Hello and welcome to another episode of Chasing Excellence. Thank you as always for tuning in. My name is Patrick Cummings.

We are into, we are slightly tongue in cheek calling us season two of the show.

And what we're going to do in season two going forward at the end of every month, we are going to bring you one of two things.

Either a conversation that Ben has had recently on another show or we're going to bring you an interview.

This month, this time around is the former, we have a conversation that Ben had recently with Matthew Durosch, host of, co-host of the oxidative potential podcast.

Ben and Matthew, they, I don't know, they geek out. They geek out a little bit. Matthew Durosch is an exercise science nerd.

And I say that lovingly. I haven't met Matthew, but I'm going to, I'm going to go ahead on a limb and say that he's okay with that.

As a descriptor, they get into the CrossFit Games a lot, they get into what it takes to become a CrossFit Games athlete to thrive in the sport.

And what it will continue to take in the years ahead. I hope you enjoy this conversation. Thank you to Matthew.

Again, his show is called the oxidative potential podcast. We'll link to it in the show notes. Check it out. Here you go.

You came from kind of a unique background and triathlon and kind of moved into coaching CrossFit and CrossFit, the CrossFit space, which is interesting.

Because I think a lot of people kind of attack CrossFit from a lot of times from a different place, whether it's, you know, strength sports or, you know, just being in the gym, health and fitness type of thing.

And then they kind of get sucked in through that round. Or maybe they're an athlete of some type as team sports. So I found it interesting hearing that your background coming from triathlon.

Maybe we could start there and just try to, you know, eliminate folks that have that transition went.

Yeah, I, I was doing triathlon shortly after college. I played rugby.

And it was fairly high level skier, but not on the competitive sense. And that was my athletic background. Play the regular sports in high school.

And then like I think a lot of people, you saw that competitive itch when you graduate college or as you would say, graduate university.

And kind of just fell face first in the triathlon because it gave a competitive outlet. And some of that tugged at my heartstrings, which I was excited about was this, wow, three sports in one. That must mean that you are pushing the envelope of like being the fittest person around.

But very little did I realize that it's no, you're kind of, you're just, you're just outside the edge of being a specialist, you know, you, you, and then kind of sat in that sport for four years, five years maybe did a couple iron man's.

I was toyed with the idea of trying to qualify. I was never very good, but try to came close to qualifying for Hawaii once. And then as I was started like making the decision of like, is this something I really want to go for.

That's when I found CrossFit. And that's when it really pulled me in because it really spoke to what I was looking for was this breadth and depth of fitness and not being a specialist in.

Like my competitive career up to that point was so unremarkable that it was perfect for me, because I wasn't excellent at anything, but I could pick things up fairly quickly.

...