guy run with well my name is rudy garcia tolson and we are here with special guests benjamin green ben how are you today i'm very well really how are you can't complain and so i follow you on social media a lot and i see that you're always  races doing something every weekend so what was your last race you just did last race was a sprint triathlon yesterday where i guided a visually impaired athlete and you know it was excellent nice nice a deadly want to talk a little bit more about your involvement five fire men but i particularly then like the short course distance sprint olympic triathlon you can have a full time job training very well and get on the podium is what has worked out for me  and i didn't realize this was a thing then but i cracked the two hour mark about four years ago and they're one hundred and fifty nine and change is pretty fast race is good good so what you wouldn't trials on you know all the sports out there when you were growing up did you do traffic laws  road races or will you get into yes i was a swimmer growing up and swimming since i was five years old in college my friends started running marathons and at that time running twenty six two miles seemed crazy a long way very long so i was working at r e i part time while at school and one of my coworkers she said try a sprint triathlon i got a coach got into it and i fell in love with the sport because running just one thing didn't seem as crazy as putting three events together that seems a little more natural seems a little bit more crazy yeah exactly so you get your st triathlon you were hooked did you you went to a whole half hour and then let's what's your experience with all that i did this cycle where i see people who do a sprint try in the same year the same two year window they go from sprint try to have fire man and then they figure out what distance to they like the most i did that and i reason i say that because i see athletes do that now  and then i kind of fell in love with as i said the sprint and olympic because i can work full time i can train at a high level and compete at a high level of work life balance yeah definitely laus you to do more with your time and especially be in new york city and you find that challenging training in working in new york city is as a self you know and i've just moved here a few years ago and was starting to realize the logistical challenge of just getting from one place to another it could be very time consuming how do you how is your training in new now i love training in new york city i mean people think of new york is this huge massive place which it is but it also has a small hometown bob to it everything is i have coffee with my barber shop or every time i go into central park now i see someone i know i see it's almost inevitable that i'm going to go running and i will see someone well when you're at races every week and it's only a matter of time before you run in the same people you know it's a small world so when you're in a central park and you're doing your training how do you do in the winter time i mean you know people always say oh i got to go indoors and ride on a train or run on a treadmill or do you find yourself doing the same thing or do you brave the winter and go out in the snow and you know embrace the elements two years ago i started embracing the elements started working with new york road runners and i committed to working in the winter months so that forced me to go outside i don't mind running on the treadmill or training on a train or indoors but it's fun to change up your gear out on the elements and you know there is a benefit to running outside in the cold in the snow i mean it can be very therapeutic as well i would agree i grew up in california and so running in the snow just doesn't seem like something i would i would be it wouldn't be my st choice  especially with my running legs i think i would like slip and slide everywhere so ben you're doing a lot of training in new york city what do you do for a living what do you how you make your money so three years ago i left the ad sales world and followed my dream of a call this health and wellness like helping people i like working with people it doesn't matter what your level is if you're a five minute mile or a thirty minute mile or if you have a desire i want to work with you i've been working with new york road runners for the past two interest recently and also in the audio fitness space along with my own little small private business that i have i say a small private business because there's no website and all of my clients have come to me organically and i don't want to have to pull someone to say no you come here come work with me it's a rather be more again a good natural it's a better fit like it i like it so you're very into it a lot of athletes in new york city and you talk about why variety of athletes now you know were here i would got to run well and in the show and you know people would i'm assume think that you're you know a professional athlete and you know your this and that and you know but you tell talk a little bit of a little bit more about you know the type of athletes that we see here in new york perform very well as an age group but i'm not in the lead athlete so there's that and going back to so much on new york road runners they have there they have a group training where they have five different groups and then a fundamentalist group i've worked with the fundamentalist group all the way to group one and i personally prefer groups three hundred and forty five or the fundamentals because it's much more rewarding for me and it's a bigger life change for the athlete i have found these athletes and everyone's athlete if you show up if you put on your shoes if you type your shoes and you go for a run you're a runner in my opinion you might say i'm only jogging but it's your running and i say that just as the mental barrier for getting over sports where a lot of people there could be a stigma on society well i'm not a runner i'm not a bodybuilder or this or and i'm not that if you show up you're here to do what everyone else is doing then you are or part of that community in my eyes can we both agree that ever everybody is not you know we all have to embrace some type of physical activity you know as we know life is a marathon not a sprint and so when you're dealing with mass with with new athletes who just want to get to that st five k and maybe the st half ir half marathon what are some of the challenges that you find that these people are having to take just getting them to that st race i go back to one of the st at the latest who has completed five marathons and her process was she runs two minutes and walks one minute and my opinion you've completed five marathons but you're still on a two minute to minute run one minute off ratio that somehow don't work and that yeah that doesn't equal three in my brain y said we're going to get her out of this psych this mental cycle that she has in her brain how my going to do it we were on a track we started running i started talking and talking and talking next thing you know i looked at my watch twenty minutes later she had been running nonstop so i say a lot of it is mental and mental barriers correct i think the biggest challenge in and these new athletes is educating them and telling them that there's other methods because you know when you have a new astley and they've found a way where they can get out the door and do some type of physical activity and sometimes you look at what they're doing you know it doesn't look very healthy doesn't look very sustainable for the long term when you deal with these athletes and they have their they're stuck in their ways and methods how do you know talking to your great talker you can talk well especially the positivity i would have some of the other things that you get them through for me that's kind of actually the fun part of the job that's more interesting versus here's your training plan go do x intervals go do your long run more of the mental and saying ok i've met the athlete x they only think they're capable of y when really they can do triple z and getting them from wide to triple z is what's more rewarding for me and there's multiple variables that it takes i mean it's  i like to so i like to think of the body as a frame of a house or the frame of a car if you have a strong if you're the frame of your car is strong then the rest of the car will operate well but if you have really nice wheels on the car but a weak frame well would have problems exactly so i like to take so say you worked in finance or you were a dog are you work in whatever your field is i try to relay that to the sport just so they can put into their terminology i've been working with a group recently where they're in the real estate world and so it's all about closing the deal or i know you want to close a two million five hundred thousand dollars listing do the work right now and then they think he's right so it's the same concept so you want to get people to find a way to for them to have a correlation with what they're what you're telling them and also it sounds like there's not really one size fits all thing and seems like each person going for that st mile has their own unique set of challenges that you have to challenge athletes foundation keeley's international now and also you have a brother or twin brother who has a cognitive disability talk a little bit about how it was growing up with your brother and then how you were able to really translate that into helping athletes here in the city now reach their potential yes so great topic a great point have a twin brother his name is patrick green when he was born there bellecourt was wrapped around his neck and cut his oxygen supply to his brain patrick is my he's my only blood brother so he needs to do everything i need to do absolutely and growing up he we would do that together whether where you say we had a boat or we'd go sledding i put him in a snow su that's been a goal of mine but as myself patrick needs to have the best of the best so i'm still on this mission to find a custom bike where patrick would be so in front of me because he is about an inch taller than me a little skinny or so but his you know his movement if he was behind me i can't balance his movement further right or left her you got want to make sure that bike is stable enough and so what he would he actually be we paddling as well he might pedal a little bit but i think he'd be more of you and him on your instagram and the man is always smiling if he's a very happy thank you patrick is nonverbal he doesn't speak but he can communicate he can be just as stubborn as you and i not that we're stubborn people but they are who can be yeah yeah and so yeah i mean he's happy he smiles sees safety as a water bottle handle in the water bottle and then when he's done we'll kind of just put his arm up and that's my signal to grab the bottle or else the bottle is just going to get thrown off to the side so we have our own little communication in your system yeah he likes to wear hats same thing if he gets tired of wearing the hat or kind of take it off and i'll say patrick henry the hat and i'll put it up and i'll grab it so it's you know we have our own little e s p going on wins is awesome so when you when you guys were growing up did you guys go to the same school growing up patronize and i go to the same school from kindergarten on he kind of went to a special school in maryland for learning and then and where he grew up in w up in maryland then moved to virginia and virginia system you go to school till you're twenty one so he kind of went to this program called daybreak and then he continued on and he still goes to that five days a week it's about nine to nine am to five pm and it's a pretty good did make fun of me what did that did you ever have that happen and how did that make you feel and what did you guys do to get over it yeah so you can take patrick and then add your grandparents raising you on top of that yeah so i'm just going to use the word different i mean how did i get over that i don't know somedays i still don't know i mean we could go somewhere even going down the street today where you're going and you know people kind of look at you funny or give you extra and it's like you know you kind of just perseverance you just act like you didn't see that right and i think that's a very interesting thing that i learned from that is people look at me as i've learned how to read people very well i know what they're thinking just by their body language you do you find yourself in a lot when you walk down the street your brother and you see that extra book that extra non you know a natural  movement that someone does you are you just same yes i mean some people look in their you they're questioning or they're like what the heck is going on or some people acknowledge and smile and they're excited to see you so it's one hundred percent of positive reinforcement i mean that's just kind of what i do you're a positive guy i mean the glass is always half full or three quarters full absolutely i mean i could have the glass always be empty but what's the point why live life that way i mean there's no question when your brother smile and you know exactly you're going to be happy and he's he's great and one thing i love this is a slight tangent from that but he is when i go out to eat or when we're going to eat if i can't decide between two meals order him one thing and myself so is the we have your brother and you're in a triathlon so the fitness world here in new york city talk a little bit about your involvement in with the death of athletes i know you have i think you said you have three athletes who have made it to a national level and hopefully one day to sized pool of triathletes in the mix and two years ago someone reached out to me they needed a guy for a race i kind of gave them about half of my credentials i didn't they did not want me as their guide so i probably told them a little more information about myself just to say like hey you know i'm going on this bike ride or i used to have a motorcycle going i feel very comfortable on two wheels i really don't even like the word disability because it's i feel like it has a negative so i like to help anybody if you have a desire if you want to do something then i want to pull any lever i can to make it happen like i met some guys in achilles went on their fun runs on tuesdays and saturdays and i don't really know how that was going to work a met visually impaired athletes and i don't even know there are different levels of being visually impaired he just has a line out there are you know you either have sight or you don't have to care for so it's been a learning curve for me i got paired up with a visually impaired athlete or blind and the reason why i say going back to the word disability you know i like to be politically politically correct yeah even working with an amputee i'm still learning that what should i say what can i not say that i don't want to offend you or any of your friends and so anyway long story short they connected me with a visually impaired athlete i'm like well how are we going to swim like how does that where do you even tyro around each other and then you're right these guys and girls they had it all figured out they had their system set up because this isn't the rodeo per se and we when we got in the pool the j c c is right near where they train that was great and we went on the open water and we did this we finished well we found it well we had some practice  like to to guide an athlete who is completely blind i mean just from my own personal opinion that's that's a lot of weight not in a sense of like in a physical way but if you happen to zone out and stop thinking that you're guiding somebody and you know there happens to be a a curb or something and you know that they happen to go down you know that that's a that's a big responsibility you know what it is specially when you're on a bike going downhill at thirty miles an hour and know that it's all in your hands yeah that's a scary thing isn't it i mean i say sometimes i don't this is a best word to use but i feel like i'm driving a school bus because compared to my bicycle versus a tandem bike it's much larger and their life is in my hands do you find the ride in tandem is different from one hundred percent y if the athlete in the back goes to get their water bottle the weight is going to shift i do i did new york city try with someone who was autistic and we communicated and he would just start grabbing his water bottle as we're going down the hill and the bike shifting and i'm like what's going on back there so i had to communicate and just reiterate please let me know when you need to drink please let me know when you're going to move standing up shift so weight you know even if you just need to so you have to own your inner road bike handlebars and what about turning as if you had planned out of turn when he made a left turn or right sharp turn or is it pretty like just turn a wheel you're good i wish it was like just turn a wheel and you're good yeah but it was going back to yesterday be ok twenty seconds we have a ninety degree turn coming up i'll say coasting meaning that we're going to coast our feet stop pedaling they feel the brakes going our feet would be a three dollars and six dollars parallel position kind of a light turn and then easy pedaling to it now let's give a little more detail i was with the athlete by the name of ager ial yesterday aka the blind ninja and it was his st triathlon he wanted to qualify for nationals there was a time goalie has to hit and he is much smaller height wise compared to other athletes i've been working with so therefore the control is a little more compact and you can sense that we can do a little more on the bike and then say someone sixty five versus someone who is fifty nine weeks we're going into these turns i would put the bike in a hard gear soon as we're out of the turn to one stand up so by me saying twenty one up he knows he's we're going to go right on it up put a little bit get some momentum and then sit right back down into the saddle so it was so little challenging but we practiced this a few weeks ago i've been riding with him for a little while so it wasn't you know it's not like riding the bike for the st time for lack of a better term you've been to some of the national championships as well as these athletes going to us and so when you're on a tandem both pedals all working right so that means your power on the bike plus his power is what you're getting right so and i sense you guys are put in some watts down we are you know i mean we're it's a ran with multiple visually impaired athletes and depending i think if you've lost your sight or depending how long you've had vision or not had vision there's a different reaction on the athlete and i say that i worked  athlete who was lost to sight since the age of six he was much more in tune to my movement my hand move slightly right or slightly left he's going he's moving that way with me versus someone who's maybe lost their sight in the last two years then i kind of move slightly i mean i'm used to that reaction of come with or move with me and they don't always so it just depends on the level ten the level always been used to a hand tether you know in that you know we get in sync with our arm rotation i'm really big on that or working with any visually impaired athlete because you know this is a marathon it's not a sprint so if you're running with your hand down the whole time you're training for the new york city marathon or over time you're going to have an injury from improper form yes for anyone who has lost their sight and is running with a tether like i'm all about form and run proper verses just get out there and go you're already out there running now is fine tune it so you can do this for the next thirty years the next fifty years eighty years whatever the timeframe smaller life exactly so when it was away when you when you have an athlete as visually impaired and say there are visually impaired from birth and they have no idea of the surrounding zone what it looks like and and how things look i know one of the challenges i had with one of these athletes is that when i was in the pool trying to teach them how to swim and i would say something lego just you know kick kick your feet like how a dolphin would and the response i got was well what is a dolphin look like you know so if you continuously find yourself needing to explain things in different ways for different athletes is that something that you've experience as well one hundred percent and then the just the power of the voice alone you know what you're saying how you're saying a little more hands on movement where you could say if i want their arm to have a little rotation they might just move their elbow or their shoulder but not before upper body then i'll say ok i'm going to put my hands on your arms and show them how i want them to move and then they practice it and we kind back for it and another thing is this race we did over the weekend it was partial on a paved trail through like a small park running into the grass and then we got onto a road we're on a path ok we're about to be on dirt because they're going to feel slight imbalance and i don't want him i don't want them to trip you know what while you're running you guys are basically just communicating the whole time what's coming up and you know just being in the hazards that might potentially be coming up one hundred percent if there is a slight turn i might say light left light right or sharp turn and twenty or thirty seconds while i personally like to say the time in about fifteen seconds we're going to do x ok because if i say a sharp turn and they might think i'm about to make a sharp turn right in twenty seconds are i know  coming up i'm going to do this and i find that works best at least for me cool now what working with these athletes from all different type of abilities what it would take away as you take from that like what why do you enjoy that so much  well that's a really good question i mean i like helping people do like helping be if if you have if you want to do something and you have just one percent of the zire then i want to help you find whatever you need to do this i might not have the means to do it myself but i might have thirty different friends that can help you it's about they're moving like people think you know even my brother ok he has this disability he needs to sit in a room all day no he has a personality he has a brain the same with anyone who is an amputee who had lost their sight or has some other type of cognitive so called disorder because they can enjoy all these things i just feel that society in the last two thousand and thirty years says they can't go to the beach to feel what the sand feels like or they don't enjoy these things and i want them to experience it all my next adventure i hope might be adaptive skiing i would like to do that i would love to ski with someone who is visually impaired who has never been on snow never been on a mountain just to try that or trail running i've learned that the intro running you're connected with a kind of a pole and between each other where you're running the guide is in the front and the athlete is directly behind you to change the level of terrain i've only learned just a very little bit of this i have not done it  and it's about going experience in these elements like you said someone who was born without sight or if someone had sight until say they were ten they know what the blue sky looks like they know what the mountain ranges they know if there's a beautiful sunset and so to i'm getting goose bumps going down my body saying this but to say wow the sky right now is this beautiful orange or christmas thing or i'm going to go slightly further in saying you know some of these people are single you know single males females whatever their sexual orientation may be and they need to have a partner in life and so it's like ok there's a guy or girl that they might be interested in or there's you know this person that you might like or there is x type of athlete in the pool that you're swimming with so have your a game on right now i mean it's much more than just so you get got to be the set of eyes while we're racing but also your set of eyes when it comes to relationships with these guys that's now that's the responsibility that i would not want to have because  sudden you know you're in their year you're telling them what they can what they can what they can do what with these athletes and that you find who are new who are adaptive as well what are some of the challenges you might find that these guys it is a getting that equipment needed because i know some of sport equipment can be very expensive say i'm going to go for process you know a prosthetic like getting a new set of legs is not cheap or getting a leg and then i can't even imagine the kids you know you're growing every children are growing every day every one of you have one set of legs when you three or a leg or on arm then it's you know you're going to need something new over time so there's an athlete i met through achilles who she needed a biking arm she was having shoulder pain i've recently been learned different prosthetics company new york city i reached out to one where she got it they said well then we have three other options that this individual could try so i'm like ok i'm going call her sunshine like sunshine you having this pain there's two other devices you can try and they say well if i going to forward or for the well there's amazing organizations c f the challenge athletes foundation i mean they have i know one person who got a grant for a new bicycle a good friend of mine got a grant for a new set of running legs which is i mean that's huge that's that's a game changer it's night and day and so having you know different relationships partnerships and putting it all together because there's one goal and it's back to the athlete getting those athletes out there is getting these athletes who are being told no by other people and we want to be the yes man we want to tell them yes you can where i think that's i think we're on a mission here in new york city we want to go i want to get more especially the kids talk the talk a little bit about you or any involvement what they had that the kids in the area politely say i'm just going to take a step back from that is like working with kids my youngest swimmer is twenty months old right now also teach like a little water aerobics to  older population so you're involved with the keeley's they are very prominent in new york city have a big community and they have a killer's kids are you involved with them as well i've done a little work with achilles kids and then i've also guided some of the visually impaired athletes at the j c c which is a jewish community center they're very they have and that's this one program correct correct they have an adaptive youth swim program that's been quite amazing and then just to touch on going back to the adults i did my st ever group fitness class in adaptive sports now this was you name it in this room somebody might have had this so called situation to prevent them from optimal performance that a so called able body sure could do or excuses yes or excuses i like that even better yeah that was interesting i mean that was right if i say one thing it might have said somebody else or somebody else or how my going to word that right but it's going back to strengthen running yes we can go move the body and do just go go go in a forward motion but we have to have some type of strength training to your routine ok i don't care if you're twelve years old or seventy years old or ninety years old you need some type of mobility and strength work going back to the frame of the house of the frame of the car which is the core of our body and all of the any individual needs that doesn't matter where you are at in life or where you are in this world and what you're working with i believe you need that to be optimum runner to be healthy safe and most importantly avoid injury absolutely so your philosophy on running and getting people out the door is being smart and short is that right run smart and i even have this other philosophy on the hill that i came up recently working with some new yorkers here there's a diva hill diva who over the hill there's a new runner i'm going back to how do you work with someone well this individual was somewhat of a diva so i said you know what i need you to be a diva on this hill and diva hill so it goes back to it's not going to work for everybody that might not work for you sure but in my work for your roommate and so therefore i'll try what i can and always it works for one person then my job is complete i think your philosophy is working because you have a lot of athletes who are following you you have a lot of athletes who look for you for guidance and literal guidance as well as go you're with your  did to the national championships for paragraph long and you know i think here in the next year going into tokyo we're going to see maybe an athlete or two from from our home base make it to the paralympic team which is very exciting now for some of our viewers who might be on the couch and might not might be scared to take that st step to make that st mile what would you tell them oh well how would you get them out so this having the other day someone messaged me on social media and they're like i want to do this five k in october sign up for the race or the event and i don't call every race i call them some of them events because the race might seem to overwhelming to do much exactly or pay the money and sign up why do i say this it took me about four months talking about doing a tr hlon until someone said ben sign up once you've paid the money you're committed exactly you've invested it doesn't matter if it's twenty there's or if it's one hundred and fifty dollars some races might be but you've paid so you're going to work you can have bad days are going to be hard days is going to days where you might hate your coach or the community you're working with but if you really want to have that go you'll do the work and so paying for it signing up you will get there i like it now what about for some of the athletes who might be out there and might think you might be able to personally help you or i've got a friend who lives on long island or someone who's on the jersey shore or someone in upstate new york or someone in the catskills who can help you mean it's all about people helping people it's all about connecting them with the right person in the you thank you for watching we got to run with well i am your host a rudy garcia tolson and i just want to give a special thank you to the manhattan neighborhood network got it wrong will will stand yes to all my sponsors challenge athletes foundation oser new york road runners tail and endurance thank you for all your support here in new york city when i think of course my family for all the love and support they have given to me and to everyone out there who supports us and that of athletes and new york city thank you thank you thank you gotta r