148: Coronavirus And Its Effect On Peloton plus our interview with Eric Tostrud

Last Updated: January 18, 2023By Crystal OKeefe (#ClipOutCrystal)Tags: Parkinson’s fundraiser, Peloton, Peloton Bike, Peloton Community, Peloton4Parkinsons, Team Fox

Homecoming is cancelled.

Studios are closed to the public until further notice. Retail locations are closed until at least March 29.

Peloton had its biggest single sales day ever on March 17.

Peloton Digital has expanded their free trial from 30-days to 90-days.

Peloton stock is on the rise.

Motley Fool has an article about why Peloton stock isn’t going down.

Peloton’s final ride in the old studio had over 12,000 people take part.

We’re still giving away a Tonal.

Gyms everywhere are doing classes on Facebook Live.

WKDQ has some suggestions for at-home workouts.

Mashable has a list of workout apps. (Yes, Peloton is one of them.)

Jezebel thinks Peloton has been proven right and is “smug” about it.

Crystal updates us on her Fight Camp journey.

New celebrity Peloton user – Andrea Barber aka Kimmy Gibbler from Full House.

NBA players Stephen Curry and John Wall were spotted on Pelotons this week.

Ellen Degeneres recorded a video while riding her bike.

Becs Gentry was featured on FastRunning.com

All this plus our interview with Eric Tostrud!

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Coronavirus And Its Effect On Peloton plus our interview with Eric Tostrud

We are not in Mexico.

The whole world changed in a week. I hope everybody’s doing okay out there.

Much has happened.

We didn’t go to Mexico, but we did order a bidet.

We ordered two of them, front and back. It’s been crazy. By the time we recorded last episode until the time we released it, half of it was no longer true.

Everything turned upside down. I don’t know if everybody could see it coming because some people still think it’s a hoax. I could see that it was coming. I did not think it was going to be here as fast. I thought we were going to make it to Mexico and make it back.

We had no such luck. I did rebook our flights for August. Let’s try again, fingers crossed. It saved us $2,000 because no one’s traveling. The lady was like, “Pick your seats because you’re the only people on the plane.” “It sounds like I don’t have to pick my seats, but okay.”

In all seriousness, I hope everybody is being safe and healthy and social distancing. I hope that even if you don’t believe in it, you’re practicing those things.

I personally have cut in half my doorknob looking.

I’m glad that’s cut down. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.

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I’m like, “Serious times call for serious measures.” I am nothing if not serious.

I love that the kids weren’t concerned until I showed them that dogs can get it too.

The first dog case of Coronavirus was confirmed. Now they’re wearing masks.

They’re not answering the door.

They’re teenagers, so they already had the social distancing thing down. We were fine there. We don’t see them for weeks at a time. Enough of that. What do you have in store for people?

Basically, we’re going to talk about how everything has changed in the last week. That’s pretty much the gist.

Before all that, shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts. That part is still true. You can go there and rate and review and subscribe. Most importantly, subscribe, so you’ll never miss an episode. That’s not just an Apple Podcasts thing in case you are curious. You can subscribe pretty much anywhere. Wherever you’re getting them, they have a way to make sure you keep getting them, so you should do that. We have a new review. This is from Kidenn, “Fantastically funny and informative. The Clip Out is a great extension of the Peloton community. I can’t believe it took me this long to find this podcast. It was fun, funny and engaging with a mix of Peloton news and dare I say, gossip. I love the in-depth interview with fellow Peloton riders. I’m adding The Clip Out to my weekly listens.” Thank you very much.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for such a lovely review.

Also don’t forget we have a Facebook page, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. It’s a great way to stay up-to-date on things throughout the week, especially in these rapidly changing times when things are coming at us fast and furious, except for Fast and Furious. That’s odd.

It’s strangely on hold.

Also, you can check out our website, which every week now, I will tell you it should be new anytime. While you’re there, you can subscribe to the newsletter. There’s a donate button if you wanted to do that, nobody’s going to stop you. That’s all that. Let’s dig in, shall we?

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To the retroactive surprise of no one, Homecoming was canceled.

I’m pretty sad about it but I get it. It’s the right thing to do.

If you weren’t sure when it was announced, I think the subsequent activities have confirmed that it was the right call. It does not make it suck any less.

To be clear, it doesn’t just suck for all of us not going, it sucks for Peloton. They’ve been planning this for a year. It was all in time for their big change over to the new studio. Not that they’re complaining about it, I don’t mean it like the way I feel sorry for them. I mean that they didn’t do this decision lightly. Nobody’s making these decisions lightly. This is well-thought out. They did what they felt they needed to do.

I think they know a lot of people fly in and once the airlines started loosening up about letting people out of their flights, they knew that they had a window to let people take advantage of that.

It’s so crazy how fast it’s developing though. When the news first broke, a lot of people were still posting like, “Maybe I won’t cancel my flights and stuff because that’ll be May. Even if I can’t go for Homecoming, I’m still going to go to New York.” Right now, people are like, “I will not be doing that.”

If you do want to get on a plane, it seems like it’s easier than ever to practice social distancing because there’s no one else on that plane from the looks of it.

Some of the airlines are no longer serving drink services, meal services, any of that. Be aware. Also the poor people who have to stay on the plane, that’s a whole other story. I don’t want to make us political.

It’s difficult not to.

Let me say that I hope that everybody can be where they need to be safe. I wish that for every single person in the audience.

On the heels of that, the studios are closed until further notice.

They said the end of March, but now they’re saying, “We’ll see,” not until we can change things.

That also goes for the retail stores.

The retail stores are saying those are closed and that is again, at least until the end of March. We’ll see what happens.

We had a source inform us that in the midst of all this that Peloton, on St. Patrick’s Day, had their biggest single sales day ever. It’s not like they’ve been hurting. I heard sales are so high that even Echelon has been making money.

In all seriousness, John Mills has been posting all these different companies talking about different things, different aspects. One of them was one of these ridiculous companies saying that they had sold a bunch of stuff. It wasn’t even when we’ve discussed, so it was below Echelon, whatever it was.

Maybe they sold eight bikes that day.

I don’t know. The point is that, can you even imagine what would happen right now if Peloton had not started this? People would be sitting at home with nothing to do. Regardless of whether or not you agree with Peloton or you think Peloton is too expensive or you have a Peloton, the bottom line is they started paving the way to get it into people’s homes in a different way than people had thought of before. Before, it was just the same videos over and over again. Now, to have that direct content, everybody is adding on. Planet Fitness is doing Facebook Lives. This is crazy, unprecedented stuff.

Nobody is watching them, but they’re doing them.

I bet that people actually are, I’m sure. There are a lot of people looking for workout videos for their kids. They’re probably getting traction.

Peloton Digital is now free for 90 days for new users. Instead of the normal 30-day trial, now you get three months.

That’s a big thing because once you have it, you’re going to love it, you’re going to stick with it. It’s a real gift for people. It’s great for them to get pulled into the Peloton community. It’s definitely a win-win.

Also Peloton stock, which started the week at $17 an hour at almost $26. As the stock market completely craps the bed day after day, they’re going up.

Don’t get me wrong, it got down there to a pretty icky place.

There’s still a lot of volatility with it because there’s a lot of volatility everywhere.

It’s nice to see the green amongst all the red.

Normally when you see times like this, the only people making money are Campbell Soup and gun manufacturers.

I heard the only companies making money right now are Peloton and Charmin. I’m totally making that up. That was me being Tom for a second.

For Charmin, they’re making a lot of money now, but when this is all over, they’re not going to sell any toilet paper for six months because we all got it. We’re going to have it forever. We are stocked up.

To be clear, we’re not those people that hoarded the toilet paper. That’s not us. We don’t want anyone to think that we did. We bought appropriate amounts that we normally would have bought, plus two more weeks.

There was also an article on Fool.com, which is Motley Fool, Three Reasons Why Peloton Stock Isn’t Going Down.

Did you read it?

No.

The three reasons are Peloton is riding the wave of social distancing. Then, momentum matters. They were already such a huge growth swing already and now, they’re going to do even better. This quote bothers me, “Peloton decision to throw the masses a bone by giving them digital subscription offering.”

How was that throwing them a bone?

It’s because this guy is tushy. You can’t just say something nice about a company whenever you’re one of these people apparently.

They do a fool in their title.

The third one is Peloton works. We can agree there, Mr. Motley Fool guy. That’s about it.

The immortal words of Meatloaf, “Two out of three, isn’t bad.” Some non-Coronavirus news. Peloton’s last ride at the old studio happened.

It was Sunday night and it was at 5:30 PM. At first, they had a Lights Out Ride scheduled, but then that got taken off. That was just the Together We Ride far, which was great. Robin did the final one, and it was almost 13,000 people online. It was 12,500-something is the highest number. I saw it and I jumped up too. It was good. That was my third Peloton workout that day because I had done a live 30-minute with Rebecca Kennedy for my 150th run. Then I also did a 30-minute with Jenn Sherman, both of which were last rides for those two instructors. They were super emotional. I really thought they balanced well.

Last ride in the studio.

None of the instructors are going anywhere. It’s funny you say that. Every time the instructors are like, “Farewell West 23rd,” they get a, “Where are you going?” Who are these people that don’t know what’s happening? I say that like legit. I know I’m super into Peloton. I get that. There’s a curve and I am at one end, but who are the people at the other end that don’t even know they’re moving to another studio? I can’t identify with those people. At any rate, I want to say that Jenn and Rebecca, and I heard Tunde did too, I didn’t get to watch hers, but I did see these myself. They balanced it so well between this calming, “We all need to take this time for ourselves and we need to focus on the things we can control.” They balanced that very well with, “It’s going to be really sad to move away from here, but we’re excited about the new chapter.” I thought they did that so well. It was great.

They are scheduled to start live classes at the closed studio for the moment.

The new studio that will be closed to the public for the time being. When we say closed studio, it sounds like the old, closed down studio.

They are going to start?

Yeah, that’s just it. They were supposed to start at 6:00 AM but that is no longer the case. We’re back to Coronavirus news. They are going to be doing live rides, but they are modifying the schedule. They’re maximizing social distancing even for the instructors, so they don’t want them in the same place at the same time. They’re keeping everybody away. They’re keeping production team away from each other. Point being, the Lights Up Ride that was scheduled has now been postponed until they officially open the Peloton Studios New York at a later date, so that is not happening any more soon. They are still going to teach a 30-minute Together We Ride at 10:30 AM Eastern on the 19th. By the time everyone reads this, it will have already occurred. It is changing still. They said they’re only scheduling rides out a few days now, not our normal two to three weeks, because everything’s happening so rapidly.

There’s so much influx that they don’t want to lock into something and then have to change it all again.

They said to note that they are building Encore classes and they will continue to update those on a daily basis. They recognize that people want the content, they’re at home, they need that content, so they’re working on it. Thank you, Peloton, for doing that. Thank you for allowing your employees to work at home. Thank you for allowing people to stay safe and healthy in this crazy time.

Speaking of work-outs you could do at home, we’re giving away a Tonal. In the middle of all this, we didn’t forget but it’s easy to lose sight of this.

Let me tell you about some cool contest. Tonal has got their own contests going on and I’m not going to get into the details of that because we’ve got to talk about this contest. One of the things that you had to do was to do five Quick Fit workouts. I put them all together to be one Quick Fit workout. It was 50 minutes long. It was all these ten-minute workouts. It was great because they’ve got a little bit of arms and a little bit of abs and they did a little bit legs and then I did a little bit of cardio. It was fabulous. For anybody who’s like, “Does tonal do anything besides just straight strength like a bench press?” Yes, they do lots. It’s a good variety of exercises. Back to our contest. Sorry, Tom.

That’s okay. On the heels of that, I was explaining Tonal to a lady I work with. She had a baby, but she used to be a power lifter. I had to be extra nice to her. I was explaining it to her and she was like, “How much can it really do?” I explained it to her, I showed her the video and her big concern was like, “Can it do legs?” I showed her those, she’s like, “Wow.” Now, she’s totally into it. I thought that was interesting.

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I do get that question a lot like, “Is it even enough for me?” There are people that this is not good for. If you’ve got a squat rack and you’re lifting regularly 400 pounds with everything you do, this probably isn’t for you. 99% of people lifting, it’s not who they are.

It’s going to be fine for the vast majority of people. Anyway, how do you win one? You go to theclipout.com/Tonal. There will be a different question each week. If you entered last week, you can go and enter again. Some of the extra entries you can only partake in one time, but you can enter the question of the week multiple weeks.

I want to add that you are not required to do any of the extras. The only thing you’re required to do to enter is to answer the question.

Also we should point out if you missed last week’s, you’re okay. You can still do this week so you don’t have to have done last week’s to enter this week. The more questions you answered, the better your odds, but you can still jump on the train now and get an entry or two in there.

You are excited about this, which I don’t blame you. I’m excited too.

We’ve had a great response. If you miss it, it’s not like one of the challenges in the past where if you miss the first week, you’re behind the eight ball and there’s no catching up. It’s not that kind of contest at all. Go to theclipout.com/Tonal for your chance to win. You alluded to this earlier with Planet Fitness doing Facebook Live, but gyms everywhere are scrambling to try and hold on to people.

I heard from a little birdie that Equinox has freezes on their memberships. They are up over 50%. Keep in mind, that was Friday or Saturday that I heard. I don’t even know what day it is anymore because I don’t go outside now, so I don’t know. It was a few days ago is my point. Who knows how many have been added to that since then, but it’s an all-time high? Other gyms are trying to figure out quickly they’re trying to adapt to this freeze system. There are a lot of gyms that didn’t have this ability. Now, they’re trying to quickly figure out how they can freeze. We have all these other gyms trying to get online and do classes with the people that come in week after week.

I ran into this with AMC. I do their A-list thing, which is for $20 a month you can see up to three movies a week. I was like, “I need to stop this for a little bit because they don’t have movies anymore.” This was before they flat-out closed. I went to the chat queue and it was like, “You are the 674th person in line.” I was like, “Oh dear. It’s going to be awhile.” I’m sure that they’re scrambling. Especially, a lot of those people are probably doing things like sampling Peloton in the interim. It has to scare the crap out of them, especially small businesses.

There’s so much turn on its head in seven days that like nobody knows which way is up. Everything is insane. When you’re starting to look at all these people that are thinking about Peloton or they’re thinking about other ways to work out from home and they’re really focused on it, you’ve got to wonder, “Are they going to go back to the gym when this is all over?”

They will get used to it. Then they’re like, “I could buy this piece of equipment,” and for what will be comparable to the cost of the gym or even less, especially in the long-term. It’s going to get really ugly out there for them. It’s going to get ugly out there for a lot of people, but it’s going to get ugly out there for gyms just because that’s what we talk about. It’s a little scary out there. What is this WKDQ?

Since we were talking about all these different things that you can do at home, I did want to bring up the fact that there are things besides Peloton. Here’s my reasoning. I don’t deserve to have my Peloton card taken. Here’s why. One, because both of these mentioned Peloton. Two, because not everybody has a Peloton Bike or Tread and maybe they have kids that even if they do, they don’t want their kids on their bike, or maybe they’re too young to be able to get on the equipment. I wanted to provide some options. There are some articles, one for Mashable.com, that you will see workout abs apps and YouTube channels for working at home. The other one is the one you mentioned, Tom. It’s from a radio station, WKDQ, and it’s all about seven free at-home workouts to replace canceled group exercise. There are lots and lots of option. Peloton was mentioned in both.

Salty Chic?

That’s just what I called her.

I thought that was a Twitter handle or something. You were just calling her salty?

Yes. You pulled back the curtain on my notes. I feel attacked. If you haven’t heard, there was an article in Jezebel.com, and the title of the article is Peloton Certainly Is Smug Right Now.

Peloton has said nothing about all this, other than cancelling it.

It’s why I said she’s salty.

I wasn’t disagreeing.

I know, but somebody else called her that and it rung true to me. I was like, “This person is salty.” As I was typing up the notes, that comment was in my head. You’re right, Peloton has done nothing to deserve that. They didn’t sit there and go, “Nanana boo-boo,” even though they could, it would be well-deserved. Here’s the thing, Peloton is so above that. That’s not who they are.

Then they would be salty.

It would be childish, immature and petty.

Also cruel in light of the fact that people are going to get sick and some of them aren’t going to make it. Obviously, they wouldn’t spike the ball like that. They’re providing people opportunity in a marketplace that has rapidly shifted in their favor in a way they could have never predicted nor desired. They were doing just fine. They don’t need a global pandemic.

To my point earlier, they’re the exact opposite of smug right now. They had a lot to celebrate this time of year and to invite people to them to be able to talk about it. Now, they’re unable to do that. There’s nothing about them that is smug. This chic is salty and she deserves to be called that, even though I’m a little embarrassed that you called out my notes.

That seems unfair. In the midst of all this, you also have your Fight Camp to keep you occupied.

I tell you, there is nothing more satisfying than hitting that bag as hard as I can.

Do you pretend it’s the Coronavirus?

I pretend it’s something. I don’t think I should say out loud who I think it is.

I think they can surmise.

Go for it.

The CEO of Echelon.

They are on the list. I have a slide show of different people and they’re up on the bag. I project them onto the bag. To be clear, my whole point to that is it’s satisfying to wear out your body in a different way without thinking. You’re literally wailing on this bag. It feels pretty good. There’s a lot of uncertainty and anxiety that is welling up right now. I enjoy beating the crap out of the bag. It’s very therapeutic for me. Enjoying it, still on the prospect path and checking out the different instructors and all the different moves that you can do. I’m learning all of that. I’m at four rounds. It’s nice because I can tack that on to a Peloton ride before or after. The great thing is it works your body in a completely different way than the Peloton. It’s a very nice compliment to it, so it’s great.

If people are interested, they can go to join FightCamp.com and check out all this stuff they got there.

If you end up buying mine, make sure you tell them that The Clip Out sent you at the little end of their survey when you buy it.

Celebrities and the Peloton news, they’ve been everywhere.

Celebrities have been posting because they’re at home too.

Their homes are nicer, but they’re at home. We stumbled across a new one this week. I don’t think I’ve seen anybody talk about this one yet.

I don’t think I have either.

Andrea Barber, also known as Kimmy Gibbler from Full House.

I love that show so much. I love Fuller House too. I watched them both every single episode.

I was 35 when the show started. We have a little bit of an age gap, so I don’t watch it so much. I’m aware of it. It’s like that generation’s Brady Bunch. It is.

Although I watched that too, but it was in reruns whenever I watched it.

It was also in reruns when I watched it. It started in 1969.

You just talked about how you were 35 when Full House came out. I’m just saying, I don’t know where the lying is, Tom.

That might have been a bit of hyperbole. I was probably 18 or 19 when Full House started, so calm down. Welcome to the Peloton family, Andrea Barber. I’m sure she’s reading and listening to all this. If she had been, she’s not anymore.

It’s exciting though.

Then some NBA players have them. People keep sending us pictures of like, “Look at this person that has a Peloton.” We’re like, “Who is that?”

Guys, when you send me this stuff, you’ve got to tell me who it is. If it’s sports-related, I don’t know.

Especially if it’s NBA. We barely know anything about sports is as it is, but we don’t have an NBA team in this town that we’re in. I won’t say we never have, but it was like in 1955. It’s almost like ABA team that became an NBA team or some crazy stuff like that. This town doesn’t really know a whole lot about basketball and the same way that Chicago or Detroit or Austin.

Tom and I know even less.

Whatever that media knowledge amount is, we’re in the second percentile for knowing it. Don’t just send us a random picture of a basketball player, unless it’s Meadowlark Lemon, I’m not going to know who it is. If they were never trapped on Gilligan’s Island, I will not know who they are.

We got a couple of on this episode, Stephen Curry, who is an NBA champ for the Golden State Warriors. Jeff Shelman sent us that one via email. He knew that you wouldn’t know. He thought I had a chance, but he was wrong.

Thank you, Jeff. Thank you for knowing that. I don’t know anything about that stuff.

Then Allie on Instagram sent us a player from the Wizards, John Wall, I don’t know who that is either, but he was enjoying riding his Peloton. He had it in his Story on Instagram.

Ellen posted a video with her Peloton.

It was so funny. She was on her Peloton watching Ellen. She said, “I’m feeling a little meta right now.”

I would think the instructor was probably a little hurt.

Maybe she just wants to ride. She didn’t show us. You don’t know. Don’t judge Ellen. She was probably on there all day. Have you seen how many videos she’s been posting? That woman is bored out of her gourd.

She is someone that likes to be on the go. Then finally, Becs Gentry was featured in an article in FastRunning.com.

It’s sad that it came out this week because there’s so much not happening in sports world right now, but it was talking all about how she’s interviewed. They interviewed her and talked to her world.

The sports word, it’s ugly for them. I was flipping through cable and I landed on ESPN, and it was an eight-year-old girl playing catch.

Coming back to this article for Becs Gentry, just to say how fast Becs Gentry is and how talented she is. In 2019, she ran Hong Kong, Boston and New York Marathons. She went from three 29 in her 2016 London debut, three hours, 29 minutes. That’s how ridiculously short it took her to run 26.1 miles. When she was in New York, she ran it in two hours and 37 minutes. It was no big deal, she shove almost an entire hour off of that. She finished 18th place in the race, 18th fastest performance in the UK and not only that, she also got a PR during the half marathon portion of one hour and sixteen minutes. I want to tell you that Becs Gentry is fast.

Before we roll into the interview, we should probably talk about the fact that this week’s interview, he talks a lot about an event that he has coming up called Peloton for Parkinson’s. Unfortunately that event has been postponed.

We don’t have a date on when it’s going to come back. The thing is that one of Eric’s dreams is to be able to have people create their own experience in their hometowns to help out and recreate that. He doesn’t want to bring people together to do that right now. Obviously, we could all ride at home, but he can’t do that in a gym right now. He’s going to wait until things chill out a little bit, and then we’ll be back.

We still wanted to share his story with you.

I dare you not to cry.

We also wanted to let you know that you’re going to hear us talk about some stuff that is no longer occurring, so you’ve been warned about that. Here we go.

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Joining us is Eric Tostrud. Eric, how is it going?

It’s going very well. How’s it going with you?

It’s going well. I don’t know if you remember, but a little while back we did an interview with Tunde, where I missed the beginning because I was stuck in a plane and things weren’t going well. To make up for that, I’m going to have to do the heavy lifting because as we were getting ready, Peloton released a line of clothing. I guess I’ll ask what I always ask which is, how did you find Peloton?

The first time I ever saw Peloton was probably online or a Facebook social media post where I’m like, “Spin classes that I can take from my house and I don’t have to leave the house? I’m in.” I wanted one so bad but obviously, the price tag of the Peloton makes it something that you typically got to save and work for. Long story short with how I got my Peloton, I’ve been doing personal training and group fitness training on the side since 2008 when I got divorced. You get divorced and I always tell people, “You do want two things. You hit the gym or you hit the bar.” I hit the bar for 30 days and then I hit the gym and got in pretty good shape. People ask you, “What do you do?” and it slowly morphed into being a trainer.

When the Peloton came out the Christmas of 2015, all these people had been training for 7 or 8 years. Some of them I help nationally, but the local ones said, “We’re all getting together for a drink down at a local bar, we want you to come down after class.” I’m like, “That sounds fun. An impromptu holiday thing.” I show up and sure, they’ve got this whole big party plan. They got video shot, they’ve got cards and banners up and their big gift for me was a Peloton spin bike. There’s a video on YouTube you can see and I was blown away. It was such a neat thing. I told them in my little thank you speech to them that I was totally humbled by that gift and I was going to figure out a way to pay it forward. When you look at this Peloton 4 Parkinson’s saying it never would have happened if it wasn’t for these. I thank a hundred-plus people with this generous gift to me. That’s where it came from.

I know we were going to wait a little bit, but tell us about Peloton 4 Parkinson’s, how you came up with it, how it got started, what your inspiration for it was and how it grew?

My mom was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2005. Growing up, my mom was super athletic, super fit, didn’t drink, didn’t smoke and ate great food. She was all of our role models for health. When someone takes care of themselves, to me it’s especially unfair. In the spring of 2016, after I got this bike, my mom and dad are over. She was still doing pretty well mentally. She could move, the shaking and the stumbling, having trouble walking. She and dad were over for coffee and we were just chatting and I was walking her out to the car and I stopped and I have a selfie that I took at this time. I’m walking around to the car and this thing hit, “How do I pay this spin bike forward?” This thing had been sitting in my head.

I said, “Mom, stop. I want to take a picture of you.” I take this picture. I said, “That Peloton bike with the TV on it?” She’s like, “Yes.” I said, “I didn’t know what I’m going to do to pay that forward.” I said, “They have classes all day.” This was at the beginning of April. April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month. I said, “I’m going to ride every one of their live classes all day and I’m going to try and raise money for Michael J. Fox Foundation and Team Fox.” She’s like, “That’s sweet. Good for you.” My parents have always known I’m a little bit crazy when it comes to this fitness stuff. I’ll do it without a new training, “I’ll just run this or do this.” That’s where it began. That moment walking my mom out to out her car, that’s where the idea was sprung and it grew from there.

That’s such a parental response. My mom was always the same way, “I’m sure you are.”

I’m like, “Mom, I’m going to sit on a spin bike.” “Have you been on a spin bike?” It’s a great memory. Sitting at my office in my gym and I can look at that selfie that I took. It’s a neat thing to have.

When was that?

That was spring in 2016. The first Peloton 4 Parkinson’s. It was the first week of April. It might’ve been the end of March, but it was right at the beginning of the month. I’m like, “I’m doing this at the end of this month.” I got into gear on that first year. It was small. I had a studio in my home. My garage is walled off with a fitness studio. I had my Peloton there. I had two other spin bikes and my friends that live locally that had chipped in to buy this thing for me and I work out with, they came, signed up and rode with me during the day. I did a lot of Facebook posting and live video and whatnot. That first year was thrown together. It was neat from a Peloton community standpoint. I put it in the official Peloton group and some of the other tribe groups. The response from the Peloton community that had connections to Parkinson’s was unreal.

I got to meet Kevin Schmid, who’s a great friend of mine. He had Parkinson’s, he’s in Montana. He’s like, “This is great. I love what you’re doing.” A little side story on it is when I came up with the idea, I thought, “Physically, am I nuts? Are people going to care to do this? Can I get people behind this?” I emailed two people right away and I chose people that I didn’t know well because I wanted them to be honest with me versus you know how your friends always just say, “That’s great.” They think everything you’re doing is great because they’re your friend. I wanted to email two people from the Peloton community that was strangers that I’d never met in person. I emailed Howard Godnick. I don’t know if you guys know Howard at all.

We interviewed him a while back.

Howard is the one that writes the poems and he wrote the poem for my mom for the event that took place years ago in Mall of America. Howard was one of the first people I emailed. I say, “I know you don’t know me, but here’s what I’m thinking of doing. Am I nuts? Do you think people will do this?” I don’t know if you know this about Howard. He messages me back and he says, “It’s funny, you’re reaching out to me.” I almost think he borderline thought maybe I knew this connection that he had, but I didn’t. He got an award. To me here in the Midwest, it was like what we have here, the Susan G Komen Award. He got this award in New York City for his effort in life and some philanthropic connections and being an all-around great guy. He got this award and he sends me a video clip and he said, “Here’s this award I’d got. My good friend, Michael J. Fox, presented this award to me.” I’m like, “You’re kidding me.” The first guy I reach out to is connected to Michael J. Fox and Team Fox. If that’s not someone telling you, “You should be doing this,” I don’t know what it is. I was like, “I’m in.”

For all of our readers, Howie Godnick tells that story in his episode that we did. If you want to know the whole story, go back and read it. He told me how they became friends. It’s a good background.

That’s episode twenty if anybody wants to check it out. That is a great reply from Howie. I’m a little disappointed that it didn’t rhyme.

If I look back at it, it might have.

What was your original goal of doing it? It was to raise money. How did you come up with, “I’m going to ride all day?”

You look at how people raise funds for charity a lot. At least the things that resonate with me, it’s when people do crazy stuff. It’s attention-grabbing. If you say, “I’m going to ride a spin bike all day,” most people look at you like you’re nuts and then some people go, “It sounds fun. I’m in. I love it.” The neat thing about how I’ve set the event up is in the Peloton community. You don’t have to ride all day. Some people do. I usually get a dozen to a half dozen people. It’s like, “I’m riding all day with you.” We texted, Facebook and FaceTime and all that stuff. People who ride it, ride one, ride two and put one on-demand. The all-day thing to me makes it a challenge. It makes it something where I’m accomplishing something. I try and accomplish stuff physically that maybe it was hard and challenging. I put a challenge out there for me with the awesome goal of raising money for Parkinson’s and trying to find a cure, so eventually, I don’t have to have the Peloton 4 Parkinson’s.

There's something to be said for awareness and getting involved. It's neat that people are thinking about issues. Share on X

There are many people doing things like that, that you also need something that’s going to cut through the clutter.

Nothing against races, some races are great but there are many of them like, “I’m going to do something different.” The virtual fitness, you think back to 2016, Peloton was still fairly new in this virtual fitness thing. There was no mirror. You weren’t working out in front of a mirror with someone in the mirror. That’s some 2019 stuff. We didn’t have that stuff back then. Now, it seems a little more the norm. I want to take advantage, especially when you put the word out in a Peloton community. There are many great people with these bikes. The number of relationships and friends I’ve met through a bike that goes nowhere, it’s incredible. Some of the bad press Peloton got, it’s like, “Get in the community and meet all the awesome people in there. You wouldn’t say a bad thing about the bike.” It’s the people and this cool bike that we all have in common.

It’s a misnomer that it goes nowhere. I think the bike can take you everywhere.

It goes nowhere but looks at the list of people that I consider good friends. Some of them I maybe haven’t met in person, but I consider them good friends.

I said to Crystal all the time “You’re not popular until people hate you.” That’s one of like, “People hate it? That’s the true sign of popularity.”

There are some people in media that it’s their hook, “It’s popular, I’m going to hate it and write a blog about how much I hate it.” There’s a local DJ here I stopped listening to years ago because I was a shtick. If a movie was popular, “I hate that movie. I hate this TV.”

That’s so irritating. Things are good or bad and you can say something is good even if you don’t enjoy it. If you can see the value in it, you can still talk about the value even if it’s not for you.

You can acknowledge quality but still have it be like, “It’s not my thing.”

Some people get bored sitting on a bike that doesn’t go anywhere. They’re like, “Why would you do that when you can go ride a bike outside?” I live in Wisconsin.

You can’t do that every weekend. There’s weather limiting that is at play there.

There’s a film critic like that named Armond White. He’s notorious for if there’s a movie that everybody loves and he’ll write the bad review so it doesn’t get 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. He gave a bad review to Toy Story 3.

How can you give a bad review to Toy Story 3?

He stopped many movies from getting 100%. He’s weird.

I have a question. When you do these rides all day, do you go all out? Do you always do what the instructor says or do you take it easy and go at an even keel throughout the day?

If you’re a Peloton instructor, you have to put it on mute and you can’t listen part. I do anything I want.

I think they would agree with you. I don’t think they would be mad. I think they would be like, “You’re going to do it all day. That’s a different thing than what we’re teaching up here. You need to modify.”

I do what I want, especially those early years where it was a team of me. I’m like, “I’ve got to do a live Facebook post. I’ve got to do this. We need a picture of that.” I stay on the bike, but I do it all. Not in the afternoon. There are no ride classes for more from 1:30 to 3:30, so I got a two-hour break. The year we did at the Mall of America, I went out and got one of those chair massages. I do my own thing. One neat thing was the first year that after Jess’ 3:30 ride on a Friday, so this is class eighth of the day. I set up a 45-minute PR. One of my friends who were there said, “For every mileage base, I’ll give you $50.” All of a sudden, I went and I set a PR on the 3:30 rides the first year. That’s pretty cool.

Have you seen a lot of growth over the years of involvement?

We’ve doubled every year. We went from 4 to 10 in the first two years above and beyond 50%. The third-year we had at the Peloton store, which was at the Mall of America, that’s only about 35 minutes from my house here. We’re across the border in Wisconsin. The Peloton was kind enough to send some extra bikes. We did it there in a whole bunch of people showed up to the mall and they had to unlock the doors at 4:30 in the morning to let us in. We rode there. That got some nice publicity. Where I was working, the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine backed it, so that helped. That year we raised $22,000 and some change. In 2019, we had it here at a local gym and I started to incorporate Peloton.

I didn’t want to make it exclusive to just people with Peloton. We had it in a spin studio and that’s what I’m going to do it in my gym. We had it in Riverfront Athletic Club, which is another awesome gym here in Hudson. Some of the classes where the Peloton instructors being projected up so other people could see the instruction. Some of the classes had Peloton going at the same time as a live instructor were teaching the class. The 6:00 in 2019 was the first spin class I’ve ever taught. There are 40 people in there. In 2019, we ended up raising over $50,000. If I do my math correctly, that means in 2020 I have to raise $100,000.

You can think of all the people you can add in because of all the Flywheel at Home people.

I’m trying to get a satellite location set up. Hopefully, there’s some set-up where people who are interested, I’ll help them set up exactly what I’m doing. Have some spin instructors, have some bikes and they’ll be able to use my registration page. The back work is taken out of it. They just need to find the space and coordinate that. On top of that, some of the Peloton stores. There have been people who live close to Peloton stores and getting them involved. In between Peloton stores and satellite locations, I’d like to get some more places going because there are many. I’ve met hundreds of people in our community that have this connection to Parkinson’s either themselves, their spouse, their mom, and dad or maybe someone who had grandma and grandpa passed away. There are many people affected by Parkinson’s. It blew me away. I’m hoping to get it growing, so we can hit that $100,000 mark.

If people want to jump on board, what’s the best way for them to go about doing that?

To register, it’s www.Peloton4Parkinsons.com. For people who want to get involved or maybe get one of the Peloton stores involved or getting the satellite location set up, that’s where they can message me on Facebook. We have a Peloton 4 Parkinson’s Facebook page. I’m on Instagram and all the socials. They can message me and then I’ve been talking to people and sending them, “Here’s what you need,” based on what they’re looking for. Hopefully, we should have three or four satellite locations and then some of the stores popping up here, where they’ll get involved so people can go into a Peloton store and ride. They can ride on their bike too.

I will put a post up on The Clip Out page and group, putting out there that you’re looking for people to find stores that if they want to do their own satellite locations, how to reach out to you.

I made a video talking about it a little bit. I can send that to you as well and you can share that video too.

I think what you’re doing is amazing and I know that the Peloton community wants to help you. It’s difficult to only use the official Peloton page. I don’t know how the standards have changed over the year. I’ve seen other people have their posts taken down if it’s for donations anymore. I don’t know if that’s true or maybe they did something else to break the rules.

I don’t ever mention donation.

That’s the key.

I say, “Here’s what’s going on.” A lot of people know about it. I’ll get tagged in posts saying, “Is that Peloton 4 Parkinson’s thing going on?” There’s this thing with charity, which is great to get donations and in the end, that’s what’s going to help find a cure for Parkinson’s. There’s something to be said too for awareness. Get involved. If you want to hop on your spin bike and you don’t even want to register. I want people to register because then they get a t-shirt and we’re going to have registration levels where $40 get you a t-shirt, $75 maybe gets you a tee shirt and a hat. We’re going to create those tiers. Even if people want to hop on and ride. I have everyone changed their profile pic on the Peloton to our logo, which is neat.

When you go into a class and if there are a hundred people riding for Peloton 4 Parkinson’s and you keep seeing this logo repeated over and over again, it’s cool. It’s neat that people are thinking about this issue. For me, it’s a way to honor my mom and my dad, who was my mom’s cornerman, the backstory in 2019 and why we raised so much money. I like to think she did this on purpose. My mom passed away a week before the event. Her disease had progressed to Lewy body dementia. She was about 60 pounds when she passed away. I would have rather had her pass away the year before. She didn’t have a real good quality of life.

I remember seeing that and it was super sad.

It was sad, but when you’re seeing your mom who is this fit, healthy person and she’s mentally checked out. She’s 60 pounds. I had more relief for her to get out of this body she was trapped than anything else. For me, it outweighed the sadness because she’s a lot better off. I can deal with the fact that I’ll see her again in time. I’m fine. I’m happy she’s out pain and out of that body. I pretend a little bit more, but the joke was she did it on purpose a week before the event because she knew we’d raise more money.

That was very giving of her.

You look back at some of those videos that I posted. The day before the first one ever, she was having a horrible day and my dad’s like, “I don’t think she’s going to be able to come over.” I’ve got this video of her writing and Christine played Coldplay’s song Fix You for my mom. My mom doing a full ride. She went ten miles. She had fallen up terrible the day before. She rode every year until 2019. She rode at the Mall of America. She was about the size of the bike seat and she’s on there, and we couldn’t get her to stop. She loves Peloton 4 Parkinson’s. She was all about it. My dad loved it too. He would brag to all of his friends and he’d call me every day, “How are we doing? What’s new? What’s going on? What’s the donation at?” He had his bracelets and all that stuff while my dad ended up passing away very unexpectedly at the end of June 2019. That was unexpected but there again, I always try to look at what’s the good side of this stuff?

My dad didn’t want to be around without my mom. We tried to, “Come on, dad. We can go do this and that.” Even when she was still around, he didn’t like to go out without her. My dad was at my mom’s side all day, every day. When she wasn’t there anymore, he wanted to go be with her. We say he died of a broken heart. It was unexpected. This 2020 is a little bit tough because I don’t have my dad. When you guys said, “We’d like to interview you for this.” He’s the first person I wanted to call and say, “Dad, The Clip Out and Peloton community, they’re going to interview me.” My dad would have thought that was the coolest thing in the world. He wouldn’t understand what a podcast was. He would’ve told his friends I was going to be on TV and whatever. He thought that was the neatest thing in the world. It’s almost harder not having him around. There’s this clip of him getting up during the last song we played, Hey Jude. My mom’s name was Judy.

My dad got overwhelmed and he gets up and starts dancing with my wife. If you can watch that without a dry eye. Everyone is like, “I’m not crying. You’re crying.” To carry it on for them, our theme in 2020, I want to put the focus on people like my dad who are the caregivers. When you have these diseases in your family, Parkinson’s and cancer, these awful things. We think a lot about the person who has the disease, cancer, has a Parkinson’s and the person who cares for them sometimes gets left out on the side. No one is like, “How are you doing? How are you responding to having to care for this loved one and take them to radiation or take them to their Parkinson’s therapy?” They sometimes can get lost in the shuffle. I still honor my mom, but to honor my dad, I’m putting the theme around the event as the caregiver. We call him Cornerman or Cornerwomen in the Rock Steady Boxing community. The people who are supporting. I want to shine a light on those people who sometimes can get forgotten about.

What you’re doing is wonderful and your parents sound like a very special couple.

When you ask me that years ago, I’m like, “My dad is old-fashioned.” They thought that this was great. My biggest thing with my mom, I’d tell her, I’m like, “Mom, it sucks that you have this disease. You didn’t deserve it. You did everything right.” We’re going to take this super negative and we’re going to make it into something positive. The coolest thing about Team Fox is Michael J. Fox will tell you, “We’re in business to go out of business. I want to fire all you guys, this Team Fox and a bunch of athletes on Team Fox,” which are people like me who raise money for Michael J. Fox. I don’t want people that have to go out and do this. I want to find a cure. We’re all out of jobs. I take that with this event. I’m like, “I’m going to keep doing this until there’s a cure.” If I’m 80 years old on the Peloton bike, I’m like, “Granted, it’ll probably be a hologram.” I can be sitting on my Peloton bike riding all day. I’m like, “Come on, send me your Bitcoin or whatever we’re using for currency.”

Let’s turn it back to you a little bit more of Peloton. Tell us about your favorite Peloton instructors.

I’m a Power Zone guy. I like riding to the music a little bit every now and then. Denis, who I like to call Jason Bateman. Am I the only one who thinks he looks like Jason Bateman with short hair?

I could see it a little bit.

I didn’t know he cut his hair. I don’t pay attention to as much stuff as I used to. All of a sudden, I have time to ride.

I can’t believe you missed that. That was a whole thing.

I predominantly do Matt and Denis rides and I was super pumped. For years I’m like, “Why doesn’t Kristin do Power Zone? She wins all the medals.” She’s finally doing it. I did one of Olivia’s ride. It’s nice to have some change up because then the music’s a little different than the style’s a little different. Power Zone is my bread and butter. I’d probably a minimum of four of those a week. I try and I do always like to do the 60 minutes, Saturday one.

I’m glad they got you some more alternate options because it’s riding with one instructor all the time isn’t as fun. That’s the hardest thing for me when it comes to Power Zone training or always had been, is only being able to ride with one or two instructors because I love so many of the instructors. I always felt hemmed in by that.

I do Jen’s ‘80s rides. I used to do a Jennifer Jacobs ‘80s ride all the time on Friday morning. I do those. Those are more my recovery rides when I ride to the music. I predominantly being busy all the time like, “Power Zone, I know what I’m doing.” I’m a metric-based guy. I like someone to tell me the number I want you to hit, hit that number and not just wing it.

You know you’re getting the biggest bang for your buck out of the Power Zone training. You know that every time you get on to do one of those rides you are working on your output and getting stronger. That’s always going to happen. That’s a good reason to do it.

If you can focus on frequency, people are going to have a lot better chance of success and sticking with it. Share on X

Except that they don’t let them do enough max rides because it scares out everybody.

It does. It’s so funny. They need another word.

I’ll look it up like, “There hasn’t been one since like October. I already did that one.” I’m like, “Where are the max rides?” I think it’s because it scares people. The word, Power Zone, scares most people.

I want to put a plug out there for Power Zone Max rides because I feel that they’re way easier to do than a regular Power Zone ride. Because when you have to hold the effort for 30 to 45 seconds or maybe even a minute, that’s completely doable as opposed to doing seven minutes at a threshold. That’s so hard for me. I would much rather do the max rides.

It’s more what people are used to is go hard. When I even worked with my own clients, I’m like, “You need to learn that you don’t have to go hard all the time.” That’s what I like about the Power Zone. Work on your endurance. Hold zone for eleven minutes with Matt and see how that goes.

It’s working on your bike in a very different way.

Do you get to the studio very often?

The New York one, I have been there twice.

I have to tease you. That’s the only studio.

There’s London. I’ll be back there in there the beginning of April 2020. Team Fox has a dinner for the Team Fox MVPs they call them. It’s always the beginning of April. I brought my son to New York at the end of October. It’s a surprise to go see Billy Joel in concert. My kids are big into the Peloton. He and I went and took a ride.

Was that during his birthday concert?

It was the end of October.

I can’t remember when his birthday was. I just know he did a big birthday concert at Madison Square Garden.

He has a residency where he does one show a month there, but then there was one that was falling on his birthday. I was trying to figure out a way to go to it and I failed.

I’m not a local New Yorker obviously, but I did my homework. My son who God-loving me likes good music. Actually, my other kids, they don’t like some of the garbage kids listen now. It sounded like a crotchety old man. He loves Billy Joel. I did my homework on tickets and found out you sit behind the stage at Billy Joel because he doesn’t have a bunch of big sets and screens. We sat right behind the stage, up a little bit so we could see over this stuff. His piano spins. They weren’t the best seats and compared to the other seats, they were way cheaper. It’s still not cheap by concert standards. It was awesome. We had so much fun. It was a once in a lifetime experience. My son and I walked around all in New York City. We put on twenty miles in two days because he didn’t like the subway.

We saw Garth Brooks the same way and we sat behind the stage. He uses a similar setup, which isn’t shocking because Garth Brooks will tell you he’s a huge Billy Joel fan. It was great because he runs around so much, you’re never getting a straight shot at him anyway.

He looks right up at our suite and waved at us. That was fantastic.

Billy Joel’s piano spins. When it’s in the round, they make a point to make sure that they’re angling differently because they know that people are all around them. They go into that knowing. That’s the secret. Behind the stage, seats aren’t as bad as they used to be. They’re underpriced because perceptually people think they’re bad and they’re the last to sell.

The only bummer thing about our concert was no special guest. Every month, it’s Jon Bon Jovi. It’s like, “Where’s Paul McCartney? You didn’t have a special guest?” It was still a great show. I was going to send him a letter of complaint, maybe if he reads this. Does he have a Peloton yet? He could use one.

Based on appearance, I’m going to say no.

I feel like somehow Jenn Sherman would be the first to know if Billy Joel got one.

Her story in that whole airport story when she’s listening to music, that’s the greatest story I’ve ever heard.

I love that story so much. It’s my favorite. The time she met Bruce Springsteen was an also amazing story. She told me that story when she was on our show.

I’m going to start tuning out the instructors and listen to the podcast when I arrived. It’s going could be your guys’ fault.

It’s worth it because you will know about things like Hair Gate 2, when you listen. Do you have any favorite stories from the studio?

The neat thing for me is, my wife and I went there the first time and that was great. My wife doesn’t ride much. She’ll ride her old spin bike. God knows why I don’t understand it. You know there are scenic rides and you can hit a button that says “Just ride,” and then you have these stats. I don’t need stats. She’ll ride on her fifteen-year-old Live Strong bike.

I do not understand your wife at all. I cannot fathom that.

We went to the studio and it was fun. This was when Jennifer Jacobs was still there. I guess that was the last one. My son, Alex, and I came out to see Billy Joel bring him there. We have three kids. We’re a blended family. Having my boys Alex and Garrett. My sons are both fifteen. They ride that thing about the same amount of times I do them a week. They come home from school. I don’t have to say anything anymore. They go ride or if it’s a strength day they work out. I have a personal training background so I help them. It’s neat that they get excited about it and taken out to the studio is cool to share that thing with your kid. For me, knowing chances are my kids are going to grow up and this is going to be a part of their life. They’re going to be happening on these Peloton bikes and buy their own or buy the latest model when they’re my age. That was a pretty cool experience in the studio to ride with my son.

What is your leaderboard name?

It’s Peltn4Parkinson. People are like, “Put that in.” I’m like, “No, that’s not the hashtag for the event.” That’s the only way it’ll fit. My leaderboard picture is our logo and that’s what everybody changes to. Everyone looks like me for one day on the Peloton community.

I bet you love that for so many reasons.

The coolest thing is some people left it. One time I went to a class I’m like, “You look like me.” I give them a little high five. I think that’s cool that they left it. I’m sure it’s just because they didn’t feel like changing it, but good job.

They probably had trouble changing it and they’re just like, “Screw it.”

They’re stuck with their grade.

Do you have any advice for people who are just getting started with their Bike or their Tread?

Matt brought up a cool thing. He talked about the number one thing when you’re starting not even just Peloton or the Bike or the Tread. A lot of people starting on a fitness journey, when you start, it’s all about frequency. Don’t worry about how hard you go. Don’t worry about how many watts you create, how many miles. Worry about how many times do you get on the bike a week. Don’t worry about how long, ten or twenty-minute work ride. Worry about frequency. It’s not meaning seven days a week, but get your frequency established so you get in that habit and then start working on maybe some duration and a little bit more effort. If there’s a day you don’t feel like it, get on and do a ten-minute scenic ride.

Make that number one focus when you first get on the Bike or the Tread. Set a goal of three days a week, four days a week, whatever it is, hit your frequency goal then start bringing in the other things, the effort, the intensity, the duration and that thing. I think that when people focus on frequency, they get that habit. That’s where you start getting that habit of how you feel after your workout. You’re like, “I want to go do this.” All of a sudden, you’re doing it four or five times a week and then you start getting stronger. Other stuff doesn’t naturally happen. If you can focus on that frequency upfront, I think people are going to have a lot better chance of success and sticking with it so it doesn’t become a coat rack.

Where can people find you on social media if you would like to be found?

You can look up my name, Eric Tostrud. I’m on Facebook with my personal page. I have a page where I post my fitness stuff because sometimes people don’t like you posting about fitness all the time. Peloton 4 Parkinson’s has its own Facebook page and Instagram account. Primarily, most of the communication I do with the event itself is through either my personal page or Peloton 4 Parkinson’s page, which hopefully here in the mail anytime soon is going to be officially its own 501(3)(c). We’re going to have our own charity organization, which will help do a bunch of different things. You think about these charities and mine’s name the same. Charities are always something for something. I’ve always looked at the name Peloton 4 Parkinson’s. I’m not for it, I’m against it. It’s one of those things you’ve got to follow the crowd even though I think it’s stupid.

I was showing restraint by not asking, like, “Why are you cheering?” Why would you go and try and help this?

If I have to say against it wouldn’t be able to fit on a t-shirt. Parkinson’s is long disease. I want to use the four. That’s the only reason because I hear you when I did it, I thought the same thing, but what are you going to do?

This is the rhythm so you got to roll with it.

Whatever works, whatever gets you the most attention so that there can be awareness, that’s what you’ve got to do.

Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to join us. We appreciate it.

Thank you, guys. I appreciate it having me on. The community that reads this, you got involved in this in 2016 and continue to get involved in it. Even though I don’t get to talk to all of you how very much I appreciate it. My mom and dad appreciated it. My family appreciates it. It’s such a neat thing. We’ve got a video of my mom and I cut it out. She says in the end, she says, “I love you, Peloton.” It’s one of the things I cherish because my mom got it. This event wouldn’t have been happening without the people who gave me this bike and the community that has been built by this bike. It wouldn’t be a thing. We’re at $75,000 and counting that we’ve raised as a community to help fight Parkinson’s. That’s awesome. I thank all of you for that.

It’s a great thing that you’ve been doing and here’s hoping you never have to do it again.

Hopefully, by 2021, screw it and we’ll move on to something else. The next cause we’re going to say against.

To confuse people, you should call it like “Against Cancer Research.”

People will be interested in learning about that.

I don’t know that they would.

They might be scared.

I would like to put a challenge out there to you that giving you my sob story. My mom and dad passed away. Not to be joking about it, but my mother-in-law, my mom’s mom, who I loved, passed away at my dad’s funeral. The year 2019 was a banner. My wife and I brought in 2020 with two fingers in the air. I would think after hearing this sob story that you could at least hop on the bike and do a 25-minute ride at 9:30 in the morning most days. Do one for my mom and my dad.

Tom, I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

It’s at a mall that you should have a hot dog eating contest or something.

Tom, I’ll make you a deal. For every minute you spend on the Peloton bike on April 24th, 2020, which is the date of Peloton 4 Parkinson’s, I will do ten burpees videotaped.

Tom, he just said sit on it. He didn’t even say you had to pedal.

Sometimes guilt works. Whatever brings the dollars in and gets the people involved. Sometimes if it’s got to be guilt, it’s got to be guilt and shame.

Tom, it’s for a good cause.

There are many good causes, you hate to single out.

He’s trying to double it. Think about how many people would love to see you ride.

I bet that we could get however many people reading this to donate $1 for every minute that you’re on during a class. That might be the thing to find the cure. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. It means a lot to me and it’ll help get the word out and get even more people in our community involved.

We will do our best to help any way we can. Thank you very much, Eric.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

—

That was a rough one for me there at the end.

You got the hard sell. It’s happening a lot lately.

I’m pretty stubborn though. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed or not, but sometimes I can be stubborn. My current theory for my stubbornness is sexually transmitted. What, pray tell, do you have in store for people next week?

We are going to talk to Melissa Bazarian, and I have no idea if I’m saying her name correctly. You will know her from Facebook as MelBZ. I’ve been getting lots of messages in general lately about all the things we’ve pronounced wrong. Somebody actually sent me one that we pronounced wrong from Boston, Massachusetts area. They let me know and they were telling me in fun. They weren’t being mean.

We got the name of one of their hamlets wrong.

We butchered it. I’m going to go ahead and accept it because if I said it right, then I would live near you and I don’t live near you.

I promise you, there are lots of stuff around St. Louis that you would think you’re saying it right and you’re not. We all have our quirks. Until next time, where can people find you?

You can find me at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. They can find me on, Instagram, Twitter, on the Bike and of course the Tread, @ClipOutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter, @RogerQBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/TomOKeefe. You can find the show online at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. Wherever you get your podcast from, make sure you click subscribe, so you’ll never miss an episode. Sign up for our newsletter, enter our contest for a free Tonal. There are awesome stuff for you there. That’s all of that. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

Wash your hands.