WHY THIS EXISTS

Hey —

I played baseball in college. Competed my whole life. So when I decided I was going to run a marathon, I didn't just sign up for a training plan and hope for the best.

I went all in. That's the only way I know how to do things.

If you're reading this, I'm guessing you're wired the same way.

You don't just show up on race day and hope it works out. You train with a plan. You track your miles. You probably check the weather forecast three days out.

You take this stuff seriously.

So did I. The running part? That I could figure out. Mileage, tempo runs, long runs — there are a thousand training plans for that.

But the deeper I got into race prep, the more I kept seeing the same word come up: fueling.

How many carbs per hour. When to take your first gel. How much sodium you actually need. Why some people throw up at mile 18 and others feel fine.

It sounded important. So I started digging.

And that's where it got frustrating.

The information exists — peer-reviewed research on carb absorption, sodium transport, gut tolerance. Decades of it. But every article either read like a biology textbook or gave me some watered-down rule like "take a gel every 45 minutes."

I just wanted a straight answer.

And look — it's 2026. You can ask ChatGPT how many carbs you need for a three-hour run and get a pretty solid answer.

But that answer lives in a chat window.

It's not there at minute 75 when your legs are starting to lock up and you can't remember if you already took that gel or not. It can't tap you on the shoulder and say "fuel now."

And getting to a real, personalized plan? That means hours of back-and-forth, hoping the answers are right, and stitching it all together yourself.

Hope is not a strategy. Not for race day, and not for the 16 weeks of training that lead up to it.

I didn't want a research assistant. I wanted a system that did the work for me and then coached me through it while I was out there.

That system didn't exist. So I built it for myself. And now it's yours.

PODIUM takes the research — the real research, the stuff that's been validated in labs and tested on athletes — and turns it into a plan you can actually use. You tell it your workout. It tells you exactly what to take and when to take it.

No math. No guessing. No pretending you remember what "SGLT1-mediated transport" means.

Then, while I was testing the app and fueling my own runs, I started paying attention to the gels I was using.

Flipped the label. Twelve ingredients. Half of them I couldn't pronounce.

And I kept thinking — the science says this only needs a few simple things. Carbs, sodium, water. Why is there a chemistry experiment in this packet?

That question turned into Pulse — a gel made from honey, maple syrup, and sea salt.

Three ingredients. That's it.

I'm not a sports scientist. I'm an athlete who read the research they publish and built the tool they haven't.

If you've read this far, you're the kind of person PODIUM was built for. You don't cut corners. You prepare. You want to know that the work you're putting in on the road isn't going to fall apart because you got the nutrition wrong.

That's exactly why this exists.

The system I wish I had when I was getting started — now it's yours.

PS - If you're ever in the St. Pete, FL area, would love to grab some miles with you! You can email be directly at taylor.drake@gowithpodium.com and hopefully we can make it work.