Episode 79: Love and Fencing: From Olympics to Medical School

Joel Totoro:

This is The Thorne Podcast Performance Edition, the show that navigates the complex world of sports science and explores the latest research in diet, nutritional supplements, and the human body. I'm Joel Totoro, Director of Sports Science at Thorne. As a reminder, statements in this podcast have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Hello everybody, and welcome to The Thorne Podcast Performance Edition. Joining me today are Olympic fencers Lee Kiefer and Gerek Meinhardt, two of the most decorated fencers, with a combined six individual titles at the NCAA level and three Olympic medals, including Lee becoming the first-ever American to win gold in the individual foil at the Tokyo Olympics. Lee, Gerek, welcome to the podcast.

Lee Kiefer:

Thanks, Joel. Great to be here.

Gerek Meinhardt:

Thanks for having us.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, we always love talking to folks in our Thorne family, so I'm excited to peek behind the curtains here a little bit. I know this is going to be a bit of a loaded question, but can you walk us through the journey, your journey into fencing, where it's taken you and how you found Thorne along the way? Lee, let's start with you.

Lee Kiefer:

I started fencing when I was seven years old. That was a long time ago. I'm now 28 years old. I was thrown into the sport by my father, who was a walk-on in college. He put me, my older sister, my younger brother in it, so yes, that was an interesting time growing up. We definitely fought with each other at practice but we also became so close, and so for me it was a family thing. I think when we were all young, because we were so competitive with each other, we were able to translate that to tournaments and had success at a young age.

When I was 18, I competed my first Olympics in London. From there, I went to college at Notre Dame. While I was there, I competed Rio 2016, came back to school, applied for med school, finished up my collegiate career. This part is a little bit tough for me to always say, but yeah, I did two years of competitive fencing and two years of medical school at the same time, and it was very traumatizing at some points, but I was able to qualify for Tokyo, have a really amazing experience there. Then here I am still fencing, but on a leave of absence from med school now to finish up my fencing career.

Then to jump back into my relationship with Thorne and where that started, I believe I was about 16. At the time when I was starting to qualify for my first Olympics in London, we, as in the national team, would visit the Olympic & Paralympic Training Center and they would run labs on us, just to see where our little high school and college bodies were at in terms of nutrition, electrolytes, vitamins, et cetera. I was definitely iron deficient at that point, so they recommended I start supplementing there and they recommended Thorne. I started that, and then I also started taking protein shakes too, the Thorne ones, the whey isolate chocolate shakes, and have been taking them ever since.

Gerek Meinhardt:

I started fencing when I was nine and a half years old. My mom was classmates with someone who ended up marrying an Olympic fencer, and he was starting a youth club in San Francisco where I grew up, so at nine and a half years old, my parents threw me into that. I had been taking piano lessons from my mom's classmate, so on Fridays specifically, I would get dropped off for my piano lesson and then the fencing coach would drive me to fencing practice, and we'd be in the car with his two kids who went on to both be Olympians and are my teammates now as well, which is great. It was a family and close friend affair for me in a way, even though neither of my parents or my siblings fenced.

It took me a lot of places, like Lee. I was very fortunate to have success at a young age and get to start traveling internationally, compete on the Cadet, which is the 17-and-under, and the Junior, which is the 20-and-under world teams, and then eventually qualify for my first Olympics when I was just under 18 as well, so around the same age as Lee at her first Games. I went on to Notre Dame, and after qualifying for my second Olympics, which were the London 2012 Games, I was expecting to retire pretty soon.

I had one year left of school, and I had already at that point had three surgeries on my knee and was planning to pursue a career in business, but I continued to go to World Cups. I had one NCAA season left and vaulted to number one in the world, and decided, "I can't retire at this point," so I kept going. Tried to qualify for the 2016 Games, which I was able to, and thought I'd retire after that. Went for another one. Here I am in 2022, trying to go for my fifth Games.

A big part of me being able to continue competing into my thirties has been a shift in my focus on keeping my body healthy, whether that's recovery, strength and conditioning, eating, and very importantly, supplements, which is where Thorne has come in. I've gotten labs at the Olympic Training Center for years, over a decade at this point. I really started using Thorne for all of my supplements starting in 2016, shortly after the Rio because Thorne signed a partnership with USA Fencing, which was great for us to get exposure and to be able to use and learn about a lot of their products.

It's just been a big part of me being able to continue to be healthy. Like I said, I never would've dreamed that I'd be competing into my thirties, let alone going for my fifth Games, at which time I would be 34. I'm very happy to have Thorne be a part of that journey for me.

Joel Totoro:

We talked about, obviously, your amazing accomplishments, and it takes incredible effort to get to that pinnacle, but you've both been able to stay there for a long time. Gerek, you're coming up on your fifth Games. Can you talk a little bit about what it takes, and how you've been able to maintain that level of expertise as long as you have?

Gerek Meinhardt:

Lee and I have similar personalities. We're both very competitive, and we're never really satisfied or content with our results. It's pretty interesting. Everyone sees our results, imagines that we're super confident all the time, maybe even cocky, which comes off sometimes when you watch professional sports and they get into it, and that's just part of the whole persona. We really are often not satisfied, or even if we get a good result, there are those things that bother us about our performance and that we can improve on.

I think that's something that's helped us to continue to expand our game, because especially once you get to the Senior, which is the Olympic level, you're fencing so many people that have been around just as long as you, that have studied you, that have competed against you, and they're always finding your weaknesses. You have to also be aware of what those weaknesses are, so that you can improve on them and find different ways to be successful. I think that personality trait has helped us a lot.

Then to be honest, some of the injuries that I've had over the years I think forced me to work on different things and find different ways to win, even when I might be constrained as far as what I can do in certain situations. That's been really important as well for my development, and is why I often recommend for young fencers at practice or young athletes to obviously have an emphasis on winning ... because that is a learned trait, figuring out ways to win ... but also, at practice sometimes it isn't the most important thing to only focus on winning, because that may put you in a box knowing that you can do this one thing against your opponent to win, when really you could be diversifying your game and trying other things, even if it's not going to work right away or even within the first few times of trying it. You've got to keep working on expanding your game, so you can be successful in different situations.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. Now, you mentioned briefly you are both pursuing med school. Is that something you've always been interested in, or is that something your experience in sport led you into? What drove that passion for you both?

Lee Kiefer:

For me, I come from a family of physicians. My mom's a psychiatrist, my dad's a neurosurgeon, my grandma's a psychiatrist. My sister's already an OB-GYN, my brother's a med student, so everyone around me is in medicine. Growing up, I really looked up to my parents. They worked so hard, and they enjoyed their work and found a lot of satisfaction in being able to help people in the way they do. Maybe it was brainwashing, maybe I knew nothing else, but just from a young age I was thrown more into the science track versus arts or whatever else is out there. I still don't know. I'm just kidding.

When I was early in college and I was competing more serious, seeing high-level athletes at my competitions, having more interaction with the sports med team, I guess my own interest blossomed more just seeing how, for instance, Gerek was so injured with his knees and just the whole process of getting injured and then the different people, not only the doctors but physical therapists, et cetera, that it took to get him back so that he could keep going to reach his dream. I was like, "I would love to be part of the care team, and I'm going to keep chugging along and try to get into med school," which was very hard as a student athlete. For me, I've known for a while, the opposite of Gerek.

Gerek Meinhardt:

Yeah, so I definitely have not been on the medicine track for long. I was actually interested in medicine in high school a bit, but then as I was deciding my major at Notre Dame, I thought that it would be too difficult to do pre-med while continuing to train and travel to international competitions as much as I was, after having already been in my first Games and wanting to qualify for another one.

I went into business, and I really did enjoy my classes. After graduating, I actually worked in business for a couple years. Loved my team and the environment that I had in consulting. At the same time, something just felt a little lacking to me as far as what I wanted to do. As I mentioned previously, I've had this strange journey with fencing, and thinking that I was going to retire after the next Games or go for another one.

At one point when I was pretty sure I was going to retire, after Tokyo, I was just thinking about what I was going to do after and whether the current track I was on was something that excited me, and it really wasn't. There was still that pull toward medicine for me. I think probably, seeing Lee already in medical school and her family, it kind of reignited that passion that I had. Before just dropping everything and jumping into it, I definitely shadowed a bunch, shadowed a bunch of her family, her family friends, and asked questions and got insight into what they love about it but also the things that really bother them or annoy them, and that it isn't all pretty and glorious or anything like that.

Lee Kiefer:

I started two years before you, so he saw me go through the first part of med school. He was prepared in a lot of ways.

Gerek Meinhardt:

Yeah, definitely. I think for me, the biggest hurdle at that point is I was late twenties, and it was obviously going to take a lot of backtracking to be able to even apply to medical school, since I didn't have any science prerequisites from college. With some help from Lee and speaking to other people, I decided there's plenty of time for me to work. It's okay to be later in my life when I start my new career. I decided to take all my science prereqs at the University of Kentucky, applied to medical school, and now I am halfway through medical school and excited for my future profession.

Joel Totoro:

You guys are speaking 100% my language. One of the recurring themes on this podcast is the idea of human performance and the fact that we get to work on both sides of it, treating the human while also looking at the optimization side. We'll do this in two parts, Gerek, and you've had some history of injuries. Is there anything you've applied from the sports world that gives you a different lens in the medical world? On the flip side, Lee, as you start digging into the medical side, are there any things you're like, "Oh, that makes a lot of sense about what I was feeling or what I was doing during my early years of training"?

Gerek Meinhardt:

Yeah. I think that so far I've only had two years of pretty much mostly just learning from books, the science and all of that. I just imagine that it's something that I'm definitely going to take into it, and having shadowed and been at the hospital seeing physicians later in their careers do this, it just makes me think about the fact that we're multiple-time Olympians and both Olympic medalists. Like I said earlier, we are constantly trying to find new ways to improve and new things to learn, and that's important to our success. I think that in the medical field, regardless of how many years you've been doing the same operation and regardless of how great of a physician you are, there are always things you need to learn and there are new things coming out. That's going to be really important for us as we continue on this path.

Also, I think it's been really important for us as athletes, and especially as we've matured as athletes, to lean on the people around us. It's been natural for us to rely on our coaches since we were young, but bringing more people in to help us that have expertise and that we can really count, on like our team physicians, the PTs and the nutritionists, the sports psychologists. There's so many people there and there's so many resources that as a young athlete, you often think you don't need. You're fine. You don't even need to stretch or warm up. Then as you get further in your career, you're like, "Oh, these are all super important things." I think in medicine too, there's so much teamwork that people often don't see or you often don't see as a patient, but the physician working with the nursing staff and with everyone else behind the scenes is going to be very important.

Lee Kiefer:

Yeah. I didn't mention this earlier, but with our crazy fencing, trying to do med school at the same time and the pandemic, I actually completed two-thirds of my third year, which is the year that you start doing your clinical rotations and you're in the hospital. From the question you asked for me, I was on family medicine, internal medicine, psychiatry, and it's so crazy how simple things that seem obvious play such an important role in your health, like getting sleep.

Someone comes in, and it seems their lives are going terribly and there's so many health problems, but sometimes you break it down into simple components like sleep. Are you getting sleep? That plays such a big role in your mental health. Are you hydrating? That affects a lot of your electrolyte levels. That was a really surprising thing for me, to see how a lot of simple things play into the big picture of your health. Now that we're later in our careers, just having a big respect for the small things that can go into the longevity of our careers, or even just being able to get a teeny bit better.

Joel Totoro:

I think you bring up some really good points, and it's things I talk about a lot, is there are some parallels between athletics and the medical world, specifically talents that translate. You are competitive. You are always going to have this growth mindset, whether it's in your performance and in your skills or in your medical knowledge. Then understanding that, yeah, there is this team around me. I need to be expert at what I do, I need to be the best at what I can do, but there are this team of people I can rely on. That's, to me, where a lot of things happen, and that's where things don't get missed. I've worked with a client forever and then it came up like, "Oh, are you hydrating?" What is that little thing? It's that foundational need that we're ignoring that has this whole cascade. Love to hear that you guys got there faster than I did, for sure, in my journey.

I think a lot of what you've talked about, for you specifically for your performance and doing as well as you need to do, in your professional life as you are in your personal life, some of those things translate to the general populations. What are some of the things you've learned to really support health and wellness post-career? What are the things you guys are looking at as you transition into less competitive fencing and more competitive medicine?

Lee Kiefer:

I think when other people ask me for tips, athletes that are not athletes, I feel like we're going to have to make simple, achievable goals, because our time is filled with a lot of fencing-related, physical-related obstacles. When we go back to school, sometimes we're going to be at the hospital walking around all day. A lot of times we're going to be just sitting on our computer, staring at computer screens for hours upon hours. What are some things that we can actually do to keep up with our health? Is this setting a goal of going on a walk twice a week outside, getting some sunlight?

I think we're really going to have to strip down what's achievable and then slowly work from there, rather than being like, "We need to keep doing what we were doing while we were training for the Olympics, but now start med school." Being honest with ourself, which I think will be really hard for me.

Gerek Meinhardt:

Yeah. I think that's going to be really crucial for us, and it's definitely great advice for people in general. I think another thing that comes to mind for me is that the health process can also be a trial-and-error process. You don't need to read like, "Oh, this article says I should do 30 minutes a day on the bicycle after work." No. Maybe for you, you want to try 15 minutes in the morning because you're more awake, and after work you're too tired to do anything. You just want to sit in front of the TV. You might try that. If it doesn't work, it doesn't mean there aren't other ways that you can find that fit you better.

Just doing something and doing little things, like Lee said, are great ways to start building healthy habits. Then from there, once you achieve a small goal, maybe you increase that to a couple times a day, or maybe you add on getting an extra half hour of sleep. Those are things that, as when we get back into medical school, we'll definitely have to remind ourselves of as well.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. I think that's a pretty intuitive statement there. It's not like you walk into the training center and they're like, "Here's your fencing training program." It is so individual. It's really great to see the future of medicine heading that way. I think on that note, we're going to take a quick little break here. When we come back, we'll have a couple questions from our audience, and I look forward to continuing the conversation.

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Welcome back. Let's get into some of these questions from our audience. I think the first one we've had a couple people ask is, "How do I find out more about fencing?"

Gerek Meinhardt:

A little plug for ourselves. We post a lot of stuff about fencing, whether it's obviously updates about us going to tournaments, but also some of the basics about fencing and resources about where you can learn more. We'll share our social media information with you, Joel, but also USA Fencing, on Instagram and other platforms as well as their website, has a ton of information about the sport of fencing, the rules, also what our Olympians, our Paralympians and our youth fencers are doing here in the country, also internationally.

There are tons of clubs that you wouldn't know about, maybe in the small city that one of your listeners might be in, that they never thought of. That's definitely a place you can go to, USAFencing.com, to see if there is a class near you to try it out. It's a really fun sport for people of all ages. We know tons of adults that started at a late age and have a great group of friends that they go after work and fence with once or twice a week, for exercise and also just something fun and new to learn.

Joel Totoro:

The follow-up question to that is what skills do you need to transition to fencing from another sport, or if you're just starting for the first time?

Lee Kiefer:

Footwork is very important in fencing, being able to change direction, and then having that element of explosion to be able to reach someone or get away from someone. When we're not fencing, sometimes we like playing tennis together. It has a similar feeling, except for on a different plane. Then when we're fencing, we're very one-side dominant, which might not be a good thing, but it's something that develops in a lot of combat sports. I think that's something you can develop yourself if you join us.

Gerek Meinhardt:

One thing that we both love about fencing is that it isn't one body type that is successful. You can be super tall, but maybe you're a little bit slower than someone that's smaller and running all over the fencing strip.

Lee Kiefer:

If you're tall, you can have a really long reach, hit someone from really far away. Then if you're my size, like 110 pounds and five foot four, people will hate trying to hit you because your target's really small.

Gerek Meinhardt:

I think that's just another thing that's really great about fencing, that you can show up and obviously you need to learn the basics, like Lee said, the footwork and the fundamental skills, but then from there it's like what can you do to be successful given your strengths and your weaknesses. That's the fun mental thing and strategic thing that you can figure out, and find ways to be successful despite some of the physical traits you might have.

Lee Kiefer:

Yeah. Then even if they're not short and fast or tall with a long reach, other people are really physically strong with their arm too, so their defense and their ability to do fast hand work too. It's not just two body sizes and shapes too. It's a wide range. You're able to put together a really nice form in different ways.

Joel Totoro:

That's great. Sounds like it's a sport everybody could have a little bit of fun doing. This one's an easier, lighter one. The question is, "What's your favorite city to compete in?" Then as a dietician, I'm going to throw in what's your favorite city to eat in?

Gerek Meinhardt:

First I'll go with my favorite city to compete in. I'll actually be going there next month for this tournament, but it's Paris. France has such a history with fencing, and then on top of it, they're so great at throwing competitions and events. It's always a spectacle. The stands in the stadium are always packed. There's so many young fencers that are excited, running around trying to get autographs from every fencer and every coach, even if they don't know who they are. It's just a great environment.

The favorite city to eat in would probably be Seoul. We have a tournament in Korea most years, and I love Korean barbecue. Just throwing that meat on the grill, maybe some lettuce to wrap it on the side, all the little sides with the kimchi and the pickled vegetables, it's just right up my alley.

Lee Kiefer:

Yeah, I agree with Gerek. Food-wise, we love Asian country, so Tokyo sometimes we get to go to, and Seoul, and it's just so delicious and vibrant.

Joel Totoro:

That's amazing. You're throwing in some fermented products in there with the kimchi, so we're helping with that. Love to hear it. You guys talked a little bit about this earlier, and I want to dig into it. You talked a little bit about you see athletes in social media and the, quote/unquote, perfection, but you guys have both been really introspective with yourselves in realizing, "Hey, if I want to be the best at my performance, I may not be able to give everything to my medical studies," and making that decision to take that pause. Can you talk a little bit about having to come to that decision and the way you went about that? I know it's always a struggle for anyone to be like, "No, I'm doing enough."

Lee Kiefer:

Our original thought was that we had to retire from fencing at this point. Our medical school has been so supportive and so understanding, but being in med school is a full-time job, and then trying to be an athlete who's traveling and training and doing all the right things is also a full-time job. For me, my first two years of medical school were plagued with a lot of mental health challenges, including anxiety and depression. I've talked about it before, but I knew I couldn't do both. I knew, six months before Tokyo, I had not reached my full potential with this sport. Then I started panicking. I was like, "What do I do now? I can't go back and keep fencing." I knew that was not possible for me, especially when you're doing rotations too. You're full-time, versus doing remotes because of the pandemic with your foundational sciences.

For me, I'm the person who just marinates on something and gets a little bit stressed. Then I talked to some people, and they were like, "You just need to make a plan, and you just need to talk to people and ask what's possible." I was like, "That sounds so scary, but I'm going to try." People often want you to succeed, they want to help you, and so we had a really great, open conversation with the administration and made a plan of how we're going to come back to school, and what the timeline and challenges and the benefits look like. It was really scary. Any decision is really scary, but it was the best decision for us.

Gerek Meinhardt:

Joel, you alluded to it, that on social media, people often see us only post about doing well at a tournament, when an athlete has other things going great in their life, and they think that for us, being in medical school and being Olympic fencers is incredible and also something that's just ... like we're superheroes, and we did it and it's not hard, and maybe even anyone can do it and it won't be hard. I don't know. That definitely isn't the case, and it's something that we try to communicate and get across, is that it has been a huge struggle. That's why now we're on a leave of absence from medical school, because we physically and mentally wouldn't have been able to handle doing both for the next two years.

Something that we have to keep reminding ourselves and had to keep reminding ourselves as we were trying to do both was that, like you said, it's just sometimes doing your best is enough. We're still going to be disappointed when we get back a test score and it's not as high as we wanted, but at the same time, what could we possibly have done? At this point, what can you do, besides knowing that you put the hours in for studying, and maybe you had to make a sacrifice because in our situation, we also had a tournament that we really cared about? Sometimes I think having two passions is an okay thing, as long as you accept that you're doing your best.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah. No, I think that, as many gems as we've heard in this conversation, I think that's one of the strongest ones, is stopping and looking at everything you are doing, right? You're excelling in so many different places, and what's realistic and what's really not. I really love that. It's a very healthy aspect, and I'm glad you've got the support around you to make those decisions. I think it's just important for everybody to hear.

Gerek Meinhardt:

I would like to add one thing to that too. It sounds like we are sacrificing our medical education to pursue fencing, and that's a big reason why we went on our leave of absence. It wasn't just because it would've been too hard to do both. It's also that we want to be good physicians and care for our patients. Obviously that is hugely important, and moving into our rotations and going to these tournaments would've been a huge sacrifice as far as our medical education goes, and that's not something we wanted to do. I just want to add that in there, that while having two passions is important, being realistic about what you get out of it is also an important piece to that.

Joel Totoro:

I think that's a really good summary. I always say yes if or no unless, right? Yes, I could do this if this is true, or no, unless this happens, I can't be the me I want to be for everything I want to do. Yeah, it takes a lot of maturity and growing up to get there, but yeah. No, I think it's such an important message. Then I guess that wisdom leads me into our second-to-last question, which is, "What have your previous Olympics changed about how you're preparing for Paris in 2024?"

Lee Kiefer:

I had a lot of trouble after the Rio Olympics. I think I didn't mentally prepare myself to enjoy the process. I went into it being like, "I'm ranked really high in the world. I probably won't be fencing after this. This is my time to get a medal." Then I didn't get a medal and I didn't fence how I wanted to fence, and so I was truly devastated for like a year. Going into Tokyo, also in the context of the pandemic, we don't know if the Games are happening.

A lot of our opportunities that we're looking forward to, like training internationally and fencing without a mask on under our mask, a lot of things were different, but we had such a healthy mindset of training and enjoying the people around us that I think, going into the Games and even at the Games in this very unique environment, we loved every second of it. Each Olympics is different, but I think I learned a lot from Rio and I loved the journey to Tokyo, so I think I'm going to take more from that process to put into this one.

Gerek Meinhardt:

Yeah. I think Lee definitely recapped that perfectly as far as our time at the Games. Hopefully we'll qualify for the next one, and if we do, the success of that Games isn't going to ride solely on how we do, whether we win gold. It's a lot of enjoying the process and the opportunity that we have to be there and meet these people and compete, and we're going to definitely compete and fight our hearts out and do everything we can to win.

At the same time, all the other stuff is super important. Not only that those two weeks of being at the Olympics are going to dictate whether this journey was successful, either. It's also this time that we have during our leave of absence. Are we doing everything we can to set ourselves up for that? Are we enjoying the process of training and traveling, to prepare for that and to hopefully qualify? These are all things that will go into our outlook later on this whole quadrennial and really our whole fencing careers.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, it's exciting. You do have to take time and enjoy what you've done. The ability to represent the United States as many times as you have, I mean, it's an amazing opportunity that very few people get to have. We definitely wish you the best, and can't wait to watch your journey on your way to 2024. Last question, a question we ask everybody, if you had to pick one supplement you could never skip. I would say mine's magnesium. What's your ride-or-die supplement?

Lee Kiefer:

I would have to say my iron supplement when I need it, when my labs show that it's low, because I notice. The fatigue element is so huge in my training and my competition, and even just being able to function in the day to day. It's such a game changer.

Gerek Meinhardt:

For me, it's easily a whey protein isolate. My chocolate protein shakes after my workouts are something I'm always looking forward to. Not only the moment of drinking it, but just sometimes I'm even like, "Oh, I can't wait to work out tomorrow so that I can have my protein shake after." It's a whole part of the process that makes it more enjoyable.

Joel Totoro:

That's awesome, training just to get your Thorne protein. That's a snippet. We'll have to cut and use that. That's awesome. I really appreciate the time. You guys have been great to talk to. I know we could have this conversation for hours, but Lee, Gerek, we mentioned earlier, where can our listeners find you on Instagram?

Lee Kiefer:

Yes. My handle is my name, Lee, L-E-E, to the, my last name, Kiefer, K-I-E-F-E-R.

Gerek Meinhardt:

My handle is @GerekMeinhardt. Hopefully that'll be written somewhere, because both first and last names are difficult to spell, I know.

Joel Totoro:

Yeah, we'll definitely make sure to throw that in the show notes, for sure. Well, again, excellent. That was great. I really appreciate the time, and yeah, we wish you the best on your way to Paris in 2024. Thanks, everyone, for listening.

Thanks for listening to The Thorne Podcast Performance Edition. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing to the show on your podcast app of choice. You can also learn more about the topics we discussed by visiting Thorne.com and checking out the latest news, videos and stories on Thorne's Take 5 Daily blog. For this Performance Edition of the Thorne Podcast, I'm Joel Totoro, reminding everyone to stay active and stay hydrated.