That was Tim Surface, one of the founders of the company Final Surge, who is bringing together this coaching series. Tim himself is a coach and has an extensive background in the sport of running.
	...

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