Transcription of Ted Darling for the show Active Life #183
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Dr. L Belisle: Here on Love Maine Radio we really enjoy speaking with people who are passionate about their lives. Today I have such an individual with me. This is Ted Darling who is a Marketing Strategist and Agency Principal at Ethos. Outside of work he is an avid cyclist and he is so much more which we’re going to talk about, but we really appreciate your being on Love Maine Radio and also being a part of Old Port Magazine.
Ted: Well thank you for having me.
Dr. L Belisle: Ted you’ve actually done quite a lot in your life, but I know people are going to be interested in this thing that we call Ethos. What is Ethos? Tell me about that.
Ted: Ethos is a multi-platform branding agency. We help clients identify their core truths and then we leverage those in messaging across multiple platforms from traditional media like radio for example, but also through digital media. We basically help clients navigate brand communications and effective communications across various platforms.
Dr. L Belisle: Why is it called Ethos? What’s the story behind that?
Ted: That’s a great question. When we were struggling with our name, our corporate name is actually Results Marketing and Design. We thought that that was what we’d do for clients, but it wasn’t the way that we should describe ourselves. As we started debating really what we are about as a branding agency it was really understanding the core truths, the essence or the name that kept coming up that we were using in discussions about our name was Ethos. What is your ethos? At a certain point in time, we just said, “That’s it. Ethos is our Ethos and so we adopted that name and got behind that in the Spring of 2000.
Dr. L Belisle: When I think of Ethos I also think of ethics and I don’t something that seems more authentic and core. Did that …
Ted: As I had three business partners at the time and presently I have three business partners but a different one. One of the things that brought us together was this core orientation of accountability and integrity and being true not only to ourselves but true to our clients. There was I wouldn’t call it ethics per se, but there’s this desire to be true, to be true to our clients and true to our principles. One of the things that we say at Ethos is that we don’t apply for awards. The reason that we don’t apply for awards is because we don’t want to compromise our clients integrity. It’s about our client’s result, about putting our clients first, not about us.
Dr. L Belisle: You do many things outside of working at the agency. You’ve worked for the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust. You live in Cape Elizabeth.
Ted: I do.
Dr. L Belisle: Why is that important to you?
Ted: Well like many people who become involved in the Land Trust in Cape Elizabeth it was a function of something happening in my backyard. At the time, there was a development involved and I was invited to participate and help in the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust with their marketing efforts. I explored the Land Trust. I really liked what they were doing. They were trying to get younger. I was a younger man at the time, that was probably ten years ago. I got really involved and I got involved at a higher level and really liked what they were doing, what the message was, what they stood for which is interesting because the Land Trust brings together people who are you might say more interested in sustainability and might be more politically liberal.
It also brings together people who are conservative meaning they like things the way that they are or they appreciate the natural environment that we live in. When you talk to people who come to Cape Elizabeth they point to a couple of things, one is schools but also the rural environment and the natural environment around Cape Elizabeth. That’s important to people. It’s really core to people who live in Cape Elizabeth. I connected with that. I spent nine years with the Land Trust on their board. I was five years as president. I couldn’t extricate myself as president during a five year period of time and have subsequently just recently termed off the board, but I remain an advisor on their land conservation committee. It’s just a great organization. One that has a lot of broad appeal.
Dr. L Belisle: I’ve been to the art auction several times.
Ted: Yeah, great event.
Dr. L Belisle: It is. It’s a great event. It’s usually held in a nice venue. I think that all of the art is done within a day or so before it’s offered for sale. They’re all [crosstalk 00:39:33].
Ted: It’s a wet paint auction so actually the art is done that day. We choose venues around Cape Elizabeth. I believe there were twenty venues last year and a total of thirty artists who painted in wet paint in [plein air 00:39:49] as they say. Then they come together for an auction at the end of the day. It’s just amazing what the artists do during that period time and really capture some great light during the July time frame is typically when it’s done.
Dr. L Belisle: You are a bicyclist, actually in the bio that I have for you, it says, “Ted fancies himself a bicyclist and endurance athlete. He trains and races year round as a cyclist, swimmer, and triathlete. He hates open water, ocean swimming, but does it anyway. He loves his wife of twenty plus years and two kids who are grown up. He can’t believe it.”
Ted: True.
Dr. L Belisle: This is interesting. It’s interesting to read this. You seem to have quite a sense of humor about yourself and your life and the desire to live in a fun way.
Ted: I would say it’s fun, but I’m really goal oriented, so everything has an intention. For me, I’m serious about being a cyclist. I’m serious about being a triathlete, so there’s fun about it, but it’s in a work man type way. I tend to be more serious than fun but I do have fun doing what I do.
Dr. L Belisle: You have a sense of humor about it and your definition of fun may be different than other people’s.
Ted: There’s the humor.
Dr. L Belisle: Got it. Got it. Tell me about that. If you not only do you work at Ethos and you have spent quite a lot of time with the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust, you’re also a former member of the Board of Directors for the Gulf of Maine Research Institute [day one 00:41:18] and the Riverview Foundation. You’re a member of the Lambda class of the Institute for Civic Leadership. You really you’re doing a lot of things so how do you find time to cycle. Where does this fit into your day?
Ted: For me cycling is primarily a morning activity in that I find with workouts that with a busy day and a busy life I start early so I start at 4:30 every day and I’m usually out and on the bike by 5:15 and that’s pretty much year round until times of year like winter, but nine months out of the year it starts early. It involves lights oftentimes and just get out and start early in the day. That’s the way that putting the things in that are important first that’s how things get done because if I wait until the end of the day it’s variable. I do have one ride that I try to do every week which is the Portland Velo Club Wednesday night ride. It leaves out of South Portland and that’s a small group ride that I typically do on a Wednesday night during the proper season.
Dr. L Belisle: In the winter time, do you use a wind trainer, do you use some sort of stationary bike. How do you continue to get that? It seems like you have a lot of extra energy so how do you take care of that?
Ted: I do have a trainer that I use in my basement. It’s not my favorite activity. I do tend to emphasize running and swimming in the winter, but I do keep active on the bike. I try to ride two or three times a week inside. I’m opportunistic with outside riding so if the weekend looks promising meaning anything clear roads and anything above twenty-five degrees I do try to get outside and take advantage of being outdoors.
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Dr. L Belisle: I’m interested in this idea of being an endurance athlete and also a triathlete because it’s not as simple as I’m going to go do a few miles on the bike. I mean you actually have to have a training schedule in place. If you’re an endurance athlete, it means you actually have to put some miles in whether you’re running, biking or swimming. I mean that is something that you do need to be very intentional about.
Ted: Right. I have a training program that I’ve developed over time and it’s seasonal meaning it tends to be lighter activity or a shorter duration in the winter, more intense activity in the winter to keep general fitness up, but then adding longer duration during the longer days of summer. I tend to emphasize medium distance triathlons and shorter distance bike races, rather than focusing on iron man competitions. I’ve done several half iron man competitions, but that’s about as long as I want to go from an endurance point of view, mostly because the running is so difficult. The biking is good. The running is difficult.
Dr. L Belisle: You’re the opposite of me. I can envision myself running and possibly biking, actually for me the swimming because even though I know how to swim it’s not quite as natural an activity. How do you balance all of those three things. I mean they’re very different from a physical standpoint.
Ted: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s interesting because during the heavy training seasons, swimming is almost a recovery activity because as we age we need to have more recovery time, but as an endurance athlete you need to be consistent so one of the things is just being consistent and having a daily schedule. I don’t take much time off. I rarely have a day off of training so I’m very consistent. Swimming tends to be lighter day activity in the summer. Then it’s interesting between the running and the biking because I’ll bike in the morning and run at night.
There are different muscle groups so oftentimes my best run comes after a hard bike ride. I do a lot of bricks in the summer. I’ll ride fifty miles and then I’ll run ten minutes or I’ll run ten miles. It depends on the training protocol at the time.
Dr. L Belisle: Describe for me a swimming regimen.
Ted: I swim masters so I try to be deliberate about that. In the summer, I swim at the Kiwanis Pool which is an outdoor twenty-five meter pool, great coach [Jeanette Hagen 00:47:18] does that class. I try to go three times a week and she meters all the activity. She’s great because she focuses on longer distance so you’re doing three hundred to five hundred yard sets. It’s not particularly intense meaning you’re not working super hard. It’s more focusing on endurance.
In the winter and fall I swim at the Cape Elizabeth Pool with Eric French who’s the master’s coach there and that tends to be shorter more intense, some would call it a sprinter’s workout, but again it’s that intensity. Then as you move into closer to goal events it’s focusing on more specificity meaning swimming at the types of distances and running at the types of distances and biking at the types of distances that you need in order to be ready for race day.
Dr. L Belisle: Ted you grew up in Brewer.
Ted: I did.
Dr. L Belisle: Were you doing any of this when you were going to high school or any of your younger years?
Ted: No. I’m a latent athlete. I really didn’t start doing any of this until I started bike riding in 1999, actually took a spin class at the Bay Club and then I started working with a couple of people, did the trek across Maine and just about perished on the ride because it was just relatively hard at the time. Then, I got into long distance events, so I did the trek across Maine a number of times. Then, I did cycle Oregon which is a weeklong even in Oregon, different locations throughout Oregon for five years. Then I gravitated to the climbing. I really started to enjoy mountain climbing and did the bicycle tour of Colorado for four years which it’s not a bike race, it’s more touring. The biking really started the interest in endurance sport.
Then, I started swimming mostly as a way of spreading out the activity during the year. I started to do swim and bike events which are called aquabikes because I was never a runner. In fact, I had had a back injury a number of years ago. I was a heavier person. I had a back injury and my orthopedist said, “Don’t do it. Just hang up the running shoes. You don’t really need to do it.” I wasn’t a serious runner at the time anyway, but I started to develop envy at events because these were all at triathlon events and so I would swim and bike and then be done and everybody else would go out on their runs.
At a certain point in time, I decided it’s time to start learning how to run. I took that up about four years ago.
Dr. L Belisle: This Wednesday ride that you do with a group of other people it sounds like that having other people who are like minded is very important and having good coaches is very important. The community that you’ve been doing this with is critical.
Ted: Yeah, absolutely, so from a cycling point of view I’ve been involved with the Portland Velo Club which is Maine’s largest cycling club. I became president of what we call PVC about four years ago now. That has about a hundred and fifty active members, male and female and we have a series of rides, most notably is the Saturday morning ride that takes place throughout Portland, Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth, and South Portland. It can be as big as a hundred people which can be intimidating during the summertime, which I tend to avoid because of the size of the group but we’ve set up a Wednesday night ride. There’s probably ten to fifteen of us that do a short hard ride in Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough.
Dr. L Belisle: Is there any specific type of equipment that people who are considering becoming a cyclist or a triathlete anything that people who are starting from the ground up that they need to be thinking about?
Ted: Well it’s important from a cycling point of view to have a good bike and a bike that fits so I recommend talking with the people at Cycle Mania and having them basically fit you for a bike. I mean you can spend a thousand dollars or you can spend ten thousand dollars on a bike, so really understanding where you are and what you’re trying to accomplish with a bike. There are also different bikes. There are road bikes and triathlon or time trial bikes. A lot of people that compete have both road bikes and triathlon bikes. Many also in the off season do [cyclocross 00:52:14] which is a growing and emerging sport, so really understanding bike, bike fit and then making sure you have adequate equipment from shoes to gear, clothing, et cetera. I think that’s one of the things that’s important to be aware and sensitive of how to fit into the community.
It takes a little while to understand the cycling culture and what that’s all about and what people wear, so there’s a fashion thing about it which it’s just more exposure and understanding what the culture is like.
Dr. L Belisle: Do you have any specific goals for 2015 either in your endurance sports or in Ethos or personally or with any of the many things that you do in your life?
Ted: Several as it relates to endurance goals I’m actually this is the time of year where I really start to think about what I want to do. I tend to become unfit at this time of year so it’s important to start thinking about what’s next. What’s next probably this year will include several medium distance triathlon events. I tend to like, I’ve gravitated towards Olympic distance events which are about a mile swim, twenty-five mile bike and a 10K race off the bike. That’s a good event for me. I’ll probably do three or four of those. My goal has been to qualify for nationals so I did qualify this past year for nationals which takes place out in Milwaukee I believe.
I am probably going to forego that because one of my other goals is to get back to [France 00:54:06] this year and do a week in the mountains with a friend of mine. That’s on the cycling calendar. Don’t tell my wife.
Dr. L Belisle: Too bad you’re on the radio. Hope she’s not listening.
Ted: Everybody listens to this show so I’m sure she’ll hear it. Personally, my wife and I have just bought a house in Cape Elizabeth that we’re rehabbing so we hope to be able to move in sometime in the March time frame and start a new life there. Our children are now grown and our youngest is graduating college, so that’s a different journey that we’re embarked on and so enjoying one another’s company and having fun, putting some travel on the calendar will also be important as part of the goals this year.
Dr. L Belisle: Ted you’re Phi Beta Kappa Magna Cum Laude graduate of Boston College with a BA in History and Philosophy. How have you made those things work for you?
Ted: What Boston College taught me was how to think. It taught me how to approach activity and how to approach intellectual pursuits and how to learn. When I graduated Boston College, I elected to go law school which wasn’t really a great fit for me because I was more I didn’t know it at the time but I had more entrepreneurial leanings. My family has been in business a long time so there’s always business talk at the dinner table and it’s just a natural thing for me to gravitate towards. I met a friend one of my business partners in another venture. We met in law school and we embarked on that activity together and built a business. It’s always been in that way it was the road less traveled. It was like this seems interesting. I was twenty-three, twenty-two. It was just let’s do this.
We were risk takers at the time. As you get older, you tend to take fewer risks because there seems to be more to lose, but yeah so I think what BC did was really provided the ability to learn and think for yourself. I mean it’s interesting because liberal arts education is I think tougher to recommend now just because everything seems so highly specialized. With my own kids, they were both business focused in their education. I think it really was an awesome choice for me.
Dr. L Belisle: Ted people can read about your story and your cycling and more about you in Old Port Magazine. How can they find out more about the work you do at the Portland Velo Club and with Ethos?
Ted: Oh, great question. With Portland Velo Club, people can find out more at our website which is portlandveloclub.com. We welcome all members. It’s a great organization. Good way to get started in cycling. As far as Ethos is concerned, can certainly look us up on our website at ethos-marketing.com.
Dr. L Belisle: We’ve been speaking with Ted Darling, Marketing Strategist and Agency Principal at Ethos, also avid cyclist, endurance athlete, triathlete, man about town. You’re very busy and you’ve done a lot of good work for the community so we’re fortunate to have you in and take the time to talk to us here on Love Maine Radio. Thanks for being part of our community.
Ted: Thank you very much for having me.
Dr. L Belisle: You have been listening to Love Maine Radio show number one eighty-three, Active Life. Our guests have included Meg LePage and Ted Darling. For more information on our guests and extended interviews visit lovemaineradio.com. Read about our guests in Old Port Magazine. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page, follow me on Twitter and see my running travel, food, and wellness photos as bountiful1 on Instagram. We’d love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows.
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