Hoka NAZ Elite with Ben Rosario | Koopcast Episode 132

trail and ultra runners what is going on what's happening welcome to another episode of the KoopCast as always i'm your humble host coach Jason Koop and on this episode of the podcast is which is coming to you after a two-week hiatus which was facilitated by a lot of my travel and predominantly my macbook pro completely shitting the bed which totally threw my life into even more chaos we are back with a vengeance and we're back with a very special guest and it is somebody that i've had a tremendous amount of respect for in the running space it is the executive director of the hoka northern arizona elite team ben rosario and for those of you trail runners that don't keep track of the road in the marathon space the hoka northern arizona elite team has become an absolute juggernaut of performance recently and in particular over the last u.s marathon trials and that is something to be respected and that doesn't come by accident that comes by a lot of force and a lot of dedication with athletes and the coaches that are directing those athletes and the support system that goes around those athletes and i wanted to bring ben on the podcast to discuss all of that aspect how this northern arizona elite team started with very humble beginnings based on ben's background

and then how he turned it into what it is today and what we know it to be today i also wanted to bring ben on the podcast for a little bit of a selfish reason because this is something that i have wanted to do for a long time in the trail and ultra running space and i'm not sure exactly how to facilitate it do we take a model that is akin to the model that ben has developed do we take a model that we see from the cycling world or is it something where we have to adapt it a little bit into the very specifics of trail and ultra running in particular regards to the terrain and surface availability of the venues these athletes could live in with all of that being said i found this extremely fascinating conversation that touched on a number of different points from business to athletics to elite athlete performance i hope you all enjoy this conversation as much as i did i'm gonna get right out of the way here's my conversation with ben rosario you guys just had um some additions to your staff and to your team there recently didn't you yeah i mean we're we're we're in the transition period here of uh the next phase of our program really uh we brought on alan culpepper as the new head coach which will allow me to focus on my role as executive director i've been doing both roles the entire time and so um i i'm very excited because i i love the business side of things and so i think i can advance things on on that end and

i think alan can advance things on the performance end and and yet um you know i still have uh quite a bit of um uh quite a bit of my day is still uh involved in the nuts and bolts of the coaching side at least for now as as alan transitions in um and eventually that'll be less and less but you know it's not overnight um so yeah i mean i'm very busy right now but it's it's good busy i love the fact that you mentioned it's not overnight because i can remember way back when you first started this uh program now it almost seems like it's evolving into the vision that you had when you originally started it because i can remember some of the interviews that you gave at the time and how you were uh kind of pitching it into the running ecosystem and i thought that okay that's going to take 10 years when i when i saw that because i know high performance programs i know how you know slow those wheels get ground unless you get a freaking ton of capital and fluxed into it and that's you know that's that that usually doesn't happen so congratulations on finally fulfilling at least you know most or all of that vision but is that a correct like assertation that's finally like moving towards this point to where you can see the vision that you initially started with really started to take shape yeah i think that's that's pretty fair i mean it's certainly we've certainly been pleased with what we've done thus far and i do feel like everything we've done thus far is exactly what we wanted to do you know became super high level program put somebody on the olympic team you know

won national titles from a performance standpoint i i couldn't be more pleased um i think from a business standpoint uh that's where i think now we're going to reach the new stratosphere uh because i'll be able to concentrate on that i mean everything we've done thus far has been great and look you know we have a monster uh monster budget from from hoca and that's awesome and it's grown and grown and grown um over the years and we're as well funded as anybody out there but um we feel like we can take that to a new level by implementing more of the cycling model and and uh introducing uh additional high level sponsors uh so that we can kind of just blow the competition away that's really the goal i love it so we're going to talk about both like the performance side from the athlete's point of view and then a little bit of the business side as well but as we were talking about before we got on air i think we got to retrace a little bit and talk about what the team is originally because this is a really specific ultra marathon audience and sometimes we play in our own pool like way too much it's way too incestuous with ultra running magazine and all these very endemic very specific things and and some of this audience is not going to be familiar with what you guys do out there in flagstaff so can you give the audience a little bit of a flavor of what the team was kind of originally started for and where you and where everybody stands right now and where you want to go yes so i think i i have to talk about where what i was doing previous to this because because

that kind of lends context to the the story so um i i ran for the hansons brooks team in in michigan for two years after college moved back to st louis missouri which is my hometown uh worked for a year there for the st louis marathon and then i opened uh with my buddy matt helbig our our own running stores so independently operated uh running stores big river running company in 2006 i did that for six years oh six to 12 and we had three locations and so i really you know was immersed in the business side of of running at least the the the run specialty side of the business um for for that time learned learned a ton and uh you know we were very successful fortunately uh but it was it was um it was time for me to do something else after six years i was fried and so my wife and i and our one year old daughter moved out to flagstaff arizona in 2012 in march of 2012 really just to go somewhere fun and different uh really had no plans um to to start a a training group uh what happened was over the course of the next year and a half i got to know people in flagstaff got to know some of the athletes began working with a couple of pretty darn good athletes um started coaching them because i had coached in in st louis while i owned the stores as well a lot of sub elite type of people and so once we hit fall of 13 that's when my wife and i because we kind of been searching for our next

adventure that's when we decided okay we're going to start a running team here in flagstaff the adidas team that greg mcmillan was coaching and operating was dissolving and so we had a couple of the athletes that i was already working with plus some of the athletes that were uh searching for a new group since the adidas group was was done so that's stephanie bruce kellen taylor ben bruce scott smith amy van alstein those athletes who were all very very high level in the road and track world joined our team in addition we had matt yano who i was already coaching eric fernandez who had run at the university of arkansas um the these folks formed the the initial group and we launched northern arizona elite in 2014 but i but i give you that context because the the goal was always to treat it like a business it was it was always to be marketable to share our story uh to to tell the stories of the athletes as as uh human beings in addition to what they were doing on the course and on the roads and on the track um we knew that if we did that then we could be valuable to potential sponsors as we so my wife and i funded the team with our own money that first year 2014 but we were creating pitch decks we were pitch decks excuse me we were reaching out to sponsors potential sponsors and finally in the beginning of 2015 we had three different shoe companies interested in sponsoring our group uh one

of those companies was hoca of course it was an advantage to have the other companies involved because that created leverage um we had won a couple of national titles that first year in 14 and then in the beginning of 15 kellen taylor ran a 228 marathon in houston which at that time was the sixth fastest u.s debut ever and that was a big part of our pitch was look the the the masses are on the road running the marathon and half marathon you know of course hoca at that time had some ultra marathoners because that's where they got their start they had some track athletes actually they had signed leo manzano they were trying to show that hey we can run fast as well um but but my pitch was hey those are both ends of the spectrum we're right here in the middle where all the people are where all the consumers are and i think that spoke to them and and so they signed our group and you know the the the fast forward version now is we've been with them ever since this is our third contract with them the the the funding has continued to grow and grow and grow and um you know though though your audience may not be familiar with all these names that we'll probably talk about over the course of the uh of the podcast but uh we've reached a very high level uh in in last year we had our first olympian alphine tuliamuk won the olympic trials marathon in 2020 and then ran in the tokyo olympics last last summer um so we we've we've kind of reached the pinnacle of the sport in that sense from a performance standpoint and now we're we're looking to sort of uh version 2.0 if you will where where we um you know bring this thing and uh you know to a whole new level i want to get

to both ends of the spectrum and this is part of what really makes this interview intriguing to me is you have this eye on things both from a performance standpoint and also from a business standpoint and a lot of times we try to isolate those two and it when you're when you're talking about like an ecosystem of athletes or even an an athlete's ecosystem of coaching and support staff and things like that you have to keep those things into context and not a lot of not a lot of people in the lay audience kind of really really realize what goes into it all to create those types of performances that you mentioned and so i want to get into that first you you obviously you came from a background where there was a training group kind of one of the original not certainly not the first but one of the original training groups uh and that brooks hansen's group and you've seen a lot of these evolve over the years and they tend to take on you know variations of very similar flavors with subtle what i would say like subtle nuances in in between the different models but from an athlete's point of view what do you think are the like the main advantages for an athlete to say you know what i'm gonna go here or i'm gonna go there versus i'm just gonna train on my train by myself in my own you know in my own kind of little bubble what would your pitch to athletes be who are trying what would your pitch be to the athletes that are trying to like navigate that space in terms of what direction to take their career from a training perspective yeah i think the days of of training on your own are

sort of behind us because even if you look at the people who are quote-unquote training on their own they've built the support system around themselves or they cut they have support systems come to them because of that well yeah i mean they have their coach they have their training partners uh that they work with they have and often oftentimes a significant other that that serves as a um a training mule you know but biking along for all their sessions and and they have their sports uh physios that that that they see on a regular basis so i i think in a way everybody is group training now you know even the people that supposedly are on their own but but the the advantages of a structured group a true professional team like ours and there are others is that everything is taken care of uh for you you know we have our massage therapists we have our strength and conditioning coaches who are world class we have our sports psychologists we have a in our case a three-person coaching staff we have um of course a wonderful sponsor um uh we're very well funded uh your training partners are world class um you're you're training with people each and every day that are like-minded uh individuals they also you know have have that same ability level um so you're you're pushing one another to to greater heights and there's look there's mental value in in running for more than yourself as well you know um running in high school and college the best part is the team aspect so to continue having that aspect is a huge piece of this thing as well to put on that jersey and have it mean something

um i think that's really important so those are just a few of the things but from a you know from a pure performance standpoint it's just the best situation because you're you're going to have everything you need to reach your goals and you played a the credit the critical role in figuring out what all of those pieces are you mentioned a few of them massage therapists the sports uh psychologists the coaching and things like that is that something that evolved over time or from the get-go you decided that the that the elite athletes that you are bringing on they had to have these certain essential services in order to make the whole thing work in the first place like kind of describe how that how that or if that has kind of changed over the years i think it has evolved over time and i think it continues to evolve because it's a this is a science you know and so you've got to stay up to date on the latest and greatest methodologies and some of that is financial because you we need to be able to pay for all these things and and you know that's been part of it as we've been you know gotten more and more funding but um you know early on look i didn't know i didn't know that there was such a need for a sports psych or a mental performance specialist um now i realize that that's a need so we implemented it um early on i didn't realize that it would be um you know beneficial

to have a bunch of different massage therapists that we use because not every massage therapist works for every athlete now we have nine different therapists we work with um didn't realize early on that we needed to be in the weight room twice a week thought once a week was enough um you know these things evolve over time so i would i would just tell you i knew right away that it was it was going to take more than just running um so that's always been at the core of what we do understanding the ancillary pieces are very very important and i guess i would just say they've become more and more important as the years have gone by and i think that'll continue to be the case moving forward when i've seen these things evolve the the point that you just made that it's got to be more than running when i've seen these things evolve the training almost takes care of itself because the training methodology and what people are doing is we can argue about like the little small nuances and things like that but by and large everybody's kind of doing the same thing and it's the duties is otherwise specified or the services is otherwise specified or the ergogenic you know whatever you're using is otherwise specified that tend to that tend to be some of the bigger differentiators i think that's true but i also think that that perhaps the biggest differentiator is culture so you you have to have the buy-in you have to have the athletes excited about what you're doing you have to have them believing in what you're doing believing that this is the best place for them believing in each other um that's really really important and of course culture ups and flows um

chemistry ups and flows over the course of the years i mean we're in our ninth year so you know there's been periods of time that have been unbelievable and then there's there's been periods of struggle of course um as you would expect with with any such organization but uh we happen to be in a great period of time right now and uh it feels very very fun right now um okay so describe a little bit of the push pull that happens when athletes either want to be a part of the program or when you're out in the field trying to recruit them because once again we've got an audience that kind of like doesn't really know the ecosystem what does that look like are you you know bank like in the typical collegiate you know program where they're banging down high school kids doors and things like that or have you built up enough reputation where people you've got like a waiting list so to speak what does that look like i think both things are happening at the same time so so people are coming to us left and right but we're also um we're also trying to go knock on the doors of the very best people um in the ncaa so what i like best is when was is when um it's mutual you know the same person that we wanted is knocking on our door then we're in a good situation um you know of course that's not always the case but uh it is really really important that we assign the right people and what i mean is what i basically mean is that we're the right place for them you know um of course of course you know um

we want them to be very talented and we want them to be at the very highest level but we also want them to be able to feel like this is the right place and and we're the right team for them and the right coaching staff and flag staff is the right city and that they can live here and enjoy themselves and be happy outside of running all those things are really really important we're very confident in our program and physically um how we're able to prepare or how we're able to prepare people physically for for the biggest days but um look you got to enjoy this and you got to enjoy a structured system you know not every team is is um the same they don't know you said earlier there are nuances and i agree with that um there are there are slight differences between how each team functions and and we very much function as a as a professional organization and you know yesterday we had 90 minutes social media meeting you know we we're we're in constant contact with the hoka marketing folks about different campaigns and things that we need to be doing and um we're brand ambassadors and we take that very seriously and if that's not a part of what you want to do then then we're probably not the group for you and that's totally fine you know um we live at altitude all year long if that's not for you we're not the group for you these are little things that we that we sort out during the recruitment phase um and we try to really do our due diligence uh but but the way it works um if people aren't familiar is it is kind of like that college recruiting process we we talk to them sort of informally um as they reach the end of their eligibility we we talk to them you know nowadays on zoom um and then

uh actually the first thing we do is talk to their coach then then we talk to the athlete um if that goes well then we usually set up a visit and they come to flagstaff and spend a few days with us and immerse themselves in our culture and if they leave that visit feeling like this is the right place for them or as you know they feel 99 sure it's hard to be 100 sure um and we feel 99 sure that this person is a great fit then we try to make it work and then there's the business side where you know they usually sign an agent with an agent after they finish their eligibility and that agent works out a contract with hoka and and naz elite and uh you know those contracts vary uh in years and in in in compensation dollars etc just like in any uh sport but um that's the process you mentioned something that i don't want to that i don't want to uh miss you talk to the coach first which is really interesting right why is that because i know that's a very deliberate strategy why do you talk to the coach first as opposed to the individual i mean number one is respect you know i think it's it's out of respect uh these coaches are our colleagues and so i don't feel like it would be right uh to reach out to the athlete without reaching to the out to the coach first i think that's the that's the number one thing i think secondarily um they're the conduit you know these these coaches especially at the college level are motherly fatherly figures to to these athletes and um these athletes typically if if the relationship is good they don't trust anybody in the world um

as much as they trust their coach and so if we can set up our first chat with that athlete via the coach it's sort of a stamp of approval um the stamp of approval that we need i mean it gets us off to a good start uh in terms of the relationship so that brings me into a great transition point to my next area so i'm a coach by trade and i'm always curious it within these group training uh setups how the coaching actually works because you're bringing in this collection of individuals and as you as you know with your background there's always an individualistic nature of how the training needs to be applied and then you combine that with the fact that they're coming from a collegiate program which they have an established relationship with a particular coach and you guys have coaching staff on board so how can take us through like how that actually gets flushed out and what the athletes are usually thinking about when they're like going through that process because they want the right setup right they're ultimately like coming into the program to succeed so what are they thinking about during that time as well different athletes have different priorities when we recruit some athletes ask us a lot of training questions sure other athletes are just super confident in themselves and they just they just want to be just give me the work they just give me the work just give me the work um so i think it depends on the individual um as far as how it works you know bringing them into this

new system i think you said it earlier it's not terribly different you know usually the top college programs which that's kind of where we're recruiting from it's not terribly different than what we're doing here uh usually very um strength based and and you know a lot of lactate threshold work it's kind of the latest and greatest methodologies are being used at the college level just like at the pro level and so there's not these gigantic differences but there are individual differences you know in terms of physiology and so i think alan culpepper our new head coach uses a really good term he calls it collective individualization uh meaning that you know we have a we have a an approach um and we have principles that we believe in from a training perspective but we we layer those philosophies and we we individualize training um sort of underneath this collective umbrella and how that looks is it almost varies segment by segment you know over the years i can think of segments where we had a lot of people on the same page because they were getting ready for the same event on the same day and that event required very specific preparation like the olympic trials marathon in atlanta right um we had six athletes training for that and they pretty much did the exact same thing the

entire time except for one younger athlete um didn't do quite as much volume as the others and just had a couple of sessions that were different but otherwise it was almost the same throughout but then you take a segment like we're in right now where we have alafine doing some shorter road races we have stephanie bruce um who's getting ready for the gold coast marathon we have katie wasserman getting ready for the track we have alex messiah and wesley kip to two really great young runners straight out of the ncaa um sort of getting their feet wet in road racing but then also focusing on a 10 000 meter on the track so it's just there's a lot of moving parts and there's very there's been very few workouts where people have been together um now they they're doing a lot of easy runs together um alice ride is training for the european marathon it's another one so your feet of marathon championships so so everybody's together there's a collectiveness to what's going on but the workouts are individualized right now so that's just kind of a little sneak peek speaking of that collectiveness so do all of the athletes are they all contained within the services that you offer meaning they're using the same group of coaches the same group of massage therapists the same strength training coaches and things like that or do you give them the flexibility to say hey i want to go use this mental skills coach or i want to go get testing over at this physiology lab or i want to use you know so and so speed program just for this one you know one

training block or whatever like how do you do you ever come into those conflicts isn't the right word but where they want to kind of like drift out of the ecosystem that you've built i would not say that happens very often i mean that's not really an option if you want your own strength and conditioning coaches you'll have to go somewhere else um there's there's some things that aren't optional because it's a slippery slope um and look you know i'm not out here to be their best friend you know i'm here to to give them what we believe works um and what we believe works is is very um uh we we we believe that we have all those things in place now there are as we get farther and farther away from the the training so i'm talking running the strength and conditioning um the ancillary work the speed development work that that stuff is all very structured and very much uh inside that that ecosystem as you say um if there is a therapist that we think or you think as an athlete can help figure out some kind of little setback you're dealing with yes let's try it we'll try anything uh to to figure out these injuries and so there are some there have been occasions where athletes have gone to a therapist that they used to use back home or um somebody down in phoenix that is really good uh john ball for example we've we've we've sent people down to john ball um even though he's not here in flagstaff so there are those situations where uh when we're trying to figure it out and figure it out

figure out an injury excuse me um that we've we've gone outside of what we have here in flagstaff but uh but that's really all that i could think of other other than that um folks are pretty much um you know they they pretty much have everything they need well and that's it by design right and i mean you're trying to bring out your as you mentioned earlier you're trying to bring the best and the brightest underneath one roof so that the most talented people can take advantage of the best types of practices and the further and further you drift from that you kind of get away from that that very core tenant or that core philosophy yeah you look you lose buy-in you know if you you i mean i this would be super hypothetical because we would never allow this to happen but yeah if somebody said hey you know for the next four weeks as i get ready for this race i want to use my old college coach for my workouts i mean and we said yes to that what's the point that we would lose all credibility with all the other athletes and so it's not possible you know and um uh yeah i i think that would be a terrible mistake uh if if a group tried to try to allow that much flexibility and and look some people might be hearing me say this and think oh i wouldn't want to be in that situation totally fine totally fine uh you don't have to be in this situation you know like i think that's the big thing to understand is there are a lot of in the pro running world pro road running track world right now there are a lot of options and that's great um i think the athlete needs to do their due diligence beforehand uh before

they choose their path to make sure they're putting themselves in a place that they're going to really enjoy and really thrive in and it goes without saying that those choices have evolved over time and they've been there for for longer periods of time as well because i i used to feel that athletes graduating from the collegiate system and you're kind of part of this era as well you were kind of just like set adrift and there were very few opportunities that were very few and far in between where you could actually participate in some sort of coach post-collegiate program and the research the due diligence that you just mentioned was even further and farther between because there wasn't all these there weren't all these like pieces of technology and social media and things like that to actually kind of kind of kind of connect it and i i think that i think that that's been quite refreshing to see post-collegiately because you can have you can have the best athletes in the world with the best career but if they don't know how to manage that career especially as the competition gets tighter and tighter and tighter a lot of times those athletes just kind of slip through the performance cracks and you never really hear or see from them again yeah i think we lost a lot of talented athletes to that sort of abyss that you're describing uh back back in the day uh but yeah it's not happening now everybody has great options and yeah you know again perhaps we need to explain more because um maybe the audience

here is maybe a little more ultramarathon um focused but but essentially what what it is is when you come out of college in this road and track world your path to making a living is via shoe company sponsorships and i think that's sort of the same in the ultramarathon world but the uh the from the competition side of things in order to be marketable for those companies you have to be either um performing at a super super high level on the track and you have to be good enough to make it to the world championships and the olympic games or or you have to be a great marathoner that that's pretty much the the the two kind of vehicles to to be really marketable is to be really really fast on the track 1500 meters 5 000 meters 10 000 meters or um be a be a world-class marathoner and be able to finish in the top 10 at new york city london chicago berlin um things like that uh that those are the those are the paths to making money well but you guys have enhanced that though so i'm going to give you a little bit of credit and i know you you're aware of this as well you're you were at the forefront you and your group were at the forefront at making the athletes that you brought into your team seem like everyday people like you put them out like you literally you kind of just like put them out in the public in the you know virtual public and also in the physical public in a more accessible way than we had really seen in the past and i think a lot of fans really appreciate that

strategy because a lot of times we think of these you know like training robots that are just behind closed doors and training on their treadmills 24 7 and you know living this like monkish kind of kind of life where they're isolating themselves from friends and family and things like that and those types of touch points i've always viewed as good for the sport because they make people especially the moms in your group more identifiable with the public and then and then therefore more marketable so when what i want to know is is when you're initially kind of like taking on that strategy it was a little bit different than what we typically saw with a lot of the elite athletes and a lot of the elite training groups what was the experience like going through that initial like marketing push of making this group just more accessible as a whole yeah i well again i i said at the top that i had come from six years owning my own running stores and it was really it was really just that same strategy so the the the strategy we used at the stores was to create a community around our store and be much more than just a running store and so we were the community meeting place for for the running community in st louis we we we hosted tons of group runs we had the speed workouts we did the races we did the clinics we had a youth team we had a you know a startup uh 5k team our 5k group you know for beginners all those things and um we were very um we were very transparent in everything that we did and we sort of made stars if you will out of the personalities

at the store or myself my business partner um the the the folks who ran for our racing team like they were all sort of stars in the st louis running community if you will and so it was that same idea but on a national or even global scale with the with the team here it was hey we've got to make these athletes super relatable to the fan base and there's a giant fan base out there to pull from because you know there's millions and millions of runners across the world and they they want role models they want idols um but they've gotta they gotta feel like they know these folks so i'm a big sports fan and because the top sports figures in the world are interviewed after every game and they play in the in basketball in in hockey etc 80 games a year you feel like you know them because you see them talking all the time and that was my thing was looking distance running we only race a few times a year especially if you're a longer distance athlete um marathoner or ultra marathoner and so in order to put yourself out there and get people to know you you got to do it yourself nobody's going to do it for you there's no machine like the nba like the nhl like the mlb uh etc uh driving these these um personalities into the public consciousness we've got to do it ourselves and so that was my thought was hey uh we don't have 82

games a year uh but we have three and 365 days a year and we can we're running every day so let's give them as much of an inside look into what we're doing and who we are as as possible well and the big thing is the athletes are actually relatable which a lot of like a lot of normal people they just don't for whatever reason they've got this psychology in their head that they're like i said they're robotic or or just what are they just don't relate to like normal like these are people that go to the grocery store they have their you know personal and social issues and things like that they have strife in their life just like everybody else and when you present these like really good athletes or as you mentioned the stars as just normal people it increases the fan base and it's also just a neat story it's just a really neat story to tell which running and track and field needs more and more of those very desperately yeah no i mean look the the other thing i always say and i said this at the beginning when we started and i i really am proud of the fact that i think this has changed over the years for for so many years in our sport there was a there was a belief that among the gatekeepers if you will the the brand managers the marketing people at the top shoe brands the the the running store owners that we shouldn't be marketing these athletes to the public it's going to turn them off in some way which was so weird like what on earth can you imagine a soccer magazine not having cristiano ronaldo on the cover because

oh that cristiano ronaldo he he's not relatable he scores too many goals you know i mean it doesn't make any sense every other sport uses their athletes to grow their game if you will um and yet for so many years we weren't doing that and it was so bizarre to me we were trying to focus on oprah winfrey running a marathon instead of instead of the best athlete it just didn't make any sense to me but i i feel like that has been a big change over the last decade and i'm and i think it's a change for the good i'm i'm totally with you on that sometimes i look at the marketing strategies and i've always taken a top-down approach right you've got to take it from the very of course yeah you've got to take it from the very tip of the spear and then move it down because people because like i said those elite athletes they're real human beings which a lot of people don't give them enough credit for and if you sit down and you have a beer with them or a pizza or whatever you'll find out that they're just normal people just like everybody else they just have really spectacular aerobic engines and like why do you think the new york city marathon and the chicago marathon and the london marathon are the biggest marathons in the world you think they would be that popular you think they would be on television if there was no profile yeah right i mean it doesn't make any sense so we we know that this works um and yeah i'm glad to see and of course i'm biased but i'm thrilled that we're working with a brand hoka that understands that and promotes their athletes and spends money and time and effort to tell the stories of their athletes of course we do that at naz elite

as well and it's a it's a joint effort between you know the the folks we have here and the brand uh but um yeah i just think it's a it's it's a proven strategy in all sports and it works in ours as well i want to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about hoka's role in all this um because if you you've kind of you've described this a little bit throughout the course of the interview where every single year there's been gradual iterations to the program and those iterations are either largely or exclusively fueled by the capital that hoka will will infuse into the program they're going to add more dollars you can add more people they're going to add a different level of sponsorship you can bring on different you know athletes and things like that so first off is the entire program funded by hoka 100 or are there other sources of revenue kind of coming into it we have a few different sources of revenue so we have our sponsorships hoka being our title sponsor and our you know by a wide margin our our um our largest source of funding we have rudy project sunglasses we have final surge the online training log uh platform and then we have uh picky bars so we have we have four total cash sponsors so that's a pool um and then we have uh revenue from our gear sales as well um so currently those are our two main main sources of revenue for the team you know that

goes to our general fund now of course for the athletes themselves you know they have their base compensation they have a very healthy bonus schedule and they have prize money and they have appearance money and they have uh the top athletes anyway get appearances at the top uh major marathons and then they have the opportunity to have um uh individual brand ambassador roles with companies that don't conflict with any of our uh team sponsors so um there's money flowing in in a lot of different ways but uh but no question hoka is the uh the driving force between or behind everything we do they've been a pioneer in this area i think and a lot of trail and ultra runners will primarily think of them as a pioneer in the trail and ultra space because that's kind of where they're where they started with their french roots but i give them a lot of credit for for partnering with you for such a long period of time i think that that's unique in the space as well as to have a partner for that for that long of a period of time that's willing to be like you said the lion's share of it what when you kind of look forward to another 10 years of this where where do you want to see the business side of it evolve either from a revenue perspective or the athletes that you're pulling in or a support perspective like you tend to have these you know you tend to be a little bit of a visionary so to speak in terms of where things can go five and ten years from now specific to your ecosystem or even the team ecosystem that that exists in the united states at large where do you think that

that's going to go in the next several several years well i can speak for us i mean we're we're very much going to follow the cycling model um we're going to increase the number of athletes that we have on the team eventually up to 30 um so that we have you know 10 or so athletes that are really marathon focused 10 or 10 or so athletes that are really track focused and then 10 or so athletes that are versatile and can kind of um do both if you will um that's that's the cycling model from a performance uh perspective because of course on us on a major cycling team you have uh one day specialists you have tour specialists you have a little mix of both um uh and then you have the the business side of the cycling model which is multiple big sponsors there is nothing stopping us from getting multiple big sponsors in this sport it's just that the tradition has been you get your shoe sponsor and that's it but there's nothing stopping us from getting more sponsors and hoka is all for this and they believe that this is the future as well and so this is the whole impetus between behind me stepping away from the day-to-day coaching and and freeing me up eight hours a day to work on the business and to promote our team make us marketable to not only endemic sponsors but non-endemic sponsors um i i would tell you five or ten years from now we will have a high level performance center here in flagstaff that we own and operate that includes a weight room and room to do

indoor drills and strides uh podcast uh space uh office space locker room cold tub uh cold pool uh hot tub uh recovery space all these things we we need to be a professional sports organization in every sense of the word um and that that's that's what's going to happen over the next five or ten years is you'll see i i really believe hoka continue to be our our main title sponsor but then we'll have presenting sponsors at a very very high level um and um you know look we're also going to be able to do super cool things with that um we're going to be able to give to the community in ways that we that we uh have never been able to before i mean we're already starting that now with um a youth track team that i coach here in flagstaff and and um some of the work we've done on the reservation with the hopi tribe those things are going to continue and continue to grow and um these are things that you see major sports organizations doing in their communities as well and so um yeah i just think you're going to see us be more and more professional well the non-endemic side is where it's at as you realize that the pool of those dollars are far surpasses the pool of endemic dollars within the within the running space or even in that the athletic space if you wanted to broaden that out if you talk about the big big athletic brands once you start to branch out from those the pool gets a whole lot bigger and you're right there are there are very successful athletic models out there that we can that we can kind of pull from i envision you having a lot more staff if you're going to talk that big abroad like you you need

like 30 more people of course yeah no no question about it and that's what we've done along the way you know for for years it was just my wife and i um then then we added you know uh well of course we had our strength coaches and whatnot but now you know if you look at what we have now depending on what you call staff we have myself uh as executive director alan culper head coach jenna reed an assistant coach my wife jen rosario uh director of operations we have our two strength and conditioning coaches we have a sports science uh uh intern right now hopefully eventually a full-time person on our staff uh we have our mental sports performance specialist we have our massage therapists i mean we've already got a gaggle of folks that that that support us each and every day here and yeah i do believe the staff will be much bigger uh eventually social media uh full-time employee i i see happening for sure right now we employ a marketing agency here in town that that has begun helping us uh with those sorts of things and so it's just going to grow and grow and grow well i can appreciate the personnel that you put there because those tend those things tend to drive athletic performance far more than the widgets and the uh technology that you can kind of put on uh put put into place and we see this with professional sports teams a lot where a lot of times they invest in the fancy gadgets and things like that and they fail to invest in the people that can actually make sense of those gadgets and so you leading with a people first approach with the coaches and the

sports scientists and the massage therapists and the physical therapists and the strength training coaches and things like that from a from a professional and from a personal perspective it's quite refreshing because i think that that that's that's ultimately what drives things because then you can bring the technology in after that after that point you know and um i've always thought that those types of training groups which we see a little bit of that model at the olympic training center here in colorado springs although it's not quite as what i would call coordinated as what you have they're always greater than the sum of their parts meaning once you get the sports psychologist and the coach and this coach and that coach and this professional and things like that they're able to enhance the athlete's performance at the end of the day much more so than if those things are all disjointed because there's some level of synergy that exists between all of those individuals to which they can they can help the athlete with oh yeah i mean and look the more people in your corner yeah more ready you feel when you toe the line that's that's the bottom line isn't it i got that from your from the athletes at the olympic trials they just had a like an i don't and i don't know how much of this is like marketing spin that you intentionally put on so you can divulge that if you want to but they all seemed like they had this air of confidence about them that was markedly greater than many of the athletes in the rest of the field yeah yeah i think when you're training every day alongside such high level people um your confidence is really really high um that's and you see that in

in other sports and um you see that at the collegiate level in our sport with it with a team like northern arizona university i mean they're just that confidence it comes from each other yeah you just know you know you just know what you're doing on a daily basis it's so and and you know there's a level of um uncertainty and there's a level of um kind of questioning what shape you're really in if you're by yourself all the time because you're kind of winning every day and there's confidence that comes with that but there's also that i wonder though because i don't have that tangible uh comparison whereas yeah if you look at our women at the trials they were training with each other so they knew how good of shape they were in because they were training steph was training with alphine and kellen kellen was training with steph and alphine so those were the best people so they knew they just the confidence was very real they didn't they didn't have to strava stock their competition they could just look across the dinner table and look across the training table and say yeah if i'm this good i know i'm that i'm know i'm going to be ready on race day there's that is a big part of it i totally agree one of the biggest advantages to these training groups is just when you bring the best of the best in and you're all beating each other up out up on the most important workouts like you you get yes you get a big physiological bump but the psychological bump you get from you know what you're doing is going to work is a is a big big advantage yeah look and you you have seen it in the ultra marathon world here and

there i know there's a lot of there's a lot of uh free spirits in the ultra marathon world uh but when over and there's not as much structure to some of the different groups but you've seen when there and look it ebbs and flows and it changes but you've seen when when groups of guys or ladies have come together and done work together it seems to have elevated everyone um i i think uh i think that's just human nature well we're i've said this many many times before and i've said this for 20 years now that i've been working in the ultra world we're 10 years behind every other sport and we we in that we only make up like a month every year it seems like so maybe now we're like nine years behind everything else but i do think that this training model that has been uh that we see more and more of in the traditional endurance disciplines whether it's in cycling and in road running predominantly maybe to a lesser extent in triathlon i do see it migrating into trail and ultra marathon uh running gradually because the the bigger limiting factor is terrain availability and and and that tends to kind of like hamstring the process there's only a few places if we're talking about north america that are really conducive to to that type of training and as you mentioned in the middle of this interview you got to want to live there and if you don't want to live in one of these places and there's only a few of them you know and there's only a few of them available then your your your options have all of a sudden run out very very quickly no that's a good point that's a good point but as we're as we're

having this conversation i'm also thinking that we've we've forgotten one thing it's fun that's true fun it's hard to train by yourself day after day month after month year after year and not get burnt out not get fried but when you have others around you and in a group of course there's always going to be some changes in roster and whatnot and those changes are good um bringing new people in getting new blood in new energy it it it invigorates you um in a way that just doesn't happen on your own so i think that piece of it is is an important piece that maybe we haven't uh touched on but gosh darn it you know it's fun maybe we have created a compelling enough argument for some people to get interested in and i mentioned to you offline it's been something that i've been trying to trying to see if we could pull it together in the trail and ultra space so maybe this will be a little bit of a catalyst and we can borrow from your model just like you're borrowing from the cycling model so that's the legacy that you can leave how's that sound that sounds fine you can you can take it take it take it however you want steal it i don't care i love it i love it all right man we're gonna leave it at that i once again i really appreciate your time but also more importantly i appreciate the imprint that you've had on the running community with you and the group there because i think that that's going to have a legacy that far exceeds your lifetime in my lifetime and maybe the people that are training underneath your group's lifetime as well and that is always something to have a little bit of pride and to kind of stick your chest out about so as we go where can people find more about you and your team and what you guys are doing well we're very proud of the website naz elite.com

you can see all sorts of cool videos and the whole history of the group and results all the way back to 2014 you can nerd out on that thing for hours of course you can follow us on social media at naz underscore elite you can follow me on twitter at let's see ben rosario one and then on instagram at coach ben rosario one but follow the team accounts it's super fun because we try to really as you said earlier just really give you an insight into what we're doing and what the athletes are all about as people i will echo that it is fun and it is neat seeing the athletes as people so once again man thank you for your time and good luck to you and your athletes this year and also in the future thank you jason all right folks there you have it there you go much thanks to ben for coming on the podcast today i always appreciate his perspective on how to cultivate elite athletes and how to cultivate a team of elite athletes to perform at their best particularly when the chips are down appreciate the heck out of all the listeners out there as i mentioned from the onset of this podcast this is something that i have toyed around with in my head for a number of years and i do think that with the landscape or the competitive landscape within trail ultra marathon running getting more and more competitive over the years that a setup like ben described during the course of this podcast is something that can be of benefit to the trail and ultra runners in the space time will tell if that

prophecy comes true or not and time will also tell if or how i'm involved in something like that it is something that i have been working on for a little bit uh for for a while and we'll see if it comes to light or not we have a number of great podcasts lined up including another podcast on sleep deprivation and how to combat it in an ultra marathon setting we have another podcast on wearables and the impact of technology on training which ones you should focus on and which ones are irrelevant and also we have a great podcast lined up with repeat offenders nick tiller and corinne malcolm all about how ultra marathon training is different between the sexes and can we learn anything from that that is important to training and performance i cannot wait to get those podcasts out appreciate the heck out of all the listeners out there and as always we will see you out on the trails you