The Shakeout Podcast

A big part of the race experience is the sound of the race: motivational music, the countdown to the start, and hearing the finisher’s names as they cross the line. It is a spectacle, and it should be. In most cases runners arrive at a race in the mindset that this is not just an every day training run, and all of the sights and sounds on race day feed into that feeling that this is special.

The voice you hear on race day is the voice of the race announcer, who acts as the narrator, the story-teller of the race. Without it, you’d not only miss out on important information, like if the race is running behind schedule and where the porta-potties are, you’d also lose the sense that you are doing something significant and out of the ordinary that day.

On this week’s episode of The Shakeout, we bring you the story of the race announcer and see what it’s like to be the voice behind the microphone on race day.

Michelle Kempton began running in her mid-30s after the birth of her twins to improve her health, and within only a few years, became involved in her running community of rural Nova Scotia. She has been the race director of the Maritime Race Weekend since 2011 and each year has provided a two-day event that showcases the culture and community of the East Coast. 

On this week's episode of The Shakeout, we share Kempton's personal running story and discover that the unique running community in the Maritimes is all about good times, pirates, and cold beer. 

What makes a city runnable? 

Is there a race for every season? A club for the speed demons, the rookies, and beer drinkers alike? Clean air and access to safe trails? Or, ready access to water fountains and public washrooms for regular and irregular pit-stops?

On this week’s episode of The Shakeout we bring you the first in a series of episodes featuring the great Canadian running cities and this week we take you on a tour of Toronto with CBC Metro Morning host, proud Torontonian and runner Matt Galloway. For Galloway, who spends most of his time talking, running provides a way to explore his city in silence and simply to observe. 

Today is Marathon Monday.

This year marks the 122nd Boston Marathon, one of the most iconic races in sport.

It is the world’s oldest annual marathon and along with its long and dramatic history, the unforgiving course that spans the 42 kilometers between Hopkinton and Boston, and the fact that most runners must qualify to make it to the start, it is a race in which great stories are made.

For this week’s episode of The Shakeout, we asked you to share your Boston Marathon stories --and you answered.

Becoming a better runner involves a lot more than just running. There are a limited number of hours you can spend training before the risks of injury, mental exhaustion, and becoming dangerously anti-social outweigh the benefits of lacing up your shoes.

Getting the most out of every kilometer has a lot to do with how you spend the hours you’re not running. Getting enough sleep, having good eating habits, proper biomechanics, and being mentally strong are all separate pieces, that when combined with running itself, create a bigger picture of being a successful runner.

On this week's episode of The Shakeout, we speak with Amy Bender, clinical program director of Athlete Services at the Centre for Sleep and Human Performance in Calgary, Jen Sygo, registered dietitian and sports nutritionist, Chris Napier, team physiotherapist for Athletics Canada, and Kim Dawson, professor of Sport and Exercise Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University to get expert advice on how to build a runner's perfect day. 

The experience of running a marathon is full of lessons learned. From the training leading up to the race to the race itself, runners must face tests of physical endurance and mental strength. 

What makes the Paris Marathon stand out from all other marathons in the world is that it not only teaches these lessons of learning how to run hard and fast but it also teaches something completely unrelated to running: history. 

Paris is a city that is steeped in history and while winding through the course of the marathon, at almost every kilometer mark is another historical landmark or building. 

On this week's episode of The Shakeout, we take you through the Paris Marathon in the fastest lesson in history. 

parkrun is a weekly, free, timed 5K run in a park. This all sounds like nothing out of the ordinary. There are, after all, people running in parks all the time, either alone, with friends, or as part of a club or a team. 

It may come as a surprise then that internationally, parkrun is extremely popular. To date there was been over 200,000 events worldwide, including in countries such as Australia, Germany, France, Russia, and from its country of origin, the United Kingdom. 

On this week's episode of The Shakeout, we take a closer look at this organized run, which has been called a "global movement", how it got started in the United Kingdom and spread to Canada, and its unique appeal that actually has nothing to do with running. 

Silvia Ruegger represented Canada at the very first women’s marathon at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, at a time when women’s distance running was just starting to be accepted on the world stage.

Her plan to become an Olympian began when she was just 15 years old. On September 11, 1976, Ruegger sat in her bedroom in an old farmhouse in Newtonville, Ontario writing a note. It read: I will represent Canada at the Olympic Games. She then took the note and tucked it underneath the floorboards where no one else could see it. Eight years later, Ruegger became one of fifty women to race at the inaugural event.

That race in Los Angeles represented a struggle, not only of the obstacles faced by women in sport, but for Ruegger it was also simply a fight to overcome the extreme physical and mental challenges of the marathon.

On this week’s episode of The Shakeout we return to a story of one of the toughest athletes in Canadian running history and how she became a pioneer of women's running.

We would like to thank the Ontario Media Development Corporation for their contributions to this podcast.

On August 30, 2016, elite ultrarunner Adam Campbell was alpine running in the Selkirk Mountains, and fell. He fell over 200 feet and found himself lying face down in a pile of rocks and surrounded by blood. Incredibly, he survived, but had to battle back from a broken pelvis and spine. 

On this week's episode of The Shakeout, we take you back to our conversation with Campbell, who talks about the harrowing accident and the dramatic journey of his recovery and return to racing.

A Boston Marathon qualifier living in Canada is in jeopardy of missing the 2018 race because of Donald Trump’s travel ban. 

Toronto’s Soroush Hatami, who ran a 3:05:42 at the 2016 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, qualified for the prestigious Boston Marathon in the men’s 35-39 age category, which requires running a time of 3:10:00 or faster. Because he was born in Iran, it will not be easy for him to enter the U.S. and he may in fact miss his chance to race in the marathon for which he has qualified and registered. The 37-year-old is a permanent resident of Canada and is in the process of obtaining Canadian citizenship.

On this week's episode of The Shakeout, we chat with Hatami and his teammate Daniel Sellers, who has also qualified for this year's Boston Marathon, and how they are fighting against a ticking clock to both reach the start line of the most important race of their lives.