Pro Triathlete to Age Group Advocate and Business Owner: John Kenny's Journey

Jill Bartholomew (00:00)
Hi, I'm Jill Bartholomew and welcome to another episode of the Be Fierce & Tri podcast. I'm here today with John Kenny of French Creek racing, pro triathlete and lifelong swimmer.

John Kenny (00:17)
Yeah, so I came from a swimming background. Originally I swam through high school through college and then got into open water after that. I ran one year in college too. That's a fun fact. Most people don't know, but I was a cross country athlete as well. And when I got out of college, I got into marathon swimming. I kind of did a whole circuit of national swims and

you know, World Cup kind of doing a whole circuit with international competition on the U.S. team. And in 2008, after Worlds in 2008, I decided to kind of commit myself full time to triathlon. I was already doing a lot of triathlon as cross training and kind of just decided that.

You know, this was kind of a natural progression. was doing a lot of races and I was beating a lot of pros in my, in my late twenties, I guess. And, just decided to give it a go. so became a full-time pro. left my engineering job in 2010 and became a full-time pro for a couple of years. that was fun. Not a lot of, not a lot of prize money, but, you know, I got to travel a good bit and,

race with some of the best in the world and had a great time doing it. So from there, my second year really I did about, I think I did about 28 races in 2011 and

Towards the end of that, was, if you can imagine this, I started getting hurt and, you know, just kind of struggling through some races and I'm looking at my bills and looking at some other things and realizing I have to come up with something new and...

Jill Bartholomew (01:52)
businesses.

John Kenny (01:53)
Like

most small businesses, we started by accident. I just started to coach people. We ran a program at Upper Marion a couple nights a week, and then we added Open Water, and then we added the French Creek Tri, and then we added Open Water series events. And next thing you know, I had like a fun little business on my hands, and you know, it just grew from there.

Jill Bartholomew (02:16)
So

unsurprising, 28 races in one season. That's a race every other weekend, more than every other weekend. ⁓

John Kenny (02:23)
Yeah, and

it's actually, you know, that was condensed into March through November, really, because there's not a whole lot or there wasn't a whole lot back then, unless you go to the southern hemisphere, there wasn't really a whole lot in December, January, all the way through through March, there wasn't a whole lot. So I was, you know, I was racing a lot of times twice in one weekend would be common.

Jill Bartholomew (02:41)
Mm-hmm.

John Kenny (02:46)
I remember one weekend I drove to, I got a rental car on Thursday and I drove to

Chicago Thursday night, Friday morning, I drove from Chicago to Minneapolis. Saturday, I raced at the Lifetime Minneapolis. Immediately got in the car and drove to Decatur, Illinois, which is like south central Illinois and raced on Sunday and then immediately drove all the way back to southeastern Pennsylvania. And I returned the rental car, I think it was $72, unlimited mileage and

I had put 4,000 miles on the car in four days and I won almost $2,000 in prize money that weekend and I just thought it was like, this was the greatest weekend ever. Look what I just did. I gamed the system. Yeah. But I think about that now in my...

Jill Bartholomew (03:35)
Yeah, that's a lot of racing in one weekend.

John Kenny (03:39)
mid 40s and I don't think I could even complete that drive and that you know just doing that as a training training weekend I don't think I could do that much even slowly now so I had a lot of had a lot more energy and a lot more of that

Jill Bartholomew (03:45)
Thanks

Mm-hmm.

John Kenny (03:54)
You know, to drive toward racing, you know, mean, racing was what I was all about. And I think my focus is different now. I still do a lot of the training still, but I don't, you know, I'm not at this, I'm not at the same level and I'm channeling a lot more of my energy into the business and toward helping other people do it. So just a, just a different shift right now.

Jill Bartholomew (04:16)
I have so many questions. So I

do find in my mid 40s that my desire to spend long stretches in the car has much less than it was when I was in my 20s. But I'm interested in, you said you did cross country, I think in high school and college.

John Kenny (04:38)
Yeah, I ran, I ran all four years in high school and I did spring track and I did and I swam in the winter and then really I swam all year. I took a little bit of time off cross country season like September, October. I took some time off and then spring I kind of did both. I swam through spring track season because that was like a little bit.

less of a, I was, I was a better cross country runner mainly because it was a longer distance. and then I got into college and I remember, I had that ability to do it and, my freshman year actually broke my foot. So I came on my first,

Jill Bartholomew (05:02)
Yeah.

How did you break your

foot? That's an unusual injury.

John Kenny (05:20)
Yeah, I had a stress fracture from running on the beach barefoot. If you can believe that. was 17 and I had always run on the beach barefoot and I never even thought twice about like it's the beach you run barefoot there's nothing you know it's not pavement you're not gonna hurt yourself and

Jill Bartholomew (05:43)
I totally

believe it. My daughter broke her foot on the beach.

John Kenny (05:47)
Yeah, so

I did this five mile beach run. It was the sandblast in Wildwood. So I did this five mile beach run. I would say it was two and a half miles out and two and a miles back.

Jill Bartholomew (05:59)
Hmm.

John Kenny (06:00)
And it was low tide, so it was hard packed sand. And I think I was about two miles in and like my foot started hurting and I'm like, wow, that's just kind of felt like a foot cramp. didn't really think much of it. And I kept, running. And as I got back, I remember I started running like into the water because the cool ocean kind of made it feel better. So I would like dip my foot in the water every once in while. That feels nice. And I finished the race. didn't obviously I didn't have a good race. ran maybe the last three with a, with a

Jill Bartholomew (06:08)
Yeah.

John Kenny (06:27)
stress fracture. was a clean break through the metatarsal. And I finished the race, I'm limping, my foot hurts. And so I'm limping around and I'm working on the beach patrol at the time. I'm limping back and forth to from the stand to the boat and I'm limping, you know, limping in the water. I'm limping everywhere I go. And my captain at the time basically said, you know,

I'm sending you to the doctor to get an x-ray and I'm like, nothing's wrong, it's fine, my foot's fine. I will go in and it's clear as day, it's like clean break right through it. And kind of made me, that was the point in my career I think where I realized that there was a such thing as self-preservation. Because I didn't have that, all I had was pain tolerance and work ethic, that's all I knew.

Jill Bartholomew (07:01)
Mm-hmm.

John Kenny (07:15)
injury was not a factor, you know, it was just like, this is just something I got to work through. So I kind of had to learn and I learned that a few times in different ways over time, like what my body could and couldn't tolerate, which I think is really important. It's an important lesson for all athletes to learn, like where you're.

Not where your limitations are, but like, what are the, what are the signs in knowing the difference between, you know, like just regular kind of training pain, like this is like a normal discomfort and where does that cross the line into injury or imminent injury when that's coming? that was a definitely a big.

Jill Bartholomew (07:56)
So as ⁓

a professional athlete, how did you ride that line? It sounds like you learned you weren't superhuman after all, which I think we all learn at some point, usually the hard way. I've had a few fractures of my own. But how did you adjust to protect yourself from those injuries?

John Kenny (08:16)
Well, yeah, that's a million dollar question, right? So I found that...

So triathlon is three sports, you know, it's three completely different activities. And you could argue there's nutrition and transitions and there's a lot of other, there's a lot of other factors involved, but if you just break it down into swim, bike and run, I actually looked at those three completely different swimming. I could swim all day long. could, I could swim 30 hours a week and never get hurt. have, you know, I had, I won't say I still

Maybe I'm working back to that, but I completely bulletproof shoulders. swam Maybe I swam more than anyone

in the United States or the world for a 15 or 20 year stretch. don't know. Probably not. put probably, you know, definitely top 10 or top 20, like the amount of yardage that I put in during a 10 to 15 year period. You know, we would swim 100K a week on a normal week and then we'd have, you know, training trips where we do more than that and

Jill Bartholomew (09:03)
Thank you.

John Kenny (09:21)
I was training for 25 K swim races. did a couple, you know, I round the island swim in Atlantic city was 37 K. And I would do that. And then I would, maybe I would take one easy day after that. And then I would be back to swimming 10 to 15 K a day and doing that, you know, pretty consistently. So swimming, I never had an issue. In fact, I always swam the day.

Jill Bartholomew (09:44)
For those of us who are adult

onset swimmers, that certainly is impressive and intimidating.

John Kenny (09:51)
Yeah, well, it's it's I think it's just perspective. know, I always hear people say, why, why can't I swim? You know, why can't I swim better? Why can't I I'm stuck at such and such a level? Why am I not getting not getting past that?

And the very basic answer, if you back up from that for a second, the very basic answer is, you're, you're, um, how many hours a week do you spend swimming and how many hours a week are you biking and running? And usually the answer is, well, I'm, swimming two hours a week and I'm biking 10 or 15 or I'm, running five hours a week. I'm, it's like, well, okay. So.

I think part of the problem is that in order for you to truly get better at your weakness, you have to dilute your strength in order to get better at your weakness. So basically, you have to swim more. have to spend more time in the water.

I can tell you how many hours and how many miles. So I'm probably to the, you know, I've probably circled the earth a dozen times. If you add up all my swimming, it's.

I don't know. If you made it your life goal to swim that much and you stopped biking and running completely, you might never get there. Like anybody that's in their 40s and 50s, if you made that your life goal, you might never.

Jill Bartholomew (10:57)
It's a lot of miles.

John Kenny (11:12)
swim that volume. it's just perspective of like why this is, why can I jump in the water and kind of feel natural. I'm not as fast as I used to be, but I can get in the water and kind of cruise and look okay and hold my own. I mean, I did a practice

over the winter with my college team. And I wasn't the fastest guy there, but I made all the intervals. I made the whole practice. And there's not many people that can say that at this point. So basically, spending more time doing it is the key to that. And you don't have to swim 100K a week, wherever you are,

Jill Bartholomew (11:44)
Mm-hmm.

John Kenny (11:54)
Can you increase that incrementally and build from that? And in season is kind of a different story. In season, I don't know how much you want to, but the off season is right for that. Like the fall, after you do your last event in the fall, that's a perfect time to really put some time into swimming, which is most people's weakness. Put time into that weakness and gain.

endurance and speed on your on your weakness. ⁓

Jill Bartholomew (12:21)
So more time in

the pool is the answer.

John Kenny (12:23)
It's the answer. Yeah. And, and it does come down to technique, but the thing that I think a lot of people don't realize is that, swim fitness and muscular endurance, all the things that we're trying to gain, those things all help you gain better technique. Whereas better technique does not help you gain swim fitness.

really important

point for people to kind of understand that if you can practice and have the prettiest stroke, but if you swim for, know, if you swim 2000 yards a week with perfect technique, even elite level sprinters put more laps in than that. They put a lot more laps in than that just because you need that muscle memory and you need some...

Jill Bartholomew (13:02)
Mm.

John Kenny (13:05)
tension behind it. You need some power in that pull phase. You need to kind of practice under load.

Jill Bartholomew (13:11)
So not everything in zone one. Yeah.

John Kenny (13:14)
Correct, yes. In

fact, there's been great results with...

You you say like USRPT and like the kind of higher intensity. think there's an, especially the more competitive end. If you're trying to get faster, there's, there's a lot to be said about going fast for a very short amount of time until your technique starts to break down, not a hundred percent, but at a, you know, at a good effort that's sustainable for 75, a hundred yards and then taking a really short amount of rest.

Jill Bartholomew (13:25)
Mm-hmm.

John Kenny (13:47)
you know, 10, 15, 20 seconds and then repeating that and learning to repeat that and hold a challenging pace. And that kind of goes back. That's not that's not like anything new. That's not a unique.

Jill Bartholomew (13:58)
Mm-mm.

John Kenny (13:59)
I mean, that was stuff that Doc Councilman did back in the 1950s. know, this is not new swim training technique. This is stuff that's kind of well established. Now there's other, you know, there's obviously been a lot of advancement since then, but the very, you know, the very basic structure of that has kind of remained the same.

Jill Bartholomew (14:19)
Yeah, I find that

people are willing to do the intensity, but then the rests, they end up with these very long rests in between. And I think they lose some of the benefit of the intervals by having so much rest in between.

John Kenny (14:33)
Yeah, and if your goal is to be a casual swimmer and to, you know, not get any faster, that's fine. But I find even the people that say they're not competitive, they are. Everybody's competitive. Everybody wants to beat that person next to them at the pool. Everybody wants to do that. The people that say they're not, maybe, I think most of them are kidding themselves about that. ⁓

Jill Bartholomew (14:46)
Everyone's competitive to some degree.

Yeah, I need, I need

like the, the swim cap that says today's his own two day. Cause you know, when that guy hops in the lane next to me and he's going faster and I know darn right well that I'm a faster swimmer than him and I'm sitting there. Nope. My plan today is, you know, an hour aerobic swim zone two zone three, not zone five.

John Kenny (15:06)
Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that's it. And that's a tough thing to be disciplined about as well. and I think that the, that's, that's a big part of injury resistance as well. I mean, if you get into, know, if we kind of circle back into that. And for me, that's more on my bike and my run or in my prime, it was on my bike and my run, especially the run. If I were to run hard, hard and fast and do that repeatedly.

That's just a recipe for, for an injury. mean, I just, I had found that that's, that was, and, bike a little bit less so I could ride quite a bit. And that was another way that I kind of got a lot of general aerobic base miles, just being able to, being able to go out and ride easy for, for 10 to 15 hours a week. And, you know, I did a lot of my mileage right here in Chester County and.

the hills kind of wind up being your natural intervals. It's really, for most of my career, I kept a lot of things a little bit looser on the structure because I was getting it all in. There were certain days where I hit harder, steeper hills and I worked my shorter burst. And then there was other days where I just went out and kind of grinded it out and longer stuff. ⁓

Jill Bartholomew (16:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I don't

think it's possible to ride easy in Chester County. Southeast Pennsylvania is not flat.

John Kenny (16:37)
That's possible. You just need really good gearing and balance, know, and discipline because I mean, we did a lot of we did a lot of that work at our camps. ⁓ We kind of moved, you know, I did a lot of a lot of stuff with Andrew Starkowitz. If you guys don't know who he is, look him up. He's one of the best cyclists in the history of the sport. And he said all kinds of bike race still holds a bunch of bike racers, I'm sure.

Jill Bartholomew (16:47)
Mm-hmm.

John Kenny (17:04)
And we did a lot of stuff in the mountains and he was...

It's probably about 30 pounds heavier than me. So in the mountains, that kind of worked to my advantage when I was riding well, I would be able to ride with them because if you're riding up a steep grade, it's, know, 30 pounds hurt you quite a bit. But we would do we would do quite a bit of it. But our camps used to be five days and we shifted it to four day format only for attendance because it was tough to get people to commit five days. But we would go two days hard and then we would do a third day that would be just kind of basic aerobic, you know,

we would get three or four hours of easy training just to keep blood moving and and it was funny because we just hammered two days and we were tired and we had a whole bunch of other people in the camp and now we're doing like a 10 mile climb and we're just like hold 200 watts and it's like

Jill Bartholomew (17:36)
Mm-hmm.

John Kenny (17:54)
that's all we're doing? Like this? I can go faster than well, yeah, but don't go faster than this. And we had a bunch of people that we had dropped and, you know, beaten by a half hour on the previous day's ride that were now dropping us because we were just riding. Easy. And we'd get a six or an eight percent grade and just, you know, just cruise four or five miles an hour and just keep turning the cranks over, you know, just easy. don't have to, you don't always have to hammer it.

Jill Bartholomew (17:58)
Mm-hmm.

John Kenny (18:20)
But you're right, the hills do trend. Yeah, the hills definitely, and it's human nature, especially if you don't have any feedback, if you don't have like a power meter, you don't have anything like a heart rate monitor, stuff that's live telling you that you're going too hard.

Jill Bartholomew (18:20)
I do know that for sure.

John Kenny (18:36)
Yeah, look, look at this steep hill. I'm only going five miles an hour. I should be going faster. So that is the natural kind of human tendency on this.

Jill Bartholomew (18:46)
Yeah, and having that kind of feedback is super useful. know like, you know, when I do my long rides, you know, it's usually at a, at a target average, you know, power and not, you know, speed or intensity. And it's, it's like, you know, I find myself, you're way over. Maybe it's time to back off a little bit where I have some athletes who only trained by heart rate.

And you know, when I finally see their metrics, I'm like, dude, you did three hours in zone five. What

John Kenny (19:15)
hills are great. I think hills are great training. we have a lot of people that are pretty intimidated by them. People that are intimidated by, you know, climbing on the bike by joining a group and swimming intervals with a fast group.

some people are intimidated by open water. I think universally, maybe those, feelings are kind of normal, but at the same time, you have to push past those things. I mean, if you want to, if you want to make those gains, you really have to push past your intimidation because that's. Basically where that's where it begins, you know, pushing, pushing past your point of discomfort, discomfort is,

basically where gains begin to occur. So it's really important to lean into that. Yeah.

Jill Bartholomew (20:01)
So you said a couple of things that are interesting. A lot of people train like 99 % in the pool and the first time they see open waters when they get to a race. How do we get more people more comfortable in the open water without a pool line? And, you know, often, you know, you have goggles on, you're looking down and you can't even see your hand.

John Kenny (20:23)
Yeah, an important point. I think the first step there is the pool. And I think that's where a lot of people miss it is that the pool comes first. And you have to be comfortable in the pool, pushing past that limit. Like you said, swimming hard and then only taking your little block of rest and then going on that next interval.

You have to practice things like hypoxic breathing, breathing patterns, you know, where you're holding your breath. You have to practice swimming with a bunch of people in a lane. You know, have you swum with eight or 10 people in a lane? Have you swum three across the lane? Have you passed somebody down the middle while there's oncoming people? So the more, the more of the, mean, have you done flip turns or have you done, you know, like quicker turns or are you, are you grabbing the wall and taking a break?

I think those things come first and I've seen a lot of people that come to open water and they say, I don't get it, I don't get it, I'm uncomfortable here. I do great in the pool and then you watch them in the pool and they are, they're swimming in the lane by themselves, they're not comfortable with people around them, they're taking a lot of rest on the wall. So I think you have to put those things in the proper order.

And then when they come to open water, I don't know who said this, but at some point this might, this might be the 1980s. don't know when this started, but I always hear people say, my coach said I need to do at least one open water swim before my race. And how many open water swims do you think they're going to do? They do one, you know, so they do it one time and maybe they were a little bit uncomfortable and maybe there were only a couple of people around. And so they kind of had a little bit of space and they

Jill Bartholomew (21:54)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

John Kenny (22:03)
were able to you know, like paddle their way around the course and then come back. And then they come into a race and there's 500 or there's a thousand people, you know, whatever race they're doing. And it's like, what do I do? And and they get hit and yeah.

Jill Bartholomew (22:14)
Yeah, going from being

the only person in a lane to the washing machine that is sometimes a race, especially a mass start race, it's a recipe for open water panic.

John Kenny (22:23)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's absolutely and you know, I tell people I recommend more like 10 to 15 swims, know, open water swims. Like if you can, if you swim 10 or 15 times in open water and you feel comfortable about, you know, doing that distance continuously in open water, I think that's, that's a better, to me, that's a better standard to, to go by.

And it does depend a little bit on your background. It depends on the individual. If you're coming from a swim background, you probably get away with less than that. And if you're a person that's petrified of swimming, you probably need more than that.

Jill Bartholomew (23:00)
Mm-hmm.

And it's

seasonal too. mean, you know, come the fall when it gets cold out, the availability of open water swim, becomes a factor. And, then in the spring, it's almost like starting over again, because you've been swimming for three, four, five months exclusively in the pool. And, you know, the first time you get in that body of water, it's like, I remember this, but it's still uncomfortable because it's different.

John Kenny (23:18)
Thank

Yeah, and we're doing everything we can to kind of extend that season and give people the most opportunity they can. We're April 1st to Halloween. There's been a few years where we've swum the first second week in November where the water's still been 60. So we're trying to give as much opportunity to extend that as we can. You know, we've had people...

Jill Bartholomew (23:51)
Yeah, I think I said to you, I'll swim

in the water until I turn blue.

John Kenny (23:55)
Yeah, well, there's

a certain point where, know, and that's the other thing, right? Is everybody needs to assess their own ability and limitation. There's certain things that I do. I mean, I've done some things that would definitely have killed the average person. You know, I've done, I've been stuck at, I've been stuck at the top of, what was it? I did Charo Hala Skyway in February and got stuck in a blizzard and I was descending the bike and there's snow on the ground. I'm like, this is,

So yeah, this is really not good. you know, I get down below the snow line and now it's just heavy rain and you're going down and who knows, you you're literally shivering on the bike. I'm getting off every mile and doing like 50 pushups just to keep my body heat, you know, and I don't know, that would have killed a lot of people, I guess, right? But like, I know my...

Jill Bartholomew (24:26)
Mm-hmm.

Oof.

John Kenny (24:44)
I know my limitations, I know what I can do, and I know when it's time to turn around. And that's a really important thing that I learned is self-preservation. So if you know that 50 degrees water is not going to work for you, then you really need to not try to do 50 degree water.

Jill Bartholomew (25:02)
Yeah, although I recently

discovered the miracle of neoprene booties. Yeah, yeah. Because you get in the water and for me, when it's below a certain temperature, it's like my feet and my hands, they're like on fire. And that helps that because it was even an issue just like with a

John Kenny (25:09)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's there's yeah, there's definitely ways to mitigate all those things.

And maybe, Yeah.

Jill Bartholomew (25:28)
cold plunge, know, like a two, three minutes was excruciating because my feet would be on fire. And, you know, they're not expensive. I don't know why I never bought them before. Now I'm like, oh, this isn't so bad. But I think I think the point of like knowing where your limitations are is super important. You know, I see folks at races.

John Kenny (25:33)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, it's a good strategy. ⁓

Jill Bartholomew (25:49)
all the time who haven't experimented with where their limits are and then they get into a situation that they haven't been in before and they end up having to take a very conservative approach or they're over aggressive and don't have the skills and that's when we have like falls and hospital visits, right?

John Kenny (26:07)
Yeah, definitely. I try to avoid the try to avoid the hospital as much as possible. not my favorite place. Yeah.

Jill Bartholomew (26:08)
Yeah. It's like, if you're going to go.

Yeah, yeah, it's like, you know,

first time I rode Lake Placid, you know, all the forums are like, you know, oh, be on your brakes the whole time, you know, stay under 50 because you don't want to fall, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, clearly that's coming from someone who's uncomfortable going fast downhill. So get some practice going downhill, but it's not always possible, right? Like, you know, half the country is pancake flat.

John Kenny (26:36)
Right, right. Yeah.

Jill Bartholomew (26:37)
The rest of us

can't go more than a mile without a thousand feet.

John Kenny (26:40)
Yeah, and you know, half the country is in a warm climate and half the country it's, you know, open water season is real short, you know. And that's why we do camps too. We do camps in the south, we camps in the mountains.

Jill Bartholomew (26:48)
Yeah, yeah.

John Kenny (26:54)
You know, we have a camp in the Virgin Islands for open water in the winter and it's fantastic. it's freezing cold up in Pennsylvania and you can go swim in the 81 degree water in the tropics, you know. What's better than that? Yeah.

Jill Bartholomew (27:09)
I don't know, camp in Virgin Islands. that sounds

like half camp and half party.

John Kenny (27:14)
Um, I mean, it could be, I think that's the, that's the beauty of it is whatever people are looking to get out of it. Um, we, uh, we're, flexible there, you know, we don't, we don't set it up as a party. set it up as a training vacation, but you know, we, people, people, uh, enjoy their time and, we had a, we had a live band and a couple of, a couple of, uh, beverages of the refreshing nature maybe, but you know, it's, uh,

Jill Bartholomew (27:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

John Kenny (27:42)
We're there, we're there. And that's a good point too, is I think there's far too many people that get so heavily ingrained in following their plan and they forget that it's supposed to be fun. They forget that this is not something you have to do. You don't have to do your bike ride. You can skip your bike ride, but you get to do it.

You get to ride your bike, you get to swim, you get to run. Most people can't even do those things. So how great is that that you get to do that? And if you have that attitude, you're gonna go a lot farther in your endeavors.

Jill Bartholomew (28:17)
It is a privilege to have the fitness to do

it.

John Kenny (28:21)
Yeah. Yeah. And the money to do it, the money to buy a bike and the money, you know, just every, yeah.

Jill Bartholomew (28:22)
Yeah. ⁓ so question for you, ⁓ so you've done a lot of, right.

It, yeah, it is not a cheap sport. So question for you. ⁓ you've done a lot of races. What's your favorite race that you've done?

John Kenny (28:31)
Mm-hmm.

My favorite race that I've raced in personally, I guess I can't say the French Creek Triathlon, right?

Yeah, one that I don't host, right? So, you know, I would say swimming wise was always the around the island swim in Atlantic City. I would say that was that was like a yearly challenge that no matter how good your fitness was always, you know, a crazy challenge. So.

That'd probably be number one on swimming. then, you know, I love the Alcatraz swim. think the Alcatraz, the whole try really at Alcatraz, I thought was fantastic. Iconic. It's a great location. I love the weather. You know, it was always cold, cold air, cold water, you know.

The old savage man that doesn't exist anymore, but savage men, it was roughly a half iron distance and you know, crazy, crazy hills on it. That was always a good one. You know, those are the ones coming to mind right now.

Any any real challenging race that's not on a hot day, I would say that be that's my that's my preference. Well, the heat doesn't like me, I think is more like what it is. The. Yeah, I mean, if I think back to all the best races I've had.

Jill Bartholomew (29:45)
So don't like racing in the heat.

John Kenny (29:57)
Especially long course, short course, I think you can kind of fake it. If it's 90 degrees and you're doing an Olympic, I think you can kind of fake that. I only lose, I might only lose like 10 pounds worth of, worth of fluid in an Olympic or as a half, like that, could potentially kill you if you don't drink two gallons on the bike. Um, so, um, all the great, all the best races that I had in my career were

Jill Bartholomew (30:17)
Yeah.

John Kenny (30:24)
days where other athletes were shivering and putting on jackets in transition. You know, the really freezing cold days were the ones where, because I I produced a lot of heat. I just, you know, I turn into a faucet when it gets warm. so, you know, the warm weather stuff didn't treat me well over time. I mean, I held my own.

on some of that stuff despite that, but definitely wasn't on my preference. Yeah. And that goes for race directing too. We had a swim last Tuesday night and that was the day that it was 101. And I'm not as effective of a human being when it's like that.

Jill Bartholomew (30:48)
Okay. Okay. ⁓

Yeah, I let... ⁓

John Kenny (31:04)
My

body doesn't work as well, my brain doesn't work as well. I just kind of generally slow down and despite hydration and electrolyte and whatever you want to say, just, not as effective at doing anything. When we do the frozen hair in the winter and it's 20 degrees, that's fine. I'm great.

Jill Bartholomew (31:20)
Mm-hmm.

Oh, that, that was a rough day last week.

Cause I led the group ride that day and you know, not many people showed up because it was really hot. And we started out. Yeah. Yeah. We started out like, yeah, we're going to take it easy because of the heat and newsflash. didn't. Um, right. We just drank a lot.

John Kenny (31:36)
Yeah, because 101 degrees. Yeah, the heat index is like 110. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jill Bartholomew (31:51)
but was like standing

still, felt like you were in the oven. Moving at 20, 25 miles an hour, it felt like you were in a convection oven. So like you're cooking either way.

John Kenny (32:01)
Yeah, yeah. mean, especially if it's in the upper 90s, that's not cooling you at all at that temperature. ⁓

Jill Bartholomew (32:06)
No, no, that was rough.

but I mean, for the folks in the water, it probably was not as bad.

John Kenny (32:15)
Yeah, last week are what I described the water as almost refreshing. I think it was about I think it was about 80 84 degrees. It was like 84. It didn't get that hot, at least not that not yet as of Tuesday, but it was it was 84. And it feels nice when you first get in. then once you start to move, you realize it's not you're not actually you're still sweating when you're in the water.

Jill Bartholomew (32:21)
Almost. What was the water temperature? Like 90?

Yeah.

Yeah,

Yeah, you're still sweating in the water and you're not putting fluids in because you don't have it immediately available. I don't really...

John Kenny (32:45)
Yeah, yeah, and I think

that's I think that's something a lot of people miss, you know, from my background, I remember.

My club, used to swim every Saturday, we used to swim 7 a.m. to noon. And I would get out with my high school team and we would swim 12 to two. And so I would get over there by 12, 15 and swim to two. you know, sometimes I'd have suburban aquatic league had meets after that. Sometimes I'd swim a meet after that at three o'clock in the afternoon and it was...

You just you sweat, you sweat a lot, know, if you're swimming that amount of time and you're, you know, but I learned early on how important that was. I had a few, one, actually one practice in particular where I really just couldn't, I was useless. I, were doing like 25s on the minute and I was barely making them. I'm not sure. you know, I.

Nobody understood that at the time. It was like simple hydration and literally water, salt and sugar that people didn't even know about back then. I had a few really rough practices until I realized that if I just bring a gallon of Gatorade behind my lane and I just keep drinking this, then I'll be fine.

Jill Bartholomew (33:39)
Mm-hmm.

John Kenny (33:54)
You know, that's not a great hydration plan.

Jill Bartholomew (33:56)
I really wasn't until

like, yeah, I mean, it really wasn't until like a decade ago that we started to think more critically about what we're drinking and how we're drinking and how often versus just like, I'm thirsty, go have some water.

John Kenny (34:04)
Mm-hmm. What's?

what's in it, know, is there protein, you know, what type of, what type of glycogen replenishment and all that. But ⁓ yeah, but you realize that just the volume that you sweat and, and in marathon swimming, it was important, you know, like we, we would feed in the water. But people doing long course races, depending on how long you're going to be in the water, it's, it's a long time without hydration and warm water. And that's, and you gotta, you gotta preload

Jill Bartholomew (34:18)
Mm-hmm.

John Kenny (34:37)
and then you gotta get that back after you finish your swim. And you might even, mean, I don't know, I rarely, rarely ever see this in triathlon, but.

Jill Bartholomew (34:41)
Yeah, yeah.

John Kenny (34:47)
You know, it's not a terrible idea to take something on the course with you. I mean, in open water, we used to stuff stuff in our suit. You keep a gel in your suit and take that like, you know, halfway through the swim. And I rarely ever see anybody do that in, in Ironman distance racing. I rarely ever see that. Which is funny because I mean, some people, yeah.

Jill Bartholomew (35:06)
Yeah, every once in a while you see it, but not

often.

John Kenny (35:10)
Not often, not often. If you're over an hour, if you're in the 115 to 130 range on the swim, that's a lot of time to go without anything. yeah.

Jill Bartholomew (35:20)
Yeah, you got 2.15 to complete that swim. And yeah, I think once you get above

1.30, it's a lot of time in the water with nothing. Yeah. All right. So question for you. So most of the athletes that you work with, they're working professionals.

John Kenny (35:29)
For sure. Yeah.

Jill Bartholomew (35:39)
And one of the things, one of the questions I have for you is what do you see are kind of successful strategies for these otherwise busy people to make room in their lives for?

⁓ whether it's master swimming, triathlon, running, getting the athletics. And one of the, comments I hear often, you know, is when you ask people like, I want to do this, but I can't is just finding the space to do it in their, in their lives. Cause we all have, we have 20, we have the same 24 hours, but we use it differently.

John Kenny (35:56)
Thank

.

Yeah,

so I would say number 1, I don't like to micro manage anybody's day or week or anybody's calendar. We have, like you said, working professionals, we have a variety of priorities in our.

in our sport and our community. you know, there's some people that have families or some people that are taking care of elderly relatives. We have some people that are going to school. We have some people that are CEOs of companies that are doing really important work for most people. This is not their number one priority. It's it's number two or three best for most people. So.

The best answer I can give you to that question is like something I've said over and over again, and it's community. It's like providing a space where people want to go. Providing something that's like a fun option, where you'll see people that you know, where you'll see smiling faces, you'll be able to talk to people and catch up to people, and you'll be able to kind of come through in this common thread

Jill Bartholomew (37:02)
Mm-hmm.

ruined.

John Kenny (37:17)
of endurance sports. And we've tried to, it's a challenging thing to like, to actually like.

be the architect of because how do you do that? You you kind of make the conditions right. You welcome everybody, but ultimately it's up to the people. And I think our group has done an amazing job of that. think that we have this awesome welcoming group that is, is happy to have anybody no matter who you are, no matter what your, you know, background is, no matter your, fast you are, kind of just this really, you know,

diverse group of people that just are from all different backgrounds and walks of life and I love that. And then we've also tried to give different options, different times of day, know, morning, night, when we can, we do a midday session, know, weekends, whenever we can.

Jill Bartholomew (37:55)
Mm-hmm.

John Kenny (38:10)
orchestrate that, we try to offer it. And so if we can give people the option, you know, we can't make the horse drink, but we can lead the horse to water always. So that's basically what we're trying to do on a regular basis, trying to share the love of what we do.

Jill Bartholomew (38:24)
Yeah, I'm.

Yeah, for me personally, I'm definitely in the earlier is better category. But there's an awful lot of people who are also in the opposite of like, nope, nope, I want it later.

John Kenny (38:30)
I think what's funny is... ⁓

Yeah.

Yeah, I do find that if you do it earlier, you've got that, you know, you've got kind of like a good feeling early in the day. Like you got your workout in your blood's going a little bit. I, you know, I find that those days I can attack the work a little bit better. but, yeah, it's, you know, there's, there's all kinds of different,

reasons and excuses, but I do think that most people have a few hours, a few days a week that they can carve out and everybody's super super busy, but everybody is also distracted and everybody well, maybe I can't speak for everybody, but I know

there's a couple hours a week that I waste, you know, I get on social media and I get on reels and I get something, you know, I, there's a few hours a week that I waste and I, you know, think to myself, would I rather do this or would I rather do that? And if, if we can come up as a, as a priority above like some other, you know, activity, I think that's, I think that's perfect, you know?

Jill Bartholomew (39:22)
you

Little doom scrolling for

you.

John Kenny (39:38)
It's inevitable, you know. ⁓ think anybody that says they don't do that, think they either are lying or they're not on social media at all.

Jill Bartholomew (39:42)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm totally in the, like, be at the pool when it opens at 5 a.m. Thank you. And

yeah. All right.

John Kenny (39:56)
Yeah,

do that. Do that instead of if you're if you're awake at 5 a.m. Definitely don't start doom scrolling at 5 a.m. Definitely get to the pool instead.

Jill Bartholomew (40:05)
Yeah,

yeah, I don't know today. Like it's so easy to just sit there in bed either at night or in the morning just flipping through reels.

John Kenny (40:15)
it

Quite addictive, they know exactly what you want to

Jill Bartholomew (40:17)
Well, and that's what I say to myself. I'm like sitting there flipping. like, what could I be doing right now? Oh, let's go to the pool. Yeah, I'm one of the, I love swimming at 5 a.m. because one, I'm stronger. I'm faster. I do a better job of hitting the workout that I intended to do. And.

John Kenny (40:24)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Jill Bartholomew (40:34)
yeah, yeah. And then you end up having the rest of your day to enjoy and not think about like all the stuff that you're supposed to be doing on whatever plan you're on.

John Kenny (40:36)
you

Jill Bartholomew (40:43)
So, John, just kind of wrapping it up here, is there anything that you wanted to share that we didn't already cover?

John Kenny (40:44)
Yeah.

that could be a, that could be a lot of things I could talk for hours here, but I know, I know we've got other, other places to go for sure. But, yeah, I think, what, what we're, what we're trying to accomplish, I think is a real holistic approach to, to swimming triathlon, endurance sports in general. you know,

Triathlon happens to be the outlet that I think most fits what we do, but I do other things. I've been trying to get into some other things, rock climbing and cross-country skiing, if we ever get snow. So in triathlon, we're trying to create kind of something that has something for everybody.

We're doing open water swims. We're doing open water races. We're doing triathlon races. We're doing swim runs. We're doing camps. You know, there's a lot of things that people don't even know we do. I mean, we're swimming at Lawrence Park outside in the middle of the winter. We're trying to find more open water venues. I'm constantly researching, trying to find more places that people can go. Like where's a place that we can hold an event that people will go to?

I'm an explorer by heart, so I find that this is such a cool job for me because I get to do something that I really enjoy, the exploration aspect of it, and then bring that back. But we're also doing, we're doing private lessons and clinics, and we're doing open water clinics, and we're doing so many different things.

And I think there's a lot of people that are kind of shy away from it. And people have different reasons for why they shy away from it. Some people are intimidated. Some people are busy. Some people don't know where to start. Some people just, they can't swim at all. Maybe there's, there's a lot of different reasons why people don't do it. And I think that's our biggest challenge. And it's the biggest challenge of.

growing the sport also, because our sport is not centered around like former swimmers that pick up triathlon in their thirties or former cyclists or former runners. Our sport is centered around people either with no athletic background or kids, you know, like we haven't gotten kids into the sport.

Jill Bartholomew (43:00)
Mm-hmm.

John Kenny (43:02)
And so I think if you look at our demographic as triathlon, we're aging, you know, and I did my first race, my first triathlon I did in 1990. And the sport, a lot has changed in the sport. It was a very, very different sport.

Everyone used to be uber competitive back then even in the 2000s even in the you know, 2000 and 2010 Decade like people were really really competitive and I think a lot of those people have kind of aged out and Most of those people aren't doing 20 races a year anymore. Most of those people now are doing You know three to five races is pretty good if you're in your 50s and 60s and you've been doing the sport for 30 and 40 years Then that's

Jill Bartholomew (43:33)
Mm-hmm.

John Kenny (43:47)
That's great, you know, but we don't have as much youth coming up. And so I think that's an important, important thing. We just did a kid's triathlon yesterday.

Jill Bartholomew (43:48)
week.

John Kenny (43:57)
I'm sorry, Sunday, which we picked up and acquired from another event, another group from last year. so mean, kids are the future and beginners are the future. And we have to do everything we can to make all these things accessible. And if you're watching this and you're worried, if you're thinking like, I don't know if I can do it or not and saying like this,

talking about me like this guy's crazy. Look at all the stuff he's done. I've done crazy stuff and I've gone out on road with pros and I will go out and swim with a really competitive swim team. But I've also gone on bike rides at 10 miles an hour and just sat back and talked to people because I love to get out there and do it. And, you know, my goal is to bring that to as many people as we can. So, ⁓ you know, we have we have the

Jill Bartholomew (44:46)
So, thanks.

John Kenny (44:47)
We have the events, we got events going all over the place. The training is great. You can train for an event. We pick up some people from events to do the training. And I think this community has been awesome. And I think it's got a lot of room to grow. And I think everybody's an ambassador. So I think we can keep going and we can keep doing better and just get more people involved in it and kind of normalize what we do, because it is normal.

You know, it is normal to go out for a run. It's normal to want to go swimming. it's, it's pretty, it's pretty normal stuff, but we've gotten away from that in society and it's, we're looked at as this like kind of fringe thing that people can't do. And the truth is, anybody can do it. So. ⁓

Jill Bartholomew (45:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think

you talk to most people in one sport most people are comfortable with and one sport they're okay with and one sport they're intimidated by and depending on who you talk to it's a different combination.

John Kenny (45:39)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah, yeah, I think it's usually swimming, yeah, certainly. Certainly there's the other the other way around happens as well. Sure. Yeah.

Jill Bartholomew (45:45)
I think it's usually swimming, but I've.

Yeah, you

talk to a lot of swimmers and it's the cycling or the running and cyclists, it's all bets are off. could go either way. But yeah. then there's, oh, it's bad for your knees and this and that. other thing is like, overall it's good for you.

John Kenny (45:59)
Yeah. ⁓

It's bad for your heart not to do it.

Jill Bartholomew (46:12)
That's true. That's true. I'd rather do that than, than, you know, not be around to do anything, but, know, I do love the t-shirts that are, that are like, why be bad at one sport where you can be bad at three.

John Kenny (46:19)
Yep.

Yeah, yeah. Well, like I said, there's all you know, that's actually one of the things that kind of led to our tagline. Your goals are our goals. You know, I think I have that here. goals are our things. So, you know, it sounds kind of silly, but you know, like, we have so many different goals. We have some people that just kind of like wandered in from the YMCA and they're looking for somebody else to swim with. And we have some people trying to

Jill Bartholomew (46:34)
Yep, there it is.

Thank

John Kenny (46:49)
go to a world championship and we have other people that are just trying to get a little bit faster. Some people trying to do their first race and no matter what your goal is, that's what we're, we're there with you. You know, we want to, we want to get you to succeed at, at chasing your goals and, you know, it's, it's, it's it's all good. I, it doesn't matter what your goal is. We're gonna, we're gonna work at, at, at it with you to, help you accomplish it.

Jill Bartholomew (46:52)
Mm-hmm.

My name is

So one last

thing, master swimming. If you're not already in it, it sounds intimidating. I think a lot of people, myself in the past included, had pictures of like uber fast people and like the slow lane was faster than me. How can we break down the barriers and make it feel less intimidating?

John Kenny (47:33)
Well, I doubt we're gonna get US Masters swimming to change their name, but I like to remind people that Masters is related to age and not ability. So Masters is advanced age, know, typically I don't.

Jill Bartholomew (47:37)
Probably not.

Mm-hmm.

non-advanced ability.

John Kenny (47:50)
I don't not

advanced ability. It's it's I don't know what the threshold of I think master starts at maybe 19 years old. And so it's like 19 and over. You know, but most masters most masters.

Jill Bartholomew (47:59)
Yeah, I had that in other sports too.

John Kenny (48:01)
Yeah, if you look at the skill level and the times, look at a college swim meet. I mean, if you want to really get a good appreciation for the sport, like go to a Division I college swim meet. I mean, there are guys swimming and girls swimming incredibly fast, and it's awesome to see. But that's not what's expected. It's not what's expected out of a beginning swimmer. It's not even what's expected out of... I don't even expect that out of my

Jill Bartholomew (48:07)
Cut.

John Kenny (48:27)
I mean, I used to be at that level and the sports gotten faster. I compare my times and my prime and I would not keep up with college swim meets anymore. mean, they've gotten incredibly just faster and faster every year. And I think it's important just to compare yourself to yourself and not get hung up in comparing yourself to, you know, these really high level

swimmers that you you shouldn't compare yourself to. So I think basically Masters is advanced age not advanced ability.

It's welcoming of all people. We do have a masters team. We have an official USMS team at French Creek Racing. Most people don't belong to it. I'd encourage people to do more of that. I think jumping in a swim meet.

is a great way. We've had a lot. We had probably 15 or 20 people this winter who did their first master's swimming, which is awesome. know, like people doing that something that's out of their comfort zone, like runners and bikers or total beginners that just decided they were going to jump in and just do this. And so we've got people out of their comfort zone doing something cool. And then they enjoyed it. You know, you can join the you can join the master's team and race in a master's meeting.

Jill Bartholomew (49:27)
Yeah, that's great.

John Kenny (49:42)
you can also just join the training group. And we don't require a master's membership to do any of our swims. So that's another thing that kind of sets us apart is we, you know, we don't require that. It's, we have a lot, have, I don't know, 1300 people on Pike 13 right now that have done a training with us in the last year. So.

Jill Bartholomew (49:52)
⁓

Good.

John Kenny (50:03)
I would say out of those maybe less than 100 are actual masters members. join masters if you want the additional challenge and especially if you want to do a meet. But it's not mandatory.

Jill Bartholomew (50:11)
interesting.

All right, John, thank you very much for joining the podcast. I think we had a few technical difficulties along the way, but we'll work through them. appreciate you taking the time and sharing both your experiences in triathlon and, you you know, talking about your camps and how people can get, get involved in the sport and into master's swimming. All right.

John Kenny (50:36)
Yeah, thanks for having me, Jill

Jill Bartholomew (50:37)
Stop.