RunRunLive 4.0 - Running Podcast

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-373 – Bill Sycalik Runs the National Park System  (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4373.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello and welcome to this autumn edition of the RunRunlive podcast.  I’m a bit tardy with this one because of a perfect storm of scheduling priorities.  Like I said I have a new gig in the city where I have been figuring out the commute and putting in long hours, plus I’ve been in the final stages of a training plan with those long runs and hard workouts.  Time has been short and logistics has been challenging for writing and recording.  But, this is not the ‘whine about things’ podcast.  No this is the RunRunLive podcast where we talk about transformational power of endurance sports.   Today we interview Bill Sycalik from Run the parks – you may have seen him in that running magazine or heard him on a podcast recently – he’s got a good PR presence and it’s a great story.  It’s a good chat.  I like what he’s doing.  It’s a good transformational story.  Like I said in the interludes comment last week I’ve been hard pressed with a new professional gig.  I had two business trips this past week and have been putting in some long hours.  I’m not complaining, I love it and I understand that the first 90 days in any new position, whether it’s a contract or a new job or a new role in your current company – those first 90 days are a special opportunity that you need to seize.  And that can adjust your life balance.  So – here it is Saturday and I’m going to give you the present of a few hours of my thoughtful attention, my RunRunLive friends.   Training has been a struggle over the last couple weeks but I did get a nice long run in on the Wapack course and I’ve got another tomorrow.  Am I ready for the Maine Marathon in 3 weeks?  Of course.  I could roll out of bed on a random Tuesday and run a marathon.  Am I in race shape?  I give myself a solid B- on that.  My engine is still good but my legs aren’t keeping up as well.  The big news, I guess, is that I got my confirmation letter for the 2018 Boston Marathon.  This will be my 20th Boston.  I am qualified for this race.  For those of you who have been on this journey with me, or more correctly on your own journeys with me, we’ve seen some ups and downs haven’t we?  We’ve been witness to many things.  We’ve experienced the meat and marrow of many endurance happenings.  We’ve learned a lot.  What a long wonderful trip it’s been, huh? … Here’s a story from one of my first days in the new office.  I have been getting into the city early to beat the traffic.  Another team member showed up.  Just he and I, chatting.  I don’t know how we got on the subject, maybe it was a segue from the nice cool fall weather, but he starts telling me about the time he ran the Ragnar Relay on Cape Cod.  I nod and ask some clarifying questions like, ‘Did you have a 12-person team?  Did anyone pull up injured?”  Then he tells me about how he ran it with his Spartan buddies and about how obstacle racing is really his big thing.  I ask, “Do you run that one up in Killington?” He says, “Yeah, I love the Beast.” I say, “Good for you, that’s a tough race.” He says, “Yeah, I did it in like 9 ½ hours.” And the point of my story is that I didn’t say a word about myself.  I just complimented him on his achievements.  Because, I try not to be ‘that guy’ in the office.  I always have tried not to be ‘that guy’ that people avoid because ‘that guy’ always drives the conversation back to himself.  Let people celebrate their lives and achievements.  Don’t always be playing ‘who’s got the biggest’, even if they stumble into your domain of expertise.  Celebrate with them. It’s not about you. … But just for the record…Remember back when we ran the Ragnar as a Brooks sponsored ultra team with 6 athletes and won it?  And, yeah, remember when I talked to Joe DeSena about his Spartan stuff last year and he gave me an entry to the Killington Beast and a ran it in 6 ½ hours as a 54 year old? But, it’s not about me, is it! Hah! On with the show. … I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to me trying to sound sincere about Stamps.com or Audible.. (although, fyi, my MarathonBQ book is on audible) We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio. There are book reviews, odd philosophical thoughts, zombie stories and I curate old episodes for you to listen to.  I recently added that guy who cut off is foot so he could keep training and my first call with Geoff Galloway.   “Curated” means I add some introductory comments and edit them up a bit.  So anyhow – become a member so I can keep paying my bills.   … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – 2017 Wapack Trail Race - Voices of reason – the conversation Hi Chris, Thanks again for the opportunity to be on the podcast. I think it was a good discussion. I attached a few photos. One Rocky Mountain, the other USVI. Links National Parks Marathon Project - Generosity.com Crowdfunding Page - If you want to include it - I'm Brand Ambassador for Hammer Nutrition (), Gnarly Nutrition (), Teatulia (), Footbeat () and Running Buddy () Social media is below in bio. Bio Bill Sycalik is the founder of the National Parks Marathon Project, his full-time effort to run a self-directed, self-managed, self-measured 26.2 miles in all 59 U.S. National Parks. Until June 2016 Bill was a management consultant leading large technology projects in New York City. Unfortunately, his passion for health, fitness and the outdoors were out of synch with his profession and location. He wanted to break from the corporate world and get back to nature. When he read about the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, as a marathon runner, Bill thought what better way to experience the parks than covering 26.2 miles in each one. He saw an opportunity to promote the National Parks, reconnect with the natural world through long trail runs and inspire people to get out and move in our country’s unspoiled wilderness. So, he quit his job and started running the parks. Bill ran 48 marathons in the past 54 weeks completing all the parks in the lower 48 states plus the U.S. Virgin Islands. He is now planning to visit the parks in Hawaii, American Samoa in Alaska. To learn more about Bill and the project go to www.runningtheparks.com. To connect with Bill and join him at a park please reach out via Instagram (@runningtheparks), Twitter (@runtheparks) or Facebook ().… Section two – The First 90 Days - http://runrunlive.com/the-first-90-days Outro Ok my friends you have run through various national parks in various states to the end of episode 4-373 of the RunRunLive Podcast.  Please wipe that dirt of your feet before you come in.  I drove up to Quebec for an appointment this week and the leaves are starting to turn.  It’s a pretty drive but there is nothing up there in northern NH and VT.  Since the paper mills left there really isn’t much industry.  There’s no traffic either.  You can just set the cruise control and nap for a couple hours. Having had an office in Quebec City for a number of years I know this route very well.  And, I know that if you want to you can cut through Franconia Notch.  There are a string of mountain hiking trails in there, smack dab in the middle of the Presidential Range of mountains.  I pulled off, threw my kit on and went for an afternoon run/hike up the falling waters trail up the side of Mt. Lafayette.  It’s a super difficult trail.  You can’t really run it.  The rangers call it ‘falling people trail’ because of all the tourists they have to drag out.  It’s really pretty though.  Runs right up a cascading brook.  Not runnable per se but certainly works your legs and gets your HR up.  I only fell once on the way back down.  Like I said I’m still trying to figure out the rhythms of my new gig.  We are all in the same boat.  We all get the same 24 hours.  You just have to figure out the rhythm that works to balance everything.  You have to remember that any change like this causes stresses that you may not be aware of.  They can manifest in ways you’re not aware of.  Just got to keep your head right and try to get enough sleep! I did get a club membership in the building and that should give me more flexibility to work out around the traffic or even just to shower and start exploring Boston with my feet.  I’ve never actually lived in the city and hence really don’t know my way around the city proper much. When I’m not traveling I’ll see if I can’t seize that opportunity to fill in some blanks.  I’ve missed a few workouts with the travel and the exhaustion but I do what I can.  That’s the secret, do what you can.  I’ll see you out there. MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks -

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Interlude – 2107-001 (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/ interludes2017-001.mp3] Link   Interlude Ok my friends, my loyal and good-natured listeners, I have good news and probably more good news.  I’m just not going to be able to squeeze in a show for you this weekend.  I know I’m breaking a covenant, a holy writ, a treasured norm.  I know I’m forcing you to stumble unencumbered by my droll wit and troubled psych-babble it your weekend long runs.  But, it’s the smart thing to do.  My excuse is that I started a new gig in the city this week and have been putting in 14 hour days with the long commute.  Both my mental carrying case and my cache of time is exhausted.  I’m in that early phase that requires a steep learning process and the corresponding time commitment to get there. My training took a bit of a hit as well this week.  Not to worry, they have a super nice gym in the office, you know one of those city gyms with attractive young people, shiny weights and a row of 50 high-end treadmills staring hopefully out the glass front across the alley at the sky scraper neighbor.  I should have my membership next week. That will allow me to get in there early or stay late and workout while the rest of the cubicle monkeys fight each other in road-rage traffic like demented rats in a box.  But – Don’t give up on me!  I do have some great content for you.  I have an interview with Bob sycalik who is running a marathon in in every state in a national park.  I have my race report for running the always amazing Wapack Trail Race in the tail end of Hurricane Harvey last weekend.  I have several interviews cued up with marathoners and ultra-runners now that the racing season is in full swing.  And, you can bet your carbon outsoles that I’ll be dropping some wisdom on job transitions! Figured I’d keep you in the loop.  Gotta go.  Dropped a nice 10 minute song for you at the end of this.  It’s the Grateful Dead live from Orpheum Theatre - San Francisco, CA 7-18-76. So enjoy your weekend without me and I will see you out there.

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-372 – Bob Dunfey Race Director Maine Marathon  (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4372.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello and welcome to this autumn edition of the RunRunlive podcast.  Did you know that when I originally launched the podcast I sent the information to Nigel in the UK who, at the time, managed the running podcast list.  He mistakenly called it the RunRunLiver podcast.  Which is an entirely different thing.  Ironically I did run the Boston Marathon for the Liver Foundation one year. But, no this is the RunRunLive podcast where we talk about transformational power of endurance sports.   Today I’ve got an interview for you with the Bob, the race director for the Maine Marathon in Portland Maine.  I decided to run it on Oct 1st.  I thought I needed a Maine marathon but I remembered that I ran that Bay of Fundy marathon back in 2013 when I was doing that marathon a month project after the bombings at Boston.  I think that one counts as a Maine marathon.  It started and ended in Maine.  Anyhow, I got Bob on to talk about the race and the history of it.  Maine has an unexpectedly vibrant running community. In section one we’ll talk about how to deal with a bad workout.  In section two I’m going to talk about the Grateful Dead! I’ve been training.  I had a rough build week last week.  I had a 1:30 step up run and really struggled to get my Heart rate up into zone 4 at the end.  My legs wouldn’t do it.  It’s been humid here and I don’t do well in the heat and humidity.  Last Sunday I was down on the Cape with my kids and ran a 17 miler out on the rail trail.  I got out early, I positioned a bottle of water out on the course at around 4.5 miles out.  I was doing an out and back so I would be able to refill my bottle at 4.5 and around 13.  But it was so humid I ran myself into serious dehydration in that middle 8 miles.  By the time I got back to my bottle I had the chills and was feeling classic dehydration symptoms.  I got some water in me but the last 4.5 miles were rough.  My legs were sore for a couple days.  Good thing I have a down week this week.  Combination of running on spent legs and running myself out of water.  Made my way to the hammock and did some napping and reading after that.  It’s cooling off now.  We’re sliding into autumn and then fall.  Buddy, the old wonder dog, was miserable in the heat and humidity, but now that it’s cooling and drying off he has come back to life.  I ‘ve been referring to it as ‘the quickening’.  … I’ll tell you a funny story from last week.  Friday morning I was open with my first call at noon.  I got up early did some work and decided to knock off my workout mid-morning so I could drive down to the Cape in the afternoon.  I had a hill workout that would take me around an hour and I planned to get back around 11:00 so I could clean up and be on the call at noon. I got out and hit my hill workout.  It wasn’t too hot, but hot enough to work up the sweat engine.  I got back to the house, stripped off my wet clothes and was about to jump into the shower.  My phone starts ringing in my office.  I run to check the number and it’s the company I’m supposed to have a call with at noon.  So I pick it up.  My contact says, “We’re all on the phone waiting for you.” I say, “I thought the call was at noon?” He says, “We rescheduled it.” I say, “Ummm…OK, I’ll dial in.” So there I am 5 minutes late for an important call, buck naked, sweating like a fountain.  So, I picked up the phone and dialed into the call.  Good thing it wasn’t a video call.  Go ahead.  Hold that picture in your head for the next time you talk to me on the phone! On with the show. … I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to me trying to sound sincere about Stamps.com or Audible.. (although, fyi, my MarathonBQ book is on audible) We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio. There are book reviews, odd philosophical thoughts, zombie stories and I curate old episodes for you to listen to.  I recently added that guy who cut off is foot so he could keep training and my first call with Geoff Galloway.   “Curated” means I add some introductory comments and edit them up a bit.  So anyhow – become a member so I can keep paying my bills.   … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – Getting past a bad workout - Voices of reason – the conversation Bob Dunfey – RD Maine Marathon Updates from Maine Marathon   |    MARATHON, HALF MARATHON, RELAY | SUNDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2017 AT 7:45 AM | PORTLAND, MAINE       7 Weeks to Race Day! We don't want to scare you, we know it's still summer, but race day is creeping up on us! There's still plenty of time to get your training miles in though, maybe with some of our new race ambassadors?   2017 Gorham Savings Bank Maine Marathon Race Ambassadors We were so impressed by everyone who applied to be a race ambassador this year, it was hard to narrow it down! But narrow it down we did and we're very pleased to introduce our first class of race ambassadors: Jennifer Boudreau Half-marathon | Gardiner, ME | |  |  |  Julia Clukey Half-marathon | Portland, ME |  Nathan Ferrell Relay | Falmouth, ME |  |  |  Shelby Kaplan Marathon | Portland, ME |  |  Jon Meneally Marathon | Sabattus, ME |  Chelsea Peterson Marathon |  Portland, ME |  |  |  You'll see them out training this fall in their Maine Marathon training shirts, leading training runs, and talking about how their preparations for October 1 are going on social media. All six Race Ambassadors are excited to share what they love about this event and how they can share that with you, so make sure to follow them for updates. For more details on this great group, visit the  !   A Sneak Peek at the Medal And all you have to do is cross the finish line....   We're on Instagram! We're expanding across the social sphere... Follow us, heart us, share us, retweet and regram us, let us know what you like! Tag your posts with #mainemarathon and #mymainemarathon so we can find you too!   Training Shirts Now Available! Have you seen the new Maine Marathon training shirts? If you visited the Maine Track Club/Maine Marathon table at the Beach to Beacon expo, you probably did, but if not, feast your eyes. Lightweight and moisture-wicking, these will keep up with you on your long runs and let everyone know what you're training for. Available now for $15 (includes postage) on  .    Run With Us On October 1, 2017!           Thank you to our sponsors—we couldn’t do it without you! … Section two – In Praise of the Grateful Dead  - Outro Ok my friends you have run along the rocky sea shore to the end of episode 4-372 of the RunRunLive Podcast.  Nice work.  Here we are slipping into fall.  You all will be tapering into your big fall races now, right?  Good luck.  Stay healthy.  We had a full on solar eclipse this week in the US and parts of the UK.  It was nice to see people focusing on the wonders of science for a couple hours.  I’m going to run the Wapack Trail Race on September 3rd if anyone is interested in coming up for it. The full race is a super technical 18 mile mountain race.  You could run it as a 2-person relay if you want. It’s a hard course but very pretty, very New England and very special.  I’ll have to download 2 Grateful Dead concerts for it because if I’m lucky I’ll break 4 hours. Then The next thing for me is the Maine Marathon.  I don’t feel like I’m in the best marathon shape but we’ll see what happens over the next 4-5 weeks.  You never know.  I’ve been working on eating clean and losing some weight this week.  Somehow, I crept back up over 180 since June.  I’d like to work my way down closer to 170 for race weight.  I have a predisposition towards chubbiness and my body is very efficient so even with my running volume it doesn’t’ take much for some extra weight to creep on around the middle. Similarly, I can take it off quickly by adjusting my calories a bit and eating clean. If I didn’t work out so much it would be a horror show.  I’d have to learn how to live on 1500 calories a day.  … I stumbled across a conversation this morning.  Someone was asking how to find balance.  A respondent suggested that they use a model called the ‘seven elements of wellness’.  I traced this model back to the .  It’s basically a set of advice for students on how to not get overwhelmed.  Similar to other models that segment your life into the different aspects or gardens.  The trick is how to give each garden enough water to thrive while not over attending any one aspect.  That’s the trick to a balanced approach to life, tactically, daily, is to devote a certain amount of your energy to each of these segments.  The balance will flow and flux over time but you need to pull up to a high enough level and consciously allocate time to each important segment each day.  Otherwise you get sucked into one aspect, like work or religion and you lose your humanity in the process. And that’s no good. I’ll see you out there. MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks -

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-371 – Arnar and the future of endurance sportswear  (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4371.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello my friends.  How are you?  How’s your summer going?  Welcome to our little endurance sports podcast that we’ve been doing for more than a decade, welcome in fact to episode 4-371.  We have a good show for you today.  I’m quite satisfied with this one.  Good content.  Good writing.  Good audio.  As they say “Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then.” Today we have an interview with Arnar from Tymewear.  I’ve been advising Arnar on his start up. Hopefully I’m doing more good than harm. I went in to see him this week.  He’s working out of seaport area of Boston.  There’s a lot going on down there.  That’s the place GE is building its new HQ. Since I was in there I recorded the interview in this show.  Interesting stuff. In section one I have a useful instructional piece on smoothies! Yes smoothies! In Section two I have finally wrote down a story that has been bouncing around in my head for a good 5+ years.  Working with Arnar finally shook it loose.  As you know I’m a big science fiction fan.  I was able to combine Science Fiction and running into a story!  How about that?  And no zombies required. Nothing unusual to report on the training front.  Last week was a down week and I’m ramping it back up this week.  Still have to go out tonight and do a hill workout when it cools down a little.  I had to sleep in a bit this morning.  I’ve had some sort of allergy or cold this week.  I noticed my HR was high on Tuesday when I did my morning 10 mile trail run. I gave blood on Wednesday and I’ve figured out how to pass all the hurdles.  I mentally raise my heart rate up into the 50’s by thinking about fighting and sprinting and finishing a race etc. – and that gets me by the low heart rate constraint.  Then I took a tip from one of my running buddies and pounded water all day going in so I would be dehydrated and sure enough the blood came squirting out!  No problems.  I managed to get down to my house on the Cape and spend a couple days cleaning.  I did ride my bike over to the ocean and go for a snorkel.  Got some sun.  … My tomatoes are coming in but the real bounty is in the wild black raspberries outside my garden.  There are so many they are falling ripe to the ground.  I go out every couple days and pick a quart or so but I have to tamp down my compulsion to pick all the ripe berries because I would be out all day. I told Teresa that we are disturbing the natural ecosystem by pillaging all the wild black berries.  Those berries want to be eaten by wild animals who then spread the berry seed with a bit of fertilizer throughout the neighborhood.  I told her if we eat the berries that only way we can save nature is to poop in the woods.  She and I were all set to climb Mt. Washington last weekend but when I checked the weather it said it was 34 degrees Fahrenheit, 100% rain and hail with 40 mph winds on the mountain.  I’ve had my fair share of adventures but I told her that didn’t sound like something we should willfully walk into.  On with the show. … I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to me trying to sound sincere about Stamps.com or Audible.. (although, fyi, my MarathonBQ book is on audible) We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio. There are book reviews, odd philosophical thoughts, zombie stories and I curate old episodes for you to listen to.  I recently added that guy who cut off is foot so he could keep training and my first call with Geoff Galloway.   “Curated” means I add some introductory comments and edit them up a bit.  So anyhow – become a member so I can keep paying my bills.   … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Yes, we are still working on setting up the separate podcast feed for the member’s content.  Most recently I recorded and uploaded the first chapter of the zombie novel I’ve been writing for 30 years.  Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Exclusive Access to Individual Audio Segments from all Shows Intro’s, Outro’s, Section One running tips, Section Two life hacks and Featured Interviews – all available as stand-alone MP3’s you can download and listen to at any time. Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – The Summer Smoothie Spectacular -   Voices of reason – the conversation Arnar Larusson TymeWear - There are a lot of products in the sports tech and wearables space, what led you to start working on the TymeWear solution?  What’s the origin story? I was developing prosthetics, orthotics, and exoskeletons before co-founding Tyme Wear. Those experiences taught me how valuable accurate insights about our body can be, and that the worlds of soft materials and smart electronics could be merged in a very interesting way. That through some innovation, we could create products that have technology that is transparent to the user, but that delivers real value towards improving our health, wellbeing and performance.   How is this different than my FitBit or Garmin Watch? Our product is a t-shirt. We wanted our technology to blend into the things an athlete would be wearing anyway. We collect physiological data that is as accurate as medical grade equipment. The more accurate the data, the more actionable and useful it becomes.   Why do I need this?  As an endurance athlete, why do I care? For any athlete that wants to improve, it helps a lot to know your current endurance limit, and what your potential is. We measure ventilatory threshold (VT) and VO2max. The VT is your current endurance limit, improving your endurance improves your VT. Your VO2max tells you how deep is your well, your potential. Knowing these two things informs exactly how hard to push, and helps you define and reach your goals. Talk through the difference between HR/ Respiration, effort, training zones., MaxVo2 Respiration is directly correlated to your effort level. It is also a measure of your physical limits, your VT and your VO2max. HR by comparison is a great relative measure of effort, but because it has so many compounding factors like stress, sleep quality, to name a couple, it can be very unreliable. Who is your target market?   We are for dedicated athletes that want to train to the limit of their ability, value accurate information on their workouts, but struggle with knowing where their limit is and how to train to it. Where do you want to be in 5 years? Working hard :) If you had to say what your mission is what would it be? To make our bodies accurate data available and actionable to anyone, anywhere. What have you learned so far in bringing this product to market? Working at the intersection of industries is rewarding but challenging. We work with apparel designers, electronics manufacturers, athletes, coaches and medical professionals. Each one has their own language and frame of reference. Our job is to be in the middle and make sense of it all. What kind of help do you need from our audience? We are looking for beta testers that are dedicated endurance athletes. Meaning anyone that goes out at least 3 times a week. We want people that are curious about knowing their current endurance limit. People that are skeptical about the current way of tracking performance. People that can help us learn and improve our product.   … Section two – Robo-Running  - Outro OK my friends, you have run in your high-technology smart garment to the end of episode 4-371 of the RunRunLive Podcast.  I’ve got a few things lined up for you.  First is this guy I interviewed that is running a marathon in every national park in the US.  You may have seen him in that running magazine this month – they are always copying me.  I’m also trying to get the RD for the Portland Maine marathon on for a debrief.  I’m going to run the race on Oct 1st.  I’m in good enough shape, I need to tune up and lose a little weight, but I’ll race. Before that I’m going to run the full Wapack Trail Race again this year.  Which is an 18 mile technical mountain race that my club puts on.  I think we’re doing a relay this year if you want to come up and do one way, which would be 9 miles.  And, of course we are looking ahead to December 31st again this year for the Groton Marathon.  … I’m going to swear a bit in the next few paragraphs if you want to plug the kids’ ears.  I was talking with a friend of mine last week.  He was supposed to go on vacation but his wife got sick and I could tell he was mad about it.  He didn’t ask me for advice, but I gave it to him anyhow.  Very simple advice.  Don’t be an asshole.  We get all cranked up inside our own heads and start acting like we’re right and someone else is wrong.  It’s all ego.  We construct these stories of how we are long suffering and put upon.  I know I do it.  And then we lash out. Do you know what the other person sees?  They don’t see any of that stuff in your head.  They just see you lashing out.  You just look like an asshole.  My wife called me last night.  She wanted to know what I cooked for dinner.  I’m thinking to myself “What the hell? What am I your cook? I’ve got a cold.  I’ve got work to do. What have you done for me lately?”  Then I realized that she didn’t know any of that and it didn’t matter to her.  So I chose to not be an asshole.  I got some food from the market and cooked dinner. I was standing at the fish counter in the market down on Cape Cod.  There was a young couple there fighting over whether or not to buy mussels.  She wanted mussels.  He kept saying “Buy the mussels if you want” but he was really saying, “Mussels?  What are you stupid or crazy?  Why do I put up you’re your insufferable crap.  Mussels my eye.”:  When he finally wandered off and left her standing there, contemplating the mussels, I leaned in, smiled and said “Tell him to stop being an asshole.”:  That’s it.  Secret to life. Don’t be an asshole. Inside your own head.  Let it go.  I’ll see you out there. MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks -

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-370 – Tim and the Anxiety of Running

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-369 – Vybarr and the Muse of Running  (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4369.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello my friends, and welcome to episode 4-369, of the RunRunLive Podcast.  Rolling into July and the dog days of summer.  I don’t have any race reports for you this week, but I do have an excellent interview with Vybarr who wrote a book about running.  We have a great chat. I kicked the 5 at 5 project on July 1st!  So, I officially made it 32 days.  Now I’m playing around with some speedwork and getting ready to train for a fall race.  There are a couple I’m looking at.  Both reasonably flat.   My old Buddy Brian is back training again so we did a couple longish runs on the weekend. First one was out and about Groton with Frank.  Frank, Brian and I started marathon training together in the late 90’s! It’s cool to run with them.  Now that they’ve slowed down to my pace again.  Frank had that hip resurfacing that we talked about and Brian had a foot problem that caused him to take a year off.  We cranked out 14ish miles. This week, I met Brian and Ryan on the BayState course in Lowell and we did a loop around the river of another 14 miles.  It was hot, but we lucked out because they were having a triathlon in the river.  We got to refill our bottles a couple times.  We closed the last 1/3 of a mile pretty hard.  Felt good. My legs are in great shape and my aerobic fitness is good.  I just don’t have and leg speed. I bought a pair of Brooks Launch off the internet for $60.  They are lighter and less cushion than the Hokas.  It’s challenging to do speedwork in the Hoka Challengers because they are so squishy in the forefoot.  The launch are more responsive.  Takes a while to break them in and get comfortable after running in the Hokas for so long.  I ran to the local high school track the Wednesday after the fourth.  If you ever read any of my stories about track workouts – this is that track.  I have spent hundreds of miles there.  The old track was heavily used.  15 – 20 years ago I learned where every pot hole and puddle was.  I could run that  track in the dark.  A couple years ago they finally resurfaced it.  It was a nice new track.  Then I noticed it started getting cracks and grass was growing through it in places.  They called whoever installed it and made them do it again.  Now it’s a new, new track. Anyhow I was curious as to my leg speed after not having done any speedwork for a couple years.  I ran down there.  Now, in my mind I eyeballed the distance and it felt like 2 – 2.5 miles.  Of course it’s actually 3.5 miles from my house.  That’s a bit of a warm up.  When I got there, I loosened up, stretched out and did mile as hard as I felt I could.   My legs felt like cement.  I was really dragging them, no pop.  I managed somewhere in the 6:30 mile range.  Not horribly disappointing.  I think the next big landmark for me in my slow slide into decrepitude will be when I can’t run a 1600 in the pace I used to run a marathon at!  (My marathon PR is a 3:06:40 at Boston in 1998 – which is a 7:11 pace.)  Not to be discouraged, I went back down this week and did a set of 8 X 400 at an aggressive pace.  They came in around 1:35, which isn’t bad, it’s like a 6:15-6:20 pace, but what was encouraging is that I was able to feel that speed form.  Still not much pop, but good strength and form.  And I went back out Thursday in the rain and did a set of 800’s at tempo pace, coming in around a 6:50 pace. I think in 3 weeks of speedwork I could get most of my pop back.  Not super-useful for marathon training, but at this point I’m really just benchmarking speed with effort and heartrate before I start my next training cycle.  Coach hates when I do useless speedwork.  … Did you see the post I put up about the Chinese scientist who demonstrated quantum entanglement this week?  I’ll try to give you the summary. Forgive me, I’m not a physicist, but I have always liked particle physics for some reason.   This is the stuff that goes on sub-atomic or smaller than an atom.  Atom is a word that the Greeks made up because they theorized that if you took matter apart you’d eventually find the smallest building block.  From the Greeks up to the 20th century this was the atom.  Then smart mathematicians and physicists figured out that atoms where made up of smaller bits, and those smaller bits were made up of even smaller bits. “Turtles all the way down is the old joke about this, it’s called ‘infinite regression’. And the physics, the way these particles interact with each other gets stranger all the time.  In quantum entanglement two particles, in this case photons, which are particles of light, are behaviorally connected regardless of the distance that separates them.   Meaning that if you do something to one of the particles, it also happens instantaneously to the entangled particle, NO MATTER WHERE THAT OTHER PARTCLE IS. Einstein called this “Spooky action at a distance” and said it could not be true because it violates known quantum physics.  The cool part is the instantaneous part.  This means that something is travelling faster than the speed of light, which breaks all the rules.  So anyhow the Chinese measured quantum entanglement between two photons last week.  One on earth and the other in a satellite in space. The SciFi part of this is that if you consider the entanglement a form of information or data, you could say, as the journalists did, that they transported a photon to space.  Pretty cool huh?  There’s a lot we don’t know and some of it is cool. Oh yeah – In section one I am sticking in chapter 9 from my marathonBQ audio book.  I had this guy with a great Midwest voice record it for me in his studio.  This is the version that’s on audible.  This chapter is about what you need to bring with you if you’re going to be doing speedwork down at the track.  Was thinking about this topic when I was down at the track this week. In section two I’ll talk about dealing with uncertainty. On with the show! … I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to yet another Blue Apron or Hello Fresh ad.  As a matter of fact, stop being lazy and go shop for your own food.  We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio. … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Yes, we are still working on setting up the separate podcast feed for the member’s content.  Most recently I recorded and uploaded the first chapter of the zombie novel I’ve been writing for 30 years.  Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Exclusive Access to Individual Audio Segments from all Shows Intro’s, Outro’s, Section One running tips, Section Two life hacks and Featured Interviews – all available as stand-alone MP3’s you can download and listen to at any time. Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – Chapter 9 from the Audible recording of MarathonBQ on what to bring to the track  - Voices of reason – the conversation Vybarr Cregan-Reid VYBARR CREGAN-REID is a Reader in English and Environmental Humanities at the University of Kent. He has a popular blog, , and has written on and been interviewed about running in major publications all over the world. He has also written numerous articles and essays for academic journals and a book on Victorian culture, Discovering Gilgamesh. Running is not just a sport. It reconnects us to our bodies and the places in which we live, breaking down our increasingly structured and demanding lives. It allows us to feel the world beneath our feet, lifts the spirit, lets our minds out to play, and helps us to slip away from the demands of the modern world. When Vybarr Cregan-Reid set out to discover why running means so much to so many, he began a journey which would take him out to tread London’s cobbled streets, the boulevards of Paris, and down the crumbling alleyways of Ruskin’s Venice. Footnotes transports you to the deserted shorelines of Seattle, the giant redwood forests of California, and to the world’s most advanced running laboratories and research centers. Using debates in literature, philosophy, neuroscience, and biology, this book explores that simple human desire to run. Liberating and inspiring, Footnotes reminds us why feeling the earth beneath our feet is a necessary and healing part of our lives. "Here is a book in which the striding energy of the prose matches its subject."  ​— Iain Sinclair, author of American Smoke   "Wonderfully authoritative vindication of what ought to be a self-evident truth: that running should be about being alive, not being a consumer." — ​Richard Askwith, author of Running Free   "Insightful and intoxicating. Vybarr Cregan-Reid's book makes you take your shoes off and run through a world of ideas about nature." — Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves and A Certain Age   "Footnotes is a blazing achievement. It burns with restless energy as Cregan-Reid, alive, alert, wholly and gloriously present, sets out his manifesto that running makes us human" — Kate Norbury, author of The Fish Ladder … Section two – Uncertainty  -   Outro OK my friends, have read the collective works of end of episode 4-369 of the RunRunLive Podcast.  Good for you.  Since we last talked I took Buddy down for his annual checkup and shots.  He’s healthy as he can be for an old man of 14 years old.   He loves the vet.  They give him food and say nice things to him. I told them he had gone totally deaf over the last 6 months. They said that’s normal and if it didn’t bother him, which it doesn’t, then there’s nothing to worry about.   It actually helps this time of year with the thunderstorms, fireworks and for some reason the coyotes being super vocal at night.  He’s also lost 7-8 pounds since last year.  A lot of it is muscle mass from getting older.  He also leaned up running with me most days in June during the 5 at 5 project.  I noticed the same thing in my own body.  You just lose muscle mass as you get older.  I think I’m going to run the Portland Maine marathon on Oct. 1st.  That’s a bit of a short training cycle for me but I’m in pretty good shape already.  If you want to come up it’s a flat marathon in southern Maine.  Plenty of places to stay and we’ll have some fun.  It’s been weird rainy and cool weather into July now.  My Raspberries are coming in.  I get about a pint a day – even after the birds take their share.  With all the rain I’m having a mold issue.  My tomatoes are going gang busters.  We’ll see if they fruit out well.  Need some hot weather for that.  … Had a bit of a long week this week.  We had lost a young family member in my wife’s family.  Same age as my kids. It’s always a tragedy when we lose the young.  Makes you think.  Rightly or wrongly it makes you reflect on your own life and your own family and the fragility of this life. Folks, hold those you love tightly.  Don’t waste time on petty things.  Forget slights real and imagined.  Reach out and hold the people who need you.  Right now, today, you can do one thing.  You can turn on your love light and let it shine. I’ll see you out there. And thank you for being my friend.    MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks -

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-368 – Julia and the Endurance Epiphany  (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4368.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello my friends, and welcome to episode 4-368 the new summer, of the RunRunLive Podcast.  Happy 4th of July to all my patriotic American friends.  Today we have a chat with Julia who has a great story.  She had that moment in her life where she almost lost everything that led her to endurance sports.  We get some many of these stories and it makes me wonder why people seem to need to get knocked up side of the head to make big changes in their lives?  Maybe it’s just that we need to be shown that anything is possible.  I’m dropping this show on June 30th.  I am finishing up my 30-day 5 at 5 project where I simply got up and ran 5 miles at 5 AM every morning in the woods. I’ll give you my report out on that in one of the sections. How are you doing?  If you’re an ultra-marathoner you’re in the thick of your summer racing season.  Likewise if you’re a triathlete or a biker you may be racing or training for a late summer race. If you’re one of those crazy marathon runners you probably need to start getting serious about your training plans for a fall race.  Such is the cycle of our lives. I do love this time of year.  I know many of you in Europe and in the great sun-beaten swaths of the Western US and in the densely humid jungles of the southern US, have been having some hot, hot, hot weather.  But I, up here in New England have had a mild start to summer.   We’ve had lots of rain and cooler temps.  The plants are happy and the little animals are thriving.  Buddy the old wonder dog ran my 5 at 5 project with me. I took him for a first loop and then went out again to get my miles.  That seems to be a good fit for him and he loves the cooler weather.  How are your gardens doing?  Mine was slow to get started due to the cool entrance of summer, but now my tomatoes, squash and cucumbers are coming on.  My beans didn’t come up, but I was using seeds from 3-4 years ago, so no surprise really.  My berries are starting to come in and I am going to have a boatload of berries.  Like I told you before I’ve got a bevy of apples on my trees as well so we might get some apples this year.  How about you?  How’s your running? Your Swimming? Your biking? Your gardening? What’s your next big race? … I watched a couple new movies since we last talked.  The first one was John Wick 2, which I thought would be just another terrible action movie.  I had low expectations.  But it was good, for an action movie.  They could have mailed it in and just done the typical guy with guns and cars Van Dame, Schwarzenegger, Stalone movie.  But they did more.  They put in this Noir affectation that made the character less cartoonish and more likable.  They did this thing with the fight scenes that included a lot of judo which was interesting.   Not wire fighting like the Matrix or Bruce Lee type, but Olympic wrestling type moves. And of course, lots of car crashes, explosions a high body count.  The other movie I watched was .  This is a sort of bio pic with Brian Cranston of Breaking Bad fame playing Dalton Trumbo.  I’ll give you a quick plot summary.  Trumbo was one of the most famous, richest screen writes in Hollywood in 1947, but he also was a member of the Communist Party, which wasn’t a bad thing in 1944 when we were friends with Stalin, but was a very bad thing in 1947, as the beginning of the cold war kicked off a red scare.  Some wankers in the congress decided Hollywood was being run by communists and they were 5th columnist set on infecting the population with their commie ideas.  They proceeded to create this extra-legal body called the House UnAmerican Activities committee, with subpoena power to weed out the commies. Now, technically, the constitution says we can believe in anything we want and the government can go suck it.  But, in times of hysteria, power hungry politicians always find some boogieman to whip up that allows them to set those rules aside.  The committee subpoenaed 10, mostly screen writers, who became known as ‘the Hollywood 10’ to question.  These guys thinking they had rights decided to not answer the questions, and the times being what they were, they went to jail for a couple years for contempt or obstruction or something.  Trumbo was one of those. Meanwhile, at the start of this, Hollywood banded together and tried to turn the tide and tell middle America how ridiculous all this witch hunting was.  They totally over estimated their star power and totally misread the sentiment of working class Americans.  Joe-sixpack didn’t have any love for these lefty, pinko, coastal elitists and wanted the commies weeded out! Thus started the blacklist.  The studio heads were basically arm twisted into committing to not employ anyone who was on the blacklist.  The blacklist did what it was intended to and put people out of work and ruined or even ended their lives. There is a great series that goes through this in detail that I would highly recommend you listen to before watching Trumbo.  It’s on the “” podcast by Karina Longworth.  She did a whole season on the blacklist.  I won’t belabor the politics in Trumbo.  Sometimes when you look back on the blacklist people are incredulous that this happened.  It did.  These guys were actually communists, but mostly armchair communists not Stalinist.  There was a fair amount of anti-Semitism in this as well. It’s a good move and knowing the history of the era makes it a better movie.  Cranston is great.  The thing I really took away from it, more than the political parallels, was how Trumbo just kept working.  They took his job and made him persona non grata, but he just kept writing.  He did what he was good at and eventually Hollywood came back around.  He won two Oscars for screenplays that were attributed to other writers, in one case a made up name.  That’s the lesson here for me.  Just keep your fire burning.  Keep using your gift. Keep doing what you’re good at and the rest doesn’t really matter, does it? On with the show! … I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to yet another Blue Apron or Hello Fresh ad.  As a matter of fact, stop being lazy and go shop for your own food.  We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio. I’ll also remind you that I have started raising money for team Hoyt for my 2017 Boston Marathon.  I would appreciate any help you can give.   The fundraiser is on Crowdrise (so I don’t have to touch any of the money) it goes straight to the Hoyts and supports acquiring equipment and supporting others who want to participate like the Hoyts do.  … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Yes, we are still working on setting up the separate podcast feed for the member’s content.  Most recently I recorded and uploaded the first chapter of the zombie novel I’ve been writing for 30 years.  Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Exclusive Access to Individual Audio Segments from all Shows Intro’s, Outro’s, Section One running tips, Section Two life hacks and Featured Interviews – all available as stand-alone MP3’s you can download and listen to at any time. Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – Long Run Pacing in a marathon plan - Voices of reason – the conversation Julia Khvasechko, LMT Hi Chris  I don't have a blog I'm too busy living my life I'll give you some background  A bit about me I have run 183 marathons in all 50 states twice and am half way thru round 3 I'm working on the continent, sept is AUS, aka continent #4 I completed Four 100 milers so far and many races of varying distances in between  All of this is remarkable to me since I only started running 12 years ago But it gets better, 19 years ago I was on deaths door with an inoperable brain tumor  Also I used to work in finance but switched careers to do what I love  Empower other runners & helping them feel good in their bodies  I pace races all over the country and own my own business, I'm a RYT, LMT, Running coach & am living the dream Also through running I found the love of my life & got married on my course of my 50th state  There are a few articles out there about me My best  Chris, Many thanks for the book, I can't wait to read it I am so very impressed I would also love to hear the finished product, kindly send it to me. i am deathly shy and marathons gives me an opportunity to be social I love pacing races and talking to people about running and one on one i'm okay but having to give a speech in front of an audience is too scary for me to even think about. again, i'm so very honored to have been chose to be a guest on your show. thank you for allowing me to share my story.  if i can inspire one person, one person to push their limits and leave their comfort zone, then I have done my job.   I read somewhere once that you life should have meaning; so I want to become an inspiration to others so they can try to do more and become more than they are today.  the most powerful weapon is the human soul on fire.  and if you fire up people to run more, to run faster, to do more, then you are the true inspiration.  thank you for your time and i look forward to reading your book. my best, Julia … Section two – 5 at 5 - Outro OK my friends, have you been proposed to and married during this marathon of episode 4-368 of the RunRunLive Podcast.  Things are cooking. I’m busy. I’m working on a bunch of cool stuff.  One of the startups I’m working with in Boston is this smart garment company I told you about last time.  They are going into a testing phase before they launch and are looking for runners so if you’re local and want to try some new tech and you’re training for a fall race let me know and I can introduce you.  Even if you’re not local and you want to learn more I can introduce you for future stuff as they roll it out.  Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing for a fall target race.  I think I’ll look for a Maine race in October or November.  Maybe I’ll target MDI, I know Gary Allen, we’ve interviewed him at least twice, he’s the race director, I’ve always wanted to run that race and I need a Maine race.  I’m toying with doing a version of my own MarathonBQ plan to see if I can get some speed back.  I’d have to modify it to have less volume, more cross training and more recovery days.  I’d never survive it as written.  Not sue how Buddy is going to react now that we’re finishing up the 5 at 5.  He may revolt.  He’ll be waking me up at 5 in the morning and demanding to hit the trails!  There are worse things.  Next week I’ve got a couple interviews lined up.  I’ve got an Irish author who’s book I’m reading, sort of a literary mashup of and .   (Editorial note: When I throw out authors or movies or other factoids like that I usually provide a link to an explanation of just what the fine day I’m talking about in the show notes and the accompanying blog post) I’m also talking with Tim the anxiety guy.  We’ll getone of those up for the next show or maybe I’ll pull Arnar from the smart garment company in to talk about robo-running. I curated two old episodes up onto the members feed.  Consider being a member, it keeps the lights on over here at the RunRunLive HQ.   It’s fun for me to go back and listen to myself and what I was doing 5 or 6 years ago.  By the way, this episode is more than likely the 10 year anniversary of RunRunLive as a podcast. How about that?  Here we are.  Who would have thought it was possible?  Over a million downloads later.  Don’t be a stranger.  Reach out and say ‘hi’.  I’m entirely approachable but not so terribly interesting in person.  It’s funny how time moves around us and floats us and sometimes sinks us.  Makes you think about what you are doing today and how it will change the flow of time for your tomorrows.  One of my more philosophical answers that frustrates my business partners is that I don’t know what the outcome is, but I can tell you that I’m doing the things today that will put me in a position to change those outcomes.  And that’s the message for you.  You can’t get off your raft that is being pushed along in the river of time.  You can’t change the past.  You can’t change the future.  You can only choose what you do with your great personal fire, your gift today.  And that can be enough to not only change your life but also change the lives of others.  It’s not set.  You can do whatever you want. You just have to decide to do it.  Today I choose to talk to you.  About running.  And thinking.  And experimenting with the fabric of the universe in my small dusty corner of it. I’ll see you out there.   MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks -

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-367 – Matt Dunlap – BQ  (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4367.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello my friends, and welcome to episode 4-367 th3e new summer, of the RunRunLive Podcast.  Here we are in June.  Today we are going to chat with Matt who qualified for Boston recently.  Not to be entirely self-promotional, but he used the Marathon BQ plan from my book, “Marathon BQ – how to qualify for Boston in 14 weeks with a full time job and a family” that recounts my own journey to a Boston qualifier.  It fascinates me to listen to these folks who have run the plan and qualified.  It’s wonderful to me that it actually works for them.  When you write down something like that there is always the worry that it has nothing to do with the plan.  Somehow it is just you and your genetics or your work ethic or pure chance tipping those scales.  So – congratulations to Matt for putting in the work and reaping the rewards.  Welcome to Boston.  This book continues to have legs, especially in April for obvious reasons, in both the e-book and audio book form.  I’m thrilled to help people direct their energy and strength in a way that enables their goals.  It’s very fulfilling.  I am going to look into spinning up a webinar course version of it where I would step through the chapters over 12 or 13 weeks in a live webinar.  If that’s something you’re interested in let me know.  I’ll try to put the registration up on – which I own shortly.  Should be fun and I’ll learn something and help some folks.  I’m not a webinar rookie.  I do them for work many times.  If you’ve listened to this for a awhile you might have heard me talking about giving presentations, or presentation skills or such.  It’s one of the things I’ve worked on my entire career.  I think I’m up to a B+ level now.  I gave a presentation this week in Boston this week at a startup conference. It was a room with maybe 100 souls in it.  It was a blast!  I had a 5-minute slot to give a pitch and demo.  It used to be that I would be flop sweating having to stand up in front of a room but I love it now.  If you prepare well and practice your craft you can turn that nervous energy into performance energy. I met a bunch of cool startups too.  At least one I’m going to get on the podcast.  It’s a sensor garment that you wear and it tracks all your vitals and your haptic response.  I’m definitely going to wear test that thing.  I’m 16 days into my 5 at 5 project.  This project is where I get up at 5 AM and run 5 miles every day.  I write a quick blog about it, daily, with a photo, if you want to follow along and see what’s rattling around in my brain.  It’s over at my website.  It’s fun. I take Buddy the old wonder dog with me for the first 2 miles on the trails then I go back out for another loop to make up the 5.  He seems to be handling it well.  On the weekends I still get out but I freelance a bit, throwing in some longer runs with Ryan on Sunday. I’m doing as much trails as possible. For Section one and section two today we are going to give you my Kettletown 50K race report.  It was, of course, close to 20 minutes long, so I spilt it into two pieces and bookended the interview with it.  Like a serial, right?  Build some tension and anticipation, right?   I read too much.  Really.  When you read too much the words start to seep out of your brain like coffee through the seams of a carboard cup.  They find their way out.  On with the show! … I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to yet another Blue Apron or Hello Fresh ad.  As a matter of fact, stop being lazy and go shop for your own food.  We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio. I’ll also remind you that I have started raising money for team Hoyt for my 2017 Boston Marathon.  I would appreciate any help you can give.   The fundraiser is on Crowdrise (so I don’t have to touch any of the money) it goes straight to the Hoyts and supports acquiring equipment and supporting others who want to participate like the Hoyts do.  … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Yes, we are still working on setting up the separate podcast feed for the member’s content.  Most recently I recorded and uploaded the first chapter of the zombie novel I’ve been writing for 30 years.  Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Exclusive Access to Individual Audio Segments from all Shows Intro’s, Outro’s, Section One running tips, Section Two life hacks and Featured Interviews – all available as stand-alone MP3’s you can download and listen to at any time. Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – Kettletown 50K race report part one - Voices of reason – the conversation Matt Dunlap Matt Dunlap Age 44 from St. Peters, Missouri.  Husband and father of two.  I completed the marathonBQ plan while working full time for the Boeing Co. in St. Louis.  My background as an athlete:  Never did run in school.  I was a baseball kid.  Started running in my 30s to lose weight picked up over the years.  Started running long distance in 2016 and completed the BQ plan in May of 2017 (2nd marathon).  Looking forward to my first trip to Bean Town and running the Boston Marathon in 2018!   Here’s the first email I got from Matt when he crashed in his first Marathon try… Chris! Just finished listening to your Marathon BQ book today.  I am SO motivated right now, and ready to start training, but unfortunately it's not time... yet... A little more background about myself: I'm 44 (as of yesterday) I've been a casual runner for over ten years. Ran my first race (10k) last 4th of July and been wanting "more" ever since... Ran a couple more 10k's this year, then decided to "try" a marathon which took place 8 days ago.  My intention when I first committed to it was to just be able to say I did it.  I had been listening to your podcast all the while (for over a year).  I used a marathon plan that came with my runkeeper app.  I had no intention of qualifying for Boston; it was never on my radar.  But when I got several weeks into my training, and only had trouble hitting my workout goals when it was 90+ degrees out there, I started to think "maybe I could actually qualify for Boston?"  I worked my butt off, never missed a workout for the last 10 weeks of that plan (plan goal was a 3:30 marathon).  I knew that my gps was cutting a lot of my corners off as a ran my routes and wondered exactly how much better my "real" pace was than what I was reading on my phone (and/or watch).  I told myself on race day, I would just settle into a comfortable effort level and see what happens... I am sending you three images that will basically tell you the story of the race.  When you see the pics, from mile three and from mile 25, I'm sure you'll get the big picture, along with the image that shows my split times.  In order for me to get a BQ, I had to finish in less than 3:15.  I had it in my grasp but it slipped away in the last 10k.  That's a bit of irony because for years I have always topped out at 6 miles or so on my workouts.  But this last 10k of the marathon kicked my ass (last 3 miles were 9+ min/mi).  Now I'm on a mission and I can't wait to get to the track!  I just need to decide if I'm going to try a spring or a fall race next year. I love this book! -matt dunlap in St. Peters, MO … Here is the facebook chatter on the MArathonBQ group from Matt.    BQ attempt down the drain. Race cancelled due to weather. … Finished 3:20:50 ish... more details to come. Everyone ran extra 4/10 mile because the first turn wasn't marked! Hopefully 4 minutes is enough to get into Boston. … Matt did you stick to the plan note for note? Referring specifically to the three weekly 5 mile recovery runs ... Matt N Kim Dunlap Yes, I followed it almost exactly as written. I did improvise some workouts though during the extra four weeks after the first race was cancelled. I lost about 8 lbs during the process too. Matt N Kim Dunlap When I got into the 20 plus mile runs, I started around 8 min miles for 5 or 6 miles then gradually increased to my goal pace of 7:2x. One day I felt really good and kept going to 26.2 and averaged 7:33. That was three weeks before the race … Section two – More Kettletown Outro Ok my beautiful, fit and fast friends.  Do you have the grit to get through a training plan, stay healthy and hit that staring line with gusto?  Maybe, maybe not, but you have hung in there through the end of episode 4-367 of the RunRunLive podcast.   Congratulations.  Did you see that lady from Oklahoma who won Comrades?  Great article.  She says she has 2 craft beers during every race.  Not 3, not 1, 2.  That’s enough to get her head and body in the zone.  I wonder why that’s not considered doping?  I tagged a brief audio at the end of the show from Duane who is looking for people to go run an eclipse run with him.  Once in a lifetime event. Next week I’m going to have a chat with Julia who has a very interesting story of how life changed for her and she ended up finding herself in endurance running. I also am in conversations with the anxiety guy, Tim, to do an interview about the interconnection between exercise and anxiety.  I’m going to keep curating older episodes onto the members feed as well. Avocados.  Do you like avocados?  Avocados are interesting.  They are native to the Americas.  They are actually considered a berry with a single seed botanically.  I like avocados.  I have one in my salad most days.  Healthy fat.  A couple interesting things. First, avocados should not exist.  They evolved the way they are to be eaten whole by megafauna.  Wooly mammoths, giant sloths and wooly rhinos.  The megafauna would eat the avocado in one big gulp, swallow them and drop them with a bit of fertilizer some distance off.  That was the avocado survival strategy.   Doesn’t work well when all the megafauna are gone. But along came humans and took a fancy to the poor avocado.  We cultivated them and developed them into the current smaller seed, lots of meat form they currently have.  Did you know there is now an injury called ‘avocado hand’ that is so common among millennials that it is an official medical term?  It’s when you cut your hand trying to open an avocado with a knife.  You can see how to open an avocado on YouTube.  I use a modified approach where I cut it into 4 sections, then separate, then the skin just peels off like a ripe banana.  Avocados have a perfect ripeness you have to catch them at.  You want them to be ripe but not mushy.  When you buy them leave 1 or 2 out on the counter to ripen, leave the rest in the fridge. They ripen fast.  If it gets ripe and you’re not ready to use it, stick it in the fridge.  Also, if you don’t want to eat the whole think you can put lemon juice on the exposed flesh of the leftovers to keep them from going brown in the fridge.  That’s it.  From mammoths to you.  Everything is connected.  I’ll see you out there.   MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks -

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-366 – Nick Kershaw – Impact Marathon Series  (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4366.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello my friends, and welcome to episode 4-366 of the RunRunLive Podcast.  366 Podcasts.  If you’re new to the show that means you could listen to one of the old shows every day for a year, even a leap year, to catchup.  And, assuming I haven’t thrown in the towel, you’ll still be 25 episodes behind.  It’s in our nature as endurance athletes to just keep moving forward.  I do believe there is some innate value in that attribute of dogged persistence.  What do you think?  Are people too quick to ‘Pivot’ in these Silicon days?  Silicon days.  Kinda sounds like Halcyon Days.  Do you know what that means?  You may have heard that phrase “” used by people whose parents spent too much on a Liberal Arts Degree as referring to a happier time in the past. It really means more of a calm time.  It means a time where winds don’t blow.  It’s from Greek mythology.  10 words or less.  Alcyone was turned into a sea bird.  Aeolus becalmed the waves for 7 days each year so she could make her nest.  Ok that was 21 words and a number. ‘Silicon Days’ also makes me think of irony.  Many classic SciFi stories are about humans being devastated by a silicon-based life form.  From where I’m sitting, we may have manifested this already, right?  Enough rhyming games.  What about endurance sports do we have to share today?  Today we talk to Nick about his new enterprise Impact Marathons.  He Skype called me from Greece where he was staying with his uncle Nick, his cousins, Nick, Nick and Nicki.  Sorry couldn’t resist.  Nick has an interesting story.  He ditched a lucrative banking career at an early age and now sets up these experiential, socially impactful marathons in remote and beautiful places.  I wanted to dive into why someone would do that.  Why would you give away all your stuff, live out of a couple duffle bags and lead this nomadic lifestyle in pursuit of a big dream?  Sounds fulfilling, romantic and terrifying at the same time.  In section one I’ll address a question people have asked me about what to do when your next training cycle isn’t going to start for a couple weeks or months?  In section two I’ll talk about anxiety. Speaking of the old shows, I’ve gone back in time and downloaded a few to listen to.  Those first 80 shows are rough.  I was on a schedule of pushing a show out a week and keeping it under an hour.  The early audio is poor.  I was using a cheap USB mic.  That being said there was a certain hopefulness and creativity to them that is fun to listen to.  I’m going to start editing up some of them and curating them into the members feed.  I know when I subscribe to a new podcast and see there are 300 shows, I don’t go back to the beginning.  I may cherry pick by topic.  I’m going to do some cherry picking of my own from the archives for my members.  Members, I truly appreciate you support.  This has never been a commercial endeavor for me.  It’s a passion project.  My favorite thing is when I get a membership notice from someone I’ve never interacted with before and they say something like ‘I’ve been listening for years and you’ve really helped me with my running and my life’.  That keeps me moving forward.  Even when the days are not so Halcyon.  Teresa and I did end up driving down to CT for that trail race last weekend.  I’ve got my notes down but haven’t had time to write them up.  I will.  I’ll probably push it as a separate piece because those race reports tend to go long.  Summary is, we had a good day.  She ran the 20K like a champ and I ran the 50k like a stubborn old guy.  Felt fine.  No issues.  My engine is good and my legs are good, I’m just a bit at loose ends with nothing to train for.  … I finished reading a book called “” by Robert Rodriguez.  He is a director.  He made one of my favorite movies ‘Desperado’ with Antonio Banderas.  It’s a really good story.  It is his journals from when he made his first movie El Mariachi for $7,000.  He did it with no crew.  It ended up making him the toast of Hollywood.  The basic story is that as a kid all he ever wanted to do was to make movies.  So he made movies with his brothers and sisters as actors and videotape.  He didn’t get good enough grades to get into film school, because, he spent all his time making movies.  He didn’t have any money so he went into one of those research hospitals to make $3,000 as a clinical trial lab rat.  He used that money and figured out how to make a feature length movie as an experiment in Mexico for the Spanish video market.  That was El Mariachi.  His plan was to make all his mistakes on this movie, sell it to the video distributers for a small profit and make a series of these as he learned that trade.  Essentially throw-away movies.  Then when he had enough experience he would approach the Hollywood crowd.  Long story, short, El Mariachi got noticed in Hollywood, starting a feeding frenzy that got him a deal at Columbia and won Sundance.  What’s great about this story is several things.  First, he worked very hard over many years to put himself in a position to succeed.  A splendid example of grit.  He also had the growth mindset going into this that he would make a movie, learn what he could in the process, not worry so much about failure and just do it.  Take action.  Learn from the results. It’s a classic , rags to riches, very American in nature.  On with the show! … I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to yet another Blue Apron or Hello Fresh ad.  As a matter of fact, stop being lazy and go shop for your own food.  We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio. I’ll also remind you that I have started raising money for team Hoyt for my 2017 Boston Marathon.  I would appreciate any help you can give.   The fundraiser is on Crowdrise (so I don’t have to touch any of the money) it goes straight to the Hoyts and supports acquiring equipment and supporting others who want to participate like the Hoyts do.  … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Yes, we are still working on setting up the separate podcast feed for the member’s content.  Most recently I recorded and uploaded the first chapter of the zombie novel I’ve been writing for 30 years.  Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Exclusive Access to Individual Audio Segments from all Shows Intro’s, Outro’s, Section One running tips, Section Two life hacks and Featured Interviews – all available as stand-alone MP3’s you can download and listen to at any time. Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – In between training cycles - Voices of reason – the conversation Nick Kershaw Link to share:    Bio:    The Impact Marathon Series are races for those who think differently, run for the good of others and dream they can leave an impact.   Founded in 2015 by Nick Kershaw and Matt Fenton, IMS organizes races in four developing locations: Nepal, Malawi, Colombia and Guatemala.   Like many more mainstream marathon companies IMS encourage runners to fundraise beforehand. However they ask runners to raise funds for one of the United Nations’ Global Goals directly relating to the location of their race – for example, charities focusing on Gender Equality in Nepal.   Runners then fly out to the race location a week before the marathon and complete two days of voluntary work directly relating to their selected Global Goal – in the above case, for example, providing support in a Nepalese burns unit. By doing so, participants get to see exactly how their fundraising helps and even get involved themselves via aid-work, thereby making a direct impact.   IMS aims to provide a synthesis between travel, running and voluntary work. By harnessing the power of running they believe runners can make a real difference to the developing world. City-worker turned Social Entrepreneur with a penchant for travel, running and creating positive impact. He has spent the last living entirely nomadically, with just two bags for company. In this time he founded the Impact Marathon Series: a social business that harnesses the power of running to empower communities, runners and tackle the UN Global Goals.   The Impact Marathon dream combines travel, volunteering and running to bring about social change. In their first year they began races in Nepal, Colombia, Malawi, Guatemala & Kenya. They bring 120 people from all over the globe, representing a variety corporates, NGOs and running clubs to each race. They all live together in the Athletes' Village whilst heading out each day to work at the exact projects they have fundraised for...   They want to create a direct link to your fundraising so you can see, feel and understand the impact you have.   The best bit, on the final day of Impact Week, everyone joins together with the surrounding communities to run a tough trail race, with most stunning backdrops you can imagine! http://run.impactmarathon.com Section two – Anxiety - Outro Ok my long suffering friends that is it, you have dug water pipe ditches and built out-buildings for the marginalized 3rd-world poor through to the end of episode 4-366 of the RunRunLive Podcast, and then you ran a slow marathon to celebrate.  Yes I did run a 50K a couple weeks ago.  Like I said, I have my notes, I just have to write it up.  Other than being slow – took me 7 hours – it was a pleasant experience all around.  I know, you’re all going to divorce me if I don’t start doing something interesting! We are rolling into June this week and we’ve had the oddest spring weather up here in New England.  It’s been 40’s and 50’s and overcast and rainy like Seattle or London for most of May.  I’m not complaining.  It’s great running weather.  I can’t remember a spring where I was able to get so much use out of my old Boston Marathon running jacket.  Not to run in, just to wear out.  Usually we go from 45 to 90 and it stays there.  We don’t have these extended periods of cooler weather.  It’s been great for my apple trees.  They flowered and since it wasn’t hot they kept the flowers for more than a week.  Now there are hundreds of little apples on them.  I didn’t get my garden in until just this past weekend.  I’m starting a new project for June that I’m calling 5 at 5.  I’m going to get up at 5 AM 30 Days and run 5 miles.  The getting up early isn’t the hard part for me.  It’s going to take a while or my body to get with the program of rolling out of bed and hitting the trails.  My body would rather have coffee and oatmeal and a bathroom break.  I’m taking Buddy with me for the first 2 miles and I’ll try to take a photo every day in the same place to get a time lapse.  With any luck we’ll get to see summer break like a wave over these few weeks. This will help me stay in shape during June and will take less time out of my week than my normal training routine so I can get more stuff done.  Let me tell you a couple stories from the past couple weeks. The first one is my mailbox story.  This winter the snow plows took out my mail box.  I wasn’t able to fix or replace it with the ground frozen and I propped it up with some bailing wire and a metal stake.  Now that it’s warmer I needed to fix it because it frankly looked shoddy.  But before I could fix the mailbox I needed to fix my wheelbarrow.  So, really this is my Mailbox/Wheelbarrow story.  I had a great big metal wheelbarrow that I had acquired many years ago.  A few years back one of its staves broke.  That is the proper term for a wheelbarrow handle, ‘stave’.  Me, being the impatient man that I am bought a new wheelbarrow. I soon discovered that the quality of wheelbarrows has plummeted in the intervening time and this new wheelbarrow was crap.  Very low quality.  After I worked that new wheelbarrow into the ground I decided to fix the old one this year.  I measured everything up and was able to procure the correct length staves on Amazon.  I had to spend a few hours getting the old rusted bolts out of the old wheelbarrow and buying the proper inventory of new nuts and bolts.  The new staves were the right length and of reasonably good quality.  But the holes were in the wrong places.  For the life of me I could not find my electric drill.  And I did end up buying a new electric drill on Amazon.  (I have since threatened my wife and children with painful and horrible death if they touch my new drill)  Change that to the mailbox/wheelbarrow/drill story.  I was able to find the full set of wood bits that I needed for the drill to drill the holes in the staves so that I could reassemble the wheelbarrow with the new hardware.  And it’s a thing of beauty.  Then I went down to see if I couldn’t dig up the roots of the old mailbox so I could drop a new one in.  It turns out that whoever put that mailbox in wanted it to stay there.  It was clasped on all sides by granite shards that I had to dig around and manually remove with my hands.  You see I had to dig about surgically as to not destroy the well-established lilies, clematis and irises flourishing there. I got all the pieces of the old mailbox out, measured it up. checked the official postal regulations online and headed off to one of the giant home improvement stores.  These mailbox posts come as one preassembled thing that you just stick in the ground so I thought I was close to the finish line.  However when I made my pilgrimage up and down the aisles and to where the post box posts were I was disappointed, ne thwarted.  They had two posts. Both of such poor quality as to be embarrassing.  Instead I hiked the extra kilometer down to the lumber section and procured a couple 8 foot pressure treated 4 by 4’s.  So, I guess this is the mail box/wheelbarrow/drill/post story… Anyhow I was able to find my table saw and I crafted a beautiful post box post I set it nicely back into the ground with the granite chunks at the official height from the curb.  I then gave the box itself a new coat of matt black paint.  I have to tell you, it’s a thing of beauty.  There is nothing as life affirming to your suburban male then to be able to craft something with your own hands and have it actually end well.  So those of you who have significant others who roll their eyes when you ask them to do some simple task – remember in suburbia there is no such thing as a simple task, but there is a job well done. I’ll see you out there.   MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks -

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-365 – Steve Hailstone – Heart Attack  (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4365.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Hello my friends, this is Chris, your host, and welcome to episode 4-365 of the RunRunLive Podcast.  Today we chat with our friend Steve Hailstone about his experience as a runner having a heart attack.  I wanted to get Steve on and talk through his experience because I thought we might be able to save some lives.  Seriously.  It’s well known that we endurance athletes think that we are indestructible.  This is not the case.  We are typically healthier and fitter over the long arc of our lives but we are still susceptible to the same risks everyone else is, including heart disease.  In section one I talk about how it’s not that much of a leap to go from a marathon to an ultra and give you some thoughts on how to do that.  In section two I talk about how we get into and out of mental slumps.  One of the things about mental slumps, whether you are religious or not, is the concept of will.  You have free will.  You are free to think what you want.  With the free will comes the responsibility to know what it is that you are going to do with that free will.  You’ve been invested with this great gift.  It’s up to you to Use it. It’s been a couple weeks since we last talked.  I believe I was headed into Groton Road Race Weekend last time we talked.  We got a beautiful spring day.  The races went off without a hitch.  Since I was not race director this year I had the choice of either running in the morning at 6:00 AM with the race director’s cut of the race (that I invented 10 years ago!) or actually running the race itself.  The 10k goes off in the early afternoon.  I couldn’t really decide.  Then I had a brain storm that I would just run both!  Of course when I told the other folks in the club this they all rolled their eyes and told me they knew I was going to do both all along.  Since we opted to hold the race on the 30th we were a week or so later in the spring.  It really made a difference.  The course was beautiful.  That extra week allowed the course to green up just enough.  Groton is a really pretty town. Coming out of a strong spring cycle and not really going hard at Boston I was able to perform well in both of my 10K’s.  Maybe I’ll invent a new thing – the Groton Double.  Still I was a bit beat up after doing all that manual work setting up the race and racing twice over the weekend.  Monday I felt a bit like I should have more naps in my life.  I’m a white collar worker and it made me consider that I’m getting soft.  I need more general labor in my life.  After Groton, I wanted to start in with the mountain climbing plan that Teresa and I came up with.  Unfortunately, I didn’t calculate that you can’t really get into the White Mountains of New Hampshire until June.  You can get into them, but only if you’re going to be skiing!  Washington still has 30 feet of snow in Tuckerman’s ravine!  It’s a very dangerous time to hike.  I’ve just been doing a lot of trail running and trying to stay fit.  I’ve been taking Teresa out with me when I can and we signed up for a race this weekend in CT that I will talk more about in the outro.  … One of the books I’m reading is “The Magic of Thinking Big!” By David Swartz.  This is a classic breathless self-help book from 1959.  It’s great.  It’s full of all the old-timey storytelling and phraseology of the era.  It’s basically a self-authored book from this guy’s speeches and programs that went viral in those days.  One of the quaint things he talks about is people who are suffering from ‘excusitis’.  Everyone has an excuse as to why they can’t be successful or live the life they want.  They are too old, or too young, or under-educated, or inexperienced.  He calls this excusitis! He talks about how that’s all in your head and how to flip it over and make those excuses strengths.  He talks about what I would call ‘feeding the good dog’ – meaning reinforcing those positive thoughts so your subconscious acts on them.  I also read through a series of early excerpts on government.  You might wonder why.  One of my daughters was recycling some text books and one of them was “The Great Works” a bit of a survey on great writing.  I rescued it.  (I always have 3-4 books going at a time) I read Aristotle on why government is not what we want but a natural emergence of a bargain to trade independence for security.  I read Thomas Hobbes on the natural rights of man, written in the 1600’s, and then the Declaration of Independence that cribs heavily from that with its rights to ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. Of course, they never meant total equality.  They meant political equality.  To get to total equality you’d have to force everyone to a middle state by hobbling the exceptional and lifting the less exceptional and this would bring civilization to a grinding halt.  That’s the dynamic we still work with today.  Where do we draw that line between independence and equality?  I also read a piece by Alexis de Tocqueville on how Americans are never happy with what they have.  That is true.  It’s our strength and our weakness. As I get older I am getting better at being happy with what I have.  Even in stressful times I’m quite content.  I picked up an old notebook and found that I had been listing things that I was grateful for as an exercise.  The first entry read, Friends and mentors Books Sweat My Daughters My old dog Buddy We’ve all got a lot to think about.  But we’ve all got a lot to be grateful for.  Feed the good dog – Fertilize the positive.  What are five things that you are grateful for today? On with the show! … I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to yet another Blue Apron or Hello Fresh ad.  As a matter of fact, stop being lazy and go shop for your own food.  We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio. I’ll also remind you that I have started raising money for team Hoyt for my 2017 Boston Marathon.  I would appreciate any help you can give.   The fundraiser is on Crowdrise (so I don’t have to touch any of the money) it goes straight to the Hoyts and supports acquiring equipment and supporting others who want to participate like the Hoyts do.  … The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported.  We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles. Yes, we are still working on setting up the separate podcast feed for the member’s content.  Most recently I recorded and uploaded the first chapter of the zombie novel I’ve been writing for 30 years.  Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you! Exclusive Access to Individual Audio Segments from all Shows Intro’s, Outro’s, Section One running tips, Section Two life hacks and Featured Interviews – all available as stand-alone MP3’s you can download and listen to at any time. Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com … Section one – Stepping up to a 50K from a marathon Voices of reason – the conversation Steve Hailstone Husband and father of 3. US Air Force veteran. California native transplanted in Pennsylvania. Reconnected with running in 2012. Heart attack survivor since early 2016. Seeking to understand Insulin Resistance as related to heart disease. Recently adopted Maffetone Method of running to ensure healthy retraining of heart. Section two – Getting out of a mental slump Outro Ok my friends, you have stumbled, clutching your chest, through to the end of episode 4-365 of the RunRunLive Podcast. You may have noticed that this episode was a week late.  I apologize.  I’m working with a startup out of California now and my time to write and produce has been significantly impinged.  I’m not traveling as much, but, paradoxically that means less writing.  Planes were always my quiet space.  I may have to take a vacation from the podcast this summer, maybe just drop some ancient podcasts from the past on to the feed for a few months while I get some breathing room. Teresa and I are heading down to Connecticut tomorrow to run a trail race.  She’s going to do her first trail race and her first ½ marathon distance.  I’m going to attempt the 50K.  I don’t have a CT marathon yet and I was a bit at loose ends so I jumped on this.  We’ll see how it goes.  Although the New England weather made its traditional leap from 50 to 95 in one day this week, it’s only going to be in the 70’s tomorrow.  It looks like a nice 10K loop course with some technical bits and a lot of elevation.  I’m just planning to hike it.  Would be thrilled to get in under 7 hours.  It will be my first 50K.  I’m thinking about taking a step back from racing and training this summer.  I’m leaning towards doing a 30 day program of just running 5 miles in the woods every morning for breakfast.  I think it would be a nice challenge and give me some more free time to boot. I carted my old motorcycle out to the Honda fix-er-up place this week.  Had to roll it into the back of my truck and strap it in – which was a bit dicey.  I made the service managers day dragging in a 33 year old motorcycle – seriously, they were excited to work on it.  Here’s the commercial from 1983, pretty cool huh? … So my friends, as we roll into the dog days of summer. What are your plans?  What great mountains are you going to climb?  What fabled beasts are you going to slay?  What frozen hearts are you going to melt?  Think about it.  Send me an audio.  I’ll play it if it isn’t too horrible.  I had some Silicon Valley type ask me in a meeting “If you had all the money in the world, what would you do?”  Not sure what that self-important prick, sorry did I say that out loud? I’m not sure what my west coast brother was looking to elucidate, but my answer was that I’d drop everything and run across the country.  But, I’d like to add to that answer.  I’d drop everything and grab a bunch of my friends and run across the country! That includes you. Meet me out back at the Winnebago and we’ll get started. And I’ll see you out there. MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks -