Chasing the Dream: How Garrett Mayeaux is Building His Professional Triathlon Career

DFW Running Talk: Garrett Mayeaux
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Chris Detzel: [00:00:00] Welcome to DFW Running Talk. I'm Chris Deel, so let's get started.

Welcome to another DFW Running Talk. I'm Chris Detzel, and today we have special guest Garrett Mayeaux. Garrett. How are you?

Garrett Mayeaux: I'm doing well, thanks Chris.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, you're welcome. And it's funny because we just met I think you mentioned that you're. In the DFW running group, it's a Facebook group of 10,000 plus people.

And you see some stuff every now and then, and you reached out and said, Hey, you would wanna help do some stuff and come to find out, it's like you're a an elite athlete, probably athlete, an elite. And I was like, so I, a little background. I was like, oh, this guy might be interesting to, to have on too.

So appreciate you reaching out.

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah, definitely.

Chris Detzel: And I don't know if you thought I was going to ask you to come on, you seem to have a pretty cool background. And I thought, why not? So a guy that lives in, you're in Frisco, Texas, is that right?

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah, so I currently work in Frisco, Texas, but I live in Irving right now.

Chris Detzel: Okay. Yeah. Just right now. Are you thinking about moving or

Garrett Mayeaux: not for the foreseeable future? I'm at [00:01:00] least right now, pretty settled in Irving for the time being. I'm like at a place in career with being the triathlete and pursuing it professionally that I don't know where that will lead.

Maybe I'll still have this as a home base, but I might end up. Bouncing around, or it might be that I stay here and really just go out for races travel wise, but decide to stay and train here in the DFW and Irving area and Frisco area as well.

Chris Detzel: Cool. Now tell me more about that. About being this triathlete that's doing this somewhat professionally.

Or say somewhat just actually professionally, and let's dive into that. Like I'm interested in your background, like. How'd you get into it? How long have you been thinking about it, doing it and all that kind of stuff?

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah, starting from where I'm at now, so last year I took my, what they call professional license, which considers puts you into the elite categories.

Typically, once you get into that category, you chase races that have. Bigger, better prize money. And so people that have the elite licenses, they're the only ones that are allowed to enter races and participate for the prize money if it is valued at [00:02:00] $5,000 or more at a race. So say that you wanted to go and race in that race that has a $10,000 prize purse, you actually wouldn't be allowed to do that.

And even if you went to the race. And say you even podium, you got top three, you would still not be allowed to receive the money. The guys that you even beat potentially time-wise on that same course, you, you wouldn't get the money and they would. And so that scenario actually happened to me when I was in college.

I went to a race that had $5,000 and prize money, and me and one of my college teammates, I think we ended up placing technically second and third overall. But because we weren't elite. Cardholders. We didn't get that, $1,000 or whatever the second and third place was valued at. And so that was, I think, around the time when I started.

Oh, how would you

Chris Detzel: know? Like you wouldn't know that. I guess that's how you know is go win a race or a podium. Yeah.

Garrett Mayeaux: You don't get it. Find out you're like, Hey, there's prize money at this race and there's pros here and sometimes there used to be these smaller races that was like that one that I just mentioned.

And now those are less frequent. They're a little bit harder to come by to have races that are just $5,000 prize [00:03:00] purses. But I think I'm actually doing a race that. Has a thousand dollars prize purse coming up at the very beginning of May, and it's a smaller race, but it's a race that's been a longstanding race.

They've probably had that race for over, over 10, 20 years. Race, is it? It's called the White Lake ProAm. That's a race that's in White Lake, North Carolina. And is that,

Chris Detzel: Is it is it an Ironman or Half Ironman? What's the race?

Garrett Mayeaux: So it's a, it's technically a half Ironman distance, but it's not Ironman branded.

So it's a half distance. So it'll be the 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride and a half marathon at the end of the triathlon. But the triathlon itself isn't Ironman branded. So though it is the half distance, it's just called the White Lake ProAm half.

Chris Detzel: Okay. Yeah.

Garrett Mayeaux: And then,

Chris Detzel: and so you, so looking at, I'm sure you've looked at the past runners that have been there and.

Or Yeah. Athletes, not runners. They're doing all kind of swimming, cycling athletes. Yeah. Triathletes. Kinda looking at the past are, do you feel like you have a good chance to podium or When

Garrett Mayeaux: I [00:04:00] really do. So nowadays the professional racing calendar is a bit more robust and it starts to get really heavy with a lot of races going on.

Starting in April, going throughout the rest of the year, and it's in a time period where it's close to a lot of other big races that are going on for the pros. So this year I have a feeling that this race won't be one of the, it won't be really competitive. There's been years where this race has been really competitive and the top athletes, a lot of people would know their names like Trevor Foley, Andrew Starko.

Things like that. These are big guys in the triathlon area and they've been past winners of the event and passed podium athletes there. And there's been some years where it's been a little bit less competitive. Some years it's been more competitive and I think this year's gonna fall into a less competitive, and I'm actually leveraging that as like a stepping stone for my first season of racing this year.

So I'm actually gonna do an Olympic distance professional race in. It's called St. Anthony's, and that's gonna be in St. Pete, Florida the weekend [00:05:00] before. And then after that race, which is also a very long standing, very competitive race, it has some of the biggest names in the sport that will go race there from time to time.

And that will be very competitive this year still. So I'll go to that race, which will be a shorter distance, but very competitive race. And then I'll go to the half distance the next weekend and it'll be a little bit less competitive a race. But then after that I'm gonna go work my way up from.

Kind of getting my toes wet. I've had some really good training to progressing through the season to more competitive races and hopefully maintaining, getting really good places this year.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, what do you, it's, I don't know. And I didn't do a lot of checking. I saw that you ran Cal Town and I think you ran a one 14 or something like that for the half, is that right?

Kinda wonder where are within the elites, or do you feel like, do you think you're one of the top or is it. You're getting there, how's that working out?

Garrett Mayeaux: So right now I would throw myself in the category of still being a rookie.

There is a ranking system, so you can find a lot of information on professional triathletes to see oh, how good are [00:06:00] they and what are their race results? There's a couple of websites that keep track of these things and have really cool algorithms that they use to compare your swimming to other people, your biking to other people, your running to other people, and then your overall performances.

They give you like a point system, and it's all based on all these like different. Tiers of races that you do, the competitiveness of the field. So they get a strength of field score and a lot of factors that get put into consideration. But that website is called the Professional Triathletes Organization.

And then you can look up athlete ranks. And so right now, I think last time I looked, if anything hasn't changed, I was ranked 409th in the world and that's out of about, I feel like you can do

Chris Detzel: way better than that, dude.

Garrett Mayeaux: Oh yeah. Yeah, I am. I am definitely looking to climb the ranks. For sure they score your top three races.

So basically my top three races and they kinda keep your top three as a running score and then it gives you your positioning and the rankings. So my top three was from, I did three half Ironman professional races last year. [00:07:00] That was in Maine, which was my first one, my first professional race coming back to professional racing.

So little side story, I raced professionally very. Recreationally, I guess you could say. I was in school. I was not taking the sport super, super seriously. I was training around 10, maybe 12 hours a week. And for traffic, that's really not a lot. You're a household person that just wants to go do, luckily I a sprint triathlon here in Dallas or someone that's gonna go do some half Ironman races, they'll train about that working full-time jobs with kids, everything like that. Yeah. So I was in school training about that much and I thought I was a hot shot. I was kicking everybody's butt locally. But I went to race the international competition and I was a brutal awakening.

Yes, I think I was. I thought I was a really good swimmer. I came out of the water in the bottom, 20 athletes out of 70, and so I had 50 people beat me outta the water and I was like, wow. And then I just kept losing places as the race went on and I was like, what is happening? So I raced for two or three [00:08:00] races back from the time period of 2018 to 2020.

And then I let my license go to focus on my professional career for a little bit. Didn't know if I really wanted to pursue triathlon, but then in the back of my mind it was something that was still there. And then before I ran outta time to keep. Getting improvements. I decided to jump back into the sport seriously and taking it like full on this time and really give myself a go.

And why not if you

Chris Detzel: can, I like that, yeah.

Garrett Mayeaux: I had myself set up in a good position to do it. I had some encouragement from people around me to pursue it, and so now I'm trying to slowly make that transition from a practice that I had built up to now becoming more full-time athlete. So I'm slowly working my way into that.

But yeah. So do you do a lot of

Chris Detzel: half Ironmans or do you do full or what? What does that look like?

Garrett Mayeaux: When you go professional, there are two routes you can take. You can either go what they call short course or long course. Long course is basically all the Ironman branded events. Your Half Ironman, full Ironman.

Your short course is your sprint distance, your Olympic distance, which are races that are typically around an hour, a little under an hour to two hours [00:09:00] long, and. Then you're usually chasing the Olympic pathway. That's how you pursue triathlon as a professional to go to the Olympics. It's based on a four year calendar there if you're pursuing that route.

I stepped away from that running. Very similar to running. Yeah. And then I'm pursuing a long course professional triathlon, which is more like, there's a lot of races. You go race, you build your name up, you build your brand up, and you just keep getting better and better as an athlete and hope that you keep moving up the ranks.

So that's what I'm in the process of doing now, is I'm trying to move my way up the ranks. Last year was just getting my feet wet. I was like, do I even wanna do half Ironman distance? Because before that, I'd done. Two or three half iron races just for fun at the end of a season of doing short course racing.

And none of them had really gone that well for me. I usually would go into them and think, oh, I'm gonna just hold back on everything. I'm just gonna try to enjoy these races. And almost without fail, I would blow up on the run. Even if I tried to conserve energy on the bike, I would end up falling apart on the run.

And I was like, I don't know if I'm ever gonna like doing [00:10:00] this. Maybe I'm not built. For doing this side of the sport. It's almost like runners that you might have someone that's a really good half marathon runner. They go to a marathon and they're like, I don't know what's happening. I can never do a good marathon.

Yeah. So that's how I felt. I was like, I'm getting really good at short course, but it's a. Path that I don't wanna continue pursuing. I wanna move into the longer course now. But then I was like, I don't know if I'm an athlete built to take on anything past an Olympic distance. 'cause I was not doing very well.

So last year I was like, let's race professionally. Just

Chris Detzel: training probably is the key.

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah. And that's what I ended up finding. 'cause now that I'm doing more volume, I'm becoming definitely more resilient as an athlete. I'm definitely not. Not falling apart on the runs after really long bike rides like I used to pretty frequently.

So it's a big change in a little bit of your training style. But those things are, have been very important to my success now and that I am seeing in the future as being possible. So last year I did the three races and the first one was, let's see if we can do one and do pretty well, train a little differently.

And it didn't go [00:11:00] very good because I lost all of my nutrition on the bike, which is super important in a triathlon.

Chris Detzel: You lost it? Yeah,

Garrett Mayeaux: like the first mile I hit a bump really hard and on the bike you're usually carrying your nutrition and water bottles. So I had, I think two gels with me, but then the rest of my calories and electrolytes, they were all in a hydration system on the front end of the bike.

And I hit this bump one mile in going probably 20 miles an hour, and it broke. The piece that holds this front end system on my bike. I completely snapped it. It came loose and I was holding it on with one hand, had my thumb inside the bottle where you squeeze more water into it essentially if you end up doing that.

And I was holding it and I remember going past my fiance and saying I don't know, I'm gonna do with this. And it weighs like three pounds 'cause it's got yeah, 32 ounces of water and it's got electrolytes and you know your carbs in there. It ended up, I was in this big long chain of guys where you wanna be.

It's considered the main pack in those longer distance races. And we took a turn that was real sharp and it had a little bit of rough stuff and I couldn't hold onto the bottle. So I went back to my bike and [00:12:00] held onto the bike and then that thing just launched off and. I had a good 55 or so, 54 miles left in the race and I was like, oh man, I'm in trouble now because that was a lot of stuff that you need to make sure you secure your fueling for the run.

Yeah, I

Chris Detzel: was about to say you haven't even done the run yet,

Garrett Mayeaux: right? So as usual, I actually didn't bike very good there either, and then I didn't run very well, so I was like, man, another one that I'm just gonna say that was a one off. And so after that you have to chalk

Chris Detzel: it up. A

Garrett Mayeaux: couple, yeah, a couple weeks later.

You're a rookie. Yeah. I was like, rookie mistakes, simple things. There was more things that you done it for a time that

Chris Detzel: you're still considered a rookie.

Garrett Mayeaux: There were things that definitely still messed up before we even got to that point. But yeah, I was like rookie mistakes at that race, but it's really getting your feedback underneath you and getting that going.

So a couple weeks later I went to Michigan and did a race there. I fireman Michigan and I had my best race to date. I has, I had the 10th fastest run split in a field of about 50 or so athletes. And considering that's 50 [00:13:00] pro men, having the top 10 fastest run splits getting up there, you're getting where I feel like you can run what you wanna do, run really

Chris Detzel: well.

If you get the run right. If you gotta get to swimming in cycling and you're, I could be wrong, but this is just me making shit up. But I feel like. The run is the key to doing really well. Maybe at this level it's not. Maybe they're all really good, I don't know.

Garrett Mayeaux: It can be, it used to be that if you had a really strong bike leg, that would solidify your place.

All you had to do was run okay. But you didn't have to run that good and then you just had to swim. Okay. But if you were an, what they called an Uber biker your race was set. But nowadays, as more people are doing the sport's growing. There's more money getting invested in the sport so there's more prize money available.

So more people like me are seeing the sport as something, oh, I can build a career out of this and actually be a pro athlete and maybe make it to making pretty good money for the span of a career that you get. And so now more people are chasing it. There's a lot of people that are post-collegiate runners that come into the sport that have some sort of high school [00:14:00] swimming background.

So once they start training all that up and they learn how to throw a bike underneath their legs, they become really good athletes and. You've got more short course guys, which we used to love it. Short course guys would usually never step up. They would burn out during their short course career or they'd have enough success that they didn't really wanna move on up and do the longer distance things.

But now we're seeing a lot of short course guys transition to long course, and they're dangerous athletes. They've got a really strong swim, bike and run, whereas long course guys. Typically they used to have one or two weaknesses and but now, like what you were saying, it's not

Chris Detzel: any weaknesses. Yeah. Now there's not really many,

Garrett Mayeaux: not many really chinks in their armor anymore.

So now running is more important. So if you're a good swimmer and biker, that's great, but if you don't have the running legs, you're easily gonna drop down 10, 15 places, at least nowadays in these races and the way things are.

Chris Detzel: So it's funny because and I'm not even talking on the same level as you, because.

Several years ago I bought a bike and spent, for me it was good money just on a bike that I never ride [00:15:00] anymore. But 'cause I got injured and I thought, let's try cycling. And I did. Yeah. And I did this like 60 mile, 70 mile thing, three or four weeks after I bought the bike. 'cause I was in good shape, running shape.

I was just say so. Yeah, but it's, I still did the 60 something miles. But I was pretty worn out just from that, from that ride. Yeah. I think they call 'em rallies or something.

Garrett Mayeaux: Okay.

Chris Detzel: And and I realized like people with big legs and just were like, they were way bigger than I am.

I look like I'm in shape, but these guys, I. Aren in shape, but they're kicking my ass. Like literal, you'd literally, you'd so

Garrett Mayeaux: surprised. Literal. Yeah. I'm

Chris Detzel: like, how is this person like beating me? That doesn't happen in a ru. You know what I mean? It just doesn't, but it does in cycling.

Your legs have to just,

Garrett Mayeaux: yeah. What's interesting with cycling is oftentimes you will get better at cycling simply by, Hey, go spend time in the saddle. Go ride your bike. And that's all you really gotta do. And you'll just start getting better and better. Whereas running is a little different.

You can just go and run and you might not ever progress very much. You might see some improvements in your times, but if you just go ride your bike a ton, you'll just start getting better and better. And then [00:16:00] you're, I remember when I first started riding, having little to no bike riding experience, but I was a runner really pretty quick, I guess you could say.

And I was a pretty good swimmer. But on the bike, I remember the first couple of group rides I would go to where I would see guys with beer belly looking. Yeah, exactly. Like they're older, like in their sixties and stuff, they would drop me. They're like, it was like they were barely breathing and I was dying.

And so you'll be surprised who on a bike that will kick your butt. Or you have this mother of three that's maybe 110 pounds and she just passes you up like you're standing still. And it's in, it's impressive what people can do on a bike and the different people that can do well from just their training of riding bike.

Chris Detzel: Exactly. And I, I think that's anything is. You've gotta do the training. So you did well on this the second race back, and Right. So you're happy with that. And then third,

Garrett Mayeaux: yeah, so did pretty well there. And then third Race, I went to Indian Wells in December and I was really, I was coming into that thinking I was gonna do pretty well and it was a little bit more competitive of a field.

And it was a big field. I think we had [00:17:00] 72 athletes in that race. And I finished. 30 or 33rd, something like that. And I still had a pretty good race, but compared to the other athletes that were there, they were just so much better. But even though that was a good race for me at the time, there's still things that I looked at it and said, I can still, a lot of the.

Numbers I was doing, I can do in training and I raced that race a little bit different than I had other races where I was really in the mix. At the beginning of the bike, I got into a really good bike group, but they were pushing really hard on the power for the first hour. So I had my personal best power numbers for the first hour and I was really stoked.

I was like, wow, I'm doing great. And then came that second hour and it was tough, but I still ended up pushing really well. Had my best power average over the whole bike that I've had in any race ever. So there are a lot of like good check. Boxes from that race. And I did okay, but still not great where I'm trying to get to.

And so they took those three races and that's what got me into the ranking of 400 and something. But I think if I have some [00:18:00] races, so say I break out this year from doing some really good training that I've been doing and start getting really good points on the board, then I can easily cut my places down and get into the top 200, which is what I'm gonna try to do this year.

Chris Detzel: So Interesting. So I have some questions that, if you don't wanna answer 'em, it's fine, but that's okay. I'm just. Just me being curious than anything is, you decided, Hey, I'm gonna do this professionally. And let's call it our pre-show. Before we get on, we talked a little bit about, how do you make a living out of something like that?

I know you mentioned you had maybe some sponsors and you have some jobs here and there. Because. Being a, an athlete like you are like a triathlete, you've got a bike. You gotta do a lot of things and it's gotta be expensive and somebody's gotta be able to support that.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like how do you do it? I'm curious. Yeah. So I don't know.

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah, there's definitely, with triathlon, it's become a very expensive sport, even from the bikes, which you mentioned before. And when you're racing professionally, you wanna have a bike that can put you in a position to be competitive.

Gotta

Chris Detzel: compete. Yeah.

Garrett Mayeaux: If you [00:19:00] have a three, $4,000 bike. You're already minutes behind automatically just because of the bike technology being so much more advanced. So if you look at it this way, some of the things that I had to do was make a little bit of an investment in myself. So I bought a bike, which I did go through a bike shop that does support and sponsor me, and I got a really good bike, but it's still, I still Who's the bike

Chris Detzel: shop?

Do you want to

Garrett Mayeaux: Oh yeah. In indoor bikes, which is in Frisco. Okay. Been a long time supporter of mine. It's actually where my office is too, which I'll get into. It's a piece of what supports me in doing triathlon. Yeah, indoor bikes and Frisco, a great bike shop. They started carrying Trek and a lot of riders started getting on Trek bikes, and so I was on a giant but having some issues with my position.

So I said, okay, I think I need a bigger bike. I need to change some things up. So as I was getting ready to go back and really take pursuing professionally s. Professional racing. Seriously. I said I need to have a top line, newer bike. So we looked at what I could get. So I got some of the lower components, the UL te Shimano, [00:20:00] ALTEGRA components, but it's still electronic shifting and there's a lot of things that I ended up changing on the bike as like aftermarket products, but I think I ended up dropping, if we look at numbers.

Oh, around eight grand on my bike.

Chris Detzel: Yeah.

Garrett Mayeaux: To get a bike. That's a good level and that's a eight grand on a bike. That's probably around 14 when you look at it. If it was outright retail. Yeah. That's a lot and it gets expensive. And then nutrition alone, like I've got a nutrition sponsor called Blank Sports Nutrition that treats me really great and takes care of me in a lot of ways with nutrition and things.

But I ran outta some stuff and hadn't gotten an order in. And just for one day of training this past Saturday, I spent $13 on the nutrition that I needed for that one bike ride on one day. Yeah.

Chris Detzel: Yep.

Garrett Mayeaux: So things can get really expensive in the sport, and that's outside of your cost of traveling to races, your race, entry fees, things like that.

Chris Detzel: Race entry fees are expensive to get into those.

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah, if you look at Iron Man branded events, I think right now it's around three 50 to [00:21:00] 400 for a half maybe, and then around 900. 800, 900, a thousand for a fool. And then as a pro, we have a little bit different entry pathways. So we get discounted. We can get an Ironman Pro membership, which is $1,500, and then we can sign up for whatever races we wanna do during the year.

But what they usually do with us is they tell us to do single event entries at a time. And you work your way up because say you get injured mid-season and you end up doing two races, but you already paid for the $1,500 membership, you're out a lot of money because for me to do the halves that I want to do each half marathon or not half marathon, but.

Each half Ironman race is $250 to enter.

Chris Detzel: Yeah. So that means if you wanted to hit that 1500 mark, that's several races. Yeah,

Garrett Mayeaux: it's a lot of races. So we have to go a long way before we start getting free races. But yeah, it's just the climate we're in is they're still paying for our races and things.

How many races do you

Chris Detzel: wanna do a year?

Garrett Mayeaux: So some people do only a few. So you'll see some people release their schedules and they might only have four or five races. And those are usually the bigger guys that have a lot of sponsor backing [00:22:00] and they're trying to train train, peak at a race. Train, train peak at a race, and they're trying to really do the best they can and hope that everything goes well at every race.

Otherwise, they start adding more to their schedule. But the way my race schedule looks like for this year, of course, last year I only did three. I had four planned, but one got canceled due to inclement weather. This year, I'm actually looking at doing four races in my first season. So my first season will be between the end of April to the beginning of June.

Then I'll take a little mid-season break. I'll take a couple weeks off after my last race in June, and then I'll take a week off really. Then I'll start training again, and then I'll have a second season between August to maybe November, we'll see, and I'll probably put four races there, so I'll end up doing eight under.

Seven to nine races in total of just the travelers. Yeah. I think you have

Chris Detzel: to right to, to get the points and Yeah. Become, even better, right? So I'm

Garrett Mayeaux: chasing points, I'm chasing experience still. 'cause there's still people that have, like 50 races under their belt compared to my five, maybe [00:23:00] in half Ironman experience.

But yeah, it's expensive. And then how are you gonna fund it? When you decide that you want to go professionally, it's a bit different 'cause you are looking at, okay, I need to be able to support and then fund all this stuff. And so the way I've done it is at first I had a good starting place where I had my own chiropractic and sports business, which I'd left the sport to go focus on, build it up, thought that I was just gonna go.

Off with that and make triathlon just a hobby and maybe do it as a professional hobby. But I didn't really have any future plans in that area of the sport itself, other than just to have fun and be as competitive as I could be working my full-time job. And I built my practice up to being really considerably full-time.

I think I, I see patients in a way where it's like I'm spending 30 minutes to an hour with each patient and I got to where I was seeing. 50. I was seeing about 45 to 55 patients on average for a couple weeks in a row. And I was like, all right, I've made it uhhuh and everything was real steady. And then I also worked some events for the PTO, which is a triathlon company that now puts on these [00:24:00] races called the T 100.

So I worked there, US based events. So last year when I was in Miami, I was working with some athletes and then when I got done working with all the professional athletes there. Where I wanted to stay and watch the race. So I met up with some old friends and some guys I had never met before that are still doing short course racing.

Yeah. But when I went and stayed with them at their Airbnb, I was like, I used to race these guys a long time ago and now they're full-time athletes. They're making it work. And I used to beat these guys. Yeah. I was like, maybe I should have continued pursuing the sport. And so that really got me thinking like, man, when I go home, I don't really want to go back to full-time practice.

Yeah, I just, I really think I would let myself down if I never took it seriously and tried to pursue triathlon. I think it'd be one of those things I look back on one day and say oh man, what would've happened? I should have coulda, would've. So

Chris Detzel: I like that.

Garrett Mayeaux: I ended up talking to a guy named Greg Bennett, who's like a legendary triathlete.

He was older when he made his Olympic team, so I think he was like 34 when [00:25:00] he went to the Olympics. And I was like, okay. From his experience and his knowledge on the sport and seeing all his other athletes, which I'm sure he was a mentor to, or has just been around and seen how people become successful or don't, I was like, maybe I jump on a call with him.

I had the opportunity to do that and I said, lemme get on a call with him. Ask him about his experience too late? Is it stuff like that? Is it too late? Should I maybe not really pursue it, keep it in the background and just do it as a hobby? What I originally thought or does he think, and based off of where I am right now, could I actually make it in a sport and do really well enough to make a living with it?

And after that conversation, he's I think if you had came to me a year or two later, he's I might have not told you to pursue it. He's but you're in the perfect time. You still got a good five years. You can improve and build and grow in long distance sport. And with the endurance sport, he's then you can ride it out for another five, six years.

So he is I'm looking at a 10 to 12 year career. You can still have, he's he's give it three good years. He's go and invest as much as you can of your time and energy into it. He's give it all you got for a couple years. He's and at the end of it, if it doesn't work out, you can [00:26:00] always go back to practice.

You can find a way to get back to doing whatever you're doing now. He's and now he's with the way I see it, he's you're already established. He's from a sponsor standpoint, you being a doctor and all these other little things, a coach and whatnot, he's that becomes valuable with sponsorships too, 'cause it gives him some backing to whatever you're backing.

And so he had an interesting perspective on that kind of a stu of things and. He was like, you can either set your practice up to be your sponsor to where you hire some people in and you completely step away. He's or you could still work it part-time and then just do part-time and try to build yourself up into the sport of triathlon too.

So that's the route I took. I just started backing down my hours in the office to where now to do. Professional triathlon in the way that I'm pursuing it. I work part-time in my office, so I only do three half days a week in the office, and then I do coaching. I'm a Master swim coach and I coach at Texas Ford Aquatics and Lifetime Las Colinas.

I do two practices a week at. Each of those places, and that brings in a little income. And [00:27:00] then I coach triathletes and runners on the side as well. I've been doing that for nine years. And so I have, I think I work with 14 athletes right now, and that brings in some income. So that's what supports me right now is my part-time practice.

I love it, man. That's awesome. And coaching.

Chris Detzel: You know something I actually really that you did was you took the time to really just think it through, ask some really professional athletes that maybe did it for a while but you already have, a great background and you've got your schooling, you're already established.

If you wanna be, and it's, look, you can always fall back, I don't know if that's a right, but you can, and just do that full time. So that's pretty cool.

Garrett Mayeaux: So it's cool to have those things. I think if I could go back and do it all over again, I maybe would change things a little bit.

I think before I ever went to chiropractic school and I had that inkling that I wanted to pursue triathlon professionally, I think if I could have gone back and told, which my parents just pushed me into. Keep going to school, go on. But from their time and age, that's like the best thing that they knew.

Yep. They [00:28:00] said this is what you do. You get a job, you pay your bills, you start your family. This is gonna set you up best for life. And they didn't fully support me doing triathlon because they had no athletic background. My, my family has no real athletic background. I'm the only one that kind of popped outta nowhere as some kind of a standout.

Athlete in the family.

Chris Detzel: That's interesting. And just keep going.

Garrett Mayeaux: I think I would go back and I would pursue triathlon from that point because at that point you don't have any student loan debt or anything. You have a clean slate. You don't have a whole lot of responsibilities of any sort. And you could, I could do just as much coaching then and build it up to what I'm doing now I feel like.

And I was already doing a little bit at the time, so I think I should have just said. Hey, if even if you took 10 grand to support you for a year or two, do that now. Go risk it there. You more

Chris Detzel: resilient when you're younger. Yes,

Garrett Mayeaux: that is very true.

Chris Detzel: And like you said, you don't have any debts necessarily.

If you look, there's a lot of pass you could have taken, you took this is the reality.

Garrett Mayeaux: But yeah,

Chris Detzel: that's could have, should have. But like

This is what it is. [00:29:00] Yeah. And now you are established. So that's good. You can see that as a very much of a positive. Yeah.

And then now you can still chase your dream, and you still have the guy said, four or five years to really do it and probably three years to say, is this a reality? You know what I mean? Do I con

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah.

Chris Detzel: Continue this.

Garrett Mayeaux: And so I would, and you've got pretty good

Chris Detzel: social presence. You, or at least your Instagram mean.

Yeah. You get a lot of views on that. Yeah. Yeah's been so great. You use that if you use that as a kind of a tool to really I don't know if you do TikTok or whatever, but, look, social networking is, I. For you? Is it an opportunity?

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah. Yeah. My

Chris Detzel: all athletes, like you,

Garrett Mayeaux: My coach said that he was, he's Hey, you're, he's I think you'll be one of the best in the world.

He's it's gonna take time to get there. He's but the good thing you have going for you is you're a personal person. He's you're very likable. Yeah. He's said. A lot of people like to hear what you have to say. Even sometimes when I'm like, people don't wanna know, what power, what pace you're going, but he's people do they, they're interested in that with athletes that are like you.

So he's encouraged [00:30:00] being to push me to share. I have a podcast about

Chris Detzel: running, right?

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah.

Chris Detzel: And so all we talk about is running most of the time. And luckily you want to come on this a little different. We'll talk about running here in a minute, but, but people are interested. Yeah. That's why.

And they're listening to these podcasts, so right here you are.

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah. And I've been starting to pour a little bit more into social media and recently I like to joke around. I'm like, maybe this is the beginning of something. 'cause I've had my last two or three videos that are going crazy.

And I really, the only real secret that I took into it is I did some things that I thought were interesting and funny and I hit on some things that I saw other people doing. And those, and I posted like back to back days kind of thing. And for whatever reason, Instagram loved it. And right now, over the last week, I think I've gained almost 200 followers.

And so I was like, wow, I'm just gonna keep doing this because that's working good. And that's what sponsors want when we come back to what you were asking about. That's exactly right. How you get some support.

Chris Detzel: That's right.

Garrett Mayeaux: A big thing is, and I'm not. I'm not upset with how I [00:31:00] went my whole pathway.

I like what you said. I'm established now. I feel like I'm in a really good place to be doing what I'm doing and I'm excited about it, which is one of the big things that's really important. You need a fire. We have a clear vision to keep you going. You have a vision and the vision is super important, and so I've been training really good.

Everything supporting me is going really good. And how I've also tended to produce, procure some sponsors is that I had one person who's an individual that he used to try to be a professional runner. He's known me through some swimming stuff and he said, Hey, I'm just gonna individually back you a little bit.

Here's a little bit of money. He's I. I'll support you for a couple years to get your feet on the ground. And once you don't need me, just let me know. He is but I'll help you get your feet on the ground, get going. So I've had a angel sponsor who's helped with some of the baseline expenses of things.

And then outside of that, what's been funny is that one of the easiest things to get has been wetsuit and swim apparel, gear and sponsorships. So I started out with that last year. I was a part of this big team, but then. Some of the things weren't as good as what it seemed to be or what the team was making it out to be.

They had change of [00:32:00] management in the team. The people who were in charge of taking care of our team had shifted and then it just wasn't working out for me, so I left that. But I still have a lot of connections with good like wetsuit and swim apparel brand. So I'm still like fully supported with any goggles, swimsuits, sweatsuit, things around 29 is fast.

Chris Detzel: What's that? Does that stuff wear out fast or

Garrett Mayeaux: It can. So the wet suits, even though they're a thousand dollars for a wetsuit. Exactly. Those things can only last you like five or six swims. Yeah. I have an athlete right now, he just bought a Rocha, top of the line wetsuit, and we were at the pool the other day and he noticed there's two little rips in it and he is what? He's I've only worn this thing twice. Wow, how is it tearing up already? They're very fragile. They can make you very fast, but they're, you gotta be super careful with them. You can just stretch it. That's so you can do a little stretch the wrong way and just get a little in it. Wow. So some those things are, but

Chris Detzel: that's pretty crazy.

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah. So

Chris Detzel: Let's get some very interesting background. So I've, I appreciate you coming on and telling me [00:33:00] all this stuff and, I'm sure others are gonna be interested that are, thinking about either becoming a professional athlete or what it takes to become a pro professional athlete or even just.

Hey, it's interesting that you know what you have to go through because you know it's, it is not like you're just sponsored by this big company that's gonna just give you all this money, right? You have to do a lot of different things. You have to work odds and end jobs. Luckily, like you, we mentioned you're established and so you have kind of a.

Thing that you can still do on, part-time and, but you're still doing some bike stuff, you're still doing, going to events and Yeah. Either volunteering or doing different things. You're meeting people. I love the community aspect. Something I always talk about that's important for you to be successful in any sport, whether you're just doing it for fun or just doing it for working out or whatever, or.

Even at your level professionally, I'm sure you have a community that you're building relationships with constantly trying to do those things. And I think that's a key to anything that you do in life, is the community [00:34:00] aspect. So

Garrett Mayeaux: yeah, I think that's what people seek is human connection and especially in the things that we love to do.

Chris Detzel: That's right. You said it perfectly. We could end it there, but. One of the things I wanted to talk about specifically is about running. So when we look, the, this is a podcast about runners generally, I just had some elite athletes on that just came out talking about their Boston experience and, moving forward or whatever.

You've run, I don't know what your best half marathon time is. I say one 14, which is pretty good at Cal Town, is that, yeah.

Garrett Mayeaux: I did a one 10, I think 1 10, 18 or 20. Okay. At the Irving Frost back in 2023. Did you win it? And that's my best time. I did win. Yeah.

Chris Detzel: Okay. I was about to say, now there's some really fast people.

Like I was looking at the Dallas Times and they're running one oh sevens.

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah.

Chris Detzel: For just, there's some really fast athletes here in Dallas, yeah. We've got

Garrett Mayeaux: a great community of like all around, from the top, from kind of the elite area of athletes. We have a lot of really fast runners, and then we have just a good volume.

I think the community's [00:35:00] really been growing, especially lately. I watch it from afar sometimes. I've I've bounced in different groups, so I've been around like trained Pegasus group. I've been around like the sloth, the sloths group. I've been a big part of Nomad when it was on the, when it was blowing and going, and I've been around like the Plano running community a little bit.

And then the Oak Cliff. I was actually, I was one of the first people to go to the Oak Cliff Run Club when there was maybe like. 12 people out there and now it's 400 or something crazy.

Chris Detzel: The running community is huge in DFW.

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah,

Chris Detzel: Dallas is big, but the whole entire Dallas Fort Worth, you think about what the Irvine Frost guy, I forgot his name, but the race director there, he's created this whole thing in Irving.

This

Garrett Mayeaux: Alonzo,

Chris Detzel: I think. Alonzo, yeah.

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah.

Chris Detzel: Is it Alonzo?

Garrett Mayeaux: Or I'm not

Chris Detzel: sure.

Garrett Mayeaux: Something like that.

Chris Detzel: But yeah he's done a great job there. And then you think of Dallas Marathon, Cowtown and some others that are, from a racing standpoint, what is your goal to, so have you run a marathon before or?

Garrett Mayeaux: I've actually never run a marathon standalone. I've only done [00:36:00] one marathon, and that was a part of an Ironman that I did. But I did that Ironman with my fiance, and that's the only Ironman that I've done. If you ever try to look me up to find my results, it'll say, did not finish or did not start one of the two because I actually used my back.

Then when I did it, I used my pro license to enter the race late 'cause it had already sold out for age Groupers and Ironman didn't like that. So they didn't like that. It didn't start with the pro men. They didn't like that. I registered with my pro license to not race pro, which I didn't even know there was the rules around that back then.

Like I said, at first when I was a pro. Back when I was in school, I didn't really know what I was doing. Interesting. But I did that. So they gave me I didn't finish it, but I did finish it. I did it with my fiance all at her pace. So I just had a whole day of fun training and running and stuff too, or?

Yes, she does. She's the long distance. So she really only does Ironman events and like half marathon or events.

Chris Detzel: Okay. So she's more of a ru so she does. She does Ironman, but she also is, does more running, is that right or?

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah. Yeah, I'd say she [00:37:00] does. We do probably about the same amount of running events.

'cause I say I dabble in road ra, road racing and road running a little bit to build up my running and things like that. Sometimes at certain seasons of the year. Yeah.

Chris Detzel: There's lots of races here, so why not?

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah, definitely. And, but she's the one, she's done 16 Ironman, so she's a big, oh geez, very well versed Triathlete Ironman person.

And then she's done, she's been chasing, so right now she's focused on the running, so she's chasing Boston and she just qualified at Houston this past, houston Marathon and yeah. Now she's gonna do Boston next year. We were hoping that, I'm pretty sure she got a really good time gap to be able to do that.

Chris Detzel: My wife, she's, so we're going to Boston again. So it's gonna be her 12th in a row. Oh, wow. Boston. And then she goes right to Boston. To London because London's the next weekend. So you can imagine, she's not my goodness gonna race that one, but

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah.

Chris Detzel: But trying to get into London is very difficult.

Garrett Mayeaux: I hear it. Yeah. And

Chris Detzel: also talk Tokyo. So Yeah. Look, Boston's awesome. It's amazing. So congratulations to your fiance.

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah. It'll be really [00:38:00] cool. I'll go and watch. I'm sure.

Chris Detzel: Same. Like I'll go. What's really cool is there's this 5K. That they have Saturday before the run the marathon.

Okay. And so you get to go through the finish line and there's elite athletes out there running the 5K. So there's 10,000 runners, 5K. Okay? And these guys are running. Low thirteens. Yeah. The women are fourteens, and so Yeah. Yeah. There's pacing, within the 5K, which is crazy.

Yeah. So it

Garrett Mayeaux: is wild seeing those really top in, 'cause I'll jump in a lot of like elite local type races and stuff. And I've done a couple that were like very competitive. I'm lining up against a bunch of like Kenyan athletes. When you watch those guys run, you're right there with them and right behind them.

You look at them and you're like, okay, they are running. I don't know what I'm doing or what I thought I was doing. Exactly, but they are, they're floating.

Chris Detzel: You could be doing sixteens or things and that's nothing.

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah.

Chris Detzel: You know what I mean?

Garrett Mayeaux: Oh yeah, Uhhuh,

Chris Detzel: That's fast. I find that there's a lot of these Dallas runners that can run that fast.

I'm gonna say fourteens, but fast.

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah [00:39:00] we have a good bunch that can, I think, and there's some guys I train with and there's a guy I trained with named Sergio and he's run a 14, 16 or something. And the 5K, he's from Spain and he's just crazy fast guy. I like to chase him around, but right now he's in a little bit less, he just got second at dash down Greenville and so he did really well.

Craig did. He's another really good local athlete, Craig Lottens Logger, I think.

Chris Detzel: Okay. Yeah. Interesting.

Garrett Mayeaux: And so I call him up. Oh yeah he's been around. I don't know if he lives in Dallas or, I'm not sure where Craig lives, trains and things like that. But Craig is a really good athlete. I've never really talked to him before, but I've seen him at a lot of races.

And there's a race that's called the, I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but if you haven't, there's a race in Tyler, Texas. Called the fresh K and oh my gosh, that race is awesome. There's a 5K and a FK. I don't know if there's a 10 K, but there's also like fun run walk kind of things that are associated with this for kids and everybody else, and it's a huge race in a small [00:40:00] town.

I'm from that area and they have prize money in the 5K for locals, for anyone who comes for masters. There's prize money, gift cards for all those categories. And then in the FK, it's been really competitive. They used to pay to the top 10, so it used to be fun to go to that Because you would, yeah.

See everybody getting off of the bus of Elites and it's okay Kenyan. No way Ethiopian. So there'd be like six to eight of them and you're like, okay, they can I get back first eight places are gone. We're like, there's ninth and 10th for like the local guys or like anyone else that's here to run Elite.

And so I used to try to get into that prize money there, but now they've cut it down to the top five. But it's still a super competitive race. But one of the best things about that race is their. Little expo of freebies is incredible. You can literally go home with groceries for a week because Brookshire's Brothers, which is the ones who are huge sponsors of the event, and they have a store there called Fresh where the race is at, and they basically just have all the vendors [00:41:00] for the grocery store come out and they just give away like free stuff, like crazy, like full on macaroni and cheese boxes.

You'll, you can walk out with a bunch of chopped brisket like. Crazy stuff. A bunch of protein shakes. I think one year I left for 12 bottles of like protein shake stuff on top of all the other things that I had. They literally have these big cardboard boxes that you pick up and you just go around.

You fill 'em all up and you'll go home with huge boxes of stuff.

Chris Detzel: That's super cool.

Garrett Mayeaux: It basically like covers whatever the entry fee is with all the free stuff that you end up getting.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, I might try it. It's only what. An hour and a half away from Dallas. Yeah.

Garrett Mayeaux: You could drive it in the morning.

I've done it. Exactly. Yeah, I'm sure you have. Yeah. Maybe something that'd be interesting for people to know about is how do you, with this being a heavily running podcast, is how do you structure your running training into all the other things you have to do as a triathlete? I think that's something that's interesting that's maybe a little bit different than what people would might expect.

'cause there are some people that still keep a higher running volume. But I think even. Compared to what people [00:42:00] do that are runners in the community you're looking at, you've got people that probably typically would average somewhere over 50 miles a week in the DFW running community, but I like rarely get above 40 miles in a week.

And I still can run like a low 15 minute 5K, a one 10 half. So I ran a one 14 in Cow Town, but that was after I had taken some time off for the end of my year. Last year I had two weeks of like base training, and then I got. A two week long injury where I couldn't do anything. That was just one of those freak things.

And then after I got back from that, I had about three to four weeks of training before doing Cow Town. So I did Cow Town and had a good time, but it was still like something that I think that's four off your PR is. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Detzel: World 1, 1 14 is extremely fast for most of us. It's very fast. But for you, you're probably like, yeah.

You probably, I assume you probably felt like it was good enough, and you're probably happy with it because for the

Garrett Mayeaux: place I was at, I was happy with it. But I [00:43:00] think I'm capable of maybe even running like a 1 0 7, 1 0 8 maybe at this point in time now, and this is only, a couple weeks later.

But I just, with the training and where I'm at compared to 2023. I'm like, okay, I think I could really break down and go quite fast. Like I'm hoping to be able to run wings at the end of my half Ironman's.

Chris Detzel: Yeah,

Garrett Mayeaux: and maybe even faster than that, just this past week I'll

Chris Detzel: be watching, man, because this is so interesting.

It's

Garrett Mayeaux: cool getting bored to play with,

Chris Detzel: Half Ironman person, but I am always in awe of people that can do it, and especially at the elite level. I mean it's, that's a lot of training work, time and effort.

Garrett Mayeaux: It is, dude,

Chris Detzel: but it's cool that you get to do this as a profession for the most part ish.

Garrett Mayeaux: Yeah. I'm working on it.

Chris Detzel: Yeah, you're working on it.

Garrett Mayeaux: I'm working on it becoming more of a full-time because yeah, once I get like that social media following built up and my goal is to do it, in a good way, provide things that are interesting and then start to connect with the people that are on there to say Hey, here's my journey.

Join me, follow along. Like I'm really just not, I'm not only trying to get [00:44:00] money from sponsors, but also provide valuable things to, and even if that's entertainment or inspiration, something of value to community, I'm fired, man. Yeah.

Chris Detzel: You're super smart. You've done some really cool things and now you're chasing your dream, which is

Garrett Mayeaux: work.

Yeah.

Chris Detzel: In a very smart way. At the age that you are. It's pretty cool to see, man. Thanks. This has been really cool. Yeah. I really appreciate you coming on Garrett. I. Yeah, it's been great. All right. Thank you everyone for tuning in to another DFW Running podcast or yeah.

And please don't forget to rate and review us and follow us on, we're on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. Follow us all there. Until next time, thanks everyone, and thanks Garrett.

Garrett Mayeaux: Bye.