January 31, 2005
Ryan Layhee
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Welcome back to www.EnduranceRadio.com. Thanks for joining us for another interview today.
We’re going to be speaking with Ryan Layhee. She is a triathlete and was fifth at the Tri-California and she’s a personal trainer as well, so we’re going to be talking to her about she got into the sport, her background a little bit and maybe what she’s looking for too for next year.
The Race of the Day today is the Kring and Chung Newport Beach Triathlon. It’s on May 22, 2005. You can find out more information about that by clicking on the Race of the Day link right below the link to this audio.
Ryan thanks for taking time to talk to us today, I appreciate you calling us at www.EnduranceRadio.com.”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “My pleasure.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Well how long have you been in the sport of triathlon?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “I started pretty much in 1998 with college triathlon at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “My brother went to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “Did he? What did he major there?”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “He was an electronics engineer; one of the geeky guys.
How many triathlons have you done since?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “Quite a few. I can’t say, it would take a while to count them on my hands.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Do you like to do a certain number each year, or is it just kind of what you feel like doing?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “Pretty much like I feel like doing. I try to do one about once a month during the season, but then take maybe a month off here and there.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “What’s your preferred distance?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “I like Olympic distance, but then once in a while I like to do the long courses, half Ironman distance. It’s just a nice headspace to be in. I haven’t done a full Ironman distance before, and I use the sprints just to get out the kinks and then put some speed into my races.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Are you taking a break over the wintertime or are you still training pretty heavily?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “I’m taking a break. I was supposed to go to Brazil but I had to cancel that due to getting a sinus infection. I took November and December off. I finished the Tri-California Series with Treasure Island in the first part of November, and then the last two months just taken a break, enjoyed the snow up here and snowboarded and just dinked around; just some fun recreation stuff. I’m now just getting back into the swing of things.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Do you like to do the entire series for Tri-California or do you just pick races that you like to do individually?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “I really enjoy the Tri-California Series races, so I focus on those but then I try to throw some ITU races in there as well. Last year I also did the long course national and I don’t know for sure if I’m going to do that this year or not. I still want to talk to Tim Crowley about that one.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “We’re talked to Tim. I don’t think his interview is posted, but it will have posted by the time this airs. Is he your coach?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “He is.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “How long have you had a coach?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “For a year now, so it’s still pretty new to me. Its hard to give over control, but its nice because Tim and I can talk back and forth and I can say, ‘Okay, this is what’s going on in my life,’ or how I’m feeling and sound ideas off of him, and so its definitely nice to not have to think about what I’m doing or try to plan for me, especially with working full time. It’s nice to have someone else look at my whole season and map things out, but then I have the freedom to go back and say, ‘Okay this is working, this isn’t. How can we finagle this?”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Now a year ago when you were thinking about getting a coach what was it that you said to yourself that, ‘I really need to get some help here’?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “Pretty much it comes down to the fact that I was putting myself on the back burner basically. I enjoy helping other people, so as a personal trainer I’m constantly building programs for other people and it’s the last thing I want to do for myself, so I was just doing whatever I wanted to do basically and had no real structure. So that’s kind of where I was like, ‘Okay, this would be a good time right now to hand it over to someone,’ and also just have more input and so there’s more people thinking of creative training ideas. I was kind of bored of what I was doing so I was ready for something different.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Do you find that because you’re a personal trainer and you know so much about it for yourself, did he get you to think about things you hadn’t thought about or changed some things that you thought, ‘Err, I kind of like the way I’m going. I going to stick,’ or, ‘I’ll take a leap of faith and I’ll do what he says’?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “I took a leap of faith. Sometimes I find myself wanting to go back to what I was doing just because its comfort, but it also easy to just get into a comfortable situation and then you don’t really progress, you stay stagnant, and then pretty soon you start to decline. In that sense I was like, ‘Um I’ll try this,’ and he had a lot of good ideas and he still does have a lot of good ideas, so I enjoy it definitely.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Now what are your goals in terms of the sport? Are you doing it just to stay in shape and because you enjoy it, or do you have goals above that?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “Personally I would love to make the Olympics, that’s where I’m trying to go right now. I became a professional mid-season 2003 so I knew I didn’t have enough points to make 2004, but it’s been a dream of mine since I was little just to make the Olympics. I started back when I was little, like five years, I started with Junior Lifeguards and I was like, ‘Oh maybe there can be Olympics for that.’ I think its every kid’s dream to go into the Olympics and so it was awesome to see triathlons come in to that. So that’s one of my goals.
Most of all I truly love it. I was talking to my sister and theres just a passion for racing and I loose all sense of stress and life when I’m racing out there; training as well. I really love it and I told my sister I said, ‘Okay, once I became pro if I ever forget the true passion and desire to race just remind me on that.’ I love the fact that she’s there and keeps me in check for sure.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Which do you like more, do you like the competitiveness of the race itself or some people like just the challenge against themselves and about meeting personal goals?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “I like personal goals. It’s neat because there’s so many girls that I race with like Alexis Waddell and Linda Gallow. We’re all friends outside of the sport and we’re friends even when we’re racing as well, definitely we have a competitive side, but it’s not about trying to beat them; I mean it is but its more about pushing myself and seeing how far I can go.
So that’s what I love about the sport. It’s totally individual. You can go and try and race against people and compete against people, or you can put personal goals, which is what I like to do for myself and just try and race against myself.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Is it a worry for you that if you start to do this full time, and leading up to that Olympic dream, that you might loose site of that and that it might not be so enjoyable any more?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “Sometimes I get scared about that, but I look to my friends and my sister, family, just to be like, ‘Okay, keep me in check.’ Honestly I don’t see that as me loosing sight of it just because I know that if I don’t have that enjoyment and the passion to do it, I won’t do it.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “When will you start ramping up for next season and what does next season look like for you?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “I’m starting right now just back with base training. There are some cycling road races that I’m looking into, which I love doing, just to one: get your legs and feel your legs and bike handling skills and stuff, and then I’m definitely looking at the Tri-California Series again just because they’re local, and then probably two or three ITU races just to try and get points for the year.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “If you’re doing cycling races alone, is that your favorite leg of the sport?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “Yes, pretty much. I love to train on the biking and the cycling aspect of it for the fact that you can just go so far and see so many different places, especially around where I live. I live in the foothills of the Sierras so it’s climbing basically. There are some rides where you’ll go in and out of county lines and you’ll get back and you’re like, ‘Um I went through six different county lines today.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “We talked about it before we started recording, but where are you from?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “I’m living in Tenora, California, but I was born in Santa Cruz, raised in Hawaii.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “You talked about getting your start in triathlon in college, and that’s kind of an issue about trying to grow the sport and getting more people involved at a younger age. What was it in college; did they have a specific program at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo that helped you get into it?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “They did. I actually did my first triathlon when I was 13 and it was for fun. The Junior Lifeguard program that I did down in Santa Cruz at Manresa State Beach, we would put on a triathlon to raise money for the program and one year they said, ‘Hey, if theres any junior guards that want to do it we’ll let you do it for free,’ and my girlfriends and I were like, ‘Oh hey lets do that, that’ll be fun,’ because I grew up swimming and running, and I mean we’d bike around just for fun. So I did it then and loved it, but in high school there wasn’t any organized sport so I just did track, cross-county and swimming.
When I went to Cal Poly I swam my first year and then found out that there was a tri-team or tri-club there and they actually were first in the nation the year before I came, they got second the year that I was there; and so I found out about it and I was like, ‘Hey that’s neat.’ So I got my first road bike, and actually I’ve been racing on that road bike all these years until just this year.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Did it make a pretty big improvement?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “Yes, I was stoked yesterday actually; I just rode my first ride on my brand new bike. It was awesome.
Basically how I got into it, it was all organized by the students at Cal Poly and it was a smaller club. When I started I think there were maybe 10 people. Second year I was the Treasurer. The third year I became the President of the team. We grew the team to, when I graduated, I want to say there were over 60 students that were on it. It’s definitely grown and that’s one goal that I have here, where I’m working currently at North Fork Fitness Center, is to be develop a tri-team for the high school level here in the area. Currently I’m training about four high school students in the sport and they are talking with their friends, and a bunch of other students have come up to me and they’re like, ‘Okay when are you starting this?’ I’m excited about it and I really think it can grow into something.
The nice thing is, the beauty of triathlon, I always think, is that you might not be a stellar athlete in one of the legs but when you put them all together you actually might perform even better than you would if you were just a swimmer or just a runner. That’s why I think its great for so many different people in that they might not shine in just one sport, but put them all together and they come ahead.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “To get to the Olympics, what do you think that’s going to take over the next several years in terms of how much you’ll need to improve in terms of speed, endurance and that sort of thing?”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “I definitely need to step up my swimming. I go in and out with that one. I got kind of burnt out after two years swimming in college, so that’s a hard sport for part of the leg of triathlon for me. I need to improve on my swimming and definitely put a little more speed into my legs.
I know that in order for me to reach that goal I’m going to have work with trying to cut my work hours back just because right now I currently work full time 40 hours a week pretty much so I need to change that.”
<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Well we’re out of time now, but Ryan thanks very much for talking with us and hopefully we can follow up next season with another interview and see how things are going.”
<<Ryan Layhee>>: “Sounds great. Thank you very much.”
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