The 2019 Spartan season kicked off in Chino, California last weekend and I spoke with some of the elite athletes who hit the podium all about the course, what they thought of the new obstacles, the competition, and the year ahead.

I spoke with:

-Kirk DeWindt

-Nicole Mericle

-Veejay Jones

-Nell Rojas

-Natalie Miano

-Nikolaj Dam

-Leon Kofoed

Live from Platinum OCR's first time trial of 2019, I spoke with some of the top athletes there all about the time trials, their training, and their plans for the upcoming season.

I spoke with Omar Padilla who placed first, Faye Morgan who placed first for women, Platinum OCR owner Nicole Kifer and second place female Evelyne Ruiz. We discuss the challenges they faced with the course and the obstacles, and how it relates to Spartan and other OCR races.

I also ask them about their training, their goals, and what their plans are for 2019.

A great short episode to send you into your weekend!

Spartan's VP of Product David Watson joins me on the podcast this week to discuss all the changes Spartan made to their championship qualification system, and their championship weekend, and why they decided to make them.

We start with some clarifying questions about the qualification system and the roll-down weeks that follow the last U.S. National Series race and the North American Championship in West Virginia. 

Then we dive into the why: I ask David why Spartan decided to change the the qualification system to only 6 races in the season and if they took into account those racers that might find it especially difficult to qualify for the World Championships because of that. That leads us into an interesting discussion about raising the standards of championships and legitimizing the sport.

I ask David at what point Spartan will give more spots to international competitors, and we discuss the international competition.

We then talk all about the new format of the Spartan World Championship weekend, and I dive into all the questions I have about Sunday: why they cut the open wave, whether they think it's realistic racers will stick around to spectate on Sunday, and what the competition will look like.

After talking about the championships, I ask David about the new obstacles Spartan will be debuting this year which leads us into a discussion about obstacle standardization between the race formats, and further into distance standardization as well. 

And lastly, I ask the question that's on everyone's mind: will the Spartan World Championships ever leave Tahoe?