138: The Peloton Moms Facebook Group Has Been Infiltrated and our interview with Monique Caradine

Last Updated: January 18, 2023By Crystal OKeefe (#ClipOutCrystal)Tags: Community Cooperation, Fitness As A Community, Health And Fitness, Peloton, Personal Health

Truthfully, getting a strong start on your fitness journey can be one of the most difficult things to do. But enjoying fitness as a community transforms the experience, making it collaborative, and creating accountability between you and the other people in your little circle. Monique Caradine is the founder of OverFlow Enterprises LLC, a personal development company for women. Monique chats with Tom and Crystal O’Keefe about the advantages of making your fitness journey a community effort. Thinking about a new approach to your own personal fitness? This might just be it!

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Listen to the podcast here:

The Peloton Moms Facebook Group Has Been Infiltrated and our interview with Monique Caradine

What do you got in store for people?

I know I say this every week but so much.

I want to ask you, what do you have in store? Let’s pull back the curtain. It’s a little bit of BS because I already know. You gather everything and then I stack it in what I think is the most important order.

The guy who doesn’t ride or exercise in any way is the one stacking the order but it works.

I think me not being invested makes me a better judge of what’s an important story. There are three or four things that on a regular week would be like, “That’s easily the top story or the headline of the episode.” This week I went, “Struggle is a strong word,” but I was like, “That could work too.” There was some back and forth in my head. There’s a lot that goes on in there. It’s not just carnival music. Give them a sneak peek of what’s in store.

We’re going to talk about a new monitor, where is it going? What is it for? We’re going to talk about some major, I feel, potential drama happening on the Mom page. Then there are some updates with Peloton. We’ve got competitor news out the wazoo because it was CES. That’s how that rolls. New instructor rumor and an update. Then some other little things that came up as part of conversation and instructor news.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available Apple podcast. You can go there, rate review, subscribe. You can also find us on Facebook, Facebook.com/theclipout. While you’re there, like the page, join the group and you can leave a review there or on iTunes, either place. We have a review. It is from KristinTTU. She says, “I love this show. I started listening after homecoming. Now, I look forward to my Friday drive to and from work because it’s Clip Out day. Keep up the great work, Tom and Crystal.

Thank you for this very nice review.

Thank you for listening while you commute. Also don’t forget we have a newsletter. We talk about a lot of things every week. There are lots of links and articles. You can get that directly in your inbox weekly if you sign up for our newsletter at theclipout.com. While you’re there, if you’re so inclined, there’s even a donate button. We aren’t going to stop you. That’s all of the things we have to push. Let’s dig in.

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There is a new monitor in the works?

Yes. According to TheVerge.com, there’s an article that talks about a new monitor that was filed with the FCC. The big question is what is the monitor for?

It’s for monitoring.

What device, Tom? There are a couple of major lines of thoughts because I pay attention to everybody. All the rumors are that there’s a huge contingent that feels potentially this could be for a new smaller treadmill that they’ve discussed. It could also be for a new rower, maybe both depending on how big or small the new treadmill is. The other side of the coin seems to think no, this is a new monitor for the treadmill. It’s version three because apparently there’s already a version two out there. A little bit of history, if you have a bike, those bike monitors have the model number starting with RB. Then if you have a tread monitor, it starts with the letters TC. The listing of this new monitor started with TTR01, which I believe stands for Tiny Tread and Rower. As my little joke, I’ve been amusing myself since this article came out. We don’t know what it will mean, but that’s the big mystery.

Clearly, it means something. Watch this space. Give credit where credit is due. Oftentimes, we’re saying, “We read this on TheVerge.com or we saw this at CNN’s reporting or whatever.” This one’s all you. You have discovered that the Peloton Mom’s Group on Facebook has been infiltrated, compromised, if you will, by I don’t want to say spy, I’ll go with douchebag.

To be fair, I don’t know if this person’s trying to be a douchebag. I think they’re trying to be funny.

It’s a thin line sometimes. I walk it gingerly. Not everybody’s good at it as I am.

Here’s the deal. I scroll through a lot of pages pretty quickly. I happened to see a story that stood out to me on the Mom page, and I’m not trying to call any mom out, it just stood out to me. As I was scrolling through Instagram, that same story caught my eye. I thought, “This person must have posted in both places.” Then I saw that what they had done was scratched out the name of the group and left Mom Group at the end, then they took out identifying marks so there were no names listed. Then they proceeded to make fun of the post. I was like, “What is this?” Because the name of the account which is called The Mommy Group Says has nothing but these posts.

It’s all posts basically making fun of privileged women in mom groups, complaining about things that seem petty. Complaining about first world problems.

What bothers me about this is people think that they are protected. I know that they’re not. First of all, I realized that if you are on Facebook or you’re on the internet, you’re out there. I know that. These people, not everybody knows that when they’re in a group and it’s called a private group, they think that their thoughts are at least somewhat protected. It has not occurred to most of them that they would not only be screenshotted but then made fun of.

It also makes me wonder, this person posted a story about children not being happy with a Christmas present. It’s a present that most people would feel like your kid should have been happy with. People were chiming in with variations of their kids maybe being ungrateful about things. I’m wondering if this Instagram page is seeding these stories, if maybe the initial story is BS just to prime the pump in order to get other people to chime in with their own real life stories.

I don’t know because they don’t screenshot the comments. There’s a little bit of it, but it’s like what you can see in the screenshot. They’re screenshotting the initial.

I thought they were doing both. I thought they were priming the pump and then being like, “Look at what we’ve got all these people to say.” Either way, it’s a little seedy.

If you are the owner of the account, The Mommy Group Says, and you are annoyed by this, keep in mind, we are not accusing. We’re telling you what works. We’re telling you how it looks and this is how it looks. For those of you in the Mommy Group, watch what you say or in any groups. This one is targeting mom groups.

There could be other things out there doing something similar.

The point is nothing is private on the internet. You should never assume it is. If you are posting in a group, anybody can take a screenshot and do whatever they want with it. Be careful out there.

We had an outage outrage. You can’t spell outrage without outage.

There was a post that got posted on the OPP, over 700 comments before it got deleted. It did get deleted. I don’t even know what the original comment was. Apparently, it hacked a lot of people off because apparently, and I didn’t see it, I’m just telling you from the other things that I read that it sounded very entitled because apparently Peloton is not allowed to go down. Especially on a Saturday morning when this person is trying to work out.

It is bad timing, but it’s not like they selected that time. Things happen. Considering how many people get on their system every day, the fact that how rarely this occurs is pretty impressive.

This one took the whole system down. There have been times where people have been not able to access things. It doesn’t affect everybody at once. For whatever reason, this one affected everything and everyone. It was all platforms including customer service, sales. They were without any kind of movement. It was actually within The Clip Out group, somebody from the Sales Department posted and they said it was a rough couple of hours, but they came in to that. They started their day with that. They survived and it wasn’t that bad. From their vantage point in sales, they were very imaginative and got the job done. We appreciate all of the folks at Peloton who worked very hard to make it work, who make it work every day by the way. Thank you for all that you do despite the people crabbing at you.

The Peloton wife is back in the Peloton news.

I have a sub to this. I saw Peloton lady, Monica Ruiz, got a free Peloton. It was given to her by Peloton.

I just hope to Christ, she asked for it.

I don’t know that Peloton gave it to her for free. I am telling you that because a person who claimed to be a Peloton employee said that is what happened. I didn’t go fact checking, just to be clear. Regardless, she did get one. Then the other thing I saw is she is now a Wilhelmina model as of today.

What’s a Wilhelmina?

That’s a huge modeling agency. It’s pretty much top-notch.

That’s good that she was able to turn this into a move forward at her career. I’m sure there was a period of time when she wasn’t sure.

Although, I am tired talking about it.

While we’re talking about the ad, there was some interesting stuff that you found at YouGov.com.

I have to say that I believe it was Helen Watson sent me this article, so can’t take credit for it. She found it, but it is at YouGov. She thought it was interesting. She thought that other people might be aware. This gives some statistics, it tells about where Peloton was through this whole debacle from an advertising standpoint. It said that Peloton actually raced its way to the top of the advertising hill in December, that it had gained one of the most significant increases in ad awareness, which is a YouGov metric that tracks whether somebody has seen or heard an advertisement by a company in the last two weeks. It goes across this little timeframe. It starts at October 27th and it looks like the first week of November, Peloton launched the ad. Then the percent of awareness is right around 18% on this graph. It stays there until about December 6th or 7th. It starts to take up the very end of November.

It’s trending up towards about 20 and then it hits 20, then that’s when the backlash starts.

It says the ad goes viral on December 8th, and that’s where there’s a huge thing. Between December 8^th and December 22nd, it is now at 32%.

Perhaps, it wasn’t as much of a debacle as we were thinking. I don’t think that they did this purposefully. You can’t plan something like this. I hate it when people are like, “Make us something that goes viral. I didn’t think about that make a viral thing.” Maybe this paid off in ways that in the moment when people are coming at them from all directions complaining, maybe it didn’t feel like. At the end of the day, it was a net positive for them. They clearly aren’t done with commercials because it sounds like there’s already another new commercial in the works.

I don’t know what the end result is going to look like, but I know that it stars Tune Day. I’m excited about that because she’s brand new and she’s already starting in a commercial. That’s so cool.

Good for her. There were some companies that hope to be competitors to Peloton that had some news. Echelon, who we make fun of to no end. I have to say they were bringing the heat.

I will admit that this is a surprising development. Echelon has announced that they are partnering with Samsung to expand their offerings. The reason I’m not sure about that is because Samsung is a big deal. I very much respect the Samsung.

We have multiple Samsung products in this household.

Experiencing disaster has a way of bringing you closer not only to your family, but to your community as well. Share on X

Almost everything we have is Samsung. That’s a lot of things. They’re saying that this partnership, this is a big one. There were a couple of other things from Echelon. This one, they’re saying echelon is going to have classes that are going to be available on more than twenty million TVs. It’s going to come through a launch on Samsung Health on TV. People are going to have access to free and exclusive content from partners in general but including Echelon.

I guess Samsung is going to have their own health app and Echelon will be importing to that.

Samsung already has that.

There’ll be an Echelon app on your Samsung television, which is probably for the best for Echelon. We have a Samsung television and I don’t go dig in through to look if there are new apps, but if it’s a Samsung app, Samsung is more apt, no pun intended, to push it in front of you to try and get you to notice it. That’s good for them. They had some new products that they revealed.

This is the other part that I think you were referring to that they were bringing the heat. They now have a rower. There was another product they did. It’s a tread treadmill. Now they have the four products because they had the mirror already. They had the bike, they had a mirror that they were doing complete knock off as well. Now, they have a bike and a rower that they introduced at Consumer Electronics Show.

The treadmill was a little weird-looking.

That’s a different one. That’s a different topic.

I get them all confused.

I know, there are so many. There was a lot that came out because it’s the next topic. It was all covered at CES and there were multiple things that happened. I don’t remember seeing a picture of the actual Echelon treadmill. I did see a picture of the Echelon rower. It’s another rower.

There are only so many things you can do to the design of a rower. To that point, there’s another treadmill entering.

You might remember that Lisa Niren is a past Peloton instructor. She also came on the show and we interviewed her. She was working for a company called Studio. She was doing what is very similar to active and such where they were doing runs on an app, like outdoor runs. They started using it on treadmills as well. That was around the time that Peloton had announced their treadmill, but they hadn’t come to market with it yet or anything like that. It was just out there. I’m giving you a timeframe because at this point, Studio has announced that they have a treadmill that they are putting out in the market. They are partnering with HUMEAI. It’s a company that claims that they have more wearables than anybody else in the world. They’ve sold more and they seem to do third-party after-marketing stuff. You don’t see their name on it, so you would know.

Studio has partnered with this company and they will have this tread. The interesting thing about the treadmill that they are coming out with is that it also has a 43-inch glass that is put on the wall right in front of it. That looks very similar to what you would think of when you think of the mirror concept. It’s for three things. One, with the treadmill, it allows you to see the classes you’re taking. Two, with the treadmill, it also has a camera in it that allows it to see your movements and to be able to tell you whether or not your form is good. That’s pretty interesting. It’s not going to lie. If you don’t want to be seen, if you’re concerned about that, you can cover up the camera very easily. No big deal. The third thing it’s supposed to be used for is to do any other kind of floor workout. They specifically mentioned yoga, sculpt and something else that I can’t remember right now.

The treadmill looked like it had a significantly smaller footprint than Peloton, but it looked like it was designed where you would leave a gap between the treadmill and the wall that the TV is hanging on. Let’s talk about that. I’m not sure how I feel about this treadmill because it does sit back from the wall. It would have to because that screen is 43 inches long and it goes all the way down to the base of the treadmill. You’d need to have some movement to be able to see around that because if you’re going to do floor work and use it on the treadmill, you would need to have it in such a place that you can see it from both directions. I think that’s why you pulled the treadmill back. The other thing that I’m not too sure about at all, I need to see it in person, feel it in person, it doesn’t have any crossbars. There’s nothing that goes across the front of the treadmill. Basically, you could go off the front or the back of this treadmill is what I’m trying to say. Then it’s got these arms that look like the arms of a hospital bed or something.

It reminded me of when my grandma fell and they had to do physical therapy.

That’s exactly what it reminded me of. I’m not digging the aesthetics of that. Beyond the aesthetics, I worry about the safety. We had several people chime in. I felt that Susie Barris made the most compelling comment about that. She said that because she had brain cancer, she had all of her treatments. Her scans had been clear. The point is she still has all of these dizzy spells and balance issues. She’s saying that if you don’t have something in front of you to grab, that’s scary. Just human nature, if you start to fall, you put your hands forward. If you don’t have something in front of you, that’s really dangerous. The other thing is that the controls are on these handlebars that we already described it looked like hospital beds. You put your phone on it. According to the article that was here, it says that you control the treadmill with your phone.

It’s like Bluetooth.

It’s all new and it was just released in CES. The Studio folks are super excited about it. Lisa Niren, who used to be an instructor at Peloton, she is gushing about that. She says that it’s an amazing treadmill. It’s not unsturdy at all. If I ever get a chance to go look at it in person, I absolutely will, because I would love to do that. To be fair, it gives me pause from a lot of safety concerns. Treadmills are a dangerous thing to have in your home. Bad things happen to kids and animals.

You need to be cognizant of that.

I don’t know what’s going to happen.

It’s fascinating to watch so many people enter this space with similar business models attached to it.

I saw an article also, I believe John Mills posted it. Basically, the headline was CES can be wrapped up that it was just a lot of Peloton wannabes. I think John Mills brought up a good point that these companies are all claiming to be able to come in the market at a fraction of the price of Peloton. Peloton has been saying that they want to be able to reach people of every price point. If that’s true and if that’s something they still plan to do, it’s like game on. What are you going to do about it?

Did either of these companies said what the price point’s going to be?

Echelon, they’ve had their prices out there for a while for the bike and that Mirror thing. I don’t feel like their prices are that competitive for Echelon because they have three different styles of bike. The one that actually compares to a Peloton that they totally lie about in all of their advertising and say that all of them compare, it’s pretty much the same price as a Peloton. That’s what I know about Echelon. I have not checked out the Mirror compared with the Reflect that they call it. Then these two new ones, I haven’t seen pricing. The studio with their treadmill and their Mirror, that’s a combo of those two things. There has not been any pricing released at all. They just debuted it at CES. Nothing is out there yet.

You would think if they’re not significantly cheaper, I would think at this point, Peloton now has name brand awareness that is going to give people comfort. All these companies want to be Pepsi to Peloton to Coke. Right now they’re more like RC Cola.

I have to agree and maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s just Pepsi and Cola and RC Cola. There’s room for all.

There was a time when Pepsi was more like RC Cola in terms of market share and perception. You’ve got to start somewhere. Maybe one of these will be great and kick her ass and it will be a game changer. At the moment, I think people are a little skeptical. The Peloton prophet had a prediction about Germany a little while back.

We had talked about Eric Yeager was going to be one of the new German instructors. We had our first German instructor and that was Irene Scholtz and nothing was said about Eric Yeager. Here we are and there was a post he had on Instagram that it was clearly taken from the Peloton HQ rooftop. We know because we’ve got issues, we watch way too much Instagram.

Way too much about Peloton. Let’s not forget that.

As soon as that was posted before you knew it, it was taken down. The damage was done.

Too late, that ship has sailed.

Everyone saw it. I don’t even know where this came from, but supposedly his first class is going to be on January 14th. It’s not on the schedule. I’m not sure why they think that.

It’s looking more and more like the Peloton prophet was right. Don’t question the prophet. How’s your total stuff been going?

It’s great, except for the fact that I couldn’t work out much.

It’s because I got you sick. I love you so much. My love makes you sick. You made that very clear.

Anyway, I was looking at my numbers because I was able to finally do a workout. I have been doing tonal for nine weeks now. Then I’m in the middle of my second program and I have increased my strength by 55%. That’s insane.

That’s a lot. Good job.

Thank you. I’m very proud of it and I’m very excited about it too.

Do you know what your next thing is? How far are you into your current plan that you’re doing?

There are usually four-week programs and the one I’m in right now, which is called Lean In with Liz Letchford. I am two weeks in. I just finished two weeks, so I have two weeks to go and then I’m switching. I don’t know what I’m switching to. I want to do some program that’s total body. I feel like the reason that I had such a huge increase with my PRs and stuff is because I was doing so much legwork. The Lean In has been focused more on upper body and core, which I love. It’s great. For me, I think I want to have the whole body. The other thing I might do is do something more specific but then intersperse it because they have lots of cool things you can try. They have a selection of classes that you can do that are more fast-paced, designed to get your heart rate up. Then they also have one-offs that you can do that part of a program that you could throw in a lower body or throw in a core workout or they also have yogas. There are lots of options.

You can do Tonal now and take the challenge to crush your 2020 goals. If you buy one before January 20th and complete 12 workouts in 30 days, they give you $250 back. That’s a great deal. I think that’s such a great plan to like, “If you use this like you should, we’ll reward you.” Sweating out with workouts from strength training to cardio to yoga and you can learn more about their Commit to Fit Challenge at Tonal.com. I thought this was cool. I know that when you complete certain activities on Peloton, they give you badges. Up to now, they have been digital badges but some of the stores have actual badges now.

Apparently, you can get a little century badge when you go to the store.

You have to pull out your phone and show them that you did a hundred or how do they do that?

Word of mouth says that you tell them and it’s based on the honor system as of now. I will say that the couple of times I’ve been in the store, they pulled up my profile and they were randomly, not in a creepy way, but like, “You do this or you like that or that kind of thing.” They very quickly can look it up. They know your leaderboard name, so it’s not a big deal.

Is that in all stores or select stores?

I think it’s in all stores in the Continental US but I don’t actually know because I heard this sporadically. They didn’t make an announcement about it. This was coming in from different stores. I don’t know if they’re rolling it out. I don’t know if this is everywhere. I don’t know any details about it.

You’ve got to make a special trip to the store.

Also if there’s anything happening like with the UK, Germany, Canada, I haven’t heard anything from those areas, so I don’t know.

I think that’s pretty nifty.

It’s pretty nice looking too. It’s about the size of your digital badge. It’s what it looks like from a visual standpoint. It looks like a pin. It’s a metal and it’s engraved. It’s very nice-looking.

We watched a movie called Brittany Runs a Marathon.

I posted about it on Instagram and Facebook. I feel like there are a lot of you out there who probably don’t follow social media that closely, who might be interested in it. This movie is so great, especially if there’s something fitness-wise that you’ve struggled with in your past or that you want to do, but you’re not sure you have the courage to do it or maybe you’re not sure you have the time to commit to it. This movie for me brought all feels. She starts out overweight and she goes to her doctor and she has to deal with all the mental aspects of like, “I want to make a change but I’m not sure how to do it.” I’m not going to go blow by blow on what happened. It was some very powerful points that spoke to me like the very first time she decides to go for a run. How her hand was on the door and then she pulled it off and then she put it back on and then she put it off. Whenever she started running she was like, “Just to the end of the block,” and then the block kept getting longer.

They did shot in vertigo where the camera zooms in as it’s pulling back. Everything stretches. For our younger audience, it’s a shot. They stole that from Poltergeist.

I felt it. I vibed with this character so much. It’s a true story. There’s a whole thing that she’s trying to do for the New York City marathon. It’s very inspirational.

It was shot at the 2017 New York marathon. You see actual footage of that. We should all say that it’s a funny movie too. It stars Jillian Bell. You would probably recognize her but not necessarily know her name. She had some pretty featured roles on Curb Your Enthusiasm. I think she was in 22 Jump Street. She’s been in stuff like that and she’s really funny. This was her first starring role I think. It was a funny movie. I enjoyed it too.

She also said that she actually had to gain 40 pounds for the movie. Her weight loss journey that you see was real. As a person who’s struggled with weight loss in my life, I appreciate it. It was very cool.

If you’re looking forward, if you have Amazon Prime, it was an Amazon movie, so it’s available for free with your Prime video package. There you go. On the heels of that, there was an interesting article about running late in life. Every once and a while, I do a little work.

You’ve been doing a lot of work lately because this is the third article in a row you come up with. It talks about how this article is called Too old? Too slow? No! Debut marathoners may add years to life. It says that first-time marathoners, even if they take on the challenge later in life, they are able to lower their blood pressure and have healthier arteries. They were talking about on average, the study that they looked at, there were 138 first-time marathon runners. On average, those new runners were 37 years old and 49% were male and they had not been running for more than two hours per week before the study began.

It’s interesting that the split is almost perfectly 50/50 because 49% is that’s exactly the gender split. 51% of the population is female.

It said also for fellow people who don’t have race paces, we like to finish what we started like myself. The average marathon time at the end of the study was 5.4 hours for women and 4.5 hours for men. They weren’t breaking any records. After you’ve done this event and before you’ve done this event, what kind of arterial stiffening or hardening did these people have? That was the whole point of it. They said that on average, there was a decrease equivalent to a four-year reduction in their arterial age and a drop in systolic, which is when the heart muscles contract and diastolic, which is when the muscles relax. Blood pressure of four and three respectively. They said it’s possible to reverse the consequences of aging on our blood vessels with real-world exercise in six months. These people were not doing extreme levels of exercise. They were not losing extreme amounts of weight. They were just training. For those of us who were trying to be better as we hit our 40s, that’s good to know.

Trying to be an Olympic athlete, just trying to get a little movement.

I thought it was great news. Good find, Tom.

Our challenge is still going on. People seem to be responding. We’re seeing lots of people entering, which is great.

The prize in case you’ve forgotten, is a twelve-week subscription to Stronger U. It’s $449.

That’s quantifiably awesome. You can sign up for that by going to theclipout.com/thechallenge. What are the rules again?

The rules are you fill out the entry form, which is right there on the website. Then you say yes to getting our newsletter. Then you break up January into four weeks, however you want to for seven-day periods. For each of those seven-day periods, you work out three times, twenty minutes each. No meditation.

She figured that out because that’s the kind of thing I do. She’s like, “What would Tom do?” It fits in very handily with stuff you’re already doing. You don’t have to do anything you haven’t done before or not planning to do. You need to do it three times a week.

The only other thing you need to know is it needs to be on your Peloton records. You can do it on digital. That’s fine. We need to be able to go into your Peloton profile and see what you did. If you win, that’s what we’re going to be doing. If you don’t meet the criteria, you no longer win. We will move on to the next person.

We should probably also say we find people who are stronger who were kind enough to throw in this prize. We had so many people asking us about the discount that we did. They have revived that.

They gave us another discount. It’s going to be 10% off of any of their packages. All you’ve got to do is enter The Clip Out code, which is called Clip Out 20.

It’s very simple. You go to their website, StrongerU.com and enter, Clip Out 20. You save 10%. That’s good through the month of January. Yup. There is a new partnership in the works.

It’s all about clothes, Tom. I know you’re not going to be interested in it, but it’s a partnership with Peloton. They partnered with Athleta and Hill City. Athleta might sound familiar to you because it’s a Gap brand. For a lot of people, this is a very big deal because people buy Athleta a whole bunch. It’s a huge seller and the community outside of Peloton. The other cool thing is there were real people from our community that were included in this. It wasn’t supposed to be released until the 15th. We don’t know what happened, but it got leaked. I want to give a shout out to you, Steve Chan, Christina Riviera, Sienna Ferris, Mike Miller and Holly Hayes, who were all fine models for this awesome campaign beginning on 0115 when the new collection drops. Congrats to all of you

Alex Toussaint has a partnership of his own.

It’s super exciting. He’s not going anywhere for anyone who still thinks that. He joined Ladder.sport as an athletic training advisor. This is amazing, good news for him. Just like some of our other instructors are, they’re doing Adidas or they’re doing Nike. We have lots of ambassadors for that. That’s very similar to what we’ve got going on here. He gets to work with people like LeBron James. I don’t know if he’s actually working with them but he’s on the same level because they are also represented by people like LeBron James. This is huge for Alex and we are so proud of him.

I always know when an athlete is a big name, if I haven’t heard of them. Typically, if they’re not a Harlem Globetrotter, you’ve got nothing. I don’t know who they are. Finally, Cody and Emma are doing a dual ride.

One of the things that was mentioned in John Foley’s email that came out at the beginning of this year, 2020, he said, “We’re going to have dual rides,” and this is our first dual ride. It’s going to be Cody and Emma. It’s going to be at 8:30 PM Eastern. It’s going to be a groove ride. If you like Cody and Emma, you might remember they were dancers together in a former life. They’re being brought together again for the first dual ride of 2020.

—

Joining us is Monique Caradine. Monique, how is it going?

Tom, how are you?

I’m good. Crystal is here. It will be odd if she wasn’t.

It’ll be a little weird.

This is exciting. I know we were talking a little bit before we officially started, but I am excited about this because we met when we were at She Podcasts LIVE. It’s cool to find a fellow Pelotoner out in the wild and that you were kind enough to agree to come on our show.

I remember when I met you, I saw your t-shirt. It was the first day of the conference. How you’re all wide-eyed and you’re taking it all in, I see you and I notice your Peloton t-shirt. I’m like, “Do you have a Peloton?” She’s like, “Yes, I have a Peloton. Not only do I have a Peloton, but I have a podcast about Peloton.” I’m like, “It was meant to be.”

We were off to the races instantly. Speaking of Peloton, how did you originally find it?

I would always see the commercials on TV and having experienced spinning in previous years and fell in love with spinning classes. When I started to see the commercials, I’m like, “That will be cool.” I started to see the commercials. It wasn’t in our budget at first. My husband surprised me with a regular spin bike from Sam’s Club or somewhere. There was nothing wrong with that but it wasn’t the same.

As a husband, I know exactly you’re like, “There’s nothing technically wrong with these gift, but it’s wrong.”

It’s not what you asked for.

No, but I wanted. Long story short, this is the sad part of the story. We live in Puerto Rico, hurricane Maria hit the Island in 2017. I had my little spin bike and it was in our outdoor living space. When the hurricane came, we had stored all our furniture and stuff in this area that we thought would be secure and safe from the hurricane. That hurricane was incredibly vicious that it ripped away our storage unit, ripped away our storm shutters and my bike was in that area. It threw everything all around our yard. The bike didn’t make it out of that storm. Anyway, we managed to recover from that. Thank, God. It was about in August 2018, my husband surprised me with a real Peloton.

He was forever redeemed.

He got the husband of the year award for that one.

It’s nice that in some small way, something positive came out of the hurricane.

I can’t even imagine what you guys went through. Were you still on the island when it hit? How did that work for you?

That’s a great question because I was in Chicago right before the hurricane hit and I was on my way back home. I didn’t even know the hurricane was coming. I was at the airport leaving Chicago, my son called, “Mom, there’s a hurricane coming.” I’m like, “Lucky me, I get to go back to Puerto Rico just in time.” Literally, I got back home and we started to prepare for the hurricane and that’s when we started putting all the furniture up. I was here during the hurricane. It was quite an event. I’ll never forget, it’s the scariest moment of our lives, but thankfully we got through it. I’m grateful for that.

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Where do you go when a hurricane is coming, especially when you’re on an island?

It’s weird because living on the island, we’d been here for a couple of years and we had hurricane scares and threats before, but nothing ever really came. We’d get a little tropical storm or something like that. When this hurricane came, the way our house is positioned, we’re in a valley. We’re at the base of a little mountain area. I’m like, “We should be good.” I didn’t have a concept of 180-mile an hour wind, what that do no matter where you are. I’m taking it for granted. I’m like, “We should be good. We’re safe. We’ve got the storm shutters. We’re all set.” I’m chilling. I’m having that wine, making tacos as the storm is coming. I have no idea, what’s about to happen. For us, we had made the commitment to hunker down at home. We put all the shutters down and we had our generator, we have some water stockpiles. We’re like, “We’re good.” We gassed up the cars. To answer your question, there is nowhere to go. They had shelters and stuff here for people who lived in homes that were not structurally sound so to speak. Those people went to shelters, but there’s really no place to go. You’ve got to hope and pray that your house can withstand the damage.

The rest of your house was okay?

Yeah. We did have damaged. Most of the homes in Puerto Rico are built in concrete because this is a hurricane zone. They try to account for that. We did have damage, about $150,000 worth of damaged. We lost some of our roof and we lost a lot of our outdoor space and shutters. The wind came in and ripped everything apart. I’m grateful that we had the resources to repair the damages and the insurance helped out a little bit, but not a lot. It did help out a little bit. At this point, we are all good.

That’s amazing. I’m glad to hear that. I know it’s already been a couple of years since then obviously, but it’s hard to come back from that. I’m glad to hear you are in such a good place.

Where do you go within your home when that happens? I’m assuming since it’s an island, you don’t have a basement.

Is it like when we have tornadoes in the Midwest, we go to the inner most room of the house or if you have a basement, that’s where you go but not everybody has a basement. Is that what you do there too?

Yeah. It’s exactly what we did. We started out in our master bedroom. We thought, “We got this.” All the storm shutters were down and we felt like we would all hunkered down in the master bedroom. If it got really bad, we would come into the walk-in closet of the bedroom. It was me and my husband and my son and our dog. The crazy thing about it was this storm was bad and it started to intensify. The balcony doors to our master bedroom started to buckle and give way as the wind started to increase. At that point, we decided it’s not safe to stay in the room because we ironically had some construction done on our balcony. The doors wouldn’t lock down like they typically would. As the wind would blow, the doors would literally slam open. It was weird and scary. We decided early on because, Tom, you’re going to trip out on this. My husband was trying to be the strong man. You know how you all do, right?

Not me. Whatever you’re about to say, no, I don’t do it. Remember, we met at an all-women’s podcast event. Don’t ever forget that.

My husband is trying to be the man and he tried to hold the doors shut as the wind was blowing. I’m looking at him, bless his heart and I said, “Hon, you know we’re at the beginning of this storm and it’s only going to get worst.”

“You’re not going to be able to hold that for twelve hours.”

“I don’t know how to break it to you. You are not stronger than a hurricane.”

He gave up after about five minutes of fighting with the storm. We did have to evacuate the master room and we went to a different room. It was a room within the interior of the house. That room did begin to take on water eventually because this was an unprecedented storm. It did begin to take on water. We had to evacuate that room and then we went to another room and we pray because after that, we had no place else to go.

I’m glad it stopped there. That sounds super intense.

This is probably a nice avenue for you to be able to discuss this because the other people that live in Puerto Rico, when you try to tell that story, you’re like, “Whatever, you aren’t special.”

There are so many people that have stories that are so much worse. Some people say, “Our entire roof blew off. All the windows and doors were broken out of our homes.” My story that I share with you all is nothing compared to what so many people did. The thing that I’m grateful for from that hurricane, it was traumatic. It was devastating. It was all those things, but we were so lucky to have been involved. I literally took a break from work because you have to understand that hurricane took away our cell phone service, our internet and our power depending on where you lived on the island, anywhere from 5 to 9 months. I couldn’t work because my business is online-based. I couldn’t work for those entire nine months, couldn’t make a phone call. We depended completely on our generator for power. We got to know each other well as a family during that time. We played some board games. I’m grateful because not only did we become closer as a family, but I was able to throw myself into the relief efforts of my community. Along with some friends of mine and members of my church, we threw ourselves into providing food for families in our community, necessities. I’ve never talked about this. Thank you so much for letting me discuss it a few years later.

This is cool.

We would go house-to-house, door-to-door, block-to-block, neighborhood-to-neighborhood, checking on people, seeing what they needed, making sure their kids had food, making sure they had things like Band-Aids and alcohol and basic stuff because the stores had nothing. People didn’t have access to cash because you couldn’t use an ATM machine. People were a little bit desperate. For fourteen months, I was working on almost a daily basis, strictly doing relief for my community here in Puerto Rico. That was the most gratifying and difficult year of my entire life but I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

The reason I said, “This is cool,” is because you have this amazing outlook on that. Many people and myself included, I would be sad, upset and frustrated and that turns you into a victim and you turn something very tragic into this positive experience. That is not something everyone can do and you should be very proud of that. That’s amazing.

Thank you so much for saying that.

How long was the hurricane?

I remember we went to bed at about 10:30 and it was windy. I’m from Chicago, so I know about wind. This is like a Chicago wind thing. That was around 10:30. I remember my mom called because she was probably watching the news and we had already lost power at that point. We still had cell phone service, but my mom called at 1:30 AM. She said, “I’m checking on you, guys. Is everything okay?” I’m like, “Mom, we’re good. We’re fine. We’re sleeping. I’ll call you as soon as we can.” As she’s saying, “Goodbye, I love you,” or whatever she was saying, I heard the static and the phone cut-off before we officially end the conversation. That was at 1:30 AM, it started to get progressively worse and it went all the way until about 12:30. It was about eleven hours that storm went. It went all through the night. That was the longest night of our lives.

I bet your mom was freaking out.

If you don’t have power, you don’t have cell service, how do you let your mother know that you’re okay?

You all have no idea. My husband and my son had a charter boat business. They decided to open up a charter boat business. We live in Puerto Rico, we’re right on the ocean. They started the business a couple of years ago. One of the things that when you have a boat of any kind, it’s always wise to have satellite phones. When our crew is out on the water, they don’t have cell phone service, if there’s an emergency, they can always pick up one of the satellite phones to make a call. He had the presence of mind to say, “We knew the hurricane was coming. I’m going to make sure I go get the satellite phones off the boat.”

That’s way more impressive than holding down a shutter.

He’s a pretty smart dude. I had to give him kudos for that one. You all are going to trip out on this. We have satellite phones and with the satellite phones you can’t call from your house because the phone has to be able to reach the satellite. You have to go outside to make a phone call.

It’s like DIRECTV. It needs to see the sky.

We couldn’t call anybody until the storm began to settle down. It was 12 or 13 hours after the storm. I was finally able to get a call out to the family. They were having anxiety attacks, panic. Everybody was like, “Oh my God,” because they had no idea. All they could see was what was on the news. We were finally able to get a call out to the family and we said, “Everybody is okay. We’re fine. We can’t talk long. We don’t know when we’ll be able to call you in the next time, but we’re good.” The cool thing about that satellite phone is that we were literally able to take that phone to several of our neighbors, people in our community who had no way of contacting their family. They were able to use the satellite phone to let somebody in their family know, “We’re okay. Everybody’s safe. We’re good. You don’t have to worry.” You can’t imagine when people can get pulled to a phone to call somebody, anybody back in the States.

You guys were like angels. You’re walking around with this ability to communicate and nobody else has the ability.

As soon as you started the story, I’m like, “This ends with everyone using the satellite phone. She probably could have paid for the damage to her housing and it’s $5.”

People were offering to pay us. They were like, “We’ll pay you, just let us use your phone.” It’s like, “Chill. No problem. We were all in the same boat, so absolutely. Don’t be trying to have long conversation though.”

Save some juice for the next guy.

You guys are amazing. What an ordeal and you finding all these ways to help other people. You could have been in the movies where it’s like a post-apocalyptic scene and they’re all crammed in their house and they won’t open the door for anybody. You guys are out like, “Anybody need some Band-Aids? Call your mom.” I love that.

When you finally got power back, what was the first thing that you did?

When I finally got power back, I did several things simultaneously. I used my dishwasher and my washer and my dryer probably all at the same time.

My first thought was like, “I’m taking a hot shower,” but the water won’t be hot because you get power back, your hot water heater hasn’t heated it up yet. You still got to wait.

It was quite an ordeal. We had a generator, it was challenging to keep that thing filled up with gas on a weekly basis, but we managed to do it. There were a couple of days where we had no power, we had no generator. I had to cook dinner out on the barbecue grill. There were days I didn’t have my hot coffee because there was no way to make hot coffee. You discover what you’re made of.

You guys are resourceful. If there’s ever something happening to the world, I’m going to come to Puerto Rico and find you.

Come to my house and you’ll be good to go.

I’ll be like, “Monique will know what to do.”

You’re going to need your satellite phone number.

We had meals ready to eat and everything. We were good to go on.

Back to Peloton. Tom takes us down tangents. I never know where we’re going to go, but that was all super fascinating. I’m glad we got to hear all of that. Actually, I want people to hear about your podcast because when we talked in person, I was fascinated by what you do. Can you tell us about your podcast and what you do with people?

My podcast is called Sisternomics. It is a podcast for women entrepreneurs, which gives them practical tips, resources and advice on how to get to their next income level. I’m also using the podcast as my own personal accountability platform because my goal is to get my business to seven figures by April of 2021. People can follow my journey toward that goal by listening to Sisternomics. In my work, I am a coach to women entrepreneurs. I help them to stop stressing about money, stop chasing after it, stop worrying about it and finally use their gifts and their genius to make more than enough of it. That’s what I do in the world.

What I also found fascinating was that you use so much psychology around money. It’s like people who eat emotionally like myself. You can talk about dieting all you want, but until you deal with the emotional eating aspect of it, you’re always going to struggle with that. I felt like what you were doing dealt with money in that aspect.

Fitness As A Community: When you get access to a fitness community, you start to make connections within that community, and you also fall in love with the instructors.

We all have a story about money and that story is usually developed when we’re children around the age of 5, 6 or 7, sometimes a little bit younger. However you saw your parents or your closest family members handling money is typically how you grow up handling it as well. I always like to say that the only thing that stands between a woman and the money that she desires is the story that she tells herself. That story comes from how you saw your parents handling money. What happened when they had conversations about money? Was money even a topic of conversation in your household? All of that drives our relationship with money and our experience with money. My job is to help you break all that down. If the story that you have right now doesn’t fit who you are today or the goals that you have, then it’s up to me to help you rewrite the story so that it matches who you are and the goals that you have.

Isn’t that fascinating, Tom?

Yeah. My parents never talked about money.

That’s something to do with your story. I’m sure Monique could break it down, but it means something.

My story is when I would see my parents dealing with money, there was always tension or it was always, “No, we can’t afford that. No, you can’t go to the sleep away camp. No, you can’t get the fancy jeans that your girlfriends are wearing.” I saw my dad working 2 and 3 jobs. It was an interesting dynamic for me. The story that I grew up with, because all of us have a story including you, Tom, even though they didn’t talk about money, we all have a story and my story was, “The only way you’re going to make money is if you work 50, 60 and 70 hours a week. Money is only going to come to you if you’re constantly away from your family. You can’t make money doing fun, creative things like a podcast or coaching or anything like that. You’ve got to work your fingers to the bone.” That was my story. Even as a money coach, even as a host of Sisternomics, even as a person who’s had a successful career in broadcasting in radio and TV, I still every day have to work on my money story because I have to make sure that those old, disempowering thoughts and beliefs, I have to make sure that they’re not affecting the person that I am and the income that I want to create.

That’s funny because those are all messages my parents sent me and then I ignored them. I didn’t do any of them. Now, I have the fun job.

You found a way to create your own story to do what you wanted to do, but not everybody can. There are many years that I felt like I had to work 80 hours a week to be able to make enough money to support the family. Before you and I were married just to be clear, for anybody reading.

Gainfully important readers, pull my own weight, which is considerable because I’m fat.

I used to do that all the time. What you do is fascinating and I hope people who read to our podcast check you out because what you are doing is great and can help a lot of people.

I love doing this work. I know that when we have enough money, first of all, when we adjust our relationship with it and realize that there’s no shortage of money out there, that there’s plenty of it and it’s enough of it to go around for all of us to be wealthy. When we start to realize that and we start to take away the stress and all of the misunderstandings around money, then we can begin to create it easily and create it in fun ways and then also create a legacy of wealth so that our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren can benefit from that because that’s the way it should be. When all of us are wealthy, we have the ability and the resources to make an impact on the world. That’s what it’s all about.

I should throw in here, you would like this, I was raised by a female entrepreneur in the ’70s and ’80s.

Tell her about the award your mom got.

My mom owned a printing company. Both my parents own printing companies. They owned one together and then they got divorced and started separate printing companies, but not like in a competing way. She was involved with the community and did all sorts of stuff. I still have the plaque she got. This is what the plaque says and it cracks me up, “First Lady President” of her Rotary Club.

It kills me. I love it so much. Bless them, they were trying.

They make that in the nicest way.

They loved her so much.

It did no harm.

They did not but it’s funny to see it, “First Lady President.” She might actually been the first female member in the Rotary Club when they first opened it up, the women joined. Then in classic Betty O’Keeffe fashion and then taken over the whole thing.

Back to Peloton this time. It sounded like when you and I talked, Peloton was your go-to work out at this point. I would like to hear why that is for you?

It’s something about the community, Crystal, that is addictive. I cannot get enough of it. I’ve done workouts before. I told you I had a spin bike, gym memberships and whatever. This is the first time that I have been consistent because when you have the access to the community, then you start to make connections within the community. Then you start to fall in love with the instructors because they’re like your best friend in your head. I’ve got to get on Alex’s ride or I have to go and see what Cody is talking about. It’s something about it. They’ve got this formula down to a science and I’m hooked.

I clearly am too, so I get it. Tom still has not taken a ride.

Tom, I’ve got a question for you. What is it going to take to get you on that bike?

I’m good.

In our Facebook group, they had that joke going around that they were going to make a bike out of chicken tenders and that maybe he would ride that.

I would just eat it.

He would eat it, he wouldn’t ride it.

You love the community. Have you gone to the studio in New York?

Yes. I was there in summer. I was able to ride with Christine and I absolutely love her. She was nice. The thing I love about her is that she is comfortable in her skin. I don’t know for me, as a woman that’s quickly approaching the age of 50, even though I know I don’t look a day over 35.

You really don’t, you say that jokingly. You look a lot younger than what you say you are.

I wouldn’t have guessed that you’re as old as me.

Thank you, guys, for saying that well. I met her and I’m getting to a point where I’d no longer judge myself in terms of, “I’m too this or this part of my body is imperfect or whatever.” For women, that’s an ongoing struggle. I’m now probably in the past year getting to a space where I’m not going to judge myself no more. I have to fall in love with me the way I am right now. I’ll still get on my bike and I’ll work out every day. For now, I’m going to accept myself the way I am. I love Christine because she does the exact same thing. She personifies this whole idea of women being comfortable in their bodies and I love her for that. I rode with her in summer. It was a blast. I didn’t get to ride with Alex, but next time I’m going to go and make sure I’ll ride with him. My new favorite is Matt Wilpers.

Is that for Power Zone rides or in general?

I finished taking Discover Your Power Zones. He was low on my radar. I wasn’t feeling his vibe or anything, but I knew that after having my bike for a year, I want to be more powerful on the bike. I want to be higher up on the leaderboard. I said, “Let me go ahead and mess with Matt and take his class and see what he’s talking about.” Matt for me is like Bay. He is my favorite coach of all times. He’s a rock star in my eyes. I wish I would’ve taken Power Zones when I first got the bike.

That’s interesting because I have this theory. You have 3 or 4 instructors you connect with but typically, they fall in quadrants. If you’re an Alex girl, it’s very rare that you’re a Christine and Matt girl. If you’re Christine, you’re definitely Matt. Alex usually is not lumped in with those threes. I am fascinated by that.

I’ve tried to try a little bit of everything. You’re right because I’m in the BGM community and all of them are in love with Alex. They love Robin. There’s very few in the community that love Matt. The thing I love about Matt is that he makes the bike makes sense. It’s not ride into your heart falls out. You don’t kill yourself with him. Everything he does has a strategy to it. It has meaning behind it. That’s the thing I look for in a coach, someone that can literally guide me to my next level and that’s exactly what he does. That’s why I love him so much. He’s amazing.

He does do that. That is absolutely true. That’s wonderful. I love that you try all the different instructors because we all should. You don’t know who you’re going to mesh with until you take a few of their classes. That’s great that you do that.

The bike has so much to offer. How can you not? That bike is everything. It’s just the floor workouts, the yoga, the meditation, I want to do all of it. Literally, when I finish my workout and I worked out with Matt, I said to myself, “I wish I could spend the whole day sometimes exploring some of these classes because they’re so amazing. I love it.”

I hear you. You have no idea how many days that I am at work. I’m like, “I want to go home and work out.”

I know how you feel.

She gets home and I’m like, “Let’s watch TV.”

My husband is to the point where he’s like, “You’re going to work out right now?” He knows. In my household, my husband and my son, they’re like, “You’re working out tonight, right?” “Yes.” Everything else is going to have to wait. I’ll get back to it when I’ve finished my workout. It’s a part of my life.

Here’s the thing, things might have to wait but your workout will never be as long as the weight of post hurricane. You’re like, “I’m going to be gone for 45 minutes. You can deal with it.”

That’s an excellent point.

They will never ever bother you again. If they were, you will be like that. That is your get out of jail free card. You mentioned BGM, but a lot of people in the Peloton community, they have so many groups. They may not have heard of Black Girl Magic. Can you talk about that tribe?

Black Girl Magic is a group of black women who are on varying levels of their health journey. I love this community because it’s so positive and everyone in there is encouraging and everybody respects where the other person is on their journey. You’ve got some people in there who are like fitness models and true athletes. You got people like me, I’m just a mom, trying to stay active few times a week. This is a funny story about my leader name. My leader name is Play Time is Over. Let me say how I came up with that name. I changed the name a few months ago before I was using my name, Monique Caradine. It was boring. One of the girls in the BGM in our little Facebook group, she’s a physician and she looks amazing and she posted a picture of herself. This woman has a six-pack to die for.

I looked at her and I said to myself, “This woman looks amazing.” She is probably around the same age as me. She explained how she got to where she is and how she works at. She was very nice to give us her whole entire workout and even some of her diet and stuff like that. I looked at her and I screenshotted her picture on my phone because I’m like, “If she can do that, I can do that.” That is what made me change my name to Play Time is Over, so I can get by myself daily that I’ve got the take it up a notch. That’s what made me take Matt’s Discover Your Power Zone. That’s what made me start getting down on that floor and doing some of that little strength workouts. I did Emma’s core workout all because I saw that picture.

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Does she know that? Does she know that you are so inspired by her?

I told her. I don’t know if she realizes the impact that she has had on my whole entire life, but I did tell her that she was truly an inspiration for me.

I love how that community does that for each other. That is amazing.

What I did was I started another subgroup from the Black Girl Magic group and there are ten of us in a little subgroup. We are ride or die accountability partners. We decide each month we say, “This month we’re going to focus on Power Zone training. This month we’re going to focus on endurance or strength or whatever the case might be.” We hold each other accountable every day. We create a little calendar. We say, “This is our workout for the month. How’s everybody doing? Check in when you finish your workout.” Somebody says, “I didn’t get to do my workout.” We say, “No problem, try to get at least ten minutes in.” It’s amazing the friendships and the connections that we’ve developed from that group. It’s awesome.

I am so glad that you are telling us about this group because it’s been a couple of months because we’ve obviously had been trying to have this conversation since I’ve met you. There was a BGM HRI in New York and Tune day and Jess Sims was there. The entire tribe at that HRI, they came into the class and it was Sims class that I did one morning and I was doing a run and the energy in that room was electric. It was fabulous. They looked like they were having so much fine and Jess Sims was having a great time. I love her. I don’t know if you’ve taken any of the classes with her since you’ve been using the bike and she’s a tread instructor. Have you had the chance?

Yeah, I did. I take her strength classes. I actually took one of her classes and it was killer. I took her upper body strength class. It was amazing. She’s no joke.

On Saturday, she has a class that she calls the Saturday 60 and it’s either a boot camp at 60 minutes or it’s a 60-minute run. If it’s a boot camp, she does these insane moves, the strength moves. You’ll do fifteen minutes run and then you’ll do fifteen minutes of strength and you jump back on and do a fifteen-minute run. By the end, you want to hurt her because it’s so amazing. She is tough. She’s amazing. I love her so much.

I like her a lot too.

I’m glad everybody gets to hear about that tribe because I tried to reach the admin and I sent a message. You know how you have the other messages on Facebook? It went there and I never heard from her.

Let me know, I’m happy to put you in touch with her and let them know that you want to reach out and stuff. I can make that connection for you if you’d like.

That would be great. I’d love to hear more. You told us your leaderboard name and how you came up with it. You just changed that?

I changed that in the last couple of months. I changed it probably at the end of August to September, something like that.

Are you happy with your progress so far?

I’m happy with my progress. I have what I call a six-pack starter kit. I’m starting to see some lines. My weight is very stable. It’s maintaining at a good weight. I also got some nice arms. I’m trying to get those tune day arms.

If you do, that’s amazing. I have tune day goal arms. They are my goal. I don’t have the arms but I would love to have them. She’s talking about no joke. She’s a beast on the bike.

I PR every time I ride with her. She is amazing. I’m actually trying to get her on my podcast, so hopefully I can make that happen.

That would be fabulous. If you do, let me know because I want to hear it. Are you going to go through a Peloton to do that or are you reaching out to her directly?

I reached out to her directly actually.

It’s not about Peloton necessarily your conversation?

Some of it will be obviously, but a lot of the things that I’m helping women do. I want to talk to her about the business of fitness. Since it’ll be around the first of the year, we all have fitness goals. I love her energy. I think she can add a lot of value to my audience in terms of business as well as health and wellness.

There’s no doubt. I’m sure you’ve heard her backstory.

A little bit of it. Not all of it.

She’s amazing. I don’t remember what country she grew up in, but she was overweight when she was thirteen. She ended up losing all that weight and looks the way she does now. That’s inspirational for teenagers especially because many kids these days, at least our kids, they sit around, do nothing. She’s super inspirational. She’s amazing.

She’s got a good vibe and good energy, she’s awesome.

Do you have any advice for people who are starting their fitness or Peloton journey?

My best recommendation would be to do Matt Wilpers’ Discover Your Power Zones because that’s a great way to develop a good understanding of your bike. It’s a great way to understand your body on the bike. It’s a great way to develop the right technique early on so that you don’t just jump on. My first ride was a 45-minute ride with Cody, and then while it was fun and it was great, I may have developed some not so good habits because I didn’t do the right techniques and stuff. If I could offer anyone any advice, especially if you’re a newbie, go ahead and jump on with Matt Wilpers and let that be your guide and then start trying the other folks. The main thing is don’t take it so seriously. Cody always says, “Have fun and live your life.”

That’s great advice. I love it.

I was thinking it’s like yard work. Everybody wants to have the nice manicured lawn, but first and foremost, you’ve got to mow the thing. First, you mow it and then once you’ve mowed for a while, then you look around and you’re like, “Maybe we can throw on some fertilizer.”

It’s good advice, Tom.

Until we live in the suburbs.

The next thing you know, you’re putting those little fancy lines, those diagonal lines.

You’re cutting the grass like catty corner. It looks all fancy and not unlike exercise. I hire someone to do it.

Smart man you got there, Crystal.

I agree, except for the exercise part.

Where can people find you on social media and whatnot? Normally, I say if you would like to be found, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you would like to be found.

I would like to be found and you can find me everywhere, @MoniqueCaradine. My podcast is called Sisternomics. You guys have been so much fun. Thank you for letting me share my story. I’ve never shared it to that degree. I’ve never shared it with such depth. I thank you guys for letting me get that out.

You’re very welcome.

I feel like we had a special experience. Thank you for sharing that with us.

It’s my pleasure.

It was wonderful to talk to you and I hope that we are able to keep in touch. If you somehow pass by St. Louis, let us know.

I’ll definitely let you guys know. Actually, I may be in St. Louis in summer. If I make it that way, I will definitely let you know.

That would be fabulous. You take care and thank you again for doing this.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, guys, so much.

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What do you have in store for people next time?

We have another exciting interview. We are going to be talking to Brock Masters, who if by any stretch of what I saw on the official Peloton page, you guys have seen him, you just may not know his name. He has Spina Bifida. He was racing along in his fancy racing wheelchair while taking classes on Peloton all over the OPP and it’s awesome. We’ve got to talk to him.

Fitness As A Community: Don’t take it too seriously. Still make sure to have fun and live your life.

He has a badass name, Brock Masters. He sounds like he should be a character on one of those old cowboy shows. Anyway, that’s who we will be talking to you next episode week. Until then, where can people find you?

People can find me at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe. They can also find me at Instagram, Twitter, on the bike and of course the tread at Clip Out Crystal.

You can find me on Twitter, @RogerQBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/tomokeefe. Don’t forget, while you got your podcast delivery device in your hand, you should make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you want to find out more about the show, you could do that at Facebook.com/theclipout. While you’re there, like the page, join the group and of course sign up for our newsletter at theclipout.com. That’s it. Thanks for tuning in and until next time, keep peddling and running.

Important Links:

About Monique Caradine

Why do you think you would be a great guest on the show?
this bike has been the ONLY thing that has me excited about working out consistently! I truly believe that Peloton is the answer to world peace. Real talk!

How old are you?
49

Leaderboard name
PlayTimeIsOver

Who is your favorite instructor?
Hard to name just one! Alex because he helps me PR consistently, Cody because he’s fun, Jenn because she’s cool and i love her hip hop playlists, Matt because he makes the bike make sense (I just finished his Power Zones program), Christine because she’s so confident in her skin, Tunde because she’s fresh!

What is your favorite tribe?
Black Girl Magic the Peloton Edition (aka BGM Queens) – such a supportive, positive and motivating group!

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