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Drummer Hill 50KRace Logohttps://shows.acast.com/runrunlive

As I staggered down into the trail head at the end of loop three, my head was fuzzy, I was thirsty, my legs were tired, and my back was sore. I had just run off course to add maybe a mile to the race. I was five hours in and over 22 miles done and the thought crossed my mind that maybe I’d done enough.

But, this was one of those moments. I knew it was coming. It had already started to suck. But that’s the whole point with ultras. To find the suck, make friends with it and move ahead. That’s why we do it. We know that in every ultra, sometimes more than once, there is going to be appoint where you get to choose to keep going.

And that, my friends is one of the most life-affirming moments we have. To find that place and decide to keep going. Because, experience will tell you, unless there is a bone sticking out or you’re coughing up blood, it’s not going to get any worse. The decision is just more of the same.

It’s a decision that says “Hey, I’m ok with a little discomfort. I’m ok with me.”

I figured once I got into loop four, the final loop, it would just take care of itself, everything would be ok. The decision to turn around and head back up the trail made the rest of the race inevitable.

So, I stopped drafting the apologetic, whiney email to my coach in my head. The one with all the sensible excuses. I walked to my cooler to restock my supplies.

The race director asked if he could fill my water pack, and I was, shall we say, ‘snippy’ with him. (Okay, I was 3rd-lap bitchy – it’s real thing, look it up.) Late race mental state has the interesting symptom of removing social filters.

I said, “Last time you over-filled it. Do you not know how much a liter is?” In my defense, it’s a two-liter bladder and I didn’t need two liters and didn’t want to lug the extra weight up and down all that technical vertical on this course that HE had designed.

I compromised by handing him a bottle of water from my cooler and said, “Here, use this.” Meanwhile I took a couple more Endurolytes and grabbed another bottle of Nuun.

Pack filled appropriately, and no really good excuses left, I fished out my phone and turned the volume down a bit, packed it back in, and turned to hike back up the first friggin hill for the fourth time. For some reason I yelled “105 out of transition”.

…

My training was good. No really. I came into this race healthier than I’ve been in the last five years. Since my last marathon at the end of January it has been a solid 3-month cycle. I transitioned off the roads and into my happy place – the trails around my house with my dog. Not a ton of mileage, like I used to do when I was a pup, but 3-4 solid hour and a half sessions a week with long runs on Saturday. Strength and yoga on the off days. Good enough to maintain my ‘avoid debilitating injury’ goal.

For an ultra the load was light. My peak week was in the 50’s and we spun the long run up to 20 miles on the trails. I was able to practice wearing the water pack and nutrition and equipment. All very easy peasy and nothing bad. As a veteran runner on the backslope of my career this is exactly my sweet spot now.

So yeah – very happy with this training cycle. It was work, but it was the right amount and kind of work.

Casting about for a race in May, I scheduled the Drummer Hill 50K as a proof point. “A proof point for what?” you ask. For my ability to pace Eric at Western States in June.

Pacing is a commitment. If you commit to pacing, you’d better damn well be able to do it. It’s one thing to screw up your own race but its bad form to fuck up someone else’s by not training well. Especially when it’s Eric and it’s Western States!

I figured 50K was a good distance to see how the old body performed. Drummer Hil was a small race in Keene NH at the right weekend on the calendar and close enough to my house to be same day drivable.

Based on my training, this 50K should not have be an issue. I mean, it’s always going to be challenging to run 30 miles, but if you’re trained, it’s not that big a deal. Everything added up to a good day. My long runs in my trails, on tired legs, with a full water pack, at an easy effort were all coming in under 12-minute miles. The math pointed out that on fresh, tapered legs I should be able to knock out 50K in 6ish hours.

I was not training to PR or podium. I was training to finish the distance and run strong through the finish. In my long training runs I used a 4-1 cadence, and yes, Jeff Galloway personally told me to do this. So, run 4 minutes then hike for a minute and repeat. This keeps me from working too hard early and really smooths out the effort. Even with the 1-minute hikes I was still coming in at a sub 12 minute mile on the trails, which at my age I will take and be happy about it.

So, training, check. Prepared, check. Now all I had to do was survive the taper.

The weekend before Drummer Hill I drove to Arlington to help my daughter move houses. I wondered how I’d feel after all the lifting and carrying and driving. I was tickled pink to have no ill effects at all. Not sore, not tired, no ill-effect from carrying boxes and furniture. Huh. With all that lifting and hauling it was like a really easy Spartan race.

I was well-trained, strong and healthy – and moving well into overconfidence.

The only wildcard might be weather. As this is New England in May, there was always the chance of the weather dice rolling wrong and getting a hot day. But even this fell in my favor. As race day approached the bullet was dodged. Race day started mid-forties and overcast!

Great racing weather forecast. This was turning out to be a yawner. I got myself a proactive massage and tried to watch my diet for the last week and get lots of sleep.

Race day, race ready. In the run up I organized my ultra-stuff in my ultra-bag. I have an ultra-stuff bag. Doesn’t everyone?

I packed up a cooler and organized nutrition. I wondered what to bring. On my long runs so far this cycle I really hadn’t worries too much about nutrition. I carried some bananas maybe, or oranges, and/or a handful of dates. I really like dates for race fuel. Great sugar boost and very digestible in a nice compact user format. Dates good for long runs.

Fishing through the ultra-stuff bag, I found some unused Nuun tablets g and mixed up 3 bottles. Better safe than sorry.

Saturday morning, I packed it all up into the truck and drove the hour and a half Northwest to the race start. This is not the kind of race where you have ‘an expo’ or anything like that. This is the kind of race where you have a handful of scruffy-looking characters at a folding table in a parking lot.

My kind of race.

I dropped my cooler and extra-clothes backpack at the trail head and chit chatted with the other runners. I had a couple friends there who were affiliated with my running club.

The course:

Drummer Hill is a loop course with four 12.5K loops. Which is great for self-support by staging your stuff at the trailhead. Very convenient. Quite manageable.

It was a cool day. My original plan was to start in a long sleeve and switch to a short sleeve when it warmed up. But the long sleeve I brought had the stinky shirt disease and was already acting anti-social so swapped for a short-sleeve-plus-light gloves option.

I put a liter of water in my pack, which is half-full. My reasoning was that there was an aid station and it was a loop course so I really didn’t need to carry all that water. I had a baggy full of dates with me in case I got hungry. I had the Nuun bottles, and some Gatorade bottles and a baggie full of Gu’s and some bottles of water and a couple Keytone-IQ shots.

I brought the Gu-gels because they were also in the ultra-stuff bag, but, the older I get the more I hate Gu’s so they were more of a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ item.

I also had some Endurolyte capsules, but with the cold weather I wasn’t super worried about cramping.

I wore my Grateful Dead Steal Your Face hat, because, you know, trail races. I decided not to bring my phone or my headphones to start. I could pick them up if I needed them for later loops. My experience is that the first loop has enough friendly conversation and you don’t need to be encumbered.

We started promptly at 8:00AM. There were around a hundred people at the start. A lot of them were only doing the one or two loop options. Everyone was having a good time. I love trail races. Trail runners are super chill. The first loop was conversational and chummy and great.

But the course surprised me. Leaning on a long tradition of not paying attention to the course before I start, I discovered it was a lot harder than I expected.

Right from the start we were heading uphill. Significantly uphill. Then we dropped off the rough fire road and into technical single path. Still uphill.

I had planned to run my normal 4-1 training ratio, but with all the technical uphill, that was impossible. I was forced into a more ad hoc hiking and running cadence that adapted to what the course gave me. I had the thought “Well, it’s a loop course, so it can’t all be up hill, and when I find the down hill bits I can make up some time.”

Which wasn’t a great strategy. Because the downhills were so technical you couldn’t relax. Basically, you were fighting the course the whole time. So working on the uphills and then working on the downhills.

I fell in with a nice, friendly group and we chatted our way through to the one aid station which was about 5 miles in. It seemed to take forever to get to that aid station. But when we did get there, it was what you’d expect in an ultra. Lots of food. Candy, peanut and jelly sandwiches, bananas, and my personal favorite; watermelon. I had half a banana.

Based on what people who had run the course before told me, it would be downhill out of the aid station to the start-finish transition point. But that turned out to be false intelligence. That was last year’s course. This year was a new course layout and after the aid station we got slammed into another technical uphill. I may have started to utter some foul language every time I turned a corner and was confronted with more technical uphill.

Eventually we rejoined the course we had already run and ran the technical uphill of the start back down. There was two-way traffic and I got to see the leaders (and the 60% of the runners who were faster than me) coming and going.

I finished up loop one, cruised into the exchange feeling fine. But, I felt like I had worked hard. I looked at my watch and was a full 20 minutes slower than my training paces.

Huh. What happened to that ‘will do much better on tapered legs’ stuff? I started doing math in my head and it made me unhappy so I buried all that away and got reloaded for loop two. I drank some of the Nuun and ate an Endurolyte and a couple of dates.

The race volunteers asked if I wanted my water packed filled. I said “Sure, but only a liter.” An instruction that was perhaps too vague, because they filled it up and I spent some time sucking mouthfuls and spitting them out on that first uphill trying to bring the payload down to where I wanted it. I was able to drop my gloves, but it was still quite cool. I was sweating but I certainly didn’t need all that water.

I was carrying my baggie full of dates, my primary race fuel, in the outer mesh compartment of my pack and when I grabbed a couple in the exchange, (after they handed me my overfull backpack) I found they had all escaped from the baggie and were now rattling around loose in the mesh.

“Who cares?” I thought to myself. I threw out the empty baggie and left them loose in there figuring feral dates would not make a difference and would be easier to access.

The second loop was more of the same. I was trying to figure out the topography of the course so I wouldn’t need to battle so much. My original strategies were out the window. With all the up and down technical, I just couldn’t find a groove. It felt like a frustrating combination of working too hard to move too slow.

On that first climb I stubbed a toe and pitched forward. I caught myself with my hands, but all the dates cascaded out into the trail in front of me. Ah well. I wasn’t going to fish around in the dirt for them. I’d manage.

That second loop I was still thinking about how slow I was going and trying to race and working hard. Not a great strategy. I was slowly coming to a more sanguine conclusion that the time was what it was and there was no sense beating myself to death against the rocks of New Hampshire.

I also managed to find the comparison I had been looking for. If I had to describe the course, I’d describe it as a Mountain Race. I have run plenty of mountain races and that’s what it felt like.

Towards the end of the 2nd loop I was feeling a bit challenged. I was tired. My feet were sore from all the root and rock prancing, and I was starting to worry that it might turn into a death march. The spiral death loop thinking goes something like this… “The course is different and way harder than I expected. Is this going to manifest in crushing leg fatigue and cramps in the final loop? What can I do? This fucking race is going to take all day at this rate.”

One more thing I haven’t mentioned is “The medical condition.” Euphemisms aside, I have developed a worsening case of amblyopia over the past three months. “What is amblyopia?” You ask. Well in a nutshell it is double vision. I think it has something to do with all the hours I have spent editing the second novel in my five-novel apocalyptic fiction series “After the Apocalypse.” (Shameless plug inserted. Coming to everywhere you buy books in June, book two, ‘Killer’.)

Anyhow, when I get tired my left eye wanders off and I see double. Which is super annoying for things like, say, driving or running headlong down a technical trail trying not to trip and die. Which means that by the end of loop two I was having to run a lot of sections with one eye closed which is crappy for depth perception.

I guess I should describe what I mean by technical. There is an official rating that uses a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is basically a mild dirt road and 5 requires the use of hands or ropes or ladders.

I think it should have a better unit of measure. I might default to ‘twisted ankles’. You know, we could rank it from 1 twisted ankle to 5 twisted ankles.

But that’s still pretty boring. How about bloody elbows? Or broken teeth?

Well on the 1-5 scale of copiously bleeding knees my trails around my house are mostly in the middle, let’s say 3 fracturde wrists out of 5.

Not awful, but not nothing.

These Drummer Hill trails I’d have to give 4-4.5 torn off toenails out of 5.

So, yeah, harder. I did use my hands on some of it.

I fell twice. My over-under was 3, so if you had the under you win. Luckily I sustained very little damage. Throw in a half-dozen toe stubs on the uphills where I was able to catch myself with my hands and it wasn’t even close. I think I was going so slow it didn’t hurt to fall.

But, back to the action, I rolled out of loop two and into the exchange, having shed all my overconfidence (and most of my confidence) and was feeling pretty beat up looking down the barrel of another 3+ hours of trudging.

I drank one of the KeytoneIQ shots I had brought. Just to see if it would clear the brain fog. I ate a couple more endurolytes and, since my dates had gone off on their own trail adventure, I took a bottle of Nuun with me from the cooler to carry with me on the third loop.

I managed my own water resupply by pouring a water bottle from my cooler into my pack.

I started back up the trail, but after a few steps, realized I had forgotten something. The ultra-running secret weapon. So I turned around.

It was time to call in the reserves.

I went to my bag and got my headphones and my phone and dialed up an endless stream of Grateful Dead.

Thusly well-equipped I turned into my own brain and back into the belly of the beast.

By this point, there weren’t many people left on the course. Occasionally someone would come in the other direction and we’d grunt something at each other..

I was like some weird one-eyed pirate lost in my own head.

But I was finally starting to figure the course topography out. It was shaped like a saddle. First you went up a big hill and then down into the aid station, then up again and finally down into the finish.

Repeat.

I stopped trying to race the uphills, stopped trying to fight the course, and settled into hiking where it was hard. Just sort of zoned out and moving.

My companion was a Dead show in Pasadena California from 1969. An outstanding Dark Star and Pigpen leading a nearly 30 minute long Love Light.

Let it shine, shine, shine. Let it shine.

Of course, the risk of premeditated Dead treatment in the trails on a long day manifested and I got lost. Right before the aid station I was running along lost in my head when I realized the rock bridge I was crossing didn’t look familiar and I hadn’t seen a course flag in a while.

Rut Row.

I gave it a few hundred more feet and turned around. Sure enough, the flags went left and I stayed right. In the trail running community we refer to this as ‘bonus mileage’. It wasn’t a course issue. The course was marked perfectly well and obvious.

I was just spacing out on auto pilot.

Coming into the 3rd transition to finish loop 3 and start loop 4, the last loop, I had thoughts about calling it a day. But put those aside and made the turn. This is that moment in every long race. It’s maybe why we do it. When we need to make a decision to continue. That’s life. Every day.

I decided to keep at it.

Frankly, after I stopped fighting the course and got a bottle of Nuun down, I felt pretty good.

And with that, the 4th loop felt good. Legs were fine. No cramps. Had another bottle of Nuun with me to sip and an excellent 12-minute Terrapin Station from 1981. I wasn’t racing or trying to attack anything. Just being groovy. I actually passed a couple people.

A couple tactical foot-care things cropped up. First was I picked up some small gravel in my shoes, but it wasn’t bad enough to warrant stopping to shake them out. I also had an issue with the silicon toe caps that I wear to keep from pulling the nail off my big toe. The downhill was so technical they worked off my toe and were scrunched up in the toe-box. But, it was more curious than bothersome at that point late in the race so I ran with them.

I did make another brief wrong turn at the start of the 4th lap, but corrected quickly and forced myself to pay attention at the intersections from that point on.

Early in the 4th lap my watch started complaining about a low battery. But I ignored it and it lasted well past the finish line.

Basically, once I got into the final loop it was fine. It was a Fait accomplie. The finish was never in doubt. I was just slow. Legs were fine. No cramping at all. Just slow.

I think I may have over-served myself on the electrolytes, because I did have some Adema swelling in my hands at the end, but it cleared up with 5-6 bottles of water.

All-in-all it was a successful outing and I learned a lot.

• I’m in decent shape and well trained.
• Was able to adapt in process to an unexpected course and not get thrown.
• Hill climbing requires a different muscle set, but a strong core is the ultimate multi-tool. .
• Needed more hiking practice.
• Needed more hyper-technical up and down training.
• Nutrition was fine.
• Core was good.

So that is it, my friends, Drummer Hill 50K in the can. Next up, in just about 30 days we jet out to Sacramento (where you know there will be a lot of Dead Heads) to help Eric get his buckle.

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Sun MarathonA good day in Utah.I have gotten out of the practice of writing race reports.

How does this work again?

Oh yeah, now I remember…

I’m supposed to start with a high-stakes moment in the race, describe it in compelling detail, get you breathless and hooked, and then, pull the rug out and leave you with a cliff-hanger.

Make it compelling, hook the reader in right up front. Give them enough information to ride the ride and promise them a satisfying resolution.

Then go back and fill in the messy details, exposition and clutter.

And there should be some sort of thread. A thought or expression that provides a bit of backbeat to keep the bits entangled and syncopated, like you do.

…

The guy wearing the race tee shirt, a peach-colored, minimalist, cotton affair, had been trading places with me as I fought my way up the long hill at mile twenty-four.

On any given day it would not be a long hill or a challenging hill, but, hey, did I say ‘mile twenty four’?

When we made that hard left turn into that uphill, I was thankful for having driven the course the day before because I knew where the top was. I knew what happened next. Once I got to the top of that hill and made the next right it was downhill through some neighborhoods to the finish line.

I do love a downhill finish.

I had been trading places with mister race shirt because when we took that turn, they mixed us head-long into the 5K and 10K runners and pushed us over to an uneven cement sidewalk.

But, I made it here, to this point. This was where I wanted to be. Within spitting distance of the finish line with my legs still under me. I knew I had time in the bank. Maybe as much as 5 minutes. Maybe as little as 2.

I knew I could lose some, but not too much.

I needed to keep running.

Keep moving.

My head was good.

My legs were wrecked.

Finally, that right hand turn.

The neighborhood sidewalk. The downhill.

I fought my wobbly legs off the damn sidewalk into the friendlier asphalt bike lane.

I looked at my watch for the 500th time.

Looks like I have 4 minutes. And somewhere around a ½ mile left?

A goddamn 800.

Two laps of the track.

How fast can I run an 800?

How slow can I run an 800?

I’m hunched into the shallow descent, holding on for dear life, cursing the finish line that won’t be conjured into view no matter how much I will it to.

Mr. Race Shirt is chatty.

“Great Pace!”

Silence

“Are you running the 10K?”

I grunt “No” with as much ‘leave me the fuck alone’ as I can manage.

“Marathon?” He asks incredulously.

I grunt “Yeah”

He says something else.

I don’t care.

800 meters. How long will it take me?

I used to be able to cover 1600 meters in 6 minutes.

How much buffer do I still have left?

Should I try to sprint?

I’m unsteady.

Keep the legs turning.

Keep moving.

Keep running dammit.

This is what you trained for. This is where you wanted to be. In the late miles with a chance. Where it’s not about training anymore it’s about grit and willpower.

And being alive.

…

I’ve gotten out of the habit of writing epic race reports.

I thought I should right this one up, for a few reasons. First, it was a good, positive race for me. A step forward in a lot of areas, and there’s always value in reviewing the whys and wherefores of a successful campaign.

Second, I’m stuck in Vegas with the snowpocalypse camped over my house in New England, and this is probably the safest, if not best, use of my time. (I laid out my damp race clothes on the floor to dry, so the maid service may die from fumes.)

And, finally, I’m bad at documenting, née, celebrating wins. My neurodivergence folds them up and tucks them away so I can chase the next shiny object. I suppose that protects me from ever having to dwell in any one place for too long. Keep moving so the dragons can’t catch you. But rightly these are those memories, the ones you’re supposed to be making, so you should probably try to remember them.

I’m a little hesitant because from an objective point of view this race result is mediocre at best, but if you know the context, well, it’s something.

How did we get here?

Let me explain…no let me sum up.

It all started a few years ago. I was doing hill repeats early in the year, training for some race, and my left knee went ouchy-Mc-ouchy. The ouchy turned out to be some sort of “Stress-fracture-like-bruise on the condyle” for which my doctors were disinterested in finding a solution.

I fought it, like you do. Trying everything. But I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to stop. That ‘The Journey’, the adventure, might be over.

So,I rode my bike, like you do. Did some hiking, like you do. Lifted weights, like you do. I got sad and I got fat, like you do.

My doctor was stern with me about my blood pressure and lipids.

One day, I tried a little running. Very slowly. Short distances. Flat surfaces. Just to see if anything was salvageable.

Trying to forget all the history. Trying to be a new man, student.

I made a deal with the universe. I said “Please, just let me run 5 miles pain free. That’s it. That’s all I want. Give me that and I’ll be satisfied.”

And slowly, I got there.

You hear stories about people learning how to walk again after an accident.

It was like that. Baby steps. Consistency.

I kept going, like you do. A little longer. Maybe just a little faster. A Little bit more effort.

Every time the knee started to talk back I’d back off a little.

Cautious, like a baby. Listening to my now over-60-year-old-body and coaxing it like a frightened horse back to the starting chute.

No hills, no strength work on the legs.

But miles.

Beautiful, wonderful, miles.

Mostly pain free.

And I got to thinking, like you do, that I always do better with a race goal. So I signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon. I got a long, slow, low-mileage training cycle in and ran the race. It was miserable. I walk-jogged most of it.

But I finished.

Check off the box. Take the medal. Add a shirt to the pile.

Maybe I can do this again?

Maybe I’m not dead and buried?

So I signed up for another race, like you do, and started on a nutrition plan. I lost the weight. Got lean. Trained through another slow, low-volume cycle and ran the Napa Valley marathon. We had a pretty good race. Still had to walk run the end but came in faster than the first one.

So I signed up for a 100K trail race, like you do, and commenced to build some good trail volume. A spring and summer of joy in the woods with the dog, breathing the good air, pulling the good Earth energy up though my feet.

That is, until I caught a toe 3 weeks before the race and broke my shoulder, yah know, like you do.

But, by now, I was starting to feel pretty good. I was seeing tempo paces that I hadn’t seen since before the injury and the knee was hanging in there. So I signed up for another race, yah know, like you do, and said, “Let’s get after this one and see if I can qualify!”

Oh the folly!

Oh the hubris.

(Insert snide comment about monkeys and backs here)

I picked the Mesa Marathon because it was a downhill course in a warm place in February, (this was before Boston added the penalty minutes for downhill races).

I put in another training cycle. Still keeping the volume low enough to not tweak the knee and still staying off the hills.

My thinking was, I had been turning in long tempo runs of 30 seconds or more faster than my goal pace, so according to the old math it should work. If I could stay on pace early and make it past 20, I would have a chance to gut it out at the end.

You know, the old ‘marathon miracle’.

But that’s not what happened. I went out hard and my legs were cooked before I even got to the half. I didn’t have it. But I felt like I was close. I was missing something. I just needed a little more speed, a little more volume.

My reasoning was that I had the pace, I just wasn’t strong enough.

So I signed up for another race, like you do.

Did another training cycle. Did more speedwork. Focused on strength.

Got to the starting line and went out hard and again lost my legs even earlier. I walked off the course, wet and dejected at 15 miles.

I needed a mental reset. I had asked to be able to run 5 miles pain free and here I was getting greedy.

Karma’s a bitch.

Here’s the thing. I was being rational for the athlete I was 10 years ago. But I was being irrational for the athlete I am now.

What I have learned, learned the hard way, like I do, from these past four years is that the real struggle is to stop competing with memories. Stop competing with that other guy from the past. To wipe the slate clean and make friends with this new guy.

And to stop fighting my 63-year-old body, expecting it to be beaten into submission. Into youthfulness.

To learn, instead, to work with it and, in doing so, to become something new.

Maybe even something better.

And as defeating as going out hard and blowing up at back-to-back marathons is, I was learning.

And that’s what the journey is. That’s what it’s always been. It’s learning.

So, I signed up for another race, like you do.

This one would be the Sun Marathon in St. George Utah. Tim is working his way through the 50 states and needed company. Then Gary said he was in town for a conference and would tag along too.

Now, the question became, how would I internalize and apply what I learned?

First, thing I needed to address was hills. I was getting taken out by even the smallest elevation change. I needed to bite the bullet, move off the flat rail trail path and out onto the elevation choked, narrow, icy, New England roads. Back to my roots. Back to where it all began. Like Rocky running through the streets of Philly at the break of day.

Back to the familiar forge.

Second, thing I wanted to do was to race more. Actually feel the feels and make the decisions with people breathing down my neck, on bad roads and in bad conditions.

That is where you find truth.

Third, I wanted to work at least two 20 milers into my training. I don’t know if this is superstition or a valid training strategy, but I told coach that’s what I wanted. 20 miles. Out on the road. Out in the cold. Out on the hills. 20 miles.

And I did all those things.

But the biggest thing I did was to reset my mind. Stop competing with that other guy. Get up every day and, as corny as it sounds, embrace each workout as a gift, and run with joy, knowing how privileged I am to be able to still do what I love.

For this race my ‘A’ goal would not be to qualify. My ‘A’ goal would be to run a smart race and finish it, still running. And if, big if, I needed to put a time goal on it, let’s pick a round number.

Instead of swinging for the fences, I would aim for simply getting under 4 hours.

To some of you 4 hours will sound incredibly slow. To some of you it will sound unattainably fast. To me, I speculated that if I had not crashed in those previous races, 4 hours would be about right.

I hadn’t seen the soft pink underside of 4 hours since the knee injury.

It felt right, like good goals do.

So, train better, race better and, most importantly, enjoy it.

Take the next step.

…

The Race was Saturday. We flew in Thursday Night and drove the 2 ½ hours from Las Vegas to St George Utah.

St. George is a southern Utah boom town of a couple hundred thousand souls. Everything seems to have been built in the last 10 years. Tract housing, strip malls, little businesses. We asked around, but nobody could explain all the growth. The locals said it was tourists.

Friday was a free day, so we drove the course, like you do, and it frightened us a wee bit.

The elevation map showed a consistent, but gradual downhill. The course we drove showed an undulating highway with lots of little ups and downs and some significant climbs at unfortunate places.

We drove all the way to the start in Veyo, UT, which has a population of 3-500 souls and is famous, apparently, for its pie shop.

We should have bought a pie.

As for signs of an impending marathon…there was nothing. No signs, porta-johns, water-stops being set up, cones being dropped…nothing but that undulating, rolling, 2-lane black top through the canyons waiting to eat us like an angry anaconda.

Now that Tim and I knew what we were up against we drove over to Zion Canyon Park and did a short scenic hike as a warmup.

Pretty place Zion. Other-worldly.

We met up with Gary in the afternoon who joined us from his company’s kick-off meeting in Vegas.

The weather forecast was in that stupid place between cold and warm. Somewhere in the low 30’s at the start. Somewhere in the 40’s at the finish. Right on the line between shorts and tights. I really wanted to wear shorts, but, in the end, I caved, like you do, and went with the tights.

I think I could have gotten away with the shorts.

After passing through the Running Center Store to grab our bibs we went to the Thrift Store to provision for the cold start. I bought a $10 pair of sweatpants and a $6 long sleeve tech pullover.

I had brought a fuzzy. throw-away, winter hat and some long overdue throw-away gloves.

We had a nice Italian dinner, swung by the supermarket for some bananas and oatmeal, stopped at a late night Starbucks for me to get my morning coffee.

And, we were set to go.

We made plans to meet in the lobby at 4:45 AM, laid out our stuff, and went to sleep.

…

The morning broke early and stress free. I woke up at 4AM which was 6:AM my time, drank my coffee, ate my oatmeal, rubbed my legs, got suited up, and made it down the lobby to meet Tim and Gary for the ride over to the park where we would meet the buses to the start.

There was no drama to any of this. We took Gary’s car because he was the fastest runner among us and would be back first.

I decided to keep it simple. I shut off and abandoned my phone to lighten the load.

Note: This is not an example of ‘Chekov’s phone’ – I have never raced with my phone, I only mention it because I had started to carry it in these slower races. This race , I decided, I would focus on the race and not worry about twiddling with a satanic pocket computer.

I wore my thrift clothes over my race kit, my gloves, and my fuzzy hat. I clipped my normal ‘Boston Strong’ racing cap to my vest to have it for later when it warmed up.

One water bottle, a couple Keytone-IQ bottles, 4-5 Endurolytes, a small tube of lube, and one old Gu pack, all tucked into the cheap vest I’ve been using.

Simple.

Minimalist.

Well-worn.

It was mid-30’s and overcast in St. George as we gathered into the impressive modern coaches. We were a bit shocked. We were expecting the classic yellow school buses, but, no, they drove us out in style!

Everyone was in a good mood, and we chatted our way up the dark winding roads to Veyo for the 7AM start.

We had scoped out the start the day before. It was in this small park between a graveyard and a rodeo ring. But, when we got there in the morning, we couldn’t see any of that because it was pitch black.

The race team set up a couple of fire barrels and we clustered around those in our throw-away thrift store clothing trying to stay warm. It was just about freezing with a stiff side wind blowing south at a good 15 mph.

A cold, howling wind carrying the fire from the barrels sideways across the high desert.

As we were standing around telling stories, Erlend, a tall runner from Finland came over and said he recognized my voice from the podcast, which is always cool, and we invited him into our sewing circle and took some pictures.

I told them my leg rub story, because Tim had thought it was funny, and like all stand up routines it gets better every time you practice it, like you do.

So now, I’ll tell it to you.

With the cold weather, hard training, longer runs and races, I found myself really wanting to rub some warmup gel on my legs to get them ready. This is a practice that goes all the way back to running cross country in prep school. Massage a little warmup into the major muscles to get the blood flowing before you head out. Especially now that I’m old, the warmup helps the cranky old muscles, well, warm up.

But, I am so old that they discontinued my favorite warmup gel, FlexAll454. They don’t make it anymore. So, I’ve been casting about for a replacement.

I was in the Dollar Store buying some envelopes for my mother, like you do, and they had these tubes of warmup cream.

I bought one.

Well, the week before the race, I had one last little taper run, and I thought to myself, “Hey! I’ll test out that gel and see how it works before I drag it out to Utah. Because, who knew what Dollar-Store warmup gel would be like?

So, I grab the tube of the counter in the bathroom, bring it downstairs, and rub it into my quads, and hammies and calfs. It’s a bit thicker, stickier than I’m used to, more of a paste, and while it has some mint to it, it isn’t very warming.

But, hey, Dollar Store warm up. What can you do?

I finish up and go for my run.

When I get back, and I’m changing, I see the tube on the bathroom counter and realize…I had grabbed the wrong tube off of the counter and used toothpaste.

Better than brushing my teeth with warmup gel, I guess.

A good laugh was had around the fire, and the younger ones said I should do it on TicTok and claim it as the new running hack.

At the 10-minute warning the race team dumped buckets of water on the fires in a big plume of steam, like some ancient ceremony, to get us all away from the fires and over to the start.

The start line was an inflatable arch out on the road and you threw your checked bag, if you had one into the back of a pickup truck. I ditched my thrift sweatpants but kept the long sleeve and the fuzzy hat and my gloves.

As we’re wandering around the start line, we start seeing people holding pace signs. This is where I find the second person I know from online, Todd Yerkes, who is apparently from the area and one of the pacers.

Let’s pause a second and revel in the wonder that is the online running community.

I flew to the middle of nowhere in UT to run a race with less than a couple hundred people in it and ended up meeting two people from our online community.

How about that? I guess the internet isn’t all bad.

It was still quite dark at the start. Sunrise wasn’t until 7:44. Some folks were wearing head lamps and some had knuckle lights. At least we had people to follow but you couldn’t really see the ground for the first couple miles.

I managed to find the 4-hour pacer and made a vow.

A vow that I have horribly violated in the previous 2 races.

Stay with the 4-hour pacer until the end. Take it easy out of the start. Pace myself. Run smart.

And then we were off. I don’t remember and anthem or a gun or a horn. I think someone said ‘Go!’

I introduced myself to Douglas the pacer. Douglas was from Brazil, living in Utah. I tried to make sure I stayed on the road in the dark to not trip and fall in the first mile. I was working hard and noted to Douglas that he might want to check his pace. I did my best to slow him down because the effort felt a little high.

The first couple miles were through Veyo and across a highway and into the two-lane, undulating road through the canyons. This was flattish to downhill but nothing challenging.

There were water stops every two miles. At the first one I ditched my fuzzy hat and pulled on my Boston Strong hat. It was warm enough now and the wind was on our backs.

I had found that fuzzy hat by the side of the road last year. It was a West Coast Choppers hat, not really my style, but functional. It had a good run. Now it would go back to the thrift store.

The first major course element was around 4 miles in where a switch back dropped us steeply a few hundred feet down into the canyon.

A couple runners flew by us, but I was holding back and diplomatically coaching out loud. “Elbows back, fast feet, don’t fight the hill, stay off the quads.” I was not going to lose my race here. I stuck with Douglas and we kept on knocking off the miles.

At every aid station I’d take a drink of Powerade. Maybe 6 ounces. I had my one soft bottle in the vest for when I needed to sip some water, but it was cold enough that I wasn’t worried.

After we dropped into the canyon, and the sun started coming up, I asked someone to hold my vest and threw the thrift long sleeve at a water stop. I ditched that pair of long-suffering gloves too.

The next landmark was the massive town of Gunlock at mile 8 with 250 residents and several very friendly cows who let us know their interested in us by vocalizing enthusiastically. Next up was the internationally famous Gunlock State park and reservoir at mile 10.

And so we rolled through the high desert canyons, loosely tracking the Santa Clara River. We ran on the road shoulder into light morning traffic. I focused on keeping my form clean, staying with Douglas, and ‘riding the bicycle’.

Nice and easy.

There was a hill at mile 9, another one at mile 10, and I navigated them as cleanly as I could manage. I was relying on Douglas, or ‘Doug’ as I now called him, but couldn’t help noticing that he was banking time. Not too much, but we were consistently faster than the 4 hour pace.

We had also picked up a friendly ultra-runner named Kerry who happened to fall in with Douglas and me. Kerry and I swapped stories and compared notes. She was a veteran of Wasatch and Javelena, and running this as a light recovery run, like you do if you’re an ultra-runner.

We rolled through mile 15 and, (hooray), I felt no crash symptoms. In my previous races this was the point where life had started to suck and reality had set in. But, here I was, staying in the pace, cruising along.

Huh.

I drank the first of two Keytone-IQ bottles I had in my vest and a couple Enduralytes, just in case, like you do.

Occasionally there was a nice pushing tailwind. I took to calling it “The hand of God” in deference to the saintly population of Utah, which Kerry thought was hilarious.

About this point I noticed our friend Douglas was struggling and starting to fall back.

Whelp.

looks like we needed a plan ‘B’. So I asked Kerry if she wouldn’t do me a giant favor and pace me into the high miles. She loved the idea. And we continued chatting and running, having a grand old time.

There was a significant hill at mile 18 that I struggled a bit on, my breath came hard and I wondered if maybe the shoe was dropping or maybe it was altitude or whatever. But, Kerry pulled me up the hill.

She was keeping me on pace. So much so, that with the buffer Douglas, (may he rest in peace), had built we were tracking at 10 minutes ahead. At which point Kerry hilariously asked me if I wanted to pick up the pace and try for a BQ, like you do.

I assured her vociferously that that was not why I was here today.

After that hill we got pushed onto a bike path and I recovered on the shallow downhill.

There was one final long hill around 18.5 that loomed like a Mount Kilimanjaro in my imagination from our course ride the day before. But, I knew I had money in the bank and just needed to keep running.

I did lose some speed on the hill but made it up and over, and frankly, was surprised that it wasn’t that big at all.

Now I knew the next landmark was the hard turn at mile 24 that led to the finish.

Again, I relaxed and ran. It was a nice shallow downhill for the most part. I was feeling a bit beat up but the wheels were turning and I still had my form.

Then a thing happened that told me I was going to have a good day.

I looked down and saw the 20-mile mark painted on the road. And I thought to myself, (and probably said out loud), “Holy Cow, how did that happen?”

We had been chatting along and not paying attention to the miles and I was surprised. In a bad race you count the miles like Golem grabbing at the ring. In a good race they just appear out of nowhere.

Somewhere in there I lost Kerry who ran ahead. But she had done her job, just like Douglas had done his. I drank another Keytone. I was in full end-of-race cruise control as the Mile 24 turn appeared.

This was exactly where I wanted to be.

Turning into the final miles, still running, maybe 8 minutes in the bank, nothing left to do but fight and close the deal.

There was one volunteer at the turn, which apparently wasn’t enough, because Tim told us later that he missed the turn and had to bushwhack his way back to the course, and added, fittingly, an extra mile.

I, on the other hand, made the turn and stared up at a long, shallow grind, peopled with 5K and 10K runners and wonky cement sidewalks.

…

The turn into the finish line, which we had also scoped out the day before, came into focus like a long-lost lover, yah know, like they do. And I pushed the pace around the corner up the path for a 3:58 finish.

I got my medal and found some water and some lovely Clementine oranges, quite pleased with the positive outcome.

I had run the race that I trained for and trained for the race I had run.

Could I have done better? Meh, maybe I could have squeezled another minute out of it. Could I have done worse. Oh, yeah. I could have attacked those early downhills and no-doubt ended up walking it in.

And that, my friends is how you have a good day in Utah, yah know, like you do.

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Episode 5-517 – Tamas Pinta – Living 40fiedPodcast link -> https://shows.acast.com/runrunliveHello my running friends. And welcome to episode 5-517 of the RunRunLive Podcast.

Today we are continuing on our theme of how to navigate the transitional seasons of our lives. I have a interview with Tamas from Tasmania who compiled a wonderful book of wisdom from famous fitness teachers.

In section one I’m going to give you something short and sweet and in section two I’ll give you some more discourse around the teachings from Tamas’ book.

I know I haven’t been releasing the show with alacrity, but I also know that there is a core crew of you folks out there that are my friends that appreciate it when I do drop a show.

I’m in a transitional season of my own life and the reality of that for me is that I’m half-in and half-out of multiple things and it all stacks up. Creating both mental and physical stress of switching from one thing to another. I’ve come to realize that there is a ‘switching cost’ that no one seems to consider.

But, I figure what I’m learning about this process will be useful for you as well, and will continue to document it.

I have been busy. I have been training and even racing. I’ll talk through that in the outro.

I talk to you today from the depths of the New England winter. It’s cold and dark, but it’s also beautiful. It fills me with gratitude and a peacefulness The natural world is resting, hibernating, breathing deeply and at peace.

I’ll tell you one funny story. Last week was one of the last build weeks for this training cycle. I had two 8 mile tempo runs. Warm up for 20 minutes, hit the middle 40 minutes at tempo then cool down for 10 minutes.

The first day I came back from one of these, quite proud of myself for executing it well. But of course it’s winter so I’m wearing a lot of tight, technical gear. And when I go to pull some of the wet clothes off I somehow pull a muscle in my back. Nothing serious. Just a twinge from the odd angle and the persistence of the wet technical gear.

But I had to laugh at the irony. Here I am in pretty good shape, feeling a certain sense of smugness and my body takes the opportunity to step in and remind me that I am an old guy.

Then, two days later, I do the same workout, and it goes great. I’m in a rush because I have a work call to get to, so I’m trying to jam my foot into my jeans, and my foot cramps hard. I can’t straighten it out.

I had to put on sweatpants. Good thing I work remotely.

On with the show.

Section One – Ice bath Baby.And books I’ve recently enjoyed – https://runrunlive.com/quick-note-on-books-ive-recently-read

Interview: Tamas Pinta – 40fied Fitness

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| Tamas Finta |

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Hi Chris

Thank you again for the great chat and for having me on your podcast,

My website: www.40fiedmenshealth.com.au

My Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@40FIED

A profile photo is attached.

Bio:

Tamas Finta is a strength and movement coach, lifelong student of health, and founder of 40FIED Men’s Health. Driven by a passion to help men thrive in midlife and beyond, he has studied with leading experts on four continents, diving deep into physical performance, mental resilience, and healthy aging. Tamas is the self-published author of Living 40FIED: Mental and Physical Resilience for Men Over 40 and the creator of the 40FIED online coaching program. He also leads live workshops and actively supports men’s mental health initiatives.

Regards

Tamas

Section Two: Lessons from 40fiedOutroOk my friends, you have, with great philosophical resilience, transitioned to the end of, Episode 5-517, Let me get you a kettlebell. I always thought it was a kettleball. I don’t know. A big hunk of heavy metal with a handle.

I just finished, as you heard, my last 20 mile long run for this training cycle and Tim and I will be meeting up in Sin City to drive out to the Sun Marathon in Utah on the 24th.

The cycle has gone well.

After failing to complete my target race in September I went back to the drawing board. I’m still trying to figure out what I am capable of in this new season.

There were really two things I wanted to change in this training cycle The first was to get off the rail trail and get some real road work done with some actual elevation change.

I had been sticking to the rail trail because it was easier on my knee, and logistically easier in general. It has very little elevation gain and loss. Which is fine for what it is and let’s you really focus on paces and workouts without having to worry about too many external influences. But, it gives you a false sense of strength and fitness.

These past few months I have been training almost exclusively on the hilly roads around my house. At first it was hard, but it feels like I’ve adapted well.

The second thing I wanted to accomplish in this cycle was to get at least two runs in close to 20 miles. And I did that successfully. I don’t know how much of that is me not being willing to let go of old beliefs, but I always raced better when I had the volume. Even if those long runs are a struggle they add to that bank of experience you need for the marathon.

The, third, unofficial thing I wanted to do was to race more. Just to feel what it was like to go deep and suffer a bit and see if I could hold it and recover. You can train ll you want, but there is nothing quite as acute as an actual starting line.

And I did all this training and racing without re-injuring anything. My knees and everything else is holding up well and I’m proud of that. I’m proud of doing the work in such a way that it supports not only my race goals but my long-term health.

That being said, I’m still in the learning process and I have no time goals or expectations for this race.

Included in this cycle were a couple of races. I ran a made up half marathon with my club. I ran the Hangover Classic 10K up in Salisbury and jumped in the ocean afterwards. The things we’ll do for a t-shirt!

It went fine. I had a great time, but there was one mile where I was running directly into a stand-me-up wind. That winter wind on the ocean just rips at you.

The weather was awful and the water was indescribably cold. But I was fine.

So, I had process goals in this cycle and I met them.

I don’t know what I’m going to do after this event. But there are a couple things on the early warning RADAR. Dave McGilvray, the race director for Boston is threatening to put on a 776 challenge in May – 7 marathons in 7 days across 6 New England states. I told him I was interested. That would be an enormous stretch for me. I’d really need to learn some new tricks to do that.

And, Eric, (Hi Eric), got into Western States via the lottery. I told him I’m carry his bags if he needed help. I’ve never been to Western States and would love to see it.

I’ll leave you with a story. And I’m going to obfuscate this a bit to protect the innocent.

I’m still working, even though I thought I’d be retired by now. I don’t really know why I’m still working. Kinda like a shark that can’t stop swimming when you remove its brain.

Over the last decade I’ve been phasing myself out. I have been consciously offloading responsibility and accountability.

This morning I had a call with a customer. Somehow, someone had…well…allowed this customer to assume things that were not in line with reality. I had been avoiding this call because, a) I was not responsible for the reality disconnect, and b) I knew it would be a tough interaction.

This morning we had the call. I led it. I explained the ‘facts’. Then the account team had a long, uncomfortable conversation with the customer. I don’t think anything was resolved. Because the reality disconnect still exists.

But – a couple of lessons. One, sins of omission are still sins. Letting people assume is bad for a long term relationship. Two, bad news doesn’t get better with age. I should have taken this call 3 months ago. It may not have been pleasant, but it got them started on a different conversation. Three, there is no good or bad. There is only the emotion or the value you assign to the event. Don’t lose sleep over this shit that you won’t remember in a year. And finally, It’s never as bad as you build it up to be. Never.

Don’t walk past those lions. Take them on. Learn something new.

Tell a better story.

And I’ll see you out there.

Buy a book -> https://booklocker.com/books/13731.html

Amazon -> https://www.amazon.com/After-Apocalypse-Story-Pandemic-Survival/dp/0977234207

…

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Lessons from ‘Living 40FIED – Building mental and physical resilience for men over 40: Stories of practical wisdom.By Tamas Finta

This is a perfect book for aging athletes, but the lessons are universal.

It is a set of ‘stories’, really extended narratives, from men who have had a big impact on the science and practice of fitness, who are now learning into the later part of their lives.

The book captures each of these stories in short chapters that are summaries of the wisdom that man has acquired. That lifelong wisdom is then applied to the later seasons of life, providing a grab-bag of not only acquired wisdom but advice in the form of ‘what are the most important things to consider’ as we live forward.

My recommendation would be to make this book part of a daily routine. I read a chapter each morning as part of my morning routine. I found digesting the lessons this way to be incredibly valuable to my daily mindset.

I then went back at the end, before I spoke with Tamas, went through each chapter and took notes. Actual notes on paper. This allowed me to not only reinforce the more useful points but also to find where the universal overlaps were.

It is not something you are going to speed read straight through. Each of these chapters, each of the narratives from these men could be its own standalone treatise. Each of these men have built careers and lives around their philosophies and this is just a sampling.

Tamas’ area of focus and expertise is the ‘fitness industry’. Meaning the people who populate gyms, lift heavy things and base their lifestyles around those pursuits. But, I found the wisdom to be universal across athletic pursuits regardless of whether you’re out on the road or sweating in the workout room.

If you are an aging athlete, you could treat this as a workbook. Read each chapter and then spend some time integrating the lessons into your own approach.

Hey, who knows, you might learn something. You might learn something about yourself.

As we would expect, many of the lessons are universal, not just to aging athletes, but to living well. They also provide metaphors and frameworks to help you remember and internalize the lessons.

So let’s talk about lessons from the book.

First, tricky as it sounds, resoundingly so, every one of these coaches and athletes starts with the mental game. They don’t dive into techniques and workouts. They start with the power of your mind.

It starts with the mental game. How think about challenges is important. Your ability to reframe adversity to curiosity and positive challenge will bring out the best in you. This ability to release you’re your doubts and fears and preset assumptions allows you to accomplish things that you never imagined possible. It starts with the simple consideration that maybe, just maybe, you are capable of more.

Whether you are just starting or struggling to stay with it, you need to start with the basics. Forget all the complex, tricky stuff. Go back to basics. Natural mvemnets, core strength, balance, form. Get the basics right and the rest will come. Go slowly. Quality is more important than quantity. Consistency is more important than intensity. You can’t go from zero to one hundred anymore, you need a more measured approach. You need to measure different things. And this seems like common sense but it flies in the face of our cultural pressures.

1. Love your body, don’t fight with it. Become friends with your body.
2. Let go of things and thoughts and truths that are not serving you. It’s ok to change. It’s ok to kill sacred cows. Stop grasping. Stop gripping. It is the grasping and the gripping that create suffering.
3. Embrace serendipity. Be open to what the universe brings you. Be open to surprises and new things. Let them in. Many times we are gripping the wheel so hard in life we don’t notice beatitude knocking on the window.
4. Be mindful of the power of a journey. In our world this may be a big athletic event at the end of a training cycle that will test us. Journeys and goals focus us. They force us to live in the present and appreciate it. But, the event itself, is neither good or bad, is innocent. It is the meaning you place on it that gives it value and emotional charge.
5. Life is and always has been a three-legged-stool of Spiritual, Physical and Technical – in that order. Don’t start with the technical. Don’t start with the physical. Start with the meaning.
6. When confronted with a obstacle and challenge consider embracing it as the way. Dive into that obstacle because it is trying to teach you something.
7. Finally as you age, purpose becomes a bigger part of the equation. Who are you helping? How are you modeling success in a healthy and positive way? What will your legacy be?

All of our lives could use more wisdom, and certainly more serendipity. I’ grateful that Tamas’ book found me when it did. The universe is funny that way. Let your questions and curiosity free and the teachers, the guides, the way-finders will appear in your life.

I don’t know why, but that’s how it works.

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Quick Note on Books I’ve Recently ReadThat you may like.These are some amazing books that I have listened to on audio during my runs in the past weeks.

1. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans – Designing Your Life – https://designingyour.life/

I referenced this book in the last show. It’s a very useful toolbox from two professors from Stanford who use design theory to create ‘the instruction manual they wish they got when they were undergraduates’. Some useful tips and techniques.

1. Martha Beck – Beyond Anxiety – https://marthabeck.com/beyond-anxiety

This is the first of two Martha Beck books I listened to over the last few weeks. Read by the author with a humility, vulnerability, warmth and sense of humor, this book deconstructs modern life, why it’s killing you and what you can do to save your sanity. Martha is a Harvard educated escapee from the Mormon church who has lived quite a life. She brings us on a journey through how creativity can be used to unwind the damage of modern culture.

I loved this book – it hit right when I needed it.

1. Martha Beck – The Way of Integrity – https://marthabeck.com/the-way-of-integrity/

After listening to ‘Beyond Anxiety’ I went looking for more of Martha’s work and found the way of integrity. In a brilliant, warm and funny way she blows up the myths of hustle culture and explains why the reason you are so miserable is that you are out of alignment with your integrity. Brilliant and thoughtful. Did I say brilliant again? Brilliant.

1. Hal Elrod – The Miracle Morning After 50 – https://www.miraclemorningafter50.com/

I’ve known Hal and followed his work for the past couple decades, so when he asked for people to help him launch his new book ‘The Miracle Morning After 50’ I jumped in. I have used the miracle morning methodology sporadically since learning about it and it has truly helped weather some rough times. If you can get your mindset right first thing in the morning, everything else flows. This version of the book for people over 50, again, found me when I needed it. It has a lot of overlap but there are some extras that are helpful too.

1. 40Fied – http://www.40fiedmenshealth.com.au/

This of course is the topic of my conversation with Tamas today. Great nuggets. Universal lessons.

1. Noah Davis – The Last Beast we Revel in – https://cavankerrypress.org/products/the-last-beast-we-revel-in

Fun story. I met Noah at a local author fair at the public library in Groton. He’s a big guy, looks and dresses like a lumberjack. You can imagine my surprise when I found out he and his wife are in my running club, yes, but he is also a full-on MFA and published poet. I read this collection of poems about the people and nature of Appalachia as part of my morning routine. Uplifting and beautiful. Really made my week!

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Episode 5-516 – Jeff Weis – Running Against Time* Podcast link -> https://shows.acast.com/runrunlive * Buy a book -> https://booklocker.com/books/13731.html * Amazon -> https://www.amazon.com/After-Apocalypse-Story-Pandemic-Survival/dp/0977234207

Hello my running friends. And welcome to episode 5-516 of the RunRunLive Podcast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah… I know it’s been a couple of months and I’ve left you hanging. You’ve either lost interest or you’re super worried that I’ve fallen off the edge of the world. Are you? Have you been checking hospitals and morgues?

The word ‘Morgue’ has an interesting etymology. Sounds French, and it is, but it’s also Latin. (French is just a rustic form of Frankish Latin at the end of the day). Morgue was originally a verb, Moguer, which meant to look at someone’s face to identify them.

Morgue became a place name when they had a specific building where they would house the unidentified dead, so that people could come and look at them and maybe identify them.

And it is originally from the Vulgar Latin ‘murricare’ which means ‘to make faces”.

I am not, it would seem, in a morgue. I’m actually in a super fine place, just busy.

And since we’re old friends, you and I, I’ll share with you that I’ve had two weddings, the birth of my first grandchild, and a fair amount of eldercare added on top of my exiting slate of working, training and writing.

Today we will talk to Jeff Weis who has written a book about his endurance journey called “Running against time”. I decided to talk with Jeff because his story is topical for us. How do you set meaningful goals and keep at it as you age? Something I’m interrogating in my own journey right now.

In section one, since we haven’t talked in a while, I’ll catch you up on my DNF at the Beantown marathon and how my training is going.

In Section two I’m going to talk a bit about life design and “Gravity Problems” as I manage my way through this transitional part of our journey.

Now, I suppose, I should tell you a story.

I’ve got lots of stories from the last few weeks.

Let me see… Well first I got a suspicious tick bite, (I blame climate change because the dog is just covered with them), and had to go on a full 10-day antibiotics dose. Then my Yvonne and I drove down to DC to see our new grandbaby.

Sorry, I guess I should pause there and acknowledge the gasps and swoons of my women friends. Yes, my youngest had a beautiful, healthy baby boy. I am now a grandfather.

Rolling off of the 10 days of antibiotics that meted out nuclear devastation on my biome and Recovering from the weekend travel, I plunged into the ever-entertaining game called colorectal examination. Yes, every mature adult’s dream – the colonoscopy. A one-hour procedure that requires you to turn yourself inside out for a week.

My poor insides. Rolling off a 10-day dose of antibiotics, into the fiber-free-7-day-white-bread-diet then into the truly apocalyptic prep. We don’t know whether we’re coming or going, although ‘going’ may win out in the balance.

And, yes, before you ask, of course I trained through it all.

At the end of the 7-days I was so sick of that white-bread diet, which is the antithesis of my normal diet, one could call it the ‘anti-diet, well, I was so sick of tht I just decided to fast the last couple days.

So there I was, night before the colonoscopy… Hold on, let me tell the ret in a dramatic screen play…

Scene:

A pale, haggard man lies in bed trying to concentrate on a book. He has just taken the prescribed 12(!) pills from the colon prep subscription with a volume of water and is uncomfortably waiting in expectation of the cleansing spasms and THE PHONE RINGS!

Man: Hullo?

Woman’s voice: “Mr. Russel your mom has fallen, and we need to take her to the hospital for stitches…”

Man: “Am I being pranked?”

Yeah – so I had to have my wife drive me to the emergency room to meet my Mom, who it turns out was ok, as ok as a 93 year old ever is. Which involved a lot of side trips to the rest room.

Now that’s a story!

On with the show!

Section One – Catching you upInterview: Jeffery Weis – Running against timeJeff Weiss is the author of Racing Against Time, a fitness and personal transformation memoir. It tells of his mid-life adventures in extreme sports, including finishes at Ironman Arizona (twice) and the 72-mile ultramarathon Midnight Express between the ages of 57 and 61. These were the culmination of a fitness journey that began with a first 10K at the age of 48. Jeff’s story demonstrates the possibility of radical, life-altering change even during late middle age.

Jeff is also an accomplished entrepreneur, having served for more than 10 years as a C-suite executive in a start-up that recently sold for $3 billion. His adventures in the competitive and high stakes world of start-ups overlapped with his journey into extreme sports. He sees a direct link between his successes in the fitness part of his life and his professional accomplishments. Jeff believes that audacity can be cultivated as a habit. He hopes that he can help others find a way to use fitness to supercharge every aspect of their lives.

Racing Against Time is Jeff’s third book. He is also the co-author of Fighting Back: Stan Andrews and the Birth of the Israeli Air Force (Post Hill Press/Wicked Son 2022) and I Am My Brother’s Keeper (Schiffer Military History 1998). Jeff is featured in the 2014 Nancy Spielberg documentary “Above and Beyond” (available on Amazon Prime) about American members of the Israel Air Force in 1948, which received 22 film festival awards.

In addition to undergraduate and law degrees, Jeff holds Master’s degrees in International Law (Georgetown University Law Center) and in Biotechnology (Johns Hopkins University). He lives in Tel Aviv.

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Links

Racing Against Time on Amazon – https://a.co/d/4s0zgly

Author Website – https://www.jeffreyweissauthor.com

Linked-In – www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-l-weiss

Section Two: Life design and Gravity problemsOutroOk my friends, you have aged through the process of another RunRunLive Podcast, it could be worse, Episode 5-516, pushes it’s walker towards the door.

I think we can learn a lot from Jeff’s experience. About setting goals, about working towards those goals, and then how to extract meaning from the process, even when it might not work out as planned.

Next up for me is the Mill Cities Relay. I told the team that I don’t really care which leg they give me. Because it’s true. I don’t. I’m not the guy they automatically plug into the long leg anymore!

After that I will host the 12th running of the Groton Marathon fetial of races which is a fun-run event I organize for my club on the last Sunday in December. I will not be running a marathon. You can count on that!

Depending on how much weirdness is percolating I may head up to Salsbury to run the Hangover Classic and do the polar plunge in the Atlantic on New Years Day.

And. Big news, I signed up for a race called the Sun Marathon in Southern Utah on January 24th. I’m going to do it with the other Tim, Tim from Tennessee, he’s chasing his 50 states and I just want to get away from the New England winter for a couple days.

And my friends, keep showing up. Because, A) you never know what’s going to happen and B) you really don’t have a choice do you?

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends.

And I’ll see you out there.

Buy a book -> https://booklocker.com/books/13731.html

Amazon -> https://www.amazon.com/After-Apocalypse-Story-Pandemic-Survival/dp/0977234207

…

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Catch you upI haven’t spoken to you folks since right before my target race in September.

So let me catch you up.

I DNF’ed at around 16 miles in that Beantown marathon.

I thought I had trained well and I was disappointed. But, my legs went early in the race. Really early, like 10 miles in. By the half I was struggling and on a shitty day with a loop course I didn’t want to limp through another 2 hours of fruitless, nay, thankless, labor.

(See? I snuck in a Thanksgiving reference there.)

As to why my legs went, I have some thoughts.

First, I had forgotten that this course has a short, steep lump of a hill in it. Nothing terrible and not what we would call ‘hilly’ up here, but I think it was a problem for my legs. I had done the entirety of my training on the flat rail trail to protect my knee and was not prepared for any hill work. Especially the short, steep downhill section. And, since it was a loop course, I got this little hill every couple miles.

Let this be a lesson for us all. Rail trails are awesome for training but leave you at risk for any kind of elevation change in a race.

Also to protect my knee, I haven’t done any leg work in the gym. Which, it seems gives me really weak quads. And that has been what has going first in these last couple of races. Once the quads go I can’t hold pace.

Which, in the old days, I could just do a whole bunch of hard hill work and Bulgarian split squats – problem solved. But, I haven’t. Because being able to run is better than being injured.

The other big mistake I made was to wear an old pair of Hoka-X carbon shoes. Ironically, the last time I wore those shoes in a marathon was this very same marathon 7 years ago. I won’t bore you with how stupid a choice this was, but my internal logic said, ‘I’m well trained, any neutral cushion shoe will work, I might as well wear something with an extra kick to it.”

Idiot.

I don’t put much stock in weather as a deciding factor. Unless it’s really hot. This race had pouring rain. Temperature-wise it was fine. But the rain did mean running in very wet, squishy shoes and needing to navigate some muddy sections. It wasn’t the deciding factor but did contribute to my decision to leave the course.

Other than that, I think I just haven’t been able to get to enough volume in my training to make 26 miles feel ‘normal’.

But, more than that, this is a new season, and I’m collecting data points on what my body and mind are capable of now. I don’t know. There is a ‘new normal’ and I’m searching for what that is.

We overthink these things and the risk of overthinking is that it prevents us from harvesting the inherent joy of it.

Is this a ‘keep training and keep showing up and good things will happen’ moment? Or is this a ‘your expectations are out of line with your abilities’ moment?

Which leads us to the question: What did we learn and what do we do now?

After much ping-ponging around in my brain I think it’s just a data point. There’s really no corrective action, besides being an idiot on race day.

So I keep training. 3-4 days a week. 25 -30 miles a week. Some longer stuff. Tempo. Speed.

On the off days I do strength work and yoga. And I am starting to work in some careful leg strengthening weight work and some careful hill work. Basically maintaining my fitness and scratching around to see where that edge is now.

Today is Thanksgiving and I’m grateful for my friends, my family and my ability to run up the stairs to my office every day.

I ran the traditional 5K with my running club buddies this morning.

I got up around 6, got dressed and met my friend Tim for a couple warm up miles on the rail trail. It was good to talk to him. To catch up. Like we’re doing right now.

After that warm-up we walked to the race start, and I noticed my left knee felt a bit wonky. Like I pulled something in there this week doing some light speed work.

That’s another attribute of this new season I am in. I get injuries popping up from everywhere, and especially if I do anything different.

I yawn too aggressively and strain a pectoral.

I turn to look over my shoulder and pull a latissimus.

It’s a carnival of fun it is.

Now it was contemplation time as I a limped over to the start with Tim.

Three choices really, and a rainbow of grades within those.

One end of the spectrum – Don’t run the 5K. Yeah, that’s not really a choice.

Other end of the spectrum – go race and ignore the knee. Yeah, more in line with my sense of self.

And third choice go out with a little control, ease into it and see what happens. I like the third choice.

I lined up well back in the pack and took the first mile at what I thought was an easy pace, the whole time reminding myself that what I think is an easy pace at the start of a 5K is probably still too fast.

There was a lot of weaving and dodging as the fun-run people got sorted out from the racers. I stayed in my pace and was surprised by a 7:30-ish first mile. Not gassed. Legs fine. Just cruising along.

Mile two, I slowed down a bit to catch my breath. Not feeling like a warrior but not suffering either. When you can’t give 100%, 80-85% is sufficient.

Heck 80-85% is the new black.

Mile three with its persnickety little hills. Slowed down a bit. Didn’t fight too hard. Stayed at that reasonable effort level.

Final downhill to the finish. There’s a guy beside me, maybe in his 50’s, he says “Thanks for keeping such great pace, it was good to have someone to follow.” I review the thousands of semi-comic snarky replies in my repertoire and go with “You’re welcome.” Motioning now to the approaching finish line in an ‘After you’ gesture, I finish our conversation with ‘Have at it.’

And trundle my old bones through the end.

Knee felt fine the whole way. Now it seems achy again as I stop to cool down. I’m not winded. I’m not laying on the ground or gasping like a fish. 80-85% is the new normal.

Cheer the mid-packers. Meet my friends. Take some photos. Thank the race staff and off home to see my wife.

That’s the stuff of life. For me anyhow.

Routine.

Show up.

Run.

Go home.

Try not to overthink everything.

Try to be grateful every step of the way.

Later, when I upload my data Garmin tells me I have a new 5K PR. About 30 seconds faster than last year’s effort. Another data point. Another vote for ‘keep showing up and good things will happen’.

This is my running life.

I signed up for a marathon in January. The Sun Marathon in Southern Utah. I’m still looking for that elusive marathon that feels right.

I notice that in 2 years when I’m 65 the qualifying time for Boston goes up to 4:05 for me. Maybe I’ll have figured this current season out by then.

Until then it’s work with the currents of life, the rhythms of life.

Train.

Race.

Take care of what I can.

And…Oh yeah…Look for the joy.

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Life DesignI’ve been listening to an audio book called “Designing Your Life” written by Dave Evans and Bill Burnett, two guys from the Stanford Design School that was published in 2016.

This is one of those ‘when the student is ready the teacher will appear’ moments for me.

I find myself in a transitional period in my life journey and this book hit at the right time. Very helpful.

And, as it turns out, I invented design thinking.

No. Seriously. I did.

As I was listening to these guys walk through their process, I thought to myself “Hold on. This all seems really familiar.” The reason it sounded really familiar is that I wrote a series of three articles on RunRunLive many moons ago that encapsulated a similar design process.

Here are the links to those three posts.

https://runrunlive.com/life-balance-a-primer

https://runrunlive.com/it-all-starts-with-self

https://runrunlive.com/the-system-theory-of-self

At the time I was trying to figure out how to find that ever-elusive “Life balance”. The concept of using a methodology to optimize your life was something that I had been noodling on in long runs for many years.

In these three posts I finally wrote it down.

My theory leaned on what I learned about system dynamics in engineering school and the optimization concepts I worked with in a business setting. These two concepts, combined with the need to have some sort of compelling purpose for the design, made for a fairly lucid understanding of the challenge and how to optimize for a better path forward.

At the time I was synthesizing what I had been thinking about for years. How to be rational about your career and life choices so that they align with what you find personally important, in a rigorous way, and then to act on them.

So – there you go. I invented design thinking.

This book “Design Your Life” also has a good framework for these kinds of decisions. It was developed for the Juniors and Seniors at Stanford to help them answer the question, “What do I want to do with my life?”

Which we all know from experience is a terrifying question.

The tools and methodology in this book are focused on that cohort, and spend a lot of energy on ‘choosing a career’ types of decisions, but are generally applicable to any transition point in life where you are trying to find a path forward.

Because transition points are always a challenge. They aren’t always planned. They sneak up on you. When you start thinking about these types of problems, they get big and emotion-filled very quickly. Then you are unable to find a path forward or take action, you ignore the looming transition and try to hide from it.

The question, “What should I do with the rest of my life?” is fraught. There are unnecessarily stressful built-in assumptions there. For example, you don’t have to make a ‘forever’ decision for the rest of your life. It can be a simple as “What do I want to try next?”.

The original question also implies that there is one big, perfect answer that you need to find.

There is not.

Do you think it’s fair or smart to ask yourself to select one from an infinite sea of choices and stick with it forever?

What I found is that when confronted with infinite choices I tend to freeze like a deer in the headlights and go into reactive mode. Which takes my power away and makes me miserable.

Dave and Bill also frame what they call ‘gravity problems’. The joke is a person will come to you and say “I was running up this big hill and got winded and had to stop. Therefore: Gravity is the problem! We need to fix the gravity problem before I can exercise.”

Obviously, we can’t fix gravity. There is no point in fixating on gravity. Instead of spending your energy bemoaning problems that can’t be fixed, we can redefine the problem to come up with other potential solutions and actions. We can train more. We can lose weight. We can find a less steep hill. But we shouldn’t waste time trying to fix gravity.

The important point here is that the way you frame the problem makes all the difference.

In my life I can give examples of how I was doing this. You probably can too. How about “The traditional publishing business is broken so there is no way to write a novel and get it published anymore.”

The traditional publishing world is dead, but that shouldn’t stop you from writing your novel.

What I did was start a fiction podcast, build an audience of 13,000 listeners a month, convert it to a novel and sell it directly to that audience.

Point being, I can’t fix the death of traditional publishing. But I can redefine the problem as “I want to write and publish my novel.” Then take actions that eventually get me to that point. And more importantly, take control and take action. (More on taking action in a minute)

These Stanford guys provide a methodology couched in the tenants of design thinking. This way you proactively come up with your own plans, and that is very empowering.

Right! Let’s cut right to the process.

The first step is to Start Where You Are

Much as I did in my old articles, the book suggests four areas of life (health, work, play, and love) to appraise and honestly grade your satisfaction in each. This will give you an idea of what makes you happy and where you need help.

Second step Building a Compass

In this step the book asks you to journal a description of your “Life View” and “Work View”. This exercise is a basic summary of what is important to you, what you find joy in, what you don’t.

Then read them over to see what the common themes are. Especially if you are still in your career, finding overlaps will give you some directional insights on things to pursue going forward.

Third step is Wayfinding

The exercise is to keep a “Happiness Journal” where as you go through your day you capture those moments when things are good (and bad). Basically, track your daily activities and see where you are engaged or even in flow. This is an exercise in looking for clues to what make you tick.

Fourth step is Getting Unstuck

In this step you take what you learned from your preferences discovered in the previous exercises and do a bunch of mind mapping to come up with wild ideas. For instance, you were happy walking the dog in the woods, so you ideate… “I’m going to become a sherpa in Tibet for Everest expeditions!”

But, in all seriousness, mind-mapping is a great tool to come up with ideas and the sillier and more creative you can be allows you to unlock parts of your creativity that lead to real insights.

Fifth step Design Your Lives

This is where you look at everything you have come up with so far and choose a manageable number of these ‘future you’ ideas. For each of these you create a plan. ‘Plan’ in this case being a fairly loose set of characteristics around what walking that path would take. Then, looking at the plans, you rate them on a few important characteristics.

The result is 3 potential new directions for your life.

Sixth step Prototyping

I think this is probably the most important part of this book. We all get the advice to ‘take action’. It’s easy to say. But hard to do. Especially when the problem is framed as “Choose what you want to do with the rest of your life.” The ‘take action’ advice then appears as ‘throw 100% of your energy, time and capital at one thing until you win or fail!’ Which is a horrible, terrifying decision.

What if, instead, you could test each of your ideas? What if you could find a way to be an intern sherpa for a few months? This is an eye-opening concept! You don’t need to choose one thing forever. Just find a reasonable way to test the concept and chances are that small action will lead to serendipity and you’ll discover paths you never knew existed.

The other powerful part of this is that prototypes are time bound. You can set your intent to try something for six months or a year or five and then decide to try something else. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition and becomes much less risky and more digestible. You retain your power of choice even in your decision.

I’ll go back to my earlier example. When I started the After the Apocalypse fiction podcast in 2020 with the ultimate goal of creating a series of 5 novels, I gave it 6 months and $1,000.

As it turned out Spotify started to recommend the show and about 4 months in the number of listeners shot up to where it is now. And I kept it going. Otherwise, I may have dropped it at the end of season one and pivoted to something else.

But the point is find some way to prototype the life design ideas that you want to test. This way you can limit the damage that a poor choice of action may result in.

Learn from it and take up the next prototype.

Jobs

The rest of the book talks about how the job-seeking process is totally broken and how to design around that, most notably by interviewing people in those areas of interest to get ideas. This, while you may not need a job, is always a great way to learn. Talk to people. This also leads to a discussion around building a team to help you through life.

Failure Immunity

Another good concept they talk about in this book is how to cultivate failure immunity. This could be and may be the topic of an entire discussion.

I’ll start with my editorial.

Our culture around failure, (at least here is the States), is toxic. We say things like ‘learn from failure’ and ‘fail fast’ and ‘fail to the top’. While our actions are completely at odds with this. In our actions we gleefully seek and punish and shun any whiff of failure.

Failure as a concept is safe. Failure in practice, is both culturally, and personally destructive.

Any full life will have plenty of failure in it. In the book they give strategies on how to be prepared for failure and course correct quickly.

With that I’ll wrap this article up. This book is a great reminder that your future, what you do next, and your happiness is entirely up to you, and you can design, for the most part, a life that is purposeful and fulfilling, resilient, and relatively happy.

Your goal should not be constant happiness. That’s not how life works. Life has its ups and downs and you’re always going to have challenges. The trick is to build a toolset to help you proactively manage around those ups and downs.

In reality there is no one, perfect, forever, future plan for you. It’s going to change as your life changes. But as your seasons of life go by you can recalibrate with a bit of proactive life design. A good cadence for this review is suggested by the authors at no more than every 5 years.

So, talk to people, read books, and take actions on your ideas to test them out.

I wish this course was available to me when I was an undergraduate. It would have saved me lot of thrashing and suffering.

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Training Cycle RecapOk, my friends, here are the bones of this last training cycle. Maybe you can learn something from it.

The last race for me was the Mesa Marathon in the beginning of February. That’s a long time ago.

The recap for that one is that I went out too fast and crashed early for an ugly 4:06:07 finish. Which averages out to a 9:25 pace. But was a half marathon at 8:30ish pace and a run walk to the finish much slower than that.

After that I took some time to not train for anything specific. But, coming out of that race I felt like I had the pace, but I just couldn’t hold it. I thought maybe I should try to get some more speed and volume to fix that.

I had some really good training runs in the spring where I was running 8-10 miles with a fast finish and my legs felt really good.

So I signed up for this Beantown Marathon with the thought of seeing of I could train better, run better and potentially qualify.

I have run this race before.

It is in a park in Hingham, MA and about 1:30 southeast of where I live. It is a flat, 6-loop course, designed to take the thinking out of racing. There are only 500 entrants, and they launch you in waves of 50, depending on your expected finish time, every minute starting at 7:00 AM.

So I’ll be launching in the 3:45 – 4:00 group, but more on that later.

I ran it in 2019 with the same intentions but couldn’t hold the pace and finished with a disappointing 3:52. It was a classic Chris race where I raced hard until I hit the wall and broke.

Looking at the results I see that there were only 272 finishers overall. It’s concerning that they are now putting 500 runners on the course, I remember parts of it being fairly tight.

I remember it is a runner friendly course. Part paved access roads, a small section of gravel road, and a section of paved sidewalk through the park itself. There are sections where the road is split by cones and there is two-way traffic. Some of this is fairly tight, like I said. Then at the end the finish shoots off of the loop. So 6 loops, that you need to track yourself, and then you turn down a short stretch to the finish line.

It’s a bit of an odd-shaped figure-8 loop with the water tables in the middle, so you pass them every mile. They also provide a row of tables where you can put your own bottles and food, like a pro.

Like I said, designed for people looking to race for a time.

Like we do up here in Boston.

I’m going to need to leave pretty early to get down there with enough time. But that’s ok.

Back to the training cycle.

It was a long training cycle by my standards. The better part of 6 months.

I averaged around 35-40 miles a week across 3-4 runs. I typically did 2 quality tempo runs, with a longer effort on the weekend and maybe a recovery run in there somewhere. On the off days I did core work and yoga. During the big build weeks I also cycled once a week, typically the day before the long run.

I did throw in some specific speed work, mostly because I hadn’t done it in a long time and was curious as to what my pace, form and recovery would be. The answer was that my pace and form was good, but the recovery was a bitch.

I also bulked up my long runs. I got 8 efforts in over 15 miles, and all of those were surge runs with fast finishes. I was able to execute most of those well but the summer heat really got to me and some of those workouts were a struggle.

But, if I look historically, my best performances come after a solid, consistent, 2 years of training. And that’s what I have. I’m in that sweet spot since I came back from the knee injury.

Overall I’d give it a B+.

In the old days I would want to get those peak weeks up over 50 miles and I’d want to get at least 2 20 milers in before the taper. But, it is what it is and I can only do so much. I am constrained by my ability and need to find that tricky balance between training and breakage.

I didn’t focus on nutrition, but I managed to keep weight off with the training and mediocre nutritional habits.

Going into the taper I have a few sore spots. My left knee complains. I’m very tight and feel fragile. My quads don’t seem to want to move blood around like they used to and fatigue easily.

I really need to let everything warm up well before I start to bare down and race. It all comes down to being able to warm up enough before dropping into race effort.

On paper my paces in those long tempo runs are 30 seconds a mile faster than I need. So maybe I’m selling myself short. But I just don’t want to walk the last 10k of another marathon. I’m sick of it. I need to prove I can run smart.

And with that I go into the race.

My goal is to get under 4 hours. I think I can easily do that. I would have done that at Mesa if I hadn’t gone out like a deranged rogue bottle rocket.

What can I say? I get excited.

I’m going to try to manage and backload my effort. Just run a smart race.

Because of the course design I should be able to manage my fluids and nutrition.

Like I said – they send us out in groups of 50 based on 15-minute expected finish time chunks. I don’t think there are official pacers. I’ll get in the back of the 3:45-4:00 group and try to find someone to run with.

My expectations, for me, are low. I just want to run a smart race and get in under 4 hours. I suppose it’s all relative.

That’s my story for this training cycle and the Beantown Marathon.

We’ll have to come up with something interesting to do in the next cycle.

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Right here, Right nowI was down at the Cape out on the rail trail in the morning on my long run. It was a hard workout.

You know it’s a hard workout when it scares you a little. You see it on the schedule and think about it all week. It hangs over you like the sword of Damocles.

Hold on…

We throw that saying around a lot, but do we even know what it is about? Who the heck is Damocles and what’s up with the sword?

It’s from a classical Greek tale that is supposed to teach you something. Like all tales it is apocryphal. Probably didn’t happen. Just a story made up by the Greeks, who loved telling stories, who understood the power of storytelling, to make a point.

Here’s the tale.

Damocles was an official in the court of King Dionysus of Syracuse. Damocles was flattering the King so much that the King said “I’ll tell you what, why don’t you be King for a day? See how you like it?”

Damocles, said, “Yeah Baby” and leapt at the chance – specifically he leapt onto the King’s throne.

But all was not roses, rainbows and unicorns for Damocles, because Dionysus had suspended a very sharp sword, hung by the pommel by a single hair from a horse’s tail over the throne and precariously threatening to lop off Damocles’ head at any moment.

Damocles got to be king and sit in the throne, but the whole precarious sword hanging thing, was a bit of a bummer and kinda made him nervous.

What was the point that the king, (and the story), making?

When you are king you are constantly under threat from others who envy you and want to unseat you. You can never relax. You always need to be on the lookout for attackers and betrayers.

Power is a precarious, moment to moment, thing.

That sharp sword taught Damocles what it was like to always be afraid, to never know when the sword would fall, to worry about an uncertain future.

The punch line is that Damocles begged to step down from the throne. Turns out, on second consideration, he didn’t want to be king.

But I digress.

This long run was to be 2 hours and 45 minutes, with 3-minute surges up into zone 3 every 15 minutes and close the last 15 minutes in zone 3. For my current abilities that works out to 18-19 miles.

A good purposeful workout for marathon training. Not only time on the feet but race specific. Teach the body to finish strong when tired.

I got out early in the morning, but it felt hot. It always feels hotter down Cape, because the Cape sticks out into the ocean – it’s surrounded by water – so the humidity is always high. And since it is basically a big sand dune, there isn’t much tree cover.

So even if the temps are coolish it’s always high humidity and full sun.

I ran the workout in two laps of around 1:30 each, because I didn’t want to carry too much water.

It was hard going but I stayed with it and paced my surges and executed on point to the workout specifications.

Then the part I was worried about, those last 15 minutes at pace and effort, rolled around.

I was tired as I got towards the end. I had that 15-minute high-effort finish looming over me.

I started to falter.

Not just physically, but mentally.

It seemed like such a long way to go. It was hot. I was tired. I was thinking about walking as it got harder and harder to maintain the effort.

But then I thought about it, like you do, and I thought, ‘you don’t have to hold this pace and effort for the next 15-20 minutes. All you really need to do is hold it right here and right now**’.

And that became my mantra. I stopped thinking about the finish. I stopped worrying about how I was going to cover that ground with my body tired and hot.

Every time my body started to whisper to me that I should really just walk a little bit to recover. I refocused on “Right Here, Right Now.”

And it worked. I chugged through those last miles and held that effort.

It was hard. But it was only too hard in the cumulative. In the Right Here and Right Now it was manageable.

All this may sound oddly familiar because we have talked many times about managing races and long runs by collapsing the effort down to a scope you can manage. The next water stop. The next telephone pole. The end of that fence.

Refocusing on where you are snaps you back into observation mode. You can do form check, a breathing check, and relax into the effort.

But mentally, there are echoes of the meditative practice of ‘living in the now’. Just like in your meditation, you focus on the breath to calm your mind. You can’t control the future, and you can’t change the past. No matter how much your monkey mind wants to run around in circles screaming. All you have is the now and your breath.

The only thing I could control in my long run was what I did right here, and right now.

And when you get to that place it is empowering.

It gives you the power of choice. You can make any decision you want, right here, right now.

You don’t have power over a decision in the future. You don’t have power over a decision made in the past. But what happens right here, right now is entirely under your control. Entirely your choice.

Everything else is an illusion.

Being in control of your decisions in the ‘now’ empowers you and protects you. It is a shield of power. In this case it protects you from yourself and your monkey mind.

If you are a visual person you can see this as a shield, or a force field, providing energy and protecting.

And now, apologetically, we need to return to the Greeks again for one of my favorite words, “Aegis” .

The Aegis was a shield or protective skin that was worn by Zeus and Athena.

So when some pretentious, narcissistic, over-educated, ass-hat, like me says ‘I have the Aegis to do something’ it means I am protected and empowered.

Like wearing a magic shirt.

Zeus and Athena are kick-ass gods. But, if you have some other god or gods, who you’d like to visualize providing you aegis in this here and now, go for it.

Right here, right now, the decision is entirely yours whether to take another step.

Right here, right now, you have all the power.

Right here, right now you are protected by magic of your own making.

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Episode 5-514 – Lee – Coach for the Older Runner* Podcast link -> https://shows.acast.com/runrunlive * Buy a book -> https://booklocker.com/books/13731.html * Amazon -> https://www.amazon.com/After-Apocalypse-Story-Pandemic-Survival/dp/0977234207

Hello my running friends. And welcome to episode 5-514 of the RunRunLive Podcast. Today we have a chat with Lee who is a coach that focuses on the older ‘serious athlete.

We talk about something that I’m trying to puzzle out myself as I graduate into codgerhood. We talk about a specific cohort of runners who are fairly serious about their pursuit, but struggling with how to keep their performance high without breaking themselves as they get older.

It’s an eye opening conversation which makes me wonder if I’ve been asking the right questions.

In section one I’m going to muse on the ‘one percent rule’.

In section two I’m going to talk about the state of podcasting.

I know it’s been about a month since I released a show. Part of it is that I’ve been busy and part of it is that I’m just not feeling it.

We’ll leave it at that for now. I’ll talk about my mediocre training in the outro.

…

It is the ‘dog days’ of summer now. Deep into July and emerging into august. Two calendar months named after Roman tyrants. Sic Sempre and all that.

I’ve got a busy calendar coming up. My oldest daughter is getting married and my youngest is having a baby. So, even though I’m not directly involved in either event, I’m guessing I should schedule accordingly.

It’s an interesting season of life. On the one hand it feels like you’ve accomplished something and maybe can take a rest. On the other it feels like this may be your last opportunity for reinvention.

I had a really happy bike ride this morning. I through my bike on top of the bags of coffee grounds I’ve been accumulating from Starbucks in the back of my truck. Why? My wife seems to think she can use them to keep the voles out of her flowers. Who am I to argue.

I go to Starbucks most mornings, not so much for a cup of coffee but to get out of my home office and get some fresh air and human interaction. It’s very important for the mental health of we seniors to get human interaction.

Anyhow, I threw my bike, the old 29er Motobecane mountain bike that I really should clean and grease but haven’t, because as my friend Frank says “I’m the master of avoiding preventative maintenance”, in the back of my truck, which really needs to be washed and vacuumed, ibid, op cit.

The same bike I kitted out with small-block tires and clip on aerobars for my bike across Massachusetts a couple years ago. I recently added a front fender to keep the mud out of my eyes.

To be honest, I saw what they were charging for those clip on plastic fenders and DIYed my own out of a plastic water bottle that I cut in half and zip-tied to the fork arch.

So, yeah, that bike, in the truck, on top of the coffee, and drove over to the old north bridge in Concord. Yeah, that Concord. That bridge. Shot heard ‘round the world and all that.

My mission was not to go to the bridge. They actually frown on you biking in there, but I believe we’ve downsized all the park rangers so I could probably get away with it.

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, I’ve heard.

Not the bridge per se, but the building next to it that they call “The Old Manse” that has a nice parking lot I can park in for free.

Because I felt like riding the old rail trail that starts just down the street from there called “The Reformatory Branch Trail” which I used to use when I rode into that job I had in Burlington, you remember that? I actually ran to work a couple times back in the day. What was I thinking? 17 miles in both directions. What a maniac I was. I do remember having a near-religious experience deep into that run when Sweet Jane came on my headphones, not the Nine Inch Nails version, the original Lou Reed version when being a subversive artist actually meant something.

That trail. I woke up and felt like riding my bike on that trail.

So I did.

After I took the dog for a long walk over in the Audubon property that sits next to the route I die to get to the coffee shop every morning, by the way.

It was magical. I had so much to do on my to do list, and still do, (this show being one of them), but I came to the realization that it was a sunny day and I needed to go for a ride anyhow I might as well enjoy it.

I had an audio book on my headphones. A book of short stories written by Tom Hanks and read by Tom Hanks that were very Tom Hanksy indeed. The perfect companion on a sunny day on the trail in the best part of the world.

Just magical. A real smell the roses session.

I stopped for a bagel on the way back to the house at that little bagel place in Acton that still makes fresh bagels every morning. It was after lunch so they were out of my favorite Sunflower Bagel, which I understand is a difficult bagel to make, and I opted for the Energy Bagel, which has a plethora of nuts and berries folded artfully into its brown crevices.

And an Ice tea.

And that, my friends is my story. Because I heard you like stories.

They’re not all about soul searching and daring do.

Sometimes they are about a long walk with the dog and a nice relaxing ride in the sun listening to Tom Hanks muse on the magical nature of old typewriters.

On with the show,

Section One – Th eOne Percent RuleFeatured Interview – LeeLee Boniface – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsb0ZK-vFMWnUR8q7hg463Q

I guide more than 50 endurance runners to arrive on race day ready and confident without following training plans that don’t deliver predictable results.

I am a 59-year-old endurance runner and running coach. That has loved running from 13 years old.

I am fascinated with how running can help with our mental well-being and how it can assist with our health span too.

I have run 20-plus marathons and participated in 2012 in the Brathay 10 in 10, which is 10 marathons in 10 days.

Section Two: The Current State of Podcasting.

OutroOk my friends, you have run by feel, according to perceived effort, to the end of another RunRunLive Podcast, Episode 5-514, completely pickled.

Let’s talk about my training.

The good news is that my training has been consistent. I’m doing the work.

The not-so-good news is that I’m hitting some headwinds.

The first complaint is the heat. Boy oh boy I am struggling with the heat. It just seems to suck the energy out of me. I get out early in the morning to avoid the heat but that just has the double whammy of having those tired morning legs.

Second, I don’t feel like I’m recovering well at all. In the old days I’d do two hard weeks followed by one recovery week. Now it seems reversed. One hard week takes two weeks to recover from.

And third, I just don’t feel like I care enough about hitting those efforts. Maybe I’m falling out of love with the training.

The biggest fear that I have, the existential fear, is that I have come to a point in my life where I could have time to really enjoy some running adventures and I may no longer have the ability to do so. That’s what keeps me awake at night.

But I keep plugging away.

I run 3 to 4 times a week. Typically, 2 of those are tempo-runs and one is a longer effort. I’ve also been biking once a week.

But, honestly, I feel like I’m fighting it. Like I’m not getting anywhere.

I struggle to hold those tempo paces. I run 16 mile long runs and feel like it takes a week to recover.

I’ll still run this race in September, but I’m going to try to hit a stellar time. I’m going to try to get it in under 4 hours. That’s enough.

My knee is taking the training fairly well. It still has some pain in there. I think that is probably just arthritis at this point and I have to live with it.

Life doesn’t slow down, even when you do. Life events keep happening and you need to rise up each day, shake them off and move ahead. Until you can’t anymore.

But, I’m not there yet. I’m healthy, I’m happy and I’m living with purpose. Not porpoises, but purpose. You need to have purpose.

You can live with porpoises as well, but bring some fish. They like fish.

I’ve got a lot of personal stuff going on this fall. I’m at a life inflection point.

So, unfortunately for you all I’m going to take a pause in producing RunRunLive for a while. I’ll check back in after my target race.

And, if for some reason my voice is reaching you, hang in there, stay with it, take care of yourself. Be the best version of yourself you can be.

Help others without expectation of reward.

Be kind.

And I’ll see you out there.

Buy a book -> https://booklocker.com/books/13731.html

Amazon -> https://www.amazon.com/After-Apocalypse-Story-Pandemic-Survival/dp/0977234207

…

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The Current State of PodcastingThis is something I wanted to talk about because I’m seeing some interesting currents in the conversations around podcasting.

If I remember my history correctly podcasts were invented in the early 2000’s? I started in 2008. I know this because I have a t-shirt from the Vermont 50 Ultra from 2008. And I remember I made my first recording after running the Mount Washington road race that year, (and then running back down for good measure.)

That Mount Washington entry I earned by running the New England Mountain series the previous year, 2007. I think I got a shirt for that too, but it was a lousy shirt and I threw it away.

Why did I decide to start a running podcast?

Well, I was a fan. I got that first iPod, which came out in 2001. The original version of iTunes came out at the same time.

First, I ripped all my old CD’s into digital and listened to my music. But then got bored. I looked around and found the first few podcasts.

I listened to of these. Not running podcasts. I didn’t know running podcasts existed. I was listening to marketing and sales podcasts mostly. Internet 2.0 stuff.

But it was cool. Here were some run-of-the-mill tech guys chatting about all the tech stuff going on.

I decided to figure out the technology and start a running podcast. I figured it all out and DIY’ed it all for myself.

I started the RunRunLive podcast then, because I thought I had learned everything there was to learn about amateur endurance sports, and I thought I had a unique perspective as a midpack runner.

I also wanted to practice my writing and performance skills. Writing was always an itch for me that in my rat-race career I really didn’t get to scratch.

No one knew what a podcast was back then. You would have to tell them that it was like a radio show, but on the internet.

It wasn’t easy. The technology was immature. That was part of the attraction. You had to learn the technology and then build the show.

Those were simpler times. No one expected to make any money. There was really no way to make money. Advertisers weren’t interested in podcasts. The people making money were the Internet Marketing gurus who sold courses and how to sessions. The techies who were making podcasts did it to be heard.

Facebook existed, barely, and Twitter was a nice place to talk with your friends in 144-character chunks.

So I planted my flag in the ground and started putting out a show every week.

I honestly didn’t pay attention to the number of downloads that I accumulated. There was no easy way to track it and the technology kept changing. You had to host the files yourself on a server so you could grab the raw interactions at the source.

At its peak I was maybe getting 2,000 downloads a month.

Over the course of the show, I probably accumulated a couple million downloads. But, downloads don’t equal listens.

I do know I wrote a couple million words!

At the time we were all just amazed that there was anyone out there listening. We were like “Wow! 40 people downloaded my show!”

If you had the tech skills, you could install Google analytics on the hosting site and you could kinda look at the server traffic and see that there were two people downloading your show in some odd place like Jamaica, and you wonder, ‘who is that guy in Jamaica listening to me talk about running in the woods with my dog?’

It was, frankly, mind blowing.

So how did we make money. The simple answer is that we didn’t. We took donations or subscriptions to keep the lights on, but only those few who could use their show as part of their business, like coaches and consultants, to drive demand for their other products and services got anything out of it.

I never had ads in the show. Not because I don’t like money, but because it just didn’t seem right to charge people for what we were doing. And at the time advertisers didn’t know what podcasts were.

The only people giving us anything were the running shoe companies who were trying to figure out how they could access these ‘Bloggers’. I did get a bunch of swag and a bunch of free race entries.

The pinnacle of that was when ASICS flew me to New York City for the marathon as a celebrity blogger. I mean, who saw that coming? I had my picture on the front of the Wall Street Journal!

That was my 15 minutes in 2010.

But the big benefit. The number one thing we got out of it was connection. We got to meet people who had the same passion as we did. People who loved to run and loved a good story.

I always liked the audio podcast format because you could really make a connection with people. Once I found my voice in my writing I was able to talk to whoever was listening. Not talk at them, but talk to them.

It was, and still is, very powerful.

I made a point of trying not to make it about me. To be more of a facilitator of information, a storyteller, an avatar. I never talked about my wife or my kids. I didn’t share personal stuff except where I found inspiration. Because I wanted to help people.

My avatar was that part of me, a good part of me, that ran and worked and traveled and learned.

There was very little feedback in the loop. You might have people listening to your show for years and never reach out to say ‘hi’. You might have total strangers come up to you at races acting like they were long lost brothers and sisters. It was weird and cool. Mostly it was one way.

Maybe that guy in Jamaica that I never met and didn’t know, maybe smiling and nodding their head and thinking “That’s right!”. How weird is that? I’d never know.

…

But it’s different now. I have been reading some groups about podcasting and watching the industry. It really has changed. It is very similar to how Web 2.0 changed what we think of as a book. Yeah, we used to debate that when the e-readers and Amazon Kindle came out – “What is a book?”

They are having the same debate about podcasts right now. “What is a podcast?” Is it audio? Is it RSS? Is it a video on YouTube? I don’t know anymore.

Dave Winer invented the audio RSS feed in 2003 and partnered with MTV VJ Adam Curry to popularize the audio format. The term Podcast is a portmanteau of iPod and Broadcast that was coined by Ben Hammersley in the Guardian in 2004 to describe what they were doing.

Now apparently any digital creator is a podcaster.

The media companies love this because it creates this big soup of free content for them to stick ads into.

I got an email from one of the cable channels this morning advertising ‘the Creatorverse’ – which was all a bunch of what we used to call video bloggers. According to YouTube those folks are all podcasters.

Just like web 2.0 disintermediated the publishing industry, now the TV and video are getting flushed away in a rush of mediocre homemade content.

The advertisers are all in now. There is somewhere around $5 billion going into podcast adverts this year. Some where around half of the developed world population listens to podcasts. Billions of people. In most cases they trust the content from podcasters more than the network news.

Which is troubling, but also confirms the early vision of the internet democratizing everything.

In the next couple decades network TV and Network radio will become extinct or some other thing.

So, yeah, apparently, this thing a few of us creative techies started 20 years ago has taken over the world like some sort of reality TV Frankenstein.

It’s some sort of get rich quick scheme where people talk about driving audiences and downloads.

The big names have muscled their way in with big budgets. The advertising spend has outstripped radio. It’s basically the same set up as a prime time T.V. show, a team of technicians and producers and an A-list talent. Recreating the old Geraldo or Oprah show as a digital audio offering.

The technology is much better. All of it. The barrier to entry is lower than ever. You don’t need to know anything about RSS feeds and web hosting. That’s all old news.

Today’s podcasters are more focused on studio lighting and A-list guests. Blah, blah, blah.

Get off my lawn!

What started this rant, what fired this thought process, what tickled my ink-stained, old-man fingers to start typing this article is that I noticed an echo. An echo from 1999. New podcasters are asking the same thing that new authors asked back then. Or lamented. “Why is no one reading my book?” has become “Why is no one downloading my show?”

And my answer is that you have lost the voice.

Your show is low quality and uninteresting. There is nothing new, nothing different.

That lame old interview-based podcast is oversaturated and overused. We don’t need more self-styled comedians trying to compete with the real comedians who all have their own podcasts. We don’t need more true crime podcasts.

We’ve lost our creativity.

It has become transactional.

My answer to your question of ‘how do I get more listeners?’ is start with the quality of your passion. The quality of your voice. The quality of that connection that you make with the listeners.

Don’t focus on who’s listening. Don’t target an audience. Just speak from your heart and someone will listen. Someone will make a connection. You can make people happy, if you can make a real connection, for a brief, shining moment.

Even if it’s only 40 of them. Change 40 people’s lives and you’re a winner. You’re creating ripples that will outlive you.

That’s success.

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One percent betterI have consumed a lot of self-improvement books.

One of the common tropes is the “One percent better” saying.

Very common. Not as common as the Roger Bannister four-minute mile trope. But common, nonetheless.

This ‘one percent rule’ is probably older than dirt, Ptolemies probably preached it to eager Alexandrians, but I think it originated in my modern consciousness with the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.

A decent read. Probably better as an audio book. A bit preachy and breathless like most self-help books, it’s in their nature, part of the schtick.

But I digress.

The one percent rule.

This is how it goes, and I quote, “If you can improve by just one percent a day, you’ll be 37% percent better at the end of the year!”

The point the one percent rule is trying to make is that small changes stack up over time. In this case the supposition, as preached, is that if you improve by one percent every day for a year, then at the end of the year you will have improved by 36.5% – which is the simple math of point-oh-one times 365.

So, If I am at an arbitrary level in some quality or capability of, let’s say, ten, to keep the math easy, and I improve by one percent on day one I am now at a capable level of ten point one.

One percent better.

On day two, I add another one percent and now my capability rises to ten point two. Hoorah!

If you were to plot this on a graph it would be a nice, clean, straight line marching up and to the right at one percent per day.

For the non-remedial-mathy among us you’ll notice that this version of the rule of one percent better is simply additive. Meaning we are only claiming the original one percent of the original value.

We are not compounding the one percent on the improvements. That’s a different trope altogether. They typically tell that trope when they talk about investing. For example the story about the grains of sand or the rice on the chessboard squares.

In those stories the lesson is the power of compounding interest.

Because if you were able to improve one percent on the previous improvements you get a really cool number.

Are you ready?

OK.

If, as before, I start with a capability value of ten and I compound the daily one percent improvement, at the end of the year I have a capability of, wait for it…

Eleven quadrillion, seven hundred eighty-three trillion, seventy-eight billion, five hundred ten million, one hundred forty-nine thousand, nine hundred.

Which is way better than 36.5

While I wholeheartedly agree with the premise that small, consistent efforts produce great long-term results. I don’t think the one percent-rule is quite that simple.

In reality, as we athletes know, improvement is much trickier.

It does not follow a straight line and it is not additive.

It is, in fact, some version of an S curve. Typically, the improvement starts slow, then accelerates, before hitting a point of diminishing returns where it slows and stops.

So you get less than one percent improvement in the beginning and at the end, but probably more than one percent improvement in the middle.

That is why when you take on a new capability-based project, let’s say you decide to learn how to play the tuba, your progress will be a maddening struggle for the first few weeks. You may get frustrated and want to give up. But, at some point something clicks, and the progress is rapid, and at the end of that year, with consistent daily effort, you’re pretty good at the tuba.

But you probably won’t make the first chair in the symphony.

Because another thing the one percent rule misses is that you have a starting point, a starting state. And that starting state has built in constraints. Maybe you have a bit of arthritis in your pinky finger from a fishing derby accident when you were four. That unfortunate flaw is going to keep you from mastering some of the notes in Beethoven’s ninth.

So each one of us is starting the game with a certain base level of capability and a number of constraints that can change the shape of our S-curve.

As athletes we see this as well. Some people are just born with a better tool kit than others.

Every one of us has a different curve based on our starting point and our ceiling.

Capability, or capacity, is another curve. This curve is a normal distribution.

If you were to quantify and plot ten-thousand-people’s starting, innate capabilities on a piece of graph paper, most of us fall in the fat middle. There are a few lucky or unlucky outliers who occupy the edges.

But does any of this matter to the self-help premise of one percent better?

Can you work harder to get better? Or, is your achievement level predestined by your potential?

Nature or nurture?

The answer is both.

The first chair tuba player and the Olympic athlete have a happy combination of inherent capability plus the work ethic to realize it.

That’s, I guess, the bad news, if we must have bad news. You can’t outwork your inherent constraints. You have both a starting point and a built-in upper limit to your capability.

But, you can get the best out of YOU with consistent work.

And that will put you ahead of all the pedestrians occupying the middle of the curve with you.

If you’re up against someone with the same capability, you can put in more work and more consistency than them, and you will probably beat them in a race.

The challenge is that when you get towards the top of the S-curve there are diminishing returns. The same one percent effort produces less improvement.

You’ll always be stuck within the constraints of your curve unless you can find some sort of breakthrough to get to the next level. This is what all the ‘hack’ talk is about. Shifting the curve.

That’s why we thrash around when we get to that point trying to find some way to get back to the rapid improvement part of the curve.

Maybe the solution is a coach. Maybe it’s a methodology. Maybe it’s mind control. How can we shape the curve to learn more faster?

To improve faster.

Professionals try to extend their curves by committing every second of every day to their art. They are not the one percenters. They are the one hundred percenters.

That’s a big choice. Directing one hundred percent of your life force at a single capability facet.

That’s when they start preaching ‘sacrifice’.

Anyhow…

What does all this mean for us run-of-the-mill, down-in-the-muck types?

Well, I have good news.

The good news is that there is good news.

If you understand the S-curve and are willing to push through that early part of the learning curve, whether it’s running or tuba, if you stay consistent with your effort, long enough, you will get to that middle part of the S-curve, which is rapid improvement.

And then it is fun.

You find that place where there is a breakthrough every week and a personal record around every corner.

This, my friends, is a universal truth.

If you stick with it, by the time the curve starts to flatten out, you will have somewhere around eighty percent mastery of that thing. And that is further than most people ever get. Being in the top 20% is not a bad place to be in most endeavors.

But then you will reach a point where you can’t outwork the curve. The curve will force you to look at your constraints. That’s part of the journey.

So my friends, yes, small habits, small daily efforts and consistency do unlock steady and predictable improvements. You can learn how to do almost anything. And your eighty percent mastery may be pretty good.

This isn’t just for new habits. The same curve applies to bad habits. If there is some behavior you want to change you have to work through that slow, initial flat spot in the curve, stick with it and you will ultimately find some form of success.

What do you do with this knowledge?

Well, you could learn something. Take it for a spin. Be consistent and reap the rewards. Start stacking one stone on top of another, and if you get knocked down, start over. That first eighty percent is there for the taking.

But don’t expect it to be linear. Don’t expect it to be infinite.

And if you invest those ten dollars at one percent a day compounded you can end up with an eleven quadrillion, seven hundred eighty-three trillion, seventy-eight billion, five hundred ten million, one hundred forty-nine thousand, nine hundred nest egg. .

Or maybe just one percent better.

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Episode 5-513 – Baselining Race Times with Eric* Podcast link -> https://shows.acast.com/runrunlive * Buy a book -> https://booklocker.com/books/13731.html * Amazon -> https://www.amazon.com/After-Apocalypse-Story-Pandemic-Survival/dp/0977234207

Hello my running friends. And welcome to episode 5-513 of the RunRunLive Podcast. Today we have a chat with our friend Eric Buckley about how to baseline your racing fitness when you are in a new season of life. But the same would apply to anyone beginning a new structured training program or coming back from an injury. You wonder, ‘Where do I start?’ Well today we are going to answer that question.

Or at least give it a good chewing over.

In section one I’ll go deeper into this baselining topic and how I’ve been working through it myself.

In section two I’m going to give you some book reviews, because I have been consuming so many books, I need to celebrate some of them and clear my desk.

In the outro I’ll talk through my recent training, what I have learned and how I’m using that to set new goals.

I’ll also revisit my summer goal list.

It is about to switch to Summer in New England. We’ve had 14 straight weekends of rain. It has been consistently cool. Which is great for running but not some much for my tomatoes.

But later this week it is going shift into the 90’s and we’ll get our first real blast of summer. Which means I’m going to need to shift my workouts to as early in the morning as I can stomach.

Ollie the Collie is doing well. He hates the heat. Especially if I’m doing road work on the rail trail. Since we last talked, he pulled something on one of our long runs, and was limping, so he had to sit out for a few days, but he’s back at it now.

Two days in a row he’s found some poop on the trail during our lunchtime walks in the forest, and he thinks it’s a grand idea to roll in it.

I have been forced to give him a bath two days in a row.

Bathing a semi-feral-neurotic border collie is not the simplest activity. I do it in the Jacuzzi of our master bedroom. Which, sadly, or ironically, is the only thing we use the jacuzzi for these days.

He’s not thrilled with it, but it’s starting to become such a part of our routine that he’ll jump into the jacuzzi on demand now. Then I strip down, get in with him, pour water over him, soap him up, rinses and scrub, then drain the now hair-choked jacuzzi and towel him off. Then I wipe up all the hair and take a shower myself.

He’s got such a thick undercoat it takes days for him to dry, especially now that it’s getting humid.

I, on the other hand, have so little hair it doesn’t need to be dried at all.

On with the show!

Section One – On baselining your pace and time goalsFeatured Interview – Eric BuckleyEric was a member of the original running boom, taking up the sport at age nine the day Frank Shorter won the Olympic marathon. He switched to cycling in High School, for which his build is better suited, but never lost his love for running. After retiring from cycling at age 30, he became interested in ultra distances and has been running marathons and ultras ever since.

He is currently raising funds for Cancer Research via Pedal the Cause.

https://www.givesignup.org/Race/157721/Donate/dnALCCmMsskHtDo1?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR4dmotPzrB4v8TLkdRRA8GWG2LOkp7A3sicqAgCwqeHp0OHncc-TwYcbBKt7A_aem_pxY-XuEaSlW66xCPwVdt1A

Section Two: Two books about the Moon

OutroOk my friends, you have baselined yourself to the end of another RunRunLive Podcast, Episode 5-513, set in concrete and hardening.

My training has been going marginally well. Actually kind of awful. I have tweaked my back twice in the last few weeks. First when I was doing some side lunges, then two weeks later when I was moving soil for my wife, Each incident takes a solid 2 weeks to heal and keeps me from hitting workouts.

With my recent intensity and distance increase my knee is a bit achy as well. And to make matters worse, my ‘pre-retirement-commercial-activity’ (which I used to refer to as ‘my real job’) got a bit busy and stressful at the same time sucking my energy like a great corporate succubus. Andall this is floating on a low background hum of IRL requirements things that can’t be avoided.

You folks know this, but it’s hard, psychologically, when you’ve got a lot of stress and your training isn’t going as well as you like. That training is a lifeline through the other streams of your life and a you rely on it. So when it is faltering you develop a bit of melancholy.

Melancholy is a great word. Comes to us from those happy-go-lucky Greeks. It is a literal translation. ‘Melan’ means black, ‘choly’ is bile. So Melancholy is ‘black bile’. It goes back to the belief that your health was determined by the balance of the four humors and when you started acting depressed you were out of balance.

But – nothing couple of happy leeches and a little blood-letting can’t cure, but, alas, as much as I love a good blood-letting session, I primarily depend on exercise to hold off the melancholia.

So I promised I’d update on my summer goals. Well I’m still noodling on whether I have the juice to run a decent marathon in September given my baselining. I may back off my time goals a little but I’ll still show up and see what I can do. That’s my first goal. That race is in 12 weeks.

I came up with a reading goal. I’m going to read 12 books in the 12 weeks leading up to the race.

That’s 2.

For number 3 I need to get back to my book project because I have, after a 5-year journey completed all 5 seasons of my apocalypse podcast. So – some sort of progress on that, but I haven’t quantified it yet.

I’m going to add one more ill-defined goal of helping my kids somehow, because they are both going through some busy times in their lives.

I’ll tell you a couple stories to take you out. I have had a gentleman who has been using my book from 2015, “MarathonBQ – how to qualify for Boston with a full time job and a family” emailing me over the last year asking questions. I did my best to answer them.

I got an email from him this morning saying he had taken 42 minutes off his marathon PR in his last race. Holy cow! Yeah. If you can handle the load, it works.

And, finally the ‘old guy feel good’ story of the week. I was walking into the market yesterday from the parking lot. I look up and the young lady (young compared to me) coming in the opposite direction has a big smile and is looking at ME. I look around to see who she is really looking at, but no, it’s me, and I wonder what is going on. As she approaches, she smiles and says, “I love your Doom shirt!” Turns out I was wearing a T-shirt with graphics from the old 90’s first person shooter Doom on it.

IDKFA

That kind of thing makes me happy.

And I’ll see you out there.

Buy a book -> https://booklocker.com/books/13731.html

Amazon -> https://www.amazon.com/After-Apocalypse-Story-Pandemic-Survival/dp/0977234207

…

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Two audiobooks about the moonI listened to two books on audio during my runs over the last few weeks. (audio books don’t count towards my 12 books over the summer goal)

The first one was Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon. a 2018 nonfiction book Written by Robert Kurson recounting NASA’s 1968 Apollo 8 mission, which was the first crewed spacecraft to reach the Moon and return safely to Earth.

This was a really good listen. 1968 was a year that had a lot going on in it. There was societal and cultural upheaval. And these men figured out how to fulfill JFK’s vision of getting to the moon.

They pulled forward and combined Apollo missions to beat the Russians to it. They boosted 3 astronauts on top of the new Saturn Five Rocket to the moon, where they made 10 orbits and successfully returned to Earth.

I had listened to an earlier book by Kurson called “Shadow Divers” about the discovery and identification of a German WWII submarine wreck – but mostly about the deep-water divers who do such things for fun. Having dabbled in SCUBA diving in my life I found that book equal parts terrifying and wonderful.

Like that book, Rocket Men is not so much about the known narrative of Apollo 8, but about these astronauts and the scientists and the engineers who had the hubris and conviction and discipline to make this a reality.

It makes you wonder if men and women of this legendary caliber will ever exist again.

Go listen to it. It’s good.

..

The second book, by comparison, is “Orbital” a 2023 novel by English writer Samantha Harvey. This is a recent fiction novel that won a bunch of literary prizes. I had to wait 3 months for a copy to become available and ironically it fell on the heels of my listening to “Rocket Men”.

This is part science fiction, part philosophy and part other things indescribable. Because I was listening to it, I got the distinct impression that it was as much poetry and prose. By that I mean it had a musical cadence to it. It was narrative and characters but it had a unique rhythm that for some reason reminded me of Homer.

If you like deep thoughts and beautiful prose this is for you. If you like well-defined narratives with beginnings and ends, maybe not so much.

…

But what do these two distinctly different pieces have to say? They both ask the question ‘who the hell are we puny humans to have the hubris to throw ourselves off our little dust ball and push ourselves outward into the universe?’

They both observe how beautiful and fragile our home, the Earth is. Remember that iconic photo of earthrise from Apollo 8? There it was. Our home. Mother Earth. A blue ball suspended in trackless space.

It fills us with grandiose hope for our struggling species and great existential fear and awe at our puniness in the big universe.

Two books about the moon.

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Baselining for Racing

How do you know what your race time goals should be? This is an important question when you are putting together a structured training plan.

You need to find your baseline.

“But, Chris…” You ask, “You’ve been training and racing for over 30 years. How could you not know your baseline?”

And, indeed, I am probably better informed by my experience, but that was then, this is now. I’m coming off an injury that sidelined me for a couple years and I’m in a new age group. My history is informative, but in some ways, also inhibitive. If I start training assuming a baseline from 5 years ago I’m guaranteed to be wrong.

This is true for any runner that is entering a training cycle from an unknown starting point. New runners. Runners who have never gone through structured training. Runners cominginto a new age group. Runners coming back from an illness or injury.

All may need to establish a baseline before they launch into structured training.

What do I mean by baseline?First, I mean the physical baseline.

• What is your aerobic fitness? Your heart and lungs and muscular ability to work at a certain level of effort for a certain amount of time. How quickly does your heart rate rise and how quickly does it recover?
• What is your base capability in terms of effort and pace and how do they correlate?
• What is your fragility index (I just made that up). How much volume and quality work can you do without breaking down and still be able to recover to reap the benefits?
• What’s your base flexibility?

Second, I mean your mental baseline.

• Is your desire for the outcome enough to pull you through the discipline of a multi-month structured training cycle?
• Are you able to commit to the work? Are you able to commit to the ‘suck’ and the ‘suffering’ when things get dark?

And finally, your practical baseline.

• What’s your experience level? Are you new to the work or an old veteran?
• Do you have the time and space in your life to commit to that cycle?
• Does this cycle and this outcome align with your purpose?

Physical Baseline:The best way, and probably the only way, to find your physical baseline is to test it. The way you test it is by simulating racing conditions.

Here are some examples:

• A 5K.
• A set of speed intervals at the track
• A long temp run with a fast finish

From each of these you will see what your current pace and effort baseline is. Could you hold the pace? What pace? What did your heartrate do during the effort? Did it spike to max? At what point in the effort did you fail? Did your form break? Did you experience pain?

More importantly, how did it feel?

When you were in that interval, or that 5K, or that tempo run, how did the mechanics feel? Do you think you could sustain that through a multiweek cycle?

One session isn’t enough. I have found that these baselining sessions are susceptible to outlier performances. Do them a few times and see where the consistency is.

That will give you a good picture of what your starting point is. Of what your base training paces are and what efforts you are capable of.

Remember, the objective of the baselining is to find a starting point. The goal race and time is the objective. The structured training plan gets you from A to B. Once you have an idea of your starting point you can design a plan to get you to your goal as efficiently as possible.

Here is where I will inject my own experience. I have been coming back from a knee injury that took 2-3 years to mend – through that 2-3 years I virtually stopped running. I still kept a level of exercise going, but not running. I also turned over into a new decade of life.

After that 2-3 year hiatus I began to claw my way back into running. At first my goals were focused on just being able to run again and to be able to go the distance. Over the last 2 years I have slowly rebuilt my base fitness and my health to a point where the possibility of racing goals has once again entered the picture.

So what is my baseline? It’s been 5 years since I’ve focused on a race goal time. I’m not the same athlete.

I have essentially been doing base training for 2 years, slowly building or rebuilding my core fitness. I think I have that core heart, lungs and legs fitness.

What I haven’t even looked at are paces. I know what my target paces were in a past lifetime, and I can guess what they should be now, but I wouldn’t know until I tested them.

I also don’t know how my body will respond to volume and distance. For the past two years my weekly mileage has been hovering in the 20 – 30 mile range and my long runs, few that there are, have peaked out around 18 miles.

In my experience, in order to run a goal pace at a marathon I need to get up into the 50 mile a week range and get a handful of long runs around 20 miles.

So, that is what I set out to test over the last few weeks.

First, I leaned into my existing tempo runs and instead of hitting them at my normal 75-85% effort, instead pushed them to perceived 5K race pace.

What this translates to from runner geek to English is that I have these 8-10 mile bread and butter runs that I do on the rail trail. I ease into them with a couple miles of warmup, then raise the effort level as the run progresses.

For my baselining test I put the gas pedal down for those last couple miles at the end of the workout to see what the pace was.

The result was, and this made me quite happy, that my paces fell around 20 – 30 seconds per mile faster than my goal marathon pace.

Positive results.

Next, I had coach drop in some track work. I had to work around a sore back but was able to do a set of 5 focused, 1,000 meter repeats down at the track. I was able to hold the form and mechanics and, again, found my speed/tempo pace about 40 seconds per mile faster than goal race pace.

Also very positive.

Next I did a set of mile repeats with a short rest in between on the rail trail. I struggled a bit with this workout, but was again seeing paces 20+ seconds a mile faster than race pace.

Also very positive and right in line with my expectations, however I noticed I was lagging in energy and my legs were extra heavy.

Finally I pushed one of my weekend long runs on the road up over 19 miles. It was reasonably difficult, especially towards the end, but I was able to get it done.

So, on paper my physical capabilities seemed to align with my potential race goals.

Let’s talk about that ‘fragility index’ I just made up. For me as an older athlete, baselining my fitness and my paces is only half the battle. I can’t get to the finish line unless I can get to the starting line. And getting to the starting line requires avoiding injury.

One of the most common things with setting aggressive goals that require higher volume and more intensity as part of your structured training is injury. This is the well-known boom and bust cycle of training.

I am well versed in this.

And a big eye-opener for me from these baselining tests was how fragile I am.

Coming out of that track speedwork session I was physically exhausted for over a day. Not only did my recent knee injury ache, but my forgotten plantar fasciitis was angry, and my hips were sore. Like I said, that leg tiredness carried over to the mile repeat session two days later.

After the 19 miler everything hurt, especially the knee.

Now you might say that this was clearly a case of ‘too much, too fast’ but what I learned was that I can’t force the fitness and expect to recover. My paces are there but my body’s ability to absorb the training and recover are diminished.

This week, a week after that push, my workouts have been horrible. My legs feel like lead.

So in terms of baselining I discovered that my fragility index is too high for aggressive training, and I’ll have to work that into my structure.

As for the Mental Baseline…To be honest, these goals are not as compelling as they once were. I’ve got nothing to prove. It’s more of a nice-to-have for me now.

I’m not sure that ‘nice-to-have’ is enough. My risk tolerance is lower. At this point in my life, I’d rather be healthy and enjoy the activity than push until I break.

These goals are nice to think about but not worth risking my health over.

Practically…I am in a position where my life allows me to train for a couple hours a day. That’s not a problem. I have the space in my life and I have all the equipment etc.

I certainly have the experience to ride out a training cycle and I have the experience to manage a race.

Baselining Summary:In order to build an effective structured training plan you need to baseline your capabilities. The best way to do this is to test them, on the track, on the trail, and on the road. From you actual performances and how your body reacts to them you can set you starting point and your tolerances.

If your body is physically ready, then you must decide if the goal is worthy enough to commit to and if your life is in a position to manage it.

For me, based on my baselining, I will need to manage my recovery and take a slow-ramp approach to this race cycle. I need to be willing to back off at signs of encroaching injury. I can still train but I need to be cautious nad measured.

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Episode 5-512 – Michael Ceely the Discipline of Athletes Over Hate* Podcast link -> https://shows.acast.com/runrunlive * Buy a book -> https://booklocker.com/books/13731.html * Amazon -> https://www.amazon.com/After-Apocalypse-Story-Pandemic-Survival/dp/0977234207

Hello my running friends.

Today is the last of our four episodes focusing on the culture hate. We have a conversation with Michael and talk bout it from an athlete’s point of view.

In section one I have a delightful story for you about industrial poultry products and in section two is a summary of what I think we have learned from this fou-episode arc.

Don’t worry, next episode we will be back in the running sphere of things.

I do appreciate you humoring my little road trip around the hate and polarization topic. And one of the learnings for me from todays chat with Michael is that managing this polarized culture requires the same discipline that we use every day to get in shape and train for events.

We have the toolset already. We can approach it as another self-improvement campaign, like a marathon training cycle.

So, do the work people! Society needs us. This is our moment.

This is my favorite time of year in New England. The weather is warm but not too warm. The plants and flowers are exploding out of the ground. The days are long, long, long and full of light.

Honestly it feels special and I’m working really hard to appreciate it. Because it isn’t really a season, it’s more like a few days, or at most a couple of weeks and then it will be all heat and humidity and biting insects.

But…

The power of the pause. It’s beautiful now. Stop and breathe it in. Let the universe show its beauty to you and don’t shade your eyes and look down the road into the future.

I couple editorial comments on today’s interview. At one point I say the Mongols killed off 20% of the Chinese population. In fact historians argue over the exact numbers because no one knows. They agree it was significant. And they attribute 40-60 million deaths the Mongols overall.

I also talk about a tribe being murdered ‘a million years ago’. This is not true, it is hyperbole on my part. The actual event I’m referencing is a discovery from around 10,000 years ago in Nataruk, Kenya that is interpreted in different ways, but one of the interpretations is a violent attack. I’ll leave the Wikipedia link here and you can go argue among yourselves, but my point is that violent human behavior isn’t new.

With that, I will come back at the end to update you on my training. It’s a beautiful time of year. I hope everyone is doing well. If there is ever anything I can do for you, feel free to reach out and start a conversation.

I’m still thinking about my summer goals but I’m aiming for a qualification attempt in September and have started those wheels turning.

On with the show!

Section One – The Turkey Burger IncidentFeatured Interview – Michael CeelyYes, great conversation! Headshot and logo attached.

Bio – https://www.michaelceely.com/media

Official Bio

Michael Ceely is a high performance coach. He helps executives, entrepreneurs and athletes use the power of psychology to get results far beyond their expectations.

He is a licensed psychotherapist and holds a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology.

Michael is a lifelong athlete with a particular love for the sport of cycling. During his cycling career, he won two state titles and twice went to the Olympic Trials.

Michael views personal growth as the ultimate form of human expression. His new book, The Only Way Is Up: How to Raise Your Standards and Love Your Life, is debuting in 2025.

Links

https://www.michaelceely.com/podcast

https://www.youtube.com/@MichaelCeelyCoaching

https://www.instagram.com/michael_ceely/

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/michael-ceelys-high-performance-podcast/id1604252258

Michael Ceely

High Performance Coaching

michaelceely.com

Book a strategy call

Section Two: Summary of the hate interviews

OutroOk my friends, you looked down from 30,000 feet to the end of another RunRunLive Podcast, Episode 5-512, end of the journey, on to happier things I can control.

So the race I’m training for is the Beantown Marathon at 7:00 AM on September 7th in Cove Park Hingham, Ma. This gives me a solid 14 weeks for a training cycle to try for a BQ.

I have actually run this race before. It is a flat, 6-loop race in a park. Designed for qualifying attempts. Last time I did not have the fitness and couldn’t hold the pace.

I’m frankly terrified to be trying to qualify again. The way it looks I may need a 10-minute buffer, even if I qualify, to get into the race.

But, as always, don’t focus on the event, focus on the process and the event will either take care of itself or not.

Been playing with my paces and efforts to see what my baseline is and it’s encouraging. But it’s still right on the edge of my ability. I’ll need to get a good day and execute well.

Oh, and survive the training cycle while getting enough volume and intensity in my structured training. A journey of discovery!

It’s good to have this early in September, because I have a lot of personal stuff lining up for the fall that I’ll need to be available for – non-running, family stuff.

Ollie is doing great. And, of course, when we ran down by the Scout bridge yesterday he made sure to check that there were no turkey burgers to be had. Believe it or not, Ollie is 6 years old. This week I his birthday. He’s still crazy, but he’s my brother and my spirit guide and I’m glad we decided on another dog when Buddy passed.

Keep fighting the good fight my friends.

And I’ll see you out there.

Buy a book -> https://booklocker.com/books/13731.html

Amazon -> https://www.amazon.com/After-Apocalypse-Story-Pandemic-Survival/dp/0977234207

…

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Hate SummaryHere is a summary of the four conversations we’ve had with professionals delving into the current environment of hate and outrage and polarization.

I know this has been a difficult process to get through. But it was important to me to try to find some answers. Hopefully there are some breadcrumbs here for you too.

Let’s try to synthesize what we’ve learned and what we can do.

Why? Why are we at this point of hate and outrage and polarization?

First, our brains weren’t really designed for the constant onslaught of stimuli they are being forced to absorb in the modern world. You are being assaulted by triggering messages 24 X 7. These messages are designed to move you out of your big brain – your thinking, intellectual brain – and into your dinosaur brain – the amygdala, fight or flight fear brain.

These triggering assaults are then capturing immediate response in a positive feedback loop that is designed to amplify your outrage and move you further down that path.

Our ill-adapted mental equipment that was pretty good at avoiding lions in the jungle is a liability when it comes to responding to these constant, mostly manufactured, seemingly dire threats.

Technology as a tool for delivering outrageous content is very good at triggering us. The connectedness of the global internet enables this to be done at scale. Now you can herd people from Kansas, Oregon and Rhode Island, who would otherwise never have shared a concern, into an outraged group.

Why has this been designed this way?

This technology was originally designed to get you to buy something. Because once you are moved out of your rational brain and into your dinosaur brain, you’re much easier to influence. It’s like shopping drunk.

But it works so well on influencing people that organizations and special interest groups started using it to get you to ‘buy’ other things. Like candidates and ideologies.

Because it works the same way. The mechanics are the same. Feed you content that moves you out of your rational brain into your fear-based dinosaur brain, this puts you into a state where you are very susceptible to influence and direction. It’s easier to make you take action.

Whip you into such a frothing, angry, discombobulated state, that facts don’t matter, and you’ll do anything to get a feeling of control back.

But, what’s in it for us? Why do we participate?

Once you’re afraid and feeling like you have no control, there is a mental and physical reward from the act of lashing out, in whatever form that takes, to you it feels like you are ‘fighting back’, unfortunately you may be just following someone else’s script.

It’s like someone coming up to you in a bar, tossing a beer on you and calling your date an ugly whore. How great does it feel to throw that first punch! And what kind of loser doesn’t stick up for their date?

That lashing out gives you a physical reward of happy chemicals and makes you feel like you’re back in control, like you’ve done something. But are you? Does the negative stimulus stop? No, it reads your response and escalates.

This positive feedback from your negative behavior becomes an addiction. You need more of that. And you need bigger doses. And you need them more often. Now you’re down the rabbit hole of addiction.

How does that participation affect us?

You get a rush of dopamine by lashing out, by taking action. Remember – fight or flight. But this action doesn’t resolve the conflict. It escalates it. You are stuck in a constant high-stress state.

Living in a state of fight or flight is harmful to your long-term health. It impacts your happiness. It bathes you in anxiety and fear. It effects your sleep and your attitude. It pumps your brain and body full of stress hormones like cortisol. You become a physically sick, mentally ill zombie.

Why are some people really driven to attack and hate and go off the deep end more than others?

Different people are wired differently. Whether through nature or nurture some people are more sensitive to fear, conflict and anxiety. Some people may have childhood or other traumas or built in anxiety that makes them easier to influence into a neagtive state.

The modern world has isolated individuals and made them feel powerless. People are searching for significance and connection, whether it is positive or negative. That connection or an unhealthy ghost of it can be found in our current polarization. Throwing hand grenades is a way to have significance in an otherwise insignificant existence.

Why do these hate conversations lump people into groups and create ‘us versus them’?

Creating an ‘us versus them’ and an outgroup is an effective way to control people. The goal is to keep you in a fearful state. An effective way to do this is to create an enemy. An enemy that is trying to take your things away or harm your family. This way you can create the ‘other’.

The most effective others are a different race or religion or culture where there are real-world differences that can then be twisted into otherness. Other divisions can be used, like where you live, or your opinion on a dog-whistle issue.

‘Our team versus your team’ is a timeless cultural attribute of human society. It has always existed. In this sense it is very normal and a positive way to bring local communities together.

This normal human cultural response can be, and is, being perverted to amplify fear. This perversion progresses to dehumanizing the other group. And if you’re looking for something to be genuinely afraid of it is what happens when you dehumanize the other group.

That road ends in the loss of our collective humanity, and, potentially taking of lives. “I was just following orders” is not a viable excuse. Please, if you find yourself participating in dehumanization, check yourself.

What if was your mother? Your brother? Your son or your daughter?

These are not new things. These are all known tools of influence, manipulation and control.

Having a scary other also enables the framing of decision as a binary choice. Either or. Binary choices strip away your power. A binary choice allows the creation of a majority opinion where there is none.

They don’t need you to be in favor of anything in particular, they just need you to be against the tother and each other.

Why can’t we just make an intellectual choice? Why can’t people say ‘this may not be true?’ Why don’t they recognize the absurdity of the narratives? Why can’t we just show them the facts so they’ll choose the right way?

It’s not that easy. You are asking these questions from your intellectual brain. Once you have been moved into a fear state your rational thinking ability is deceased. You are essentially acting like an addict, or someone under the influence, incapable of thoughtful decisions.

People who are stuck in fear state or stuck in this escalation loop of hate and outrage, like an addict, can’t just decide to say ‘no’. They need to get out of that state before they can access rational decision making.

Not only that, this state, these fears, and the resulting beliefs that they cling to become internalized. They are not opinions. They become part of the individual’s identity. It becomes who they are.

The result is when you challenge a belief, you re challenging their identity. It is no longer a conversation; it is a personal attack. This dynamic reinforces the intensity of the response and deepens the ‘us versus them’.

Like an addiction the individual needs to be weened off of the stimulus before they can think rationally.

If what we need is more critical thinking, then why are intellectuals and intellectualism in general being attacked?

It would be healthier for us and our society to be able to think more clearly, to stop name-calling and having ill-informed, kneejerk, responses based on polarized group opinions.

Why doesn’t that happen? Why don’t we see the problem and lean into critical thinking? Why don’t we seek out experts and educated resources that think deeply about these challenges as their life’s work?

Why, in fact, does the opposite happen?

Simply put, this is not in the best interest of the forces using these tools of influence.

Because if you start thinking in a rational way you’ll see the absurdities. You’ll consider alternatives. You’ll understand common ground. You’ll consider that most choices are not binary.

You might even lose your hate.

You’ might even exit the fear state and become less influenceable.

Less controllable.

So part of the playbook is to vilify intellectuals as false prophets, or biased sources, or members of the conspiracy. To ban books without reading them. To exclude any thought that does not align 100%.

Control, absolute control, is when ‘faith’ replaces thought. Arguing or persecuting from a position of belief or faith is a convenient way to not have to think for yourself. Especially if that ‘faith’ means you unquestionably follow a leader of a group without thinking.

When you abdicate your power, you no longer have a choice.

It’s easier, it’s comfortable, to not include alternative thoughts, but it does not solve the problem, it amplifies the problem.

Is it really as bad as it feels?

No, well, maybe. Our current state feels bad. It feels like we’re waiting for something awful to happen. Some precipitous event that will be a violent lurch in awfulness.

Take a breath.

Realize that there is nothing new about where we are today. The way we are acting is normal human behavior. We’ve engaged in this behavior for tens of thousands of years.

Remember the goal of the forces bombarding you with hate, fear, outrage and negative input is to make you afraid. You can choose not to play in that game, regardless of how bad it seems is any of it under your control?

Even, if we assume the universe is on fire, is you living in a state of fear or hate adding any value to anything?

Take a step back. Look down on it from 30,000 feet.

There is your town. Somewhere people are eating dinner. Teenagers are doing homework. Parents are giving baths to toddlers and reading bedtime stories. The world has not ended. Maybe things are not ‘terrible’, ‘awful’ and ‘horrible’.

Remember, the system of influence wants you to think that way, to feel that way, to push you into fear mode.

Is your situation that bad? How much of what you are feeling is manufactured?

Resist fear mode. Move the observing self into the big brain and appreciate all the goodness in the world.

If you make a point of looking for the positive things, hate and fear shrivel.

How do we get out of the hate cycle?

Let’s move on to potential solutions.

First, if you feel like you are out of control seek out a professional. It’s ok. It is a strength to ask for help.

The recurring theme in all these conversations is that, like any addiction, you need to start by mitigating the influence. Disconnect from the input. Remove yourself from the triggering environment. Stick your phone in a drawer. Delete the apps. Stop watching the news. Allow your body and brain a few days to go through the withdrawal.

Stop repeating the really-good-mostly-made-up narratives. Stop participating in the catastrophizing of life.

As part of this process, once you are out from under the influence of the drug, you can thoughtfully create replacement habits to rebuild your operating system in the context of sanity and health.

Build the boundaries you need to be healthy. Whether that is with technology, habits or people.

Work on being your best healthy self first. Become a healthy island in the sea of hate. If you choose to engage, do it from the strength and power of self-control and self-realization.

Finding and bringing your best self is how you make the world better and it is 100% under your control.

And, at the end of the day, there is no mythical world where everything is peaceful, everyone agrees and there is no conflict. The world and human existence is chaotic. It has always been chaotic.

You can control yourself, how you react and how you feel. The system of influence aims to take that way from you. Disengage. Reimagine and take back your power.

Finally, stop worrying about things that are out of your control. Stop worrying about things that might happen in the future. Stop worrying about events in the past. Let it all go and be with your power in the now.

If I am a healthy individual and choose to engage, how do I engage in a positive way?

You can have conversations with anyone. But learn how to have conversations that obey the rules of decorum.

Learn how to listen. Be empathetic. Seek to understand. Seek to help. Look for common ground from which you can work together to achieve mutual goals.

Be open to ideas. Ask questions.

Protect yourself. Know when to walk away from unhealthy conversations. Respect yourself and your boundaries.

Stop dehumanizing the others. Stop personal attacks. Stop name calling. Debate policies, not people.

Engage as your best self with your rational brain and your personal power. Only support leaders or representatives that do the same. Strive to be an island of rationality and positivity in this sea of hate.

We are all influencers.

Be a beacon of hope.

How do we move forward now?

I hope these have been useful conversations. I hope they cause you to stop and think. I hope they give you some options on regaining a healthy relationship with the world and some ideas on how to engage and how not to.

Seek out the good in the world.

You can’t be angry and grateful at the same time.

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The Power of CompoundingWhat happens today is the result of thousands of small actions and choices that have been made in your lifetime.

In our talk with Rachel today you heard about the impact of small changes, persistent changes, over time.

In our off-camera, off-microphone conversations I asked her why, if all this nutrition stuff is so obvious and available, why so many people are stuck? And what she said is that her most successful clients have an immediate reason to change.

And most people are unable to makes small changes to their lifestyles and habits that would put them on a path to achieve their health goals in the future.

People who know they should eat better or are otherwise mildly unhappy with their current state aren’t successful. That knowledge isn’t enough. That mild discomfort isn’t enough. They need to have an immediate need. An acute need.

Or they needs to intellectually understand the impact of small changes and the compounding effect of those small changes over time.

Because there is no direct connection between the action and the impact. Humans have a hard time with that.

You can eat that next donut or pizza and nothing really bad is going to happen. You’re not going to fall down, clutching your chest and die. Just the opposite. You are going to have a sense of momentary euphoria from eating your favorite food.

But over the course of a week, a month, a year, a decade that small choice IS going to lead to you clutching your chest on the ground.

Because we can’t connect the small joy of today with the gruesome and shocking results of the future – we don’t have enough pain to act on it.

The opposite is true as well. There is a direct causality between your ability to make short term positive decisions and your long term success in all aspects of your life.

(For the psychiatric science behind this google “the Marshmallow Test”)

For us meat puppets unfortunately there is a big gap between intellectually knowing and taking that small action.

And that’s everything in life. Your current state is the accumulation of all those small choices that you have ever made.

How do you make the small choice today that adds up to the place you want to be in five years? It’s hard. Those small choices may not be pleasurable at the moment.

When you choose to go for a run on a rainy day.

When you choose to not eat that donut, not drink that beer, you are trading small immediate pleasure for a greater pleasure in the future. But, it’s an intellectual choice that is incredibly hard. That future is unknown, and squishy.

The now is here and solid and real.

You need to use all your understanding of the power of habit to rewire those small pleasures.

But it’s more than just a linear or binary choice – that small action directed towards the better/healthier future today. It is part of an investment of energy, knowledge and time that compounds over time with consistency.

Trues compounding is nonlinear. Because the improvements or the advancements of each iteration of the small thing build upon the level of the previous thing. 1% better is compounded. The end results of consistency are greater than inconsistent hard or big efforts.

That’s how compounding works.

Here I will refer you to the grain of rice fable. Or the penny a day story.

And I will apologize for plagiarism every self-help financial coach in the history of mankind. Because, of course this concept was built for coaching people on the importance of retirement saving.

If I asked you, would you rather have $1m today or a penny a day for 30 days which would you choose? What if I doubled the penny every day? So, 1 penny on day 1, 2 pennies on Day 2, 4 pennies on day 3, etc?

And the punchline is that the penny a day choice gets you over $5m at the end of 30 days.

Because it compounds.

But it can only compound if you are consistent. If you were to skip a couple days or buy some gumballs with the money during the month the amount at the end would be much less.

Coaches speak of the power of consistency. What they mean is just showing up and doing the work every day will get you to your goal at the end of the training cycle.

And no good coach tells you that you just need to work harder. Consistency beats heroic efforts. The next time some idiot tells you to ‘give 100%’ or even better to ‘give more than 100%’, instead of attempting to explain basic mathematical principles to them, just smile and keep being consistent.

OK – we all agree it’s hard to make small, good choices in the present. We all agree the benefits of doing so compound. We all agree that consistency is the key.

How do we bridge the gap?

I’m no expert but I’ll give you some ideas.

Depending on your personality type you need to find a way to enjoy the process. For some of you that might be creating a competition. For others, like me, a process of habits. For other you might tie it to your faith or your family.

Whatever motivates you and can trick the maniacal hamster that lives in your brain into doing the right thing consistently.

Intellectually understanding the future and living in the now. Be present in these short term decisions. They are habits and habits are unconscious. Be present in them.

Have the patience to be consistent. Long term goals and lifestyle changes do not have a ‘right now’ cause and effect. You need to have patience and make a long term commitment to stick to the process. The process is today. Trust the process.

I help this along by setting shorter term goals that dovetail into long-term results.

Take a stand for yourself. When your partner calls in evening and says ‘there’s nothing for dinner, I’ll just bring home pizza and beer’, You have to stand up for yourself. “Do what you want, but I can’t eat that.”

Eventually you will start creating a lifestyle consistent with these small, healthy habits. Through consistency they will go from chores to part of who you are. The consistency will become your identity.

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The impact of losing weight on your runningDoes losing weight impact your running? How much? How?

Clearly, common sense and Newtonian physics would say that losing weight make you faster. And it does. But there’s probably more to the story than that.

Has this ever been tested?

Yes, it has.

The first test in the 70’s used a methodology where they put a harness on people and tested how fast they could run 2 miles. Over a series of iterations they added weight to the harness.

And, as you would expect, the more weight the slower the pace. How much slower? It turns out a pound is worth somewhere between 1 and 2 seconds per mile.

But I have a number of questions. Where these actual ‘runners’ or random grad students? Why 2 miles? What happens if you make it 10 miles, or 26.2 miles? How does it correlate to heart rate and perceived effort?

There was a newer study where instead of adding weight, they used a harness, like one of those AlterG treadmills, to remove weight. In this case they had runners do a 3K race trial. For each iteration they took weight off.

And the result was a pound was worth 2.4 seconds per mile.

But, beyond the basic, obvious, less weight equals faster pace, I’m still curious how this relates to longer distances and how it correlates to effort.

According to these tests the 25 pounds I lost over the summer is equal to around 25 seconds per mile. Or let’s say a minute and a half faster for my next 5K.

That feels about right. I can live with that.

But, I think it is also a fairly minimalist and myopic set of assumptions and conclusions.

In my experience the weight loss has more impact than the stated 1-2 seconds per pound.

It also impacts your training. It makes it easier to train. It makes the training runs more enjoyable, which in turn makes it more likely you will do them. It’s a positive feedback loop.

When I was younger, I told myself that it was better to start heavier and then run the weight off as I trained. That way I would benefit from the ‘bonus work’ of carrying that weight during my base and build phases. That way when I got to my race date and goal weight simultaneously all would be roses and unicorns.

I’m not sure that’s true. It sounds a bit like a fallacy I invented in my lovely brain to justify going into a training cycle out of shape.

I now am leaning towards nutrition being intricately involved across a training cycle. I think it support your ability to do the workouts as prescribed and successfully. I think it impacts your ability to recover and to get better faster.

I think it’s part of a single package that all works together to get the best results.

And that is probably why there is such a close correlation between exercise and weight loss. Meaning people who begin an exercise program will necessarily be pulled into thinking about their nutrition, diet and weight in a different way to support their exercise.

We see this all the time.

The convers is also true. People who get into a weight loss or nutrition program to get healthier usually end up going down the exercise rabbit hole. They go hand in hand.

How many of your runner friends, especially ultra-runners, when you get into a conversation about their backgrounds you discover they have lost a large amount of weight in their journey?

So the answer to the question does losing weight make you faster is ‘yes’. It makes you faster in the pure physical equation. You only have so much energy and the more energy you use fighting gravity, the less you can use for propulsion. Less mass fighting gravity means more propulsion and voila, speed.

I would be remiss to not mention that this can be taken too far. There is a point where too much weight loss, especially if you are starving the body of what it needs to recover, has a negative impact.

You will see this in competitive runners. It’s a form of athletic anorexia. The brain thinks; ‘if losing weight makes me faster, losing more weight will make me even faster’. But there is a point of diminishing returns. Eventually the body breaks down.

In these athletes you will see a lot of stress fractures and other serious injuries. Combined with over-training it is a vicious cycle that ends careers.

In conclusion. Losing weight makes you faster, but good nutrition makes you faster and healthier.

I’m no nutrition expert, but, one could make the leap that might make you happier as well.

My recommendation would be to buy 3 months of a nutrition coach’s time with the intent to do what they tell you and learn as much as possible.

Then you can judge for yourself.

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Episode 5-497 – Podiatrist Dr. Savannah Santiago and surgesHello my running friends. Welcome to episode 5-496 of the RunRunLive podcast.

Once more we find ourselves together my friends. How are you navigating the weirdness of these days?

For today’s interview we talk with Dr. Savannah Santiago who is a podiatrist and runner from San Diego doing her residency in Indianna.

First, let me say that this is the most fun I’ve had talking to someone in a long time. She was so positive and engaged – just glowing with positive karma. And it just makes me happy to know that souls like her exist in the world.

I’ve started, or reverted to, using Zoom to record these interviews. That means we are usually both on camera during the chat – so I get to see the body language of who I’m talking to. I almost want to start posting the video versions of this because I think it would be fun for you to put a face with a voice.

In section one I’m going to get all geeky runner guy and do a deep dive into tempo training in general and surge runs in particular – which my running buddies mocked me by calling them ‘Serge’ runs.

In section two I’ll ramble about getting old.

It’s my birthday next week. And I think I’ve been having the same conversation every birthday since I turned 30!

I used to tell stories on this show, right? Stories about my adventures?

Well, let’s do that.

I was out running with Ollie on the leash on the rail trail a couple weeks ago. Just an easy out and back. I was still nursing the shoulder. On my way out I came to the first road crossing and there was a local police car parked there with the young officer standing outside nad looking down the trail.

Since I had time I was over on the Nashoba rail trail running from the Ayer end into Groton. Groton is where I grew up. This was a Groton cop. Groton is not what you would call a high crime area. It’s a suburban bedroom community that has become increasingly affluent over the years.

I had that momentary fear that somehow I was breaking some law that I didn’t know about because the cop wanted to talk to me. He asked me if I had seen two kids on mountain bikes, potentially carrying something that might look like spray paint cans.

I replied honestly that I really don’t pay attention when I’m running but nobody like that had passed me so far. We had a nice chat. Apparently some kids were trying to tag one of the bridges along the trail. We had a friendly chat and Ollie and I kept going.

A mile or so later Ollie and I go under another road and the same cop is standing in the trail. He asks me about the same caper and I reveal all my intel, which isn’t much, that I still haven’t seen two kids on mountain bikes with spray paint cans, but there were a couple mountain bikes beside the trail by the pond that I passed.

And we keep going.

On my way back now – and there’s a police car driving down the rail trail towards me. This time it’s a different cop and he’s a bit surly when I suggest that don’t they have anything better to do than to chase kids around all day? Seriously, we’re not talking about a dirty bomb here. Kids will be kids.

And I remember growing up in Groton. In different times. That night my buddy and I were racing our motorcycles through the center of town at 80+ miles per hour and got pulled over by the Sherrif. He made us dump out our beer and told us to go home.

Just a story. Because I was told people like stories.

Let’s get at it!

On with the show.

Section One – Surge Run Deep Divehttps://runrunlive.com/surge-run-deep-diveFeatured Interview:Dr. Savannah Santiago, DPM,

Short bio: Dr. Savannah Santiago, DPM, is a podiatrist and lifelong runner. She grew up running both cross country and track and later competed at the collegiate level for the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). Her own experiences with sports injuries and foot issues inspired her to pursue a career in podiatric medicine, specializing in foot and ankle care and surgery. Currently residing in Indianapolis, she is completing her medical and surgical residency in podiatry.

Although she now considers herself more of a hobby jogger, Dr. Santiago is a proud member of the Carmel Run Club and recently completed her first marathon. She is passionate about patient care, sports medicine, and her love for podiatry. In addition to her medical career, she is a weekly columnist for podiatry.com, publishing articles every Friday on topics related to life, running, and medicine. Linked below is a recent article on marathon training, life, and medicine.

Link: https://www.podiatry.com/news/1032/title-news?emailtemplate

Attached professional photo and a running photo, you can use either or both!

Section Two – Mumblings of an aging idiothttps://runrunlive.com/the-unreasonable-complexity-of-aging

Outro

Apologies Listeners, my outro was eaten by a ill-timed Microsoft update. I’m pretty sure no one reads this stuff anyhow – so listen to the end of the show and you will have it there.

Cheers.

And I’ll see you out there.

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The unreasonable complexity of agingI am rolling into a significant birthday this month. And this aging process is more complicated than I gave it credit for. Like everything else natural and human and organic – it is non-linear. There’s no schedule and no rules. I’m going to talk through it, and maybe you can take something away from the introspection.

I’ve been managing my broken collarbone for the last 5 weeks. It forced me to change my plans. I was going to run a 100K trail race on my birthday next week. Intended to be one of those exclamation point events. Me shouting at the void, shaking a gnarled old fist at the universe, screaming “I’m not done yet!”

And then the universe swats me like an annoying gnat dashed to the forest floor and broken of shoulder. Because the universe has a malicious sense of humor.

When I first broke the shoulder there was some relief. I was about to go into a significant build during a particularly busy time of year. Multi-hour training runs would need to be managed with my writing and publishing and work travel and visiting family and…and…and… Not having to schedule one more thing was welcome in a way.

Of course, as is the formula for these things I felt the loss of it keenly and was a bit low. As a rule I don’t like missing my goals, no matter what they are. I hold myself to unreasonable standards. I’m my worst critic. But, like I said, the pause ended up being good for my mental health.

It got me to thinking too. Am I done running on those sacred trails? Is this one more thing that age is taking from me? This holy thing? This apogee of meditative calm and serene mornings? Will I never again emerge from the old shore road down by the pond and pause to admire the sun setting orange into the water? Or sharing a moment with a herd of deer in the breaking dawn of a new spring day?

The forest is my church. Has age conspired to take this? Like it took my youth? Like it took my hair? Like it took my 7-day-a-week running and training?

Because that’s how it happens. Some things it takes slowly. It takes years for your pace and ability to recover to be slowly sanded off. But it takes the flash of a moment to be lying face down in the trail crying into the pine needles and wondering if maybe, this too is gone?

Memento mori.

The end comes to all things. We, the older folks, have a keener appreciation for that. I see people in my peer group pass from this plane of existence all the time. I have this sort of conversation. “You remember Joe? From high school? He died this week.” It’s not morbid, it’s matter of fact. We notice now that the clock is ticking faster and today or tomorrow could be our day.

Being closer to death makes people appreciate life. It’s true. You can’t put stuff off. You have to do it now. The window is closing.

Which brings us full-circle. This is not about fearing death. This is not about loss. This is about gratitude.

You also become very thankful for each of those rich days in the tapestry. You look back on the things you’ve done with true wonder.

And gratitude.

And going forward you keep doing the things that you can do. That you are allowed. You keep reading, and writing, and running hard to keep the grim reaper guessing and live each day with a ripe beautiful fullness that would make a teenager blush.

Because as long as you’re drawing breath you can fight. You can love. You can embody kindness. You choose to do the right thing.

And you don’t need to be perfect.

You never were.

But, you are free to be you.

So be that.

Be that 100%

Bring the joy.

Bring the love.

And find a way to get back, to get out, to win a few hands of the game before the bouncers drag you to the door and shove you to the curve.

This life, my friends is a celebration.

Make it so.

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Surge Run Deep DiveToday I’m going to use the context of a specific workout to talk and teach about training in general. The workout that I’m going to use is a surge run. From the mechanics of a specific workout we can synthesize the goals and challenges and methods of training in general.

What is a surge run? A surge run is a more structured version of a fartlek. Surge runs, for me, are typically a form of tempo run.

What’s a fartlek?

A fartlek is an unstructured run where you throw in some pickups when you feel like it, at a pace and effort you feel like. Fartlek’s are supposed to be fun. The word ‘fartlek’ means ‘speed play’. Fartleks are recreational speedwork.

How is a surge run different? Surge runs are more structured in the sense that the intervals or pickups are planned on a defined schedule during the workout and at a prescribed pace or effort level.

For example, yesterday’s workout was a 1:20 surge run. Every 17 minutes I did a three minute pickup at “medium effort”. (Because of my experience you can give me instructions like ‘medium effort’ and I know what to do). If you’re new to structured training your surges may be more prescribed – and I’ll talk about that in a moment, because that’s the good stuff.

When runners talk about training, specifically structured training, workout efforts can typically be classified into three categories. Speed, Tempo, Base. On top of those three there are specialty workouts that tend to be event specific, like altitude or hill workouts.

The first category, speed, is typically described as your 5K race pace – so close to a max effort.

Tempo is at 75-80% effort, (or for me this is the ‘medium’ effort).

Base is the zone-two heart rate effort to build base fitness, or slower work at a lower effort level.

Now that we’ve got the preliminaries and definitions out of the way, let’s talk about the workout.

What is the purpose of a surge run? The primary purpose of this tempo surge run is to train you body to 1) be comfortable with, or ‘get the feel of’ harder efforts, 2) Train your body to be able to do a harder effort mid-workout and recover from it, and 3) build strength and speed on top of your existing base. But these runs can be used additionally as a diagnostic tool, early in your training to assess your race fitness as well.

While you can do tempo training at any time, typically, most coaches and most structured training plans will load the tempo into the middle phase of your training plan. You want to already have some base fitness to take advantage of the tempo. The tempo builds on your base. The middle phase of your training, where you will typically find this tempo work, is where you build the majority of your racing gains.

Think of it this way; base training builds the foundation, tempo training builds the house and race specific speed work is the decoration.

What are the basic mechanics of a surge run?

First, you find a suitable course. For me I like the rail trail because it is mostly flat and has a consistent surface. That minimizes the unknowns so I can focus on the mechanics of the run. But right now I’m targeting a flat-ish-to-downhill road marathon.

You can also do these on the roads or any other course. It depends on what the topography of your target race is. I will do my surge runs in the trails if I’m training for a trail race and on the rolling hill roads around my house if I’m training for a road marathon with hills.

There are really no restrictions, but I try to keep it reasonably race specific to take advantage of, well, ‘specificity’.

Once you have your course you start the workout. It starts with a warm up period where you run at your low-zone-two-effort. For my workout that was 17 minutes, which is about what it takes for my heart to warm up at my age.

Then you hit the first interval. The intervals can be any length depending on what the intent of the surges are. You can do shorter, faster intervals of 30 seconds or a minute. But in a tempo surge run I’m going to target at least two minutes and more likely three minutes.

Why? Because three minutes of elevated effort give you enough time to start to fatigue. And you can practice holding the effort when you are fatigued. You can also practice holding good form when you are fatigued. Both these things are key racing skills.

Mechanically, you can either program the intervals into your watch or just look at your watch and go when the time is close. You can be off by seconds or even minutes. It’s not rocket science. If I remember I’ll hit the ‘lap’ button to start and end the three minutes. That makes the interval show up as a stand-alone event in your data. But, it’s not mandatory, more of a convenience.

What you will find is that three minutes of elevated effort is a long time. Your goal is to hold a consistent effort and a consistent form, evenly, across the interval. This is the race discipline that you are trying to learn and burn in. This is the point of the workout.

Because of this you need to do your warmup and your recovery segments at a lower effort, so you are fresh going into the interval. In this example it’s a full seventeen minutes between intervals so you should not have any problem recovering fully.

The ‘effort’ can be defined by a specific pace or a heart rate level. But, I will usually just do these based on perceived effort.

Like I said, three minutes is a long interval, so you want to ease into it. Really focus on the form. Run tall. Push those hips forward. Have your feet hitting the ground on the forefoot. Have that stride length and cadence right where you want them. Then hold it.

If you do it right you’ll notice it starts getting a little hard when you’re two minutes in. This is where you refocus on your form, cadence, breathing and effort. Stay present in the interval. If you want to get more aggressive towards the end, that’s fine.

It’s all good race training. Especially the last interval which will be the last three minutes of the run. This is a great practice for closing a run at race pace, race effort and race form.

If I look at my data, I’m typically a little bit too aggressive in the first interval, then I’m pretty consistent through to the finish. If you stay in the moment and focus on feeling the interval this is fantastic race simulation. Don’t ‘mail it in’ to check the box. Be present and see how your body is responding.

And this is how you use the surge run as a diagnostic tool.

In my 1:20 out and back on the rail trail I’ll get four surges. I can look at the pace and heart rate data and compare those to my perceived effort. I can also see if they felt too hard in that third minute. Or if the third or final interval felt easy or hard. This will directly tell me what kind of race shape I’m in and what I need to work on.

It’s a good workout because it’s not overwhelmingly difficult like, say, a sixteen mile step-up run. But it is difficult enough to tell you something about your fitness and have a positive impact on your training.

It is also a great example of structured training that is simple and effective. You can work these into your training plan and I guarantee you’ll get stronger, faster and better at managing in-race efforts.

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Episode 5-495 – Coach Nora and some frequently asked questionsHello my running friends. Welcome to episode 5-496 of the RunRunLive podcast.

Today we have a fun chat with Nora who is a coach and athlete about frequently asked questions. We ran into each other when I was answering running questions on Facebook. As always Nora’s contact links will be in the show notes. If you want to take a look at her practice it’s at mileaftermile.co.

I am consistently pushing this podcast out every two weeks while I can manage it, because I enjoy doing so. But, I’m not going to focus so much on the fine details for now because I just don’t have the time.

This is the RunRunLive ‘compromise’ version, where we don’t edit as tightly and don’t polish as much. But we still have conversations and try to have fun.

In section one I talk about shoes. And if you don’t agree with me, there’s going to be a rumble.

Like in West Side Story or The Outsiders.

Have you read The Outsiders? Have you seen the movie?

The Outsiders was one of those books we were forced to read in grade school. I think the point was to teach us that class divisions in society were stupid and dangerous. It’s probably on the banned book list now. Let me check. Yup. Of course it is. For, and I quote, “due to its portrayal of gang violence, underage drinking and smoking, strong language, and family dysfunction”.

Because reality and empathy have no place in a child’s education!

BTW – the 1983 version of that was loaded with young stars, including, C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, and Diane Lane.

And in section two I’ll talk about retirement some more and how to treat it as a career transition.

I’ll give you an update of all my projects in the outro.

On with the show.

Section One – Shoes!

https://runrunlive.com/lets-talk-about-shoes

Thanks for the conversation today. Here is the info that you requested. Please let me know if you need anything else.

Thanks,

Nora

Bio:

Coach Nora, owner of Mile After Mile, has been a runner for over 18 years and is a UESCA certified running coach. For many years she made every mistake possible before she decided to learn as much as she could about the science of running. Now she uses her knowledge to prevent others from making the same bad decisions she did.

She’s taken her love for both science and running together to focus on working with clients to create sustainable and successful strategies to maximize their potential and long term capabilities. Her mission is to partner with you to achieve your goals.

Links:

https://mileaftermile.co/

Instagram: mile_after_mile

https://www.facebook.com/MileAfterMileRunCoach/

—

Mile After Mile

@Mile_After_Mile

https://www.facebook.com/MileAfterMileRunCoach/

Section Two – Retirement as a career transition

https://runrunlive.com/retirement-as-a-proactive-career-transition-5-talking-points

Outro

Well my friends you have successfully answered enough frequently asked questions to get to the end of episode 5-496 of the RunRunLive Podcast.

Nice work.

My shoulder is progressing. I have my arm out of the sling. It’s more like a toothache now. Just hurts and I can’t really extend that arm or lift anything.

I did start running again. I’m doing some easy work on the road and the rail trail. Ollie doesn’t like running on the roads. He has to stay on leash and that is against his nature. But we had him to the vet this week and he’s healthy as a horse. He’s lost a couple pounds, like me, this summer, but the vet commented on how much muscle he has.

I’m resetting my sights on a road marathon in February, just so I don’t waste my fitness.

I’ve discovered that all the long slow trail running over the summer has made me really slow. So I’ll start playing with some tempo and see what I can do without breaking myself.

But, I need to stay off the trails for now.

It’s rolling into winter here in New England. Had our first frosts last night. Time to dig out the tights and see if I can get another year out of them!

I’m keeping my weight down and I think I’ll reset that goal to be something around staying light through the holidays which is always a challenge.

I’m still pounding on the manuscript for my apocalypse book series. You always hear people complaining about how much work publishing a book is and you think to yourself ‘ahhh that guy’s just a neurotic mess…it can’t be that hard..’

I am here to testify that , yes, it is.

I hope you are doing ok. It’s a busy time of year. Focus on what is important to you. Practice emotional detachment from those things that are not. Take a step towards your dreams today.

Practice some love.

And I’ll see you out there.

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Episode 5-495 – Maddi and some trail magicHello my running friends.

Hello my running friends. It’s only been a couple weeks but it feels like a lifetime.

When we last spoke I was on top of all my training and fitness goals for this cycle.

And then the universe stepped in and rebalanced the karma for me by breaking my collarbone.

I’ll tell you all about that in Section two today.

In section one we’ll talk about some more running advice I have been dispensing.

And today’s interview is with Maddi who is a self-described trail bum who just stepped off the Appalachian Trail.

I saw her post in Instagram and asked if I could talk to her about her experience.

Why? Why am I fascinated with these lost souls that wander the wastelands?

First, I think we all harbor this fantasy of walking away from our day-to-day lives and disappearing into the woods. We have a long history of idolizing this. All the way back to our local friend Thoreau at Walden. Or more recently in blockbusters like Eat Pray Love (which I am currently listening to on audio).

We have been trained by society to stay in our lanes, cower in our cubicles and show up for work every day freshly washed and ready to be plugged into the cogwheel of industrial existence.

But there are those few among us who say ‘NO!’ – They step off the track. They let the other rats go. And they walk into the woods.

I know I have always harbored that fantasy.

And secondly, (I bet with all the flowery prose you forgot I even had a list.) Second! I want to know how it changed them. How this decision colors their lives and existence. Is there something there that existentially cleanses the wanderer’s soul.

So I had a chat with Maddi. I think she might have still been in the dazed post-trail state and I didn’t do a great job connecting with her, but I didn’t over edit the interview to make it more productized, because I think that’s real. I think she is processing her journey and, like all of us, trying to fit the puzzle pieces of life together in some semblance of order and purpose.

Because, my friends, at the end of the day, we are not in search of answers. We are in search of conversations. And through these conversations we get whispers of the divine.

On with the show.

Section One – Top Three Runner Questions:

https://runrunlive.com/top-three-runner-questions

Maddi

Maddi Plant

A nomadic ski bum turned hiker trash! Maddi or DeepEnd on trail completed the Continental Divide Trail last summer and is setting out this summer to complete the Appalachian Trail!

https://thetrek.co/author/maddi-plant/

Section Two – How I broke my clavicle

https://runrunlive.com/the-crusty-crunchy-clavicle

Outro

Alrighty my friends you have successfully shoulder rolled your way to the end of episode 5-495 – good for you. Well done.

What’s on the schedule for me? Well, Like I said I’m working on finishing up my first apocalypse novel, I’m also publishing season 5 of that other podcast over at “After the Apocalypse”.

I signed up for a Thanksgiving 5K, I may also run my club’s trail race if the doctor’s give me the green light. Or not. I have lots of time and plenty of projects.

Should I be more angry about my plans being wrenched uncomfortably away? I don’t think so. It’s all good. None of us know how much time we have, so don’t waste it worrying about ‘what might have been’.

All we have is now.

Make the best use of it.

And I’ll see you out there.

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Retirement as a proactive career transition – 5 talking pointsWouldn’t it be great if retirement could be taught as a elemental or basic part of everyone’s education?

Comfort.

But it isn’t. Like so many other basic adulting topics.

As a result the void is filled.

Sometimes it is filled with reasonably helpful information.

But, in the great American tradition, mostly the information void is mostly filled with, a) misinformation, or b) vendors trying to sell you something or get their hands on some of your lifetime earnings.

I have been researching retirement best practices in preparation for my own transition.

And so today’s premise is that retirement should not be treated as ‘retirement’ but as a career transition.

Because treating it as an event or a destination is another in a long line of destination fallacies that we chase throughout our lives.

If I could only be promoted to Vice President of the firm life would be perfect!

If I could only make a million dollars life would be perefect!

If I could only win the lottery, lose 25 pounds, find the ideal life partner… life would be perfect!

If I can only make it to 62 years old and retire life will be perfect!

I can finally have all the rest and relaxation that is my reward for adulting well enough for 40+ years…

Except, that’s not how destination fallacies work. Life is never about a destination. Because when you arrive at the destination you realize that nothing is really different and you have brought all your baggage with you.

And this is especially true for retirement because the mythical destination is one of blissful inactivity and willful lack of purpose.

So, my premise is that you should treat retirement like any other major career or life transition. Take the time to construct something that you are transitioning to as opposed to retiring from.

And, like all these types of career or life transitions this means you are going to need to have some uncomfortable conversations.

With yourself and with your stakeholders.

About an unknown and unknowable future.

Here are some talking points to consider for these conversations.

1. It’s not all about money, but it kinda is.

When you try to have a conversation about retirement you will immediately be directed to and bombarded by the financial planning industry. You don’t even need to be interested in that conversation. As soon as you hit a certain age, they will find you.

The problem with their version of the conversation is that it is reductionist. It reduces to a core question of “How much money do you need?” and then focuses a bevy of ancillary, fear and scarcity-based questions like “How will you survive?” and “what if you have unexpected health problems?” and “what if you make mistakes?” Etc. etc.

The whole point of this is to scare you into a) never retiring and b) buying their services.

Don’t get me wrong, I have financial advisers. Because I’m smart enough to know what my strengths are. There are certain things you need to sort out. One is investing what capital you have accumulated in a way that meets your goals and matches your risk tolerance.

But, if you start with “When will I have enough?” Enough to be infinitely supported. Enough to avoid all risk. Enough to sit and do nothing and cover every conceivable eventuality. The answer is that you will never have enough.

This is scarcity thinking. It doesn’t matter. You can retire any time you want. You can’t control everything. Don’t sacrifice Now for a fear of tomorrow.

1. How Much is the wrong question.

I propose some different questions:

• What do you want to do more of?
• What have you always wanted to do?
• What makes you feel alive?
• What gives you purpose?
• What challenges you?
• What allows you to serve?

Then go find a way to transition to the answer.

Want some good news? If you remove the ‘need to make a living’ scarcity response from the decision process the world is your oyster.

If you like oysters.

I’m purposely using the label transition because, like making a career move, or changing a job, you may need to ease into it. If you’re thinking about retiring in 5 years, what project can you start now that will position you to transition in 5 years?

How can you scale back your participation in your traditional career role to make room?

1. Now is the time to practice detaching.

Your career, whether you like it or hate it, has provided the gift of not only money but purpose, social connection and, dare I say it, Identity. Now you need to start the process of detaching from that and moving your purpose and identity to that new thing.

Start by saying ‘no’. Let some things drop. Don’t work all the hours. What’s the worst that can happen? They fire you? OK, now your transition plan is accelerated – cool!

Start spending less time at work. And every time you start to worry about work, which, by the way is spending time at work, repeat “It just doesn’t matter.”

1. Set up some pilot projects to test whether you like the new things.

Don’t wait until the final bell to test out those ideas. Stick a toe in. Join the book club. Take some test trips in a camper van. Start learning a language or the guitar. Start writing that book.

Take a big swig of those things that you think you might want to do and swish the around to see how they taste.

Get a sample set of new engagement that you can transition to.

1. Tell your stakeholders what you’re doing.

Once you’ve got this engine going talk it up. Tell the folks who rely on you what you’re up to so there is no surprise and no disconnect.

Remember, you may be managing your transition like a pro, but there are other people who rely on you that probably need to be kept in the loop. Like any other transition, having those uncomfortable conversations early and often will ease your pain.

Hope this helps!

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Let’s talk about shoes

One of the most annoying frequently asked questions is the shoe question.

Why is it annoying? Because a) it’s impossible to answer, and b) it’s really not as important as people seem to think and c) at the end of the day it’s a religious or philosophical question like ‘What’s your favorite color?’

The question is made even more absurd when the Frequently Asker tries to be specific, like ‘What’s better ASICS or Hokas?’ or ‘What’s the best shoe for running a 5K?’

Absurd questions.

There are a lot of shoe companies and a lot of shoes. There is a lot of shoe advertising. Because shoes are a big business and they are extremely profitable. That shoe you pay $150 for probably costs all of $10 to manufacture.

And the shoe industry can’t really make up its mind whether shoes are a functional item or a fashion item. Mostly because, we, the consumers choose and buy based on emotion for the most part.

And all of us have a favorite shoe that we will defend to our death and gladly fork out $150 Simoleans for! Amen! Hoka Clifton are the best road trainer and I’ll fight you for it!

But they may not be right for you. Shoes are very personal. Like finding a life partner. You should play the field a little, spread some shoesy wild oats, to figure out what’s right for you.

I’m going to give it a try.

So – first thing you need to decide is if you need shoes. Because, if you’re just starting out you could run barefoot from the start. There is no requirement to wear shoes – except in restaurants.

There are runner who will gladly die on either side of that hill!

Once you decide, ‘hey I’d like to be shod!’ then you need to answer some of those basic questions. You know, the same basic questions we have for all the rest of the running advice.

Like how much are you running? What I s your experience? What kind of running? Racing, jogging, walking, or crawling on your belly like a snake? Trails? Roads? Something else?

The answers to these questions will give you a broad category like ‘trail shoes, trainers or walking shoes’. Narrows it down a little.

I’m also going to exclude any conversation about the new carbon fiber super shoes. The sense I get is that they work, but you need to have enough ability to get the benefit – so they are probably overkill for most runners.

The next thing you need to know is what kind of arches you have. You may have high arches, like me, or low arches, or something in between. You can find this out by stepping naked in a puddle and then stepping on a dry surface. I should clarify that only the actual feet need to be naked, but it’s up to you.

Look at that pretty footprint. How much of that arch is imprinted on the dry surface? My wet, naked, feet-prints have a gorgeous half moon profile.

If you know what kind of arches you have you can ask a slightly smarter question like, what’s a good shoe for someone with flat feet.

But most of us are going to be what’s known as ‘neutral’. Not too high, not too low, just perfect, like the little bear’s feet.

The next question you need to figure out is how much of a heel drop you want. This is how big of a foam wedge your shoe has at the heel.

It pains me to mention that these heels and crash-pads were marketed very heavily (pun unavoidable) in the 80’s and 90’s because more people were heel strikers – meaning they landed quite heavily on the heel

Thankfully, due to science and several saintly apostles of good running form most people don’t run on their heels anymore.

People will fight you to the death over heel drop, but if you’re just starting out, you’ll adapt either way. And if your form is good you won’t be effected by heel drop.

But never, ever try to get in an argument with a zero-drop advocate. They will kill you and bury you in the desert outside Boulder.

If you’ve got normal arches and decent form you can run in almost any neutral cushion training shoe. Each company will make 6-8 models that fit the bill.

There you go – I narrowed it down to a couple hundred shoes for you.

I would say beware of very cheap shoes in discount stores. Because the shoe companies will make cheaper, lower quality shoes for the mass market. I

Other than that, once you narrow it down to the broad strokes you are going to have to sleep around a little to find your perfect mate.

In my lifetime I have gone through tempestuous marathon level love affairs with Nike, New Balance, ASICS, Saucony. Brooks, Mizuno and Hoka. Because of my advanced level of decrepitude I currently run in Hokas, and a yes they should sponsor me because I have brought them thousands of dollars in referral business. I like having the extra cushion without sacrificing performance.

That’s my opinion and I’ll fight you for it.

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The Crusty Crunchy ClavicleAhh, yes, this is why you came today? This is why you paid your ticket? To shale your head in disbelief as I spin yet another tail of race-ending injury?

“Why?” you ask, “Don’t you ever learn Chris?”

I prefer to see it as the universe stepping in and restoring balance…

Right after we talked last time I was heading into the end of a 2nd big week of training. I ran a nice 5X3min hill workout on Friday, Rode two and a half hours on my bike Saturday in a cold rain, then knocked out 21 miles on the trail Sunday morning.

Badda Bing, Badda Bong, 6 weeks out from the event and I was absolutely positive I was going to crush it.

When I got my schedule from coach I was a bit surprised that he was loading in yet another big week. That would be 3 straight. I had one of those, ‘Are you sure?’ moments, before I remembered that my job is to shut up and do the work.

Monday was a core workout.

Tuesday was a 12 mile zone 2 run.

I planned to get up early and do that run in the trails behind my house. I rolled out of bed and had to wait until the sun came up enough for Ollie and I to see what we were doing. The days are getting shorter as we ride the big downhill rollercoaster into winter.

Because, at my current glacial base building pace 12 miles in the trails is a good 2 and a half hours.

I remember thinking about how fatigued my legs were and how I was probably going to fall a couple times. The trails behind my house are very technical. Lots of roots and rocks and single path.

But they are and always have been my happy place. Especially early in the morning. There is no blessing, no baptism that purifies the soul like a long trail run in the New England woods early on a cool morning.

Did I mention the leaves are starting to fall? Yes they fill the rails in and cover the hazards.

But that’s not why I fell. I fell because I was fatigued.

I was six and a half miles in, cruising down a long hill and I caught a toe. What does ‘caught a toe’ mean. Well if you have decent form you are landing on your forefoot and dragging that trailing foot forward for the next foot plant. You’re leaning forward a little bit. Like you’re falling and putting the feet down to keep up with that infinite fall.

The problem is when you are fatigued. When you drag that foot forward, you literally drag it. You don’t lift it high enough and it catches on something.

It wasn’t the leaf cover. It wasn’t the dog zig-zagging in front of me. It wasn’t even a root or a rock or a stick. It was just a random bump in the trail that caught my toe.

I knew I was going to fall as soon as I caught the toe. I had time to process the thought, ‘looks like I’m falling.’ And in this time, I believe Jeff Foxworthy used to call it an ‘ignosecond’ I decided I would tuck my shoulder and roll with the fall. This way I could bleed off the momentum with the roll.

Smarter than sticking out an arm and breaking your wrist, right? Smarter than slamming my chest into the trail and breaking a rib, right?

I’ll just roll, pop up and keep going.

I used to have this dog. This dog would jump up into the back of my truck. When the dog got old it didn’t realize that it couldn’t jump into the back of the truck. It would just run at the truck and impale itself on the gate.

You see, in the dog’s head it envisioned how it used to leap into the back of the truck. The dog forgot its legs could no longer jump like that.

So instead of the shoulder roll that I pictured in my head, I didn’t make it over and slammed the point of my shoulder into the ground with all the momentum of that hill.

After that, I did roll a little, but when I finally came to rest I knew it was probably broken.

I stayed there on my hands and knees in the beautiful dawn forest screaming in pain into the forest floor for a few moments.

I knew from the pain that the shoulder was badly hurt.

My circle of friends like to share x-rays of broken shoulders on social media. You’ve all seen those pictures. It’s a classic and common cycling injury. The one where they have all those pins lined up to hold the shoulder in place. That’s the picture I had in my mind.

I walked home.

Some people have asked me, “What did the dog do?” Well, the answer is not much. Ollie isn’t cursed with the empathy gene. He patiently waited for me to right myself and walked home with me.

I got myself to the doctor. I told them they probably want to take a picture. And sure enough, my clavicle was broken. But, good news it’s a clean, non-dislocated break. So it’s broken but the bones stayed in place so we didn’t need surgery or pins.

I went to the orthopedic the following day and the prognosis was, yup, you broke your clavicle. Let’s put your arm in a sling and come back for another picture in two weeks.

And that’s that. I can’t run. I can’t use the arm. And I’m stuck and useless. Hopefully the follow up appointment will show enough healing to let me start doing something.

I canceled my trip and my race. So no Mamba 100K on my birthday.

I’m really happy with the fitness I was able to accumulate in this cycle and the way I was able to reach my goal weight. And really the race was just a proxy to drive that behavior, so I’m calling it a win.

Not being able to move your dominant arm is a constraint. I’m discovering a plethora of daily, simple tasks that are now incredibly hard, including many of your basic sanitary functions, like taking a shower or putting on a shirt.

And there was/is the necessary emotional let down. As experienced as I am with this dance I still had to wade through the cycle of loss.

Now I get to se what the doctor says next week and how soon I can take off the leash.

I do have more time to work on my other goal of finishing that first book – so that’s what I’m doing.

It’s a strange and chaotic world my friends but I have my share of gifts and blessings and joy. I’m way ahead in the balance.

I ride this wave and move on to the next big thing.

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Top Three Runner QuestionsQuestions:

1. Why am I doing this
2. Am I too old to be doing this
3. Should I just give in

I’m not feeling very inspired as the cold weather arrives

Answers:

1. because it makes you a better person, 2. you’re never too old, 3. Never give in.

Questions:

1. Will my ankle ever be 100% again?
2. Can I gain 12lbs of muscle and maintain my speed?
3. Can I make it 4+ laps on a backyard ultra if I struggle with 10 miles on the street?

Answers:

You have some experience.

1. Ankles are complex joints. Sometimes they heal if given enough time and love, sometimes you need more active intervention, but you can always find a ‘new normal’ post injury that lets you pursue your sport.
2. As you know it takes more energy to move more mass, but the other side of that coin is that being stronger makes you better able to handle the stresses of distance, I’ve always had surprising results by focusing on core strength instead of just miles.
3. Focus on what you need to do today to be where you want to be tomorrow. Commitment and patience always win.

Questions:

1. Best ways to avoid injury?
2. Best cross training exercises?
3. How do I improve my diaphragmatic breathing while I run?

Answers:

1. Listen to your body, embrace recovery and rest, stay flexible.
2. It’s a personal decision but core strengthening is what you are aiming for.
3. Maybe try working in some breathing meditation to practice in a guided session while not on the run and then bring those techniques to your running.

Questions:

1. How to improve pace
2. What weight exercises to do in the gym to improve runs
3. How often to run 5km

Answers:

1. structured training, coaching and speedwork
2. Core strength, and flexibility.
3. Depends on your starting point and what your goals are.

Questions:

1. Is okay to run while I’m still struggling with hip and leg and lower back issues.
2. How can I safely my recovery process
3. With two months not running when is right time to consider incorporating my training plan

Answers:

It sounds like your biggest challenge is your own ferocity. I would recommend a coach that could keep you from doing too much. Consistency over time will give better results than smashing yourself with hard training. (I suspect you already know this) Often, as you say, Doctors are non-specific and will recommend inactivity and painkillers/ant-inflammatory – not very useful. Instead try a massage therapist or physio that works with athletes.

1. it really depends on the injury, you need to have a long view, get a good diagnosis and see if ‘active recovery’ is possible.
2. Again, take a longer view, get a good diagnosis and plan your recovery with the same enthusiasm that you approached your training with.
3. Don’t try to jump right back in where you left off. Start by building your base and strength. Slowly ramp.

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Goals are importantHow do goals work together to create positive change?

What are good goals?

How big should they be?

How many should you have?

What parts of your life should you set goals for?

…

As you may know by now, if you are keeping score, I wrote 3 goals down this past spring to accomplish before (or on) my birthday, which is November 7th 2024.

I wrote them on a yellow 3X5 index card. I have it here on my desk.

It says on the top “Goals – Nov. 2024”

Then it has 3 numbered bullets.

1. Publish first book
2. 100K 62 B-Day
3. 165 pounds

Unfortunately for you, the way my brain works, I now feel a need to define how goals work and why.

The why is the easy part.

Especially for someone like me who has a fractal brain that is going in 100 different directions at once. Goals enable me to focus on a finite number of things. Goals give me a quantifiable challenge and an end date that I can then construct a process or project around. That process then will distill down to an executable plan. That plan then will translate into daily, weekly action and measurement.

Yikes. That last bit sounded very ‘overpaid consultant’.

Well, ‘know thyself’ and all…

It may be different for you, but for me goals allow me to actually get stuff done instead of running around in circles like a moose with a brain worm.

How do you decide what the goals should be? There are a thousand different things that you could create a goal for. How do you pick one? Or two? Or three?

My advice is to pick three. Or more specifically, no more than three. More than three and you dilute your efforts. Less than three and you aren’t engaged.

If you pick those three correctly, they will be complimentary, supporting each other. Or if you want to use a favorite 1980’s buzz words – they will have synergy.

This is another interesting thing about goals. If you pick the right ones they work together and you get a one plus one equals three impact.

But, how do you choose which part of your life would be positively impacted by a goal?

I find it useful to think about life as a portfolio. Most people, whether they know it or not, have a portfolio life. You may have lots of interests and activities, but if you look close enough they all tie back to a small number of core categories or themes.

Think of it like this. Your life, the things that are important to you, the things that you want to achieve, even your responsibilities and your aspirations – each one of these things has tasks and information and time associated with it – but until you rationalize them they are like one, big, messy pile of papers on your desk.

Picture yourself sitting at that messy desk with all these things on it in a big, convoluted pile. Pick each thing up and put it into a pile by category. I bet your piles could look;

– Your physical wellbeing and health

– Your family, friends, loves and relationships

– Your spiritual life

– Your work, profession or career

And for you, maybe others.

Most people will have 5 or so main categories that are important to them. That mean something to them.

So, look through your big messy pile and decide what the big, unifying categories are. Then ponder which of these categories do you want or need to make the most progress in?

Pick the top three and create a big goal in each category.

Anyhow, long story short, my 3 big goals, by my birthday, are:

1. Train for and run a 100K trail race (62 miles for you metric challenged)
2. Publish the first After the Apocalypse season as a novel
3. Lose specified amount of weight

Let’s look at each of these.

First, train and run a 100k on my birthday. What category is that? It is health and fitness for sure. And it also has an impact on my aspirations. I am going to be 62 on my birthday. 100K is 62 miles. It has a lovely synergy to it.

At the point where I made this goal in early June I was recovering from an injury. I hadn’t run in a month. I was overweight and not happy with myself.

Training for this would force me to figure out how to do it without hurting myself. It gives me a big goal, but not one that is out of reach. A goal that will force me to execute a quality training cycle. Unlike a road marathon, I can’t fake a 100K.

What are the attributes of a good goal? Is this a good goal? It is quantifiable. 100K. It is timebound. By my birthday. It is within reach but challenging. I will be forced to modify my behavior to achieve it.

Second goal is to publish that first manuscript from my apocalypse podcast as a book. On the surface this looks like a gimme. I have published before. I know the mechanics of it. But this is different. It is fiction. It requires a level of editing that I have never had to do before. The process is filled with unknown.

What category does this fall into? This is partially in the ‘work and career’ category, and I’ll explain why. I am moving into retirement age. I would like to have an occupation in retirement. My plan was/is to do this apocalypse story as an audio podcast and in the process write 5 seasons of content that I could turn into 5 novels. This plan is amazingly on track. The only part of it that is dogging me is the conversion of the manuscripts to published novels.

I set this goal to light a fire under my ass and bring the first one through the process. In this case a goal can be a way to quantify something that you have been trying to get around to. It’s a way to create a deadline. Remove excuses.

Is this a good goal? Well, again it is quantifiable. Publish the book. Yes or no. It is time bound. And, mot importantly it is forcing me to learn how to do things. It is making me figure out and remove blocks, both external and between my own ears.

Final goal was, lose some damn weight. What category is this? Health and fitness. Is it quantifiable and time bound? Yup.

What is the why? In this case, I picked a weight, 165 pounds, which I have not seen on the scale since I was 18 years old. This is the goal I had the most doubt around. Sure, I’d need to lose the weight to get through the training cycle, but, yah know, 170 is probably the real goal…

Finally, how do these goals compliment each other? In order to successfully get through the training for the ultra I would need to lose the weight. In order to lose the weight I would need to stop drinking so much beer. Not drinking beer would miraculously give me more energy and clarity in the mornings and on weekends to work out and to write and edit.

They all play together.

As I write this I am 7 weeks out from my birthday.

What has happened since I wrote three goals on that yellow index card in a fit of frustration?

First, quite to my surprise I have seen the number 165 on my bathroom scale. How did this happen? When my weight plateaued in July and I was getting super frustrated I contracted a nutrition coach. With her help I broke that plateau and am essentially, at goal weight. I had to figure it out. The goal forced me to keep finding new approaches until one worked.

That’s the power of a goal.

My training is going well. I have avoided injury. I’m now in the high-volume part of the training. If everything stays on track I am going to crush this race.

How’s the book coming. That one is still up in the air, but I’ve managed to get a lot of editing done. I have also joined a writing group. I have found an outfit that will take care of the tactical publishing part. I still have 7 weeks.

So, my friends, some people would argue that it is more important to focus on the process than to set goals. But I am walking proof that setting the appropriate goals drives the creation of an effective process.

And that’s the meat of it. Whether you achieve the goal or not is no ultimately the point. It’s what you learn and how you change through the campaign of getting to that goal that matters.

…

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Running IdentityToday I present to you another in a series of posts I’m doing in response to frequently asked questions by runners.

Today’s question is very common on the running forums. It takes many forms.

In its simplest for it is “How do I get motivated for my run?” From there it evolves into all the reasons people have to doubt their ability to start, to stick with it, and to claim to be a runner.

My premise is that this motivation question is an actual spectrum that runners evolve through. From the beginner trying to find the motivation to start, to the practitioner trying to stick with it, all the way to the veteran that successfully makes running part of their lifestyle.

I’ll start with a story.

This week was a build week in my training plan. I was coming off a ‘down’ or easy week of recovery and now there was work to be done. When I looked at my calendar there were three significant run workouts during the week, interspersed of course with weight training, core work and flexibility. Then, on the weekend, I had an hour-and-a-half bike ride Saturday and a 16 mile long run on Sunday.

The context here is that I’m training for a 100K ultra-marathon in November and thus the next 8 weeks or so will be the make or break weeks in my training cycle.

This week here was the first of a number of testing weeks to follow. The point of the bike ride on Saturday was to put fatigue into my legs for my log run on Sunday. This is part of ultra-training. You need to be able to run on tired legs.

But I’m old and creaky so I use longer bike ride to put that fatigue in my legs instead of another run.

Back to the story…

Saturday, I got a late start, because my wife and I decided to sleep in a bit. Yes, heaven help us, I shut of the alarm and we dozed until after 7:00 AM! Which felt great but gave me a slow start to the day.

When I finally hopped on my bike around lunch time, I was feeling the pressure of having the day evaporating around me. I was doing that calculus of what I wasn’t going to get done from that long list of things I need to do on a Saturday.

½ mile into my ride the rear tire went flat. Arrghh. I walked it back to the house and swapped out the one remaining good tube I had and jumped back on. Another 20-30 minutes out of my day evaporating like steam from an errant tea kettle.

Then guess what happens?

½ mile in the same tire started to go flat.

Back to the house.

I am out of tubes. I am running out of day. How am I going to get my workout done?

Put yourself in my shoes dear listener. (My bike shoes). What would you do?

Would you have struggled to motivate yourself to start the workout because you were running late?

Would you have given up after the first flat because, clearly the universe does not want you to do this workout?

Would you give up now? After the second flat?

And how would you justify this giving up? Would you say “I just don’t have enough time?” “It’s too much effort?” or “This workout isn’t that important…it’s only one workout in a 6 month training cycle?”

You would be justified right? All those lawyerly voices in your head making their case.

I suspect you’ve been there.

I dusted off my old road bike, Fuji-san, which I have not ridden for 3 years, added a bit of air to the tires and a few drops of lube on the chain and did the workout.

Why? Why was I successful? How was I able to repeatedly deny the friction of a malevolent and chaotic universe to get my workout in?

For me it is very simple. It is what I do. It is who I am. It is part of my identity. I am that person. To do otherwise would be to violate my own identity – and that is incredibly painful regardless of the justification.

This is where I’m at now, but this muscle had to be built over time with commitment and consistently.

…

Back to the tactical.

The precursor to identity is habit.

A person becomes what they consistently do.

If you want to increase the probability of doing your workout don’t rely on motivation.

Start with building habit.

Start with decreasing the friction and the uncertainty.

Let’s start with friction. Friction is anything that opposes you doing that workout. Friction can be physical and mental.

You can remove physical friction through preparation. Know where all your gear is and have it laid out the night before. There is nothing worse than having to search for something in the dark when you’re trying to get out the door for a workout that you already aren’t looking forward to. That friction can be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.

These physical things can also be habit triggers. Each of these things and their associated ceremony trigger habits. Putting on your running shoes is an action that reinforces a chain of actions that supports the ultimate habit of getting out the door to run.

This is not me making shit up. This is science. It’s called ‘Habit Stacking’. It’s not creating the habit of doing the workout. It is stacking up all the little things that culminate in starting that workout successfully.

Mentally, you can remove friction by removing uncertainty. Have an exact workout on the schedule to be done at an exact location at an exact time.

This is why having a plan and a coach help. It removes uncertainty. The coach gives you a schedule. You do the workouts. Remove the uncertainty. Remove the friction.

You can use self-talk to build up your motivation for the workout. Commit to it as part of your to-do. “Tomorrow I will do my workout at 3PM, no matter what, even if it’s raining.” Don’t let the doubt sneak in. It helps to remember that you are doing this for yourself. It is a gift. There are plenty of people who would love to have your ability to do this workout. You are lucky. Internalize that gratitude. Don’t waste the gift.

Self-talk yourself into the workout.

Use common sense. Many of us, me included, are self-destructive and we create our own friction. If you have that long run in the morning don’t stay up until midnight drinking beer and snarfing tacos.

Budget enough time. Even if it is only an hours worth of exercise, give yourself buffer. Schedule it. Actually schedule your workouts into your calendar and give yourself 50-100% extra time buffer. You’ll need it. You need to get ready, to get to the location, to stretch a little, to go to the bathroom. Then you need to cool down, maybe take a shower. Don’t create time constraints that you have no realistic way of obeying. And yes, this means some of your workouts, especially the long, gnarly ones will have to be done in the morning.

You want proof of what I say? Look back at your own experience. Where have you been successful and enjoyed the accomplishment of the workout and gotten the work done? What were your preparations? How did you manage uncertainty and friction? Look at those other times when you weren’t successful. What got in the way and how can you remove that going forward?

Eventually, once the habits become burned in, you can start to loosen up your friction mitigation. I will only lay out my stuff ahead of time for certain, high-stakes, early-start workouts. Otherwise, I wing it. But even then I have burned in habits and routine. I know where my stuff is. I know where and when I can run.

Although sometimes my bicycle maintenance routine can be flawed.

Because this is the point.

Through consistent practice. Through stacking habits and routines. The act of doing the workout becomes part of your identity.

And then the thought of whether or not you are motivated is irrelevant. You become the person who follows the plan and does the workouts.

Then something wonderful happens.

At that point in your training plan where, for the love of God, you’ll need to get up at 4:00AM and run for 4 hours in the dark and cold, at that point, you start to see it as an exciting adventure. You don’t need to be motivated. The thing itself becomes the motivation.

That is when it becomes something to celebrate.

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Episode 5-495

Hello my running friends, yes I let this one slide a week, because I needed to align it with the off-week of my other podcast – the apocalypse podcast – in which I am entering my 5th season now.

Honestly, I have crowded my calendar so much it’s hard to get done all the stuff I’m signed up for.

Today I will talk about one of those top 5 questions from the running forums – how to stay motivated and get the workouts done.

I’ll talk a bit about how I do goal setting and why.

And I’ll give you an update on my own goals for the summer that, for better or worse, I’m closing in on the deadlines for.

Today’s interview is with the race director for the Mamba 100 in Memphis. That is my goal race for this campaign. I am glad I talked to him because I acquired insights into the course that filled in some blanks for me.

So, sit back, (unless you’re in a chair with no back, because you’ll sprawl onto the floor).

Sprawl is an interesting word that come to us through Old English and Danish. It rolls off the tongue nicely doesn’t it? Almost onomatopoeia.

Anyhow – sit back or sprawl back and let’s go on an adventure together.

On with the show.

Interview

… Thanks so much. Great talking to you. www.mambatrailrunners.com is our website.

Facebook and Instagram: Mamba Trail Runners

Outro

Ok my running friends – I have to tell you I was quite relieved after my discussion with James. When I talked to him a few weeks ago, I did not yet have any big weks under my belt and the 100K distance was looking a bit daunting.

But, after our talk I realized that the course is runnable and it’s well supported so good news all around for what my goal is.

Now I just need to stay healthy for a few more weeks.

What kind of mileage do you need to have for this distance? I think the mileage isn’t as important as you basic strength and time on your feet. So, cumulative fitness is more important than any set mileage goal.

When I ran 50K, my long run was probably 20 miles, but I was coming off a marathon campaign.

When I ran 50 miles, my long run was 36 miles, and that was probably overkill. But it was my first ultra so it was ok.

When I trained for 100miles my longest run was a 10-12 hour overnight run, so probably in the mid-30’s. But, again for these longer distances, it’s all about time on your feet and fitness. All these longer distances are grouped together for impact in the training calendar – so you are getting that time on your feet and running on tired legs effect.

My long run for this cycle is probably going to be 30ish miles, again on tired legs.

I’ve been listening to a lot of audio books. I find it’s a great way to get content in parallel with my training and dead time. It’s so convenient now with the library app.

Last week I listened to Ryan Holiday’s Discipline is Destiny. Great listen when you training and trying to get stuff done. I would highly recommend it on audiobook. It’s read by the author.

There is a lot of the ‘same old’ stoic philosophy stuff, but it’s a good reminder and might get you motivated.

So my friends, I pushed this episode to line up with the off week of my other post-apocalyptic podcast After the Apocalypse, soon to be a series of novels, lol…

Keep pushing, keep being smart, take time to learn, take time for yourself, sharpen your saw and I’l see you out there.

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Episode 5-493 – Interview Les is MadeHello my running friends.

This week I present the last of the repurposed interviews that I did originally for my other show “After the Apocalypse”.

This is a friendly talk with Les for his Les is Made podcast – and fittingly he is really interested in talking about running.

I had planned to write an article that dove deeper into some of the frequently asked questions. But, I’m out of day today and I figure something is better than nothing.

I had another satirical piece on how women running together have an entirely different conversation than men talking to each other – based on my admittedly biased observations.

But, alas there is only so much gas in the tank and I have miles to go before I sleep.

So – My friends, I’ll give you an update on my training – drop the interview and slink off stage left in a embarred shuffle.

My training is going great. Within the last 7 days I have completed a nice 12 mile trail run, a 100K bike and capped it off with a 100 mile bike ride with my buddies up to Saco Maine yesterday. Everything went well. We got perfect weather. Nobody crashed. No flat tires.

And we made the trip, with breaks in just about 10 hours.

My second goal of weight loss is going well also. I poked my nose under the 173 pound flap of the tent this week and with my training load increasing it should continue to trend down.

I also finished the last additional chapter for the first novel in my apocalypse series – so getting very close to the end of the editing process and having a finished manuscript to kick out the door like a grown child who has tarried too long.

Funny story – I actually brought that final chapter to my new Monday morning writers group for a read this past week as well. I was scared like a little kid having to stand in front of the class. But, they liked it. And gave me some good feedback.

All is not lost.

I grabbed the race director of the Mamba 100 for an interview and I’ll shove that up for the next show. You know me. Why read the race web site when you can just talk to the race director?

I was a little worried about running a 100k in the trails in the dark. But he put my mind at ease. The course is in a very gentle trail system right in a park in the center of Memphis.

That’s the next adventure!

So – my friends. This is it for commentary,. I won’t be back at the end.

Stay in touch. Wish me well. And I will see you out there.

Les is Made

By Les Madewell

My name is Leslie and I am a photographer. I have a few good stories to share and would love to shared them to the world. I try to have models and people I have work with one with me as much as I can. I hope I am at least not boring

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lesismade

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xr:d:DAFqH4110PY:3,j:4957735449445611377,t:23073015Hello my running friends.

This week I’m continuing my streak of double dipping on the interviews from my other podcast and presenting you with George Allen Miller. He’s an author and we have a nice, tight chat about the creative process and some aspects of publishing and our favorite Sci-Fi.

So – if you are one of those double dippers who already listened to my After the Apocalypse podcast you can fast forward through the interview section, but I will also have some unique content of you as well

In section one I’ll continue my Runner FAQ conversation. In section two I’ll do an old-man nutrition rant.

Here we are – the ides of August, 2024. Rolling into that busy time of year, with back to school and all those activities associated with the fall.

When I say “Ides of August” I am being ironic because August is, of course, named after Augustus, better known as Octavian who was an adopted heir of Julius Caesar, (who BTW gives us the month July). Octavian came out on top of the civil war that broke out after Brutus and crew stabbed Caesar to death on the Ides of March.

After he came out on top, Octavian started calling himself Augustus, which basically means “Really Cool.” And about this time they inserted a couple new months into the calendar, July and August to keep festivals from moving around so much.

Which made the names of the other months, September, October, November, December – literally 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th month, make no sense at all.

But we still use them.

And if that bothers you, don’t even worry about the fact that our days of the week are named after pagan, Viking gods.

Anyhow – we have a good, short interview with George. I enjoyed it.

I’m doing well, working hard. Ollie and I are getting our runs in. We’re looking forward to the cooler weather.

So, remember, you will be shoveling snow in 12 weeks.

On with the show.

Section OneFAQ 2 – https://runrunlive.com/frequently-asked-questions-part-2

Author BIO:Hi Chris!

I’d love to be on your podcast! What days/time works for you? I put together a media kit on my website, www.georgeallenmiller.com, with details about me, the book, and areas we can talk about.

https://georgeallenmiller.com/eugene-mcgillicuddys-alien-detective-agency/

Author BIO:

George Allen Miller was born in Cheverly, Maryland, just outside of Washington D.C. He has called the DC, Maryland and Virginia area, commonly called the DMV, his home for half a century. He has been writing ever since he was fifteen just after reading his first science fiction book by Isaac Asimov.

A life long fan of science fiction, George soon found a fondness for hard-boiled detective novels and humorous fantasy and SciFi.

Eugene McGillicuddy’s Alien Detective Agency is George’s first published novel.

Fun Facts / Podcaster Topics:

Favorite color: Green – no Blue…
Favorite individual book: Grunts by Mary Gentle
Favorite SciFi Series: Xenogenesis by Octavia E. Butler
Favorite SciFi book series made up of other Series: Isaac Asimov – Robot, Empire, Foundation.
Favorite Fantasy series: Discword – Terry Pratchett
Favorite Fantasy series with dragons: Dragonrealm series by Richard Knaack
Favorite comic book hero: Spidey!
Hobby: Starting real hobbies only to procrastinate my way out of them. (have three guitars and one bass (can’t really play any of them), electronic keyboard (donated to charity), fishing gear (unused), started flight school (didn’t finish), can speak one sentence in four languages, scuba gear (can’t swim) and a green belt in four martial arts).
Favorite pet: Dog.
Favorite sport team: Washington Football Team. (I don’t use the C word…)
Favorite odd sport: Curling. It’s cool.
Favorite The Ocho sport: Teqball. It’s wild.
D&D Alignment: Depends on the week….
Favorite food: All – but can’t go wrong with pizza and a beer.
Last watched TV show: Mrs. Davis – very cool. But also – huh?
Favorite Doctor: Old school- Tom Baker. New School- David Tenant.
Favorite Master (Doctor Who Villain): Old School-Anthony Ainley. New School- Derek Jacobi.
Favorite Captain: Picard!
Writing habits: A half-plotting pantser!
Age when started writing: 15
First professional publication: “Who ya Living?” published in 2016 by Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. A story of immortal humans that had begun swapping out the first hundred years worth of their memories.
Biggest phobia: Walking across wizard guarded rope bridges.

Media History:

Podcast: Digital Marketing Masters Podcast – January 18th 2024
https://serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/digital-marketing-masters/ai-discussion-with-george-allen-miller-author-of-eugene-j-mcgilliguddys-alien-detective-agency-251

Podcast: The Detective Writer Podcast – January 29th 2024
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/meet-our-sixty-third-guest-fellow-author-george-allen/id1635461758?i=1000643431099

Podcast: Co-Host Diego
YouTube: youtu.be/CKIB5l5LZ7E

Podcast: Para or Normal Guyz
https://www.youtube.com/live/gBxvL43RJ5Q?si=cEn6YJ6BBTFXZBPo

Podcast: Les is Made
Coming Soon!

Podcast: After the Apocalypse
Coming Soon!

Professional Memberships

Full Member Science Fiction Writers of America

Thanks for inviting me to be on!

-GAMiller

Section Two:Nutrition Rant – https://runrunlive.com/nutrition-rant

OutroThat’s it my friend you have world built through to the end of yet another RunRunLive – episode 5-492.

How am I doing against my summer goals?

Number one; training for a 100K on my birthday in November. It’s going well. The old body is hanging in there and I’m starting to load some distance and intensity. Right on track.

Number two; lose weight. Well I hired Rachel again for the time leading up to the race because I had plateaued in the low 180’s. I’m back on track and at my lowest weight since 2018. It’s hard. But I’m getting there.

Number three; to get the first manuscript of my 5-season Apocalypse series published. That is moving forward as well. I was stuck, but I have been able to come at it from a couple different directions and I’m back on track.

I’ve also started, with my esteemed editing team, writing and producing season 5 of After the Apocalypse. It’s crazy, but I almost feel like a responsible adult when I realize I was able to execute a 5-year plan successfully. I mean some people can’t even stay on track for a 3-hour tour. (That was a joke for Baby boomers)

I have been harvesting tons of giant heirloom tomatoes out of my garden. I’m fighting some critter who also likes them, but they have been leaving me enough. Had a good run of cucumbers and squash too.

So I’m going to leave you with a couple simple, healthy recipes to use up all those tomatoes and cucumbers and squash.

First is Tomato cucumber salad.

Know what the ingredients are? Tomatoes and cucumbers.

Right. Get a big bowl. Cut your tomatoes and cucumbers up into cubes. Put them in the big bowl. Add a few tablespoons of lime juice, a dash of olive oil, and salt to taste. That’s the base recipe. If you can squeeze the juice out of an actual lime you get extra credit.

Into this base you can fold some tasty, chopped onions if you are so disposed, or chives or basil. If you have a hankering for protein you can mix in some beans, lentils or bean sprouts.

Stir this up and let the lime juice get all cuddly with the ingredients. Put leftovers in containers in the fridge it will last for a few days.

Got it?

What about those squash?

Tomato squash soup. Works best with zucchini but will work with other squash.

Sautee some garlic and an onion until they are browning.

While that’s cooking, cube up your tomatoes and squash in a bowl. Add oregano, sage, whatever else you like for spices. A little salt and pepper.

That is your base.

Chuck all that in the slow cooker, add water until it’s covered, stir it up and let it cook for a few hours. It’s really good and hearty and filling.

I also use a hot pepper or two from the garden. I sauté half the pepper with the onions nad garlic and put the rest into the tomatoes and squash.

If you’re not cholesterol challenged feel free to add meat to this it goes great with sausage. If you want a vegan option you can add beans, or rice, or barley to the mix.

Again, you can store the leftovers in the fridge for a few days.

If you ever told me, when I was a kid, that I would be handing out cooking recommendations I would have said you were high.

But, we all find our way. We all learn.

We have free will.

So hitch up your short shorts and face the fear of freedom

And I’ll see you out there.

WWW.RunRunLive.com

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Frequently Asked Questions Part 2* Race day Advice * Shin Splints * Motivation * Heart rate * Speed work for old people

Frequently asked questionI have a half-marathon race (my FIRST!!) coming up in September. I have been working through a training plan over the last month and have worked myself up to 8 miles so far. A little over 6 weeks left to go!

I was wondering if anybody has any advice/wisdom they could share for half-marathon race day. Maybe what to expect, best fuel for the body leading up to the race (day before/morning of). Anything that was helpful for you on race day or something you wished you knew ahead of time proceeding the big day or during training?

Thanks so much!

Answer:Don’t do anything different than what you have been doing in training. Nothing new on race day! Relax, have fun, talk to people and go out slow, slower than you think you should. You want to avoid that end-of-race crash.

Frequently asked questionLooking for some advice! Please don’t judge my craziness, but I decided to sign up for a full marathon and have 9 1/2 weeks to train (this is actually more than the time I ran the Disney marathon without any training). I have been consistently running for a few months and currently run about 45 miles a week with my longest run being 9 miles (average 8:20/mi). Problem is- I don’t really have a training plan! Where would be the best place to get this? I get so overwhelmed when looking online! Thank you!

Answer:So – you have 9 weeks? So 8 with a taper? Sounds like you have a good base at 45. 8 weeks would give you 4 x 2-week cycles. Just use the last 8 weeks of one of the standard plans. You can find online. They’re all about the same.

Frequently asked questionWhat do you do when you have no energy or motivation to run. Asking because for the past few weeks it’s been hard for me to run or go to the gym to work out

Answer:It’s a constant struggle. Try to use the power of habit. (see the Charles Duhigg book) 1. Gather all your stuff ahead of time so there is no friction in the preparing to leave. 2. Set it as a goal in the morning. write it down, schedule the time slot, and start the day with the expectation that you are going, reinforce that expectation every time you think about it – don’t let the doubt creep in, 3. Have a reward tied to it. For example if you are going to the gym, maybe there is a favorite show or podcast or audiobook you only enjoy at the gym – you look forward to finding out what happens next. 4. Commit to at least getting out the door – if you can get out the door the rest will take care of itself.

Frequently asked questionI’m a new runner and got shin splints almost immediately. Tips on getting rid of them? I want to run my first marathon in 5 months

AnswerThats a too-much-too-fast injury. Get some new shoes. Check your form and back off a bit.

Frequently asked questionWhats the best half marathon training plan?

AnswerThis is a great example of an unanswerable question! The best plan is the one that works for you and your goals. Are you trying to ‘complete the distance’? Do you have a goal time? Are you trying to improve over previous effort? Are you beginner-intermediate-advanced? What are your time and mileage constraints? Injury issue? But – to answer your question – having a plan is better than not having a plan. As long as it fits your requirements, most plans have the same elements to them. If you have not used structured training in the past, having a plan (and executing it) will be a giant leap forward for you. There are several training plans available on line, and like I said, most have the same elements and can be tuned to your specific requirements/goals. Probably the best investment is to hire a coach for one training cycle to learn how it’s done. Another is to ask your local running club for advice – you can find them online as well or through RRCA (Road Running Clubs of America). The specific plan isn’t going to make or break you at the amateur level. But having a plan and following it will be a great boon to your running.

Frequently asked questionToday just didn’t go well. Maybe it was the heat, even though I started at 7 PM. Maybe it was my legs, still sore from Monday’s track session. Or maybe it’s my Achilles tendon that’s bothering me. I don’t know, but today just wasn’t my day. I’m even thinking of giving up sprinting after 30 years. At 57, I’m scared of getting injured, and the truth is, I don’t feel like I can push as hard anymore. I’m considering focusing on distance running instead!!! Help me choose: 60/100 meters or distance???

AnswerYeah – better to back off when you get close to 60. You can still do the workouts, just do them at 80-85% and focus more on form.

Frequently asked questionWhat is the go to device for checking the zone numbers?

AnswerThere is some unfortunate commentary about zones being useless here. HR zones are used as a proxy for effort level and efficiency of your running. They are especially useful for older athletes. I transitioned to HR training in my 50s because pace was no longer a good proxy for effort.

The secret sauce is that most people do their base (easy) runs in z3 without knowing any better. But if you can do your base training in z2 you will build more aerobic fitness.

The other thing is everyone’s zones are different and the online calculators are not particularly useful (based on averages).

And most wrist-based measuring devices aren’t accurate enough if you are zone training.

So summary- 1. zone training is very effective 2. You need to work with a coach and do a HR test to find your zones & 3. You need a chest strap.

What are Zones -> Here’s a quick primer team… Lydiard discovered in the ’70’s while training the New Zealand athletes that if they spent the majority (80%) of their training in a low heartrate level they build more aerobic capacity. Aerobic capacity is the essentially how long you can sustain your effort without blowing up. This low-HR training forces your cells to adapt by adding aerobic capacity. Good? So how do they know what HR is the right training HR? Well, this is where the concept of Zones comes from. They divided the effort level up into 5 zones. Where 0 is standing still (base) 1 is walking, 2 is aerobic training, 3 starts getting into breathing hard, 4 is racing, 5 is max. So, how do you know what your zones are, that’s the tricky bit because like everything else in our world there is a bunch of unhelpful information out there. a) everyone’s zones are different, both in the heart rates they start and end with and how wide they are. b) They are getting better, but the popular, wrist-based HR measurement are not accurate enough to set you zones, c) the on-line calculators for Zones are based on averages, and, I’m sure you’ll agree, runners are anything but average So what is a poor runner to do? You can get a chest strap that will synch with you watch to get an accurate HR or take your HR manually with your finger (no kidding). One bit of data you need is your resting HR. So take that every morning for a week or so. To get your zones, you put on your accurate HR device and go to the track to perform a Max HR test. This consists of warming up and then running a series of 800’s as hard as you can. This will give you 2 bits of HR information, 1) your MAX HR and 2) how fast you get to and recover from MAX. From these bits of data any HR coach can easily determine your zones. Which, again, are going to be different than mine or someone else’s.. Attached are my zones (don’t use them, yours will be different. )

Why do Zone training? For more serious athletes with structured training plans the use of zones allow you to dial in your efforts very exactly to the plan and thus be more efficient in your training (i.e. more bang for the buck) For those of us less serious, understanding our HR allows us to see where we are working too hard or even getting sick so we can adapt our training appropriately. For older athletes, (and you know who you are), HR is a better proxy for effort than pace. Meaning, as you age your pace drops and the same effort gives you less pace, but HR is a consistent measurement under any age/fitness situation. Finally, the BIG ONE, By using HR training you can get faster and go longer. And the way this works is that most people do their training in zone 3 by default. This small difference in effort level actually make a big difference in how your body adapts and builds fitness. If you can learn to shift these runs to a Zone 2 you will get much higher quality results of fitness for the time invested.

How do I figure out running in Zone 2 and how long does it take? Well, I’m glad you asked, this is where we see a lot of frustration from runners new to HR training. First you need to set your zones and have a device that accurately measures HR (see above). When you start trying to run in Z2 you will probably be super frustrated. You have been training in Z3 your whole life and Z2 will feel unnatural. It’s not rocket science. You just need to slow down, whatever that means to you. For me it was a painfully short stride length and a full minute or more a mile slower. You may even need to take walk breaks to let it reset. But, with consistent focus over 2-4 weeks, you’ll start seeing your old pace coming back at the lowered heart rate. It takes practice, consistency and training. The other thing is these Z2 training sessions may be a little bit longer than you are used to. My recommendation would be to invest in 3 months of a HR training coach just to learn how it works. Then you can decide if it is right for you. (I am not a coach – just a practitioner)

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Nutrition RantThis is entirely prejudicial. And also, satirical. Apparently you can get away with saying anything if you preface it with “This is satire.”

Losing weight is hard.

Eating to be healthy is hard.

It just goes against everything we as animals crave.

It is unnatural.

I’ve been working since May to cut weight. That’s what we used to call it when I was on the wrestling team in High School; “Cut weight” or “Make Weight”. That’s has more sense of control than ‘lose weight’. It has a sense of the effort and action required.

I’m finally starting to make some progress but it’s still hard.

To put in context of how hard consider this. I workout every day. Every day. I run more miles than 99.99% of the people on this planet.

I never liked sweets. I don’t eat cake or cookies or tarts. Never have.

But I still need to focus and scrape and suffer to lose weight.

Why is it so hard?

There are forces of evil aligned against me!

I mean we live in a land of abundance where pizza and beer are only a short reach away waiting for the weak moment.

And that’s the first lie.

That it doesn’t require self-control or self-sacrifice. That there is some magic combination of macronutrients and habits that just makes the belly roll melt away.

I call Bullshit!

It takes incredible self-control to reach past the stuff you want. It’s hard. It’s sacrifice. It does get easier with practice. But it’s never easy. And it’s always an ache in your heart.

A hunger.

But it’s not all about self-control.

The world of nutrition is filled with lies.

There is a $1.5 Trillion food industry working against you. And their goal is to sell you processed food.

Why do they want to do that?

Anyone who has tomatoes in their garden right now knows that they are anything but standardized. They come in all different shapes and sizes and colors and flavors and levels of quality. If you can manage to keep the animals away long enough you can pick them and you get about a week before they start to decompose and your kitchen is filled with fruit flies.

But. Consider this; if you deliver them in a can as tomato paste all of that variety goes away. They are easy to transport and are shelf stable. Hell, I bet you have cans of tomato paste right now in your pantry that are over 3 years old and still good.

Industrial production makes money at scale and needs standardization. It’s the industrial revolution, the Henry Ford production line efficiency. The equivalent of that in food.

By standardizing and automating and processing and packaging the cost is driven out of the food supply chain.

That’s a good thing right? Well, yeah, but at some point it also drives all the healthiness out of the food as well and actually drives in the unhealthy aspects of packaged food.

Bottom line. A bottle of whiskey is worth more and easier to transport than three bags of grain. Any time the raw material can be transformed, productized, into a package it is more profitable.

The last 100 years have been a constant march towards making cheaper calories, with small consideration to the impact that has on us as humans. As animals. As residents in our own world garden.

The constant pressure to make food cheaper drives changes in the ingredients. Less expensive ingredients that can be mass produced an on industrial scale – like corn sugar. Standardization of ingredients. Preservatives as ingredients.

And as a nice added benefit, these are ingredients designed to make us crave that food, like sugar and fats.

We are being farmed.

What is processed food? Isn’t all food processed?

Basically, anything in a bag or a box or a can in your local market is processed. Even fresh fruit and vegetables have been industrially bred to produce standardization and profitable attributes. Those incredibly large a sweet apple varieties and oranges the size of your head have been bred to be that way.

They are pushing your buttons by pushing more of the things you crave into every package. Sugars and Fats and salt, and then injecting it with preservatives to keep it fresh.

We are programmed to crave more.

We are acclimated so that we don’t even notice that we’re being farmed.

But, that’s ok because they can make even more money selling you health supplements, weight loss gimmicks and insurance sponsored pharmaceuticals.

But, you’re not stupid.

You try to do the right thing.

You read the labels and look for the healthy stuff, right?

Well, unfortunately the food industry is actively marketing to confuse and take advantage of you there too.

You walk down the aisle, concerned about the jiggle in your midsection and think “Here’s a label that says ‘Fresh’” – That’s got to be good right?

What exactly does that mean? Is there some sort of regulation or definition of “Fresh” – nope.

Means nothing.

That can of tomato paste from 2017 in the back of your pantry is just as ‘fresh’.

How about “Natural” or “All Natural” – Yeah, sorry, means nothing. You could label napalm ‘all natural’.

How about “Farm Raised” or “Farm Grown”? Ditto.

There was a lawsuit recently on that one. Someone went after a factory farm for labeling their eggs “Farm Raised” – and they lost. Because there is no, zero, nada, zilch regulation around these phrases.

The only one that means anything is ‘Organic’. That is regulated and means you shouldn’t get pesticides and chemicals. Depending on how well it’ enforced.

‘Free Range’ – Has a defined regulation as well. But it is laughably loosely defined.

And, really all these crazy macronutrient labels like “More Protein” or “Essential Vitamins” or “Proven Energy”, or ‘balanced’ or ‘healthy’ or ‘nature’ are throw away marketing terms, just window dressing to take advantage of some perceived trend.

They will continue to label and package to meet whatever it is you think you want to buy.

Don’t get me started on Biotics. Most of those mean nothing as well. Come on people.

And supplements. What about supplements? What about all those low-testosterone ads? What about those energy boosters? Those metabolism boosters? Those weight loss aids?

Unfortunately there are no chemical shortcuts to health.

There is Zero regulation in the supplement industry. As long as they aren’t actively poisoning people, and that is questionable as well, they can say and package any kind of supplement they want. It is a $100 billion business.

They are farming your fears.

They are farming your health.

They lean on a bunch of other weaselly phrases and words to ease your doubts. How about “Clinically tested”. Shit, I can call my bathroom a clinic and do my ‘verified studies’ in there while I’m at it.. “Proven results” – uh huh…That result could be raging diarrhea, but yeah, we proved it.

Guess what? There is no silver bullet.

You and I are going to die. The only proven path to health is exercise and diet. You can throw in aa dose of decent sleep for fine tuning. And you can’t smoke, drink or any of those other things that are bad for you.

Losing weight is hard. Eating healthy is hard.

I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to take back our free will from the packaged food industry.

But I try.

I eat as little packaged food as possible.

I read labels.

A quick thought experiment.

Let me ask you a question. What should the ingredients of peanut butter be? If you are in the peanut butter display in your local market and reading labels what should you be looking for?

Peanuts. That’s it. If the label says ‘Peanuts’ and nothing else you’ve got a chance.

And sometimes after reading all the labels on the shelf, you have to walk away disappointed. Because there is no choice.

What should the ingredients in beans be? Beans. That’s it. Beans.

It’s hard. It costs more. And most of the time it kinda sucks, but at the end of the day you are in charge of what you buy and what you put in your mouth.

It takes more time. But maybe there is freedom in that time applied to making and cooking and understanding how the food ‘becomes’?

Maybe you can learn to do that? To make nutrition part of your mental health as well?

There are people out there who can help you, who know the truth.

You can find them if you look.

You can weed through all the disinformation and find your way back to health.

I know you can.

Because you can do hard things.

Other people won’t.

You can.

Hard things are where the good stuff is.

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On Audiobooks…Let’s talk about audio books

I have become reacquainted with my local library.

I would say I am library friendly, but not a library nerd. I wasn’t one of those kids that lived in the library growing up. I guess the relationship was more akin to my relationship with the local post office – a municipal service to be used as needed.

My local library has changed form a couple times in my lifetime, evolving like a chrysalis into ever more interesting manifestations.

I remember the original in a historic building. Then they moved into a larger space in the old high school building. And now, just recently they have constructed a modern, spacious building to house the library’s wares and programs.

I suppose my most interesting library memory was randomly pulling a book from the shelf and reading a few pages. It was an old, musty hardback. The short section I read was an account of Roman soldiers taking a meal in an inn or something. I put it back in the stack. But the memory stuck. I wish I knew what that book was. I would read it.

Flash forward to current time.

Our hero wanders into the new library building looking for succor in his novel-writing Odyssey. I haven. A port in the tempest.

And what do I find? Some very nice people. They give me a room to work in. They don’t bother me. They give me a card and tell me how to use it.

I can rent DVD to watch, like old people do, and get access to those shows that were held behind the great streaming paywalls that stretch across modern virtual landscapes and hold at bay those not willing to subscribe.

I can read magazines, remember magazines? And newspapers, remember newspapers? On my Kindle!

And I have access to many, many audiobooks.

The thing you know about me is that I love books. I love the heft, the smell and the feel of a book. My office is cluttered with teetering piles of used paperbacks.

I will read books on my Kindle. The experience, while not the same, is similar.

I have my genres. I like Science Fiction and Literary works and History. I will read business books for their content. I’m not a fan of Fantasy or Romance or Spy thrillers.

No one ever dies having read all the books, but I make a good dent. I usually have 2-3 going at a time and, depending on their girth, complete a written book every couple weeks.

I have never been a big consumer of audio books. I listen to Podcasts.

But, now, our hero, teetering on the edge of opportunity has access to all these audio books on his phone just like podcasts.

Whoa! Long bike rides. Long training runs. Car rides. Saturdays and Sundays working on my to do lists. I can listen to a lot of audio.

I am coming up on the 2-week mark of this experience and am listening to my 5th audiobook.

An audio book is not like reading a bound, physical book. It’s not like words on a page that need to pass through your inner artistic rendering machine to make the story dance in your brain as you construct it.

Audio book take that internal-creation of narrator, characters and their voices out of play. The audio performer decides how to accent and color the words. Audio books are one distilled version of the book. One interpretation.

So what have I listened to? Let’s have some short book reviews!

I started on a long road trip with a long book by Hiroki Murakami called “Kafka on the Shore”. This is an odd book. I’m not even sure I know what it was about. But it was beautifully written and moving. It was finely constructed. It was fantastical, but not a fantasy. I hear echoes of all the masers of literature in Murakami which makes me happy.

My previous experience with Murakami was his wonderful book “What I think about when I think about running.” And a short story in the New Yorker. But now I realize I’m going to need to go deeper into his particular codex because he is a modern day master of the art.

The second book I listened to was The Library Book by Susan Orleans. This I a paean to Libraries and the library subculture wrapped around the story of the devastating 1986 fire that mostly destroyed the Los Angeles City Library. I like it. I am not of the Library culture but it made me happy that libraries exist and suggested to me that I should get more involved in supporting them.

The third book I listened to was “Small things like these by Claire Keegan”. This is a historical fiction based in 1980’s Ireland. It’s surprisingly short as an audiobook at just over 2 hours. The Irishman who reads it does a great job and it is a powerful story and a commentary on how we live our lives. It won a fair hoard of literary prize and is well worth a 2 hour investment.

And the fourth book I listened to was “The Wright Brothers by David McCullough.” On the surface this is a narrative history of the Wright Brothers and fills in the details around the mythos of the two bicycle mechanic brothers from Dayton Ohio who made the first powered flight and invented much of what we now take for granted in aviation. But, it’s also a propaganda piece, in love with the idea of a young, vibrant America, humble and competent in the world, creating mechanical miracles from whole cloth through hard work, clean living and stick-to-it-iveness.

Currently I am listening to “Lincoln in the Bardo b y George Saunders.” Which is a nice companion piece to his book on writing “A Swin in a Pond in the Rain,” which I am reading in traditional dead tree form with the writing group I joined at the, wait for it, local library.

And since we’re all friends here, I’ll leave you with this story.

One of the reasons I visited the local library was to see if there were any local writing groups I could join. I was feeling quite claustrophobic in my crowded home office and deigned that some external association might be the grease for the gears I needed.

I saw on the library calendar that there was a Monday morning writing group that met from 6:00 AM to 9:00. I confirmed with the front desk that, indeed there was such a group, because with writers there is a high level of commitment but a low level of execution and if I was going to get up early on a Monday morning I wanted to make sure that there were bodies in attendance.

I showed up and was warmly welcomed. AS one would expect it is an eclectic group that would warrant a short story of its own!

One of the activities that they were doing was reading the aforementioned Saunders Book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, as a learning exercise. In this book Saunders walks through the mechanics of writing great short stories by analyzing seven short stories by Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Turgenev.

On my first day with the group the leader turned to me apologetically and said something along the lines of “You may not get much out of this because you haven’t read the book or the short stories…”

And in my head I’m smiling because I’ve been training my whole life for this conversation. You want to talk about Tolstoy? Chekov? Gogol? I’m in! And that book by Saunders? It’s sitting on the floor of my office.

Let’s go!

So – they may get sick of me and throw me out.

This week we’re talking about Hemmingway!

In conclusion, my friends, audiobooks are another wonderful way to consume content, commercial free, on your headphones, especially if you are confronted by arduous time alone in the woods in pursuit of immortality.

It would be so much easier to pursue immorality, but that probably comes with its own baggage.

Don’t be a friad to wander into your local library and give them some love.

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Runner FAQ – Part 1The questions never change!As an acute observer of human nature, i.e. ‘stalker’, I have been answering questions in Facebook running groups. Why not? At first I didn’t want to because the questions were all so basic and repetitive that I couldn’t take them seriously. But then I thought, “What would a person with actual empathy do?” and decided to take it on as a creative writing challenge.

Why not? I started RunRunLive 20 years ago to share all the running stuff I had learned and help other be successful.

So let’s get to it.

Frequently asked question #1Any tips on how I can increase my running pace?

Answer:Speedwork.

Frequently asked question #2I’m going to Boston for a conference in a couple weeks. Does anyone know some good running routes? I plan on running a portion of the marathon route, but no idea other than that.

Answer:Boston is a running city. Head down to the trail along the Charles in the morning and you will find your tribe. Alternatively, when I worked in there I found you could run most of the Freedom Trail in about 10K and it’s makes a nice lunch run where you can see the common, the State House, and cross the Charlse up into the North end to Bunker Hill then swing back by the harbor to see Old Ironsides. There is a trail marking on the ground to follow and lots of historical points of interest.

Frequently asked question #3Hi, so my long runs have now reached the 20 mile mark I’m looking for ways to hydrate other than going to shop half way through my run is it worth carrying a water bag in the back of my running jacket or what just curious for hydration levels I sweat loads as well.

You can do shorter loops that include a cache of bottles that you pass. You can also preposition bottles on your route. You can ask people on your route to leave something out for you.

Frequently asked question #4Ok the verdict is in I lost fitness. I used to be able to do 10 slow miles during my long run, yesterday I struggled to do 5! What’s the quickest way back into the good graces of the running gods. Consistency? Is that the answer?

Follow up question for clarification:Not a lot of context. Did you take some time off?

Yes, I took about two weeks where I only ran once a week

Answer:It’s a single data point. Just ignore it. You won’t lose appreciable fitness in 2 weeks. You probably just had a bad day, or you were so enthusiastic that you went out too fast.

Frequently asked question #5I’m reaching out for some advice as I’m preparing for an upcoming half marathon. Lately, I’ve been feeling more out of breath than usual during my runs. To give you some background, I recently completed six consecutive half marathons in the mornings. Yesterday, I ran 8.10 miles in the morning and an additional 1.62 miles at night. Today, I did a 4-mile run in the morning.

Despite this solid training background, I’m noticing that I’m getting winded more quickly than I expected. I’ve been tapering my mileage as part of my race preparation, and I understand that adjustments to reduced mileage can sometimes lead to temporary fatigue.

Given my previous training and experience, I’m a bit concerned about how this might affect my race. I’d really appreciate any insights or similar experiences from the group. How have you managed feeling out of breath or dealing with similar situations before a race? Any tips for making sure I’m ready for race day would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your help

Follow up question for clarification:Am I to understand that you ran 6 days in a row, 13 miles a day? That seems like a lot of miles and volume for a half marathon. You may be overtrained. If so, the taper should help.

Chris Russell every morning ran a half marathon even more before glute injury definitely over trained but was hitting prs.

Answer:Your symptoms do sound like over-training. Got to give the body time to recover.

Frequently asked question #6So I just started training for a marathon six weeks ago. Tonight I did my first half marathon run. And honestly, it sucked. It was a lot of big hills. My lower back is killing me. Does anybody have any tips or advice for this and maybe some encouragement 

I keep thinking that one of these times Im just gonna love it, running

I did run it in 2:20, so I was happy with that time.

Edited to add:

I am following a Runna App marathon plan. It’s only 3 runs a week. I also do strength training 4 days a week.

Answer:Part of the process.

Frequently asked question #7Training for my first marathon and feeling a tweak in my right calf. Do I skip my workout tomorrow or push through? I’ve been icing, foam rolling and massaging but I’m so worried about getting injured.

Answer:Skip

Frequently asked question #8Illness and Return Question

Ok, got a summer cold (head and chest congestion) which has knocked me off my feet for 4 days and I’m finally feeling good enough to run. However, I’m supposed to run 12 miles tomorrow and wanted some advice on if I just go as far as I can or go for it? My mind says don’t go too far too fast and just go slow and listen to my body. Any tips? Thoughts?

Thanks!

Answer:Don’t try to ‘catch up’ on your training plan. That’s your ego talking and will get you injured. Reset your plan to add a build week to see if you can assess your fitness. You shouldn’t have lost any fitness in days. But jump back in with something reasonable and see how it feels.

Frequently asked question #9One more question! For anyone doing zone 2 training with the goal of having a lower HR with a solid pace, how long did it take to see improvements?

Answer:At least 3 weeks

Frequently asked question #10On my venture for 4 miles in 10 minutes or under I am at almost 3.5 miles. Every Monday, wed, and Friday I run. As of late tho the Wed and Friday workouts are getting very difficult to run that distance each week. I am unsure if it has to do with me never running that much before. Could also be that I lift weights 5x a week. Monday is a non-issue and times are always the best.

I have started running less on those days because I felt pretty beat up. I was just wondering if I should stick it out and keep running that much or if I should have slower days.

The other days last week I ran only a mile but I did it as fast as possible and did end up with a little under 9 minutes per mile which for me and being over weight I was happy with. If anyone could give me advice on the matter I would gladly appreciate it. I still would like to complete my goal of being able to run 4 miles at a 10 minute or less pace for three days.

Answer:So, my friend, you’re goal is 4 miles in under 40 minutes. So there are two elements to this, 1) being able to go the distance and 2) being able to do it faster than you are doing now. And it seems as if your rule is ‘run 3 days a week’ (and lift 5). Do you have a time frame for this goal? Like ‘by the end of July’ or in ‘in 30 days’? That would help with creating a plan. Back to the training. For #1 part of this, ‘run 4 miles’ you need to build basic fitness. Ironically, as others have undoubtedly noted, you build that ‘base fitness’ with slower training paces. I’m not sure if your gym-rat knowledge extends to heart rate or effort level, but these ‘base building’ miles should be at what is known as a ‘zone 2 heart rate’ effort level. Which, if you don’t have a HR monitor, is a ‘2’ effort on a 1-5 scale. So, you should not be breathing hard or struggling. You should be able to talk complete sentences if you’re running with someone. It takes a few weeks to get the hang of this. But you should have more energy in your W and Fri runs if you run the Monday run at the Z2 effort level. To get up to 4 miles I would recommend spending 2-4 weeks just figuring out the Zone 2 effort at whatever mileage you’re comfortable with. Then you can build mileage in a weekly cycle across the 3 days. So something like Monday 2 miles, Wednesday 2 miles, Friday 3.5 miles. And increase the mileage by 10%a week and do that until you can comfortably run that 4 miles at a Z2 effort (don’t worry about time). Then you can work on #2 going faster. For the 2nd part, once you have the distance and the base, start working in one ‘speed work’ session on either the Wed or Friday. What’s that? you ask…keep it simple. Warm up for 10 min in Z2 then do 30-60 seconds at an 85% effort level (mid-to-high-zone 3) (where 100% is your sprint). Work up to 8-10 of these pickups in one of your weekly workouts. over the course of a few weeks. So in 2-3 months you will crush your goal. (Additionally – you say you are working out 5 days a week, but don’t say whether this is barbells or pickle ball. If you are doing weights, especially leg day, that can be complimentary with your runs. It can also make your legs heavy. So – consider how to make what you’re doing complimentary with your run training. Enjoy your workouts.

ResponseChris Russell I do 5 days of PPL. That doesn’t affect me much at all. I walk everyday for 30-45 minutes as well.

I had recently gotten into running after gaining a ton of weight. I do not have a goal time to achieve this I just want to be physically able to do so.

I have started from just walking to running .25 of a mile and adding a quarter to it each successful week. I have built up to my 3.5 pace at an avg of 11 minutes per mile. As most people say I can talk during this without much effort and its always a controlled slow inhale and a quick exhale.

My question just was for a while I could do the workout each week no issue. Only now at and after 3 miles am I unable to do so. My legs are heavy and I just can’t seem to get enough air by the end of the week. Monday I can do it very efficiently and after I am done I feel I could do it again. By the end of the week I can’t anymore.

I added the Mile at under 9 because I did that instead on Friday and I felt great.

So I was just wondering, should I swap out those other two days for faster, less distance runs.

Follow up Answer:No. You’re on the right track. It might be the summer weather or some other underlying health thing that’s dragging you down. Forget everything I said above. I think you’d be a great fit for the Galloway training community. Also – go join the Extra Mile Podcast Group. One thing you can do is start checking your heart rate to see if anything is going on while you’re exercising. Measure your HR each morning and look for variation across the week – that could point to an underlying condition, could be as simple as exhaustion. With your history could be something that you could tweak with nutrition. Keep running.

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What should I drink?

One of the groups I follow on Facebook is “Runners loving Running”. It’s full of stupid questions.

Ok…OK…I hear you groaning…they are not stupid questions, they just seem stupid to me. So that makes me a stupid observer.

They ask things that are unanswerable:

• What kind of shoes should I wear for my first 5K?
• How fast is a good pace?
• What is the best weight for racing?

At first I just thought it was the AI Bots serving up dumb questions to farm comments. Because, let’s face it, if you ask something like, “What’s the best shoe for my 5K?” or “How far should I run?” you’re going to get hundreds of answers. Some of these answers will have no context, like “Brooks” and some will be well meaning experts writing long winded treatise on the art of running and shoe design.

After 3 or 4 of these types of questions I may have commented that these had to be AI Bots. And was kindly reprimanded by the poster that he/he/it was a real person and this was a real question.

My understanding of these questions has changed. They are not dumb questions. They are beginner questions. Beginner questions from people who may not have English as a first language. Beginner questions where they have a question but they don’t really know how to ask it.

In the spirit of round table, I will answer one of these questions.

“What should I drink?”

First, I’m going to assume that this is in the context of running, because otherwise I’ll recommend a good New England Hazy IPA, but be careful of the alcohol content. Generally try to stay under a 7% ABV unless you’re not driving, surrounded by sensible friends and don’t have much to do the next day.

I’m going to assume you mean “What should I drink when I’m running?”

There are a number of discovery questions I would ask if I could. Is this for training, or racing? How far are you planning to go? How fast? What’s the expected weather? What is your planned effort level?

And, since all of these questions depend on who you are and how your machine behaves, I would ask what you normally drink and eat and how that interacts with your gut?

So, as you see, you, in your naiveness, you have asked an unanswerable question. Because we have to make a bunch of assumptions to answer it.

Let’s start simple. Do you need to drink anything? It really depends on your fitness, your current state, the weather and your experience.

In general, if you are going to be out running for less than an hour you can probably get away with not drinking anything at all. Unless you’re going into the run dehydrated to begin with or you’re in Death Valley, it is not going to kill you. Probably. Because I don’t know you and you may have some inbred thirst condition.

If the question is ‘how much to drink when running?’ then you need to know your sweat rate. Your sweat rate is how much you sweat over a given period of time.

How do you measure this?

Simple, you weight yourself before you run, then weigh yourself after, adjusting for anything you may have drunk in between, and the difference is your sweat rate for that weather and effort level.

If you want to control the experiment, do it in the gym on the treadmill at room temperature.

For me the answer is about 16 oz per hour if I’m working hard. Which is a little bit less than 500ML.

If it’s hotter I may sweat twice that rate. If it’s colder half.

So, If I was planning a 3 hour outing I’m going to need 1-2 liters of water.

What to drink is really a personal preference question. The industry will push you to believe that you need to power down gallons of sicky-sweet sports drinks to get that performance. You can use those if you like. They do give you a little sugar boost with your water.

The one-hour rule applies here as well. There’s just not enough time for any fuel to impact your race in that short a time. Fueling is for longer runs. And the type of fueling is going to change depending on what the purpose of the workout is. If it’s an easy, bas-building run you may just need some water.

These sports drinks are more appropriate for shorter distances. Then will tend to give you a sore stomach over the long haul.

If you are going longer there are other drinks with simpler sugars and protein and electrolytes that are designed for fueling runners that you can tap into. Remember, plants love electrolytes.

Many runners will only drink water and get their fuel from other food sources. The older I get the more I gravitate to whole food as a source of energy.

Part of the joy of running is that you get to figure all this out as part of your journey. You get to experiment with different things and find what works for you. And what works for you will change over time.

Who knows? You may be that person who loves a good fried clam milkshake for your hot runs.

I only made that mistake once.

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13 ways to face challenges without anxietyWe all face challenges and setbacks in our day-to-day existence. Some are episodic and abrupt like losing someone or something. Some are more existential like aging or politics. But they all feel real in the moment and can be unsettling at best and disabling at worst.

I find this happens in all areas of my life. Even at my age, my emotions are up or down depending on the current score of perceived wins versus perceived losses. And when I get challenges in more than one area, or when they start to pile up, I get anxious.

I start to lose hope. I start to think and act with scarcity. I withdraw, become isolated and lose my initiative and creativity. I become a liability to myself, the people I live with and the people I work with.

It’s crazy. I have some much to be grateful for, but I forget myself and start to wallow in the bad stuff and catastrophize everything. I know better!

So what’s going on? Haven’t we talked about this before? Why are there lessons like this that require constant relearning?

I know that over the course of this podcast I’ve often coached you how to pull yourself our of a funk. How to get through the salt and sand and smog to a clearer place to live, love, laugh and achieve – if that’s what you want.

You may even remember a time when my words resonated with a challenge of your own, when they showed up at the right time to help you get through, over or around a bump in your road. When you were out on that training run, feeling sorry for yourself and my ravings struck a chord like a great blue lightning bolt of joy from the sky!

I am grateful for that resonance.

But, the truth, as I’ve often told you, and I hope you won’t take it personally, is that you are an afterthought. I wrote/write these articles, I speak/spoke these words, because I need to process something of my own and you are the happenstance, ancillary beneficiaries. I’m shouting my pain into the void and you just happen to be standing in the way.

The fact that it resonates is proof that the human experience is synchronic. We are linked in experience and emotion, if not more, in the great web of it all. We are travelers in the same small rickety boat, rocked by the same frothing, angry waves and splashed by the cold spray of life together.

And so I find myself here in need of reminding all of us that practice is required to make it through the storms to both the exultant mountain top and the peaceful bay.

Let us begin.

We are creatures of anxiety, and the modern world works hard to keep us in a state of fear.

We don’t like being anxious. Conflict makes us anxious. Deadlines make us anxious. Missed opportunities make us anxious. Pending engagements make us anxious. Past mistakes, remembered and ruminated on, make us anxious.

What are some of the unhealthy ways we tend to deal with this constant barrage of anxiety?

Self medication is a great one. There is no anxiety that can survive a two-bottle of wine binge, is there?

Eating your way into comfort? Check.

Maybe, and this is just a guess, but over exercising to deaden the screaming voices of your mind?

Avoidance is another. We don’t engage with that person, or that job, or that situation to avoid the conflict and the anxiety that comes with it.

Maybe we fall apart totally. Unable to go to work. Unable to get out of bed. Unable to engage any semblance of our best or normal self with the world – because we are anxious. We are afraid. Best not to play the game when the game just gives pain.

I think that’s enough exposition and enough rolling around in the pain of it.

Let’s move on to the solution.

How do we get through these tough points? How to we stay out of disabling anxiety and scarcity when confronted by challenges and conflict?

How do we, god forbid, “Rise to the Challenge?”

ONECheck your assumptions. There is no such thing as a conflict or challenge free life. There is no destination that you are somehow going to think your way or work your way to where everyone is holding hands and singing songs and dancing with unicorns under rainbows.

It feels to me like this is a version of the ‘destination fallacy’, like there is some place or time where there will be no conflict and no challenges and all we have to do it get there.

And then, because we have this errant assumption of a conflict-free existence, when the inevitable conflict comes, we are not prepared. We feel affronted. It feels unfair.

Guess what? There is a place you will eventually get to where you will have no conflict or anxiety. It’s six feet under in a mahogany box. Other than that, the world is spicy.

Sometimes I hear the Boomer advice, “Life is hard! Get over it!” That’s not very helpful. That implies there is some problem with you. You need to toughen up! You need to roll with the punches! You need to persevere!

No, you don’t need to ‘toughen up’ like some cowboy riding the range. But you do need to expect that there will be conflict in life and then you can develop the tools to deal with it in a mentally and physically healthy way.

TWOCultivate detachment.

Not avoidance.

Detachment. This thing that is happening is just that, a thing that is happening. You can’t stop it from happening, but you can control how you react. Detachment does not mean that you don’t care. Detachment is the ability to see a thing without attaching a load of emotional baggage to it.

Look at it like you are an observing 3rd party. This will allow you to get out of your primitive hormone and emotion driven dinosaur brain and into your big, thinking brain.

Detachment means uncoupling your self-worth from the outcome.

Before you react, apply a lens of dispassion.

THREEUnderstand the context. You are a thinking bag of water on one planet in a universe of stars. Is that thing that is upsetting you right now, really that important? How many times have you survived conflict in the past? Is it really the end of the world? Is it really something you want to spend negative emotion on?

I bet if you think about it a year from now it won’t be a big deal. And I bet in 10 years you won’t even remember it.

You’ve got so much to be grateful for. Life is a miracle. Put this thing in context.

FOURIs it under your control? Are you worrying about things that you have no way to change? It happened. You can’t change that. Why waste energy on it?

If it’s under your control, maybe you can change it. You get to choose. If it isn’t under your control you can let it go.

What is under your control is how you react and how you invest your emotions.

Why worry about stuff that isn’t under your control?

FIVEDon’t catastrophize. That’s a great term. It’s another version of worrying about things that haven’t happened yet. You have a challenge and then instead of keeping it in context, you string together a whole story about how this one conflict is the end of the world.

I know I do this. It goes something like this… “Oh my god that was a terrible call with the customer. I’m not going to get the business. I’m going to get fired. I’ll never b e able to find another job. Everything I’ve worked for in my life will be taken from me. I’ll die broke, alone and miserable…”

Sound familiar?

None of that stuff is going to happen.

Don’t catastrophize. You’re making yourself miserable for no reason.

SIXStay in the present. Stay in the now.

We have the insane tendency, when confronted by a conflict or a challenge to not only catastrophize about the future, but also to helpfully dig up from the past all those other times we failed to rise to the occasion, just to reinforce the anxiety.

You can’t change the past. The future hasn’t happened.

Whatever this challenge is, it is now. Look around. You’re alive. You’ve probably got people who love you. If not you can always get a dog.

Don’t waste energy on things in the past that you can’t change or things in the future that haven’t happened.

All you have is right now. Live it.

SEVENNow we’re going to move from the ‘what not to do into some tactics to get out ahead if your anxiety habits.

The first is to live every day and to make every day have meaning. Don’t sleep walk. Don’t put off to the future. Live intentionally. Even if that intention is to lie on the couch and watch Hallmark movies in your underwear all day. If that’s what you need to do, do it and do it intentionally.

Make finding the meaning of every day part of your habit. A great example of this is to write down what you’re grateful for.

EIGHTCultivate a sense of hope and abundance. Hope may not be a strategy, but it’s a great tactic and an awesome way to be happy. Believe in an outlandishly positive version of yourself and live that life today.

You can do anything. Live with hope. Live with abundance. Make it part of your daily existence and validation.

NINETake care of yourself. Cultivate the ability to say ‘no’. At the end of your life today’s to-do list of things other people want you to do is not going to matter. Prioritize your health. Both physical and mental.

This means scheduling time to do the thing you need to do to stay healthy. Sharpen your saw.

And it means saying ‘no’ when it is in your best interest.

You are important. Treat yourself that way.

You can’t show up for work, or family or friends as the best version of yourself if you don’t prioritize self-care.

TENLook for the lessons.

This is so easy to say, and so hard to do. When you have challenges and conflicts, consider them with detachment and find the lesson. They are teaching you something.

Open you ears, open your eyes, and open your heart to the lessons.

ELEVENCultivate connection.

It is far easier to respond to a challenge or a conflict if you have a trusted tribe you can turn to. Find a core group of people you can trust. Have them ready,. Set the expectation that you may be reaching out when you have a challenge.

Even if it is just to have someone to listen it will help.

Isolation is a killer.

TWELVECultivate helpful habits. As I have learned, challenges and your ability to respond to them, are something you need to practice and keep current. Don’t wait until there is a crisis. Build your capabilities step by step, day by day and habit by habit.

THIRTEENPractice compassion.

One of the best ways to contextualize your own challenges is to help others. It is good karma and and creates a positive cycle of goodwill.

Have compassion for others. Practice empathy. Find a way to help.

And my friends, with that I have exhausted almost 2,000 words on this topic.

I feel better.

Do you?

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Fasted RunningNot ‘Fast Running’, or ‘Faster Running’ – but ‘Fasted Running’.

Like running when you haven’t eaten for a long time.

This week I experimented with running fasted.

Why?

It’s a long story.

Shall we start at the beginning with some historical exposition? Or should we jump into Act Two where I’m wondering what all these fast proponents are talking about…

“Oh, fasting gives you mental clarity!”

“Oh, fasting gives me so much more energy!”

“Oh, fasting changed my life!”

What a crock of…Shiver me timbers!

I did not get any of that.

Ok, Let’s get back to the ‘why’.

I’m coming off a long-term injury and my weight hasn’t come back down to where I was a couple years ago before the injury. So, I’ve been focused on nutrition and trying to eat healthy, and yes, lose some weight.

I‘m currently training for an ultra. And I’m about to go into some higher mileage weeks. My fear, and partly my experience, is that training heavy is going to cause additional injury if I don’t go into it a bit lighter.

My logical mind created a plan to have my training ramp up as my weight ramps down.

But that has not happened. Even with the clean diet, my weight has stubbornly stayed about 10 pounds higher than I want. I guess it’s a combination of being older, and having trained my metabolism to such a low idle over the last couple decades – but, bottom line, I was stuck.

I was frustrated. I needed to do something different. A shock to the system.

And since I had a down week on the schedule, I asked my coach to work in a couple fast days.

…

I have done fasting before in my adventures. I find I can handle a 24 hour fast easily enough.

What I do is simple. When I wake up, I don’t eat all day until the next morning. I drink coffee, tea and water. I find this works the best because I’m not hungry when I wake up and my stomach is already empty.

Around lunchtime I may start getting a little hungry, but that’s easy enough to get through. Then, later in the day I find I’m not hungry, but I am thinking about food, more out of habit than anything.

And that’s it. A simple 24-hour fast.

What does it do? For me each of these 24- hour fasts results in an initial 4-5 pound impact on the scale. But that is not the net loss. Once I start eating again it bounces back a bit. The net loss ends up as 2-3 pounds.

What else does it do? Well, the proponents of fasting ascribe everything from endless life and total consciousness – like it’s some sort of religious-emotional orgasm.

For me it’s a way to break a plateau and potentially give my metabolism a jolt.

…

This week was a bit different because I did workouts at the end of the fast period, before I started eating again.

What I wanted to do today is answer the question: “Should I run fasted?”

This also appealed to my vein of Stoicism, where you create scarcity as part of your practice to prove to yourself that it is not to be feared.

…

But, first, how do I feel during the fasting process?

It’s not terrible, but it’s not great either.

First, I’m not hungry. Starting in the morning, my stomach is already empty. I really don’t get hunger pangs.

Second, physically I don’t feel too bad. I’m doing these fasts on rest days so there is no workout to contend with. Maybe I’m a little lightheaded, maybe I’m a bit less energetic, but nothing terrible.

My stomach is a bit rumbly, probably from the coffee. My mouth gets incredibly dry and gross. I find my skin feels greasy from whatever is going on – like I’m sweating fat.

Third, mentally, I think this is where it hits me the most. It’s like the feeling you get when you do a keto diet. It sucks the glycogen out of my brain and just makes me stupid and fuzzy headed. I can’t be creative at all with this fuzzy head. Verging on a headache.

Finally, it makes me want to sleep. I feel like I could lay down and not move for hours on end. ‘Listless’ is what I would call it.

Sounds like fun, right?

I didn’t transcend consciousness or see God. I just felt blah.

I did this twice this week. Wednesday and Saturday. Both were rest days, so nothing more strenuous than walking the dog.

The real event was waking up that second morning, fully fasted and going for a run.

I did this on purpose to see how my body would react. I’m a curious guy and thought it would be an interesting experiment.

This was where my body was talking to me.

First thing you notice is that you have zero energy. You know the last 3 miles of that marathon or half marathon where you went out too fast and hit the wall? You know that feeling where you can’t lift your legs?

Yeah, that.

Wednesday, I did a 6ish mile trail loop on my home course. A base building easy run. Usually, once I warm up, I settle into the run and my second half is better than my first.

Not when fasted.

Halfway into the run I hit the wall. Nothing in the tank at all. I ended up walking some hills and really suffering. I consoled myself that I was practicing for the ultra. Because, in an ultra you will have these long periods where there is nothing in the tank and you need to figure out a way to keep going. I got slower and slower over those last 3 miles.

What specifically did I notice? My legs had no pop and no energy. I was achy. Achy in the joints and achy in my muscles. All my muscles. Even my arms and shoulders.

The other thing I noticed was that, even though it was a nice morning, not too hot, I drank my entire liter bottle of water and could have used more. My guess is that fat needs water to metabolize.

So – pro tip – if you’re going to run fasted, drink a lot of water.

Saturday, I fasted again, same way for 24 hours and did my Sunday morning run before eating anything.

In general, I thought Saturday was an easier day then Wednesday. Same symptoms. Muddy head, wanted to sleep. But my body didn’t seem as upset as it was Wednesday. I can’t quantify it, but I think maybe my body was already adapting by the Saturday fast.

Sunday morning I woke up late. Fasting makes me sleep more.

It was drizzling. The dog and I went to Starbucks for some coffee and then to the trailhead. This one I ran on the Cape Cod rail trail which is a very flat and forgiving course.

My experience was the same. No energy. Achy. And about halfway in I hit the big wall, then a continuous deterioration into the finish for 7 ugly miles.

OK – so what is the answer to the “Can I run fasted?” question?

The answer is ‘Yes, you can, but it’s probably going to suck.’ Even the easy, base-building runs I’m doing sucked and felt like they were damaging. There’s no way I would have done any actual tempo or speed or strength training while fasted.

Frankly, I’m not sure I’d recommend it. It sure felt like I was putting a lot of stress on my body. I’m not sure that’s positive stress, especially at my age.

I think there’s a fasting hangover as well. You don’t feel quite right for a couple of days.

And, I don’t know if it was purely coincidental, but I had a couple emotionally low days after the fasts as well.

If we say we should listen to our bodies, I’m pretty sure my body is telling me not to do this.

Your body may tell you something different. We all have different machines.

But that was my experience with fasting and running while fasted.

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Episode 5-489 – Richard Anderson Interview Evolution to the VoidHello my running friends.

Now, I see you… you’re shaking your head.

5 in a row? What are you doing Chris? I just got around to removing the RunRunLive podcast from my old phone and here you are dropping conten t again? How can we trust you again? You’ve put us through so much.

Yup – I’m on fire folks. I even baked up some new bumpers. Besides I am using the interviews for both my podcasts so there are economies of scale.

Hope all my American friends enjoyed your 4th of July. Treasure those memories you’re making with your family and friends.

I spent the week down at Cape Cod with Ollie and Yvonne. Pretty low key. Just hanging out and relaxing.

We’ve got a great show for you today.

In our interview today we talk with Richard Anderson about his books and his publishing process.

In section one I’m going to talk about Running fasted and in section two I wrote a thoughtful, amusing article on how to deal with challenges so that they don’t become debilitating.

It’s been fun to have some time to write these cheesy little articles this week. It seems like I have some new energy, yah know like terminal patients get a burst of clarity right before they croak?

On with the show.

Section Onehttps://runrunlive.com/fasted-runningFeatured InterviewHi Chris,

Please see attached Press Kit. Youi can also check my blog on my web site, richardandersonauthor.com, or Facebook, Richard Anderson_Author.

The books; “The Evolution of Life: Big Bang to Space Colonies”, and “Outbound: Islands in the Void” are available on Amazon/Kindle.

Thanks again for the interview.

–Richard Anderson

ABOUT THE AUTHORRichard Anderson is an alumnus of San Jose State University, with a masters degree in microbiology.

His studies also emphasized molecular biology and biochemistry. Several years after earning his MA, Richard obtained a Clinical Laboratory Bioanalyst license.

In subsequent years he worked in various administrative and technical management roles in laboratory settings, beginning his first assignment as a clinical laboratory director in 1993. In 2006 he began working in a reference laboratory for Quest Diagnostics; he continued working in various Quest laboratories as a laboratory administrative director and technical director.

Shortly before the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, Richard began to further explore research areas that had caught his attention during his studies and employment years. As a result of his research, new information came to light that sparked his enthusiasm. And as the pandemic engulfed the world, research and writing this book filled the voids left by relative isolation.

Richard lives with his wife live in the south San Francisco Bay area of California, close to their children and grandchildren.

Bibliography and contactsTHE EVOLUTION OF LIFE:

Big Bang To Space Colonies by Richard M. Anderson

Publication Date: April, 2022

Published by: Precocity PressCopyright © 2022 by Richard M Anderson. All Rights Reserved.

Trade Paperback price $22.95 | 979-8-9851494-6-3

Hardcover/Full color interior price $54.95 | 979-8-9851494-7-0

First edition, Printed in the USA

Kindle eBook price $9.99 | 979-8-9851494-8-7

https://amzn.to/3rUIRMa

Media Inquiries | Interview Requests Contact:

Darcy Hughes, Dream Book Marketing

darcyoffice@gmail.com | 310-977-9679

Section Twohttps://runrunlive.com/13-ways-to-face-challenges-without-anxietyOutroThat’s it my running friends, starved through to the end of episode 5-489. Have a hamburger. Maybe a hot dog. Lighten up.

I’ve had a good training week. 3 runs and 2 bikes and it’s not over yet.

A couple of those workouts blundered into the Surreal.

Let me take a moment to tell you about it.

First, Thursday morning, the 4th of July, I had a run scheduled. Nothing crazy. Just a 1:20 base building run.

I have a tradition, some of you long timers may remember, of going down to Chatham light beach and running over the 4th. Sometimes I’ll bike over and run. Sometimes I’ll drive to Chatham center, park, jog up to the beach and run.

This week, since Yvonne was around, I asked her to drop me off at the beach in the morning and I’d call her when I needed to be picked up.

The only problem with that plan is that this beach is on the parade route of the Chatham 4th of July parade. When the kids were little we used to go to the parade. It’s a slice of American-small-town patriotism.

The fire trucks, some marching bands, and some other assorted decorated cars and oddities. The town fill up with all the vacationers who have made it part of their family traditions.

We don’t go anymore. We have no desire to go stand in the sun and watch the local real estate agent drive by in his convertible. We thought that the parade started at 8:00 AM. So Yvonne drove me over early, just after 7:00. The roads were already being closed, so she got me as close as she could and I hiked up the rest of the way.

It was a beautiful morning. Clear skies. Not too hot. The town was all decorated and people were out. It was really nice. Just how you imagine a small town America 4th of July.

I’ve been running this beach for many years. And, having this span of experience, I have noticed it keeps getting smaller. Cape Cod is basically a big pile of sand dropped by the glaciers and it is moving. Every year the outer Cape – the part exposed to the Atlantic – gets chiseled away.

This part of the shoreline used to be protected by a barrier island but it was breached many years ago in a big storm. In the past I have been able to run for hours out on this beach and back. But each year it gets smaller.

After visiting the convenient porta-potties at the beach entrance I took off my shirt and set out. I was wearing my fly-hat – which is a running hat with a bandana pinned to the back. And one of my running vests to hold some water and my phone.

It was a nice run but I ran out of beach pretty quickly. One section that used to be a sandy point, or bluff has eroded to the point where they have build a stone breakwater around it. It was impassable.

It’s interesting to see these changes in your lifetime.

I headed back and discovered that the parade didn’t start until 9:30. I needed some more time on my feet, so I ran the parade route and it was wonderful. Maybe not so much for the people having to see my crusty old specter moving down the middle of Main Street smiling like an idiot.

Once I got free of Main street I hiked another few miles out of town to find a spot where Yvonne could fetch me. It was a cool adventure in people watching.

This morning, Friday Morning, I had an easy bike ride on my schedule. It was cloudy when I left, but wasn’t supposed to rain until later. I got my ride in on the Cape Cod Rail trail, with no issues. Felt pretty strong, but the heavens opened up as I got close to my house.

This was like movie rain. Just sluicing down and inches deep in the road. Because there is a short section of road I need to navigate to get back to my house. Cape Cod roads are dangerous on a good day. No shoulders. Very narrow. And, on this week packed with hungover patriots.

But I was only a little ways from home and feeling quite strong – so no issues. Plus, I almost exclusively ride my 29er mountain bike now and it is a beast in bad conditions.

The last thing I navigate before getting back to the house is an intersection where the road up from the rail trail, a busy road called Depot Road tees into another busy road and I need to turn left against traffic, cross the road and into my street.

Well, picture this, I’m up in the saddle grinding away, feeling strong. It’s a blinding, torrential downpour. There are three cars that pass me and que up to the stop sign at the tee. I see they are all helpfully turning right, so I move left to the center lane of the road and pull up past the car at the front so I can see traffic in both directions and wait for a gap so I can cross the road.

I’m clipped out, stationary and balanced on my right foot.

I’m watching the cars coming down from my right and turning into the road I’m on. And I see that the car is going to hit me. It’s going to be close, but yes, one of those slow motion things where it’s going to happen.

I start scooching backwards to give them room, but I don’t quite make it and the care clips my front tire and knocks me down onto my ass in the middle of the road.

I’m frankly, not angry, or adrenaline filled, because I knew I wasn’t hurt, and truth be told, I was probably violating the stop line. And I was at the penultimate moment of the workout where I was warmed up and grooving.

People are jumping out of cars and some lady offers me a hand, which I wave off, because I am perfectly capable of standing myself up.

Then there is this young lady saying “Sir! Are you ok? I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you.”

And I’m checking myself and my bike over in the pouring rain and it’s becoming apparent that she is really bad at hitting cyclists because I am unscathed.

But, she’s going on an on. And I’m telling her I’m ok. So I have her pull over out of traffic. The little crowd of motorists that has gathered starts to disperse. She tells me she was on her way to work and keeps repeating how she didn’t see me and how sorry she is.

I tell her, it’s ok, I’ll just take a picture of her license, just in case. And as we’re transacting this, in the pouring rain, on the shoulder of the busy road, literally 50 feet from my front door, I try to shield my phone enough to get a picture of her license.

The poor kid is probably all of 18 years old. She’s visibly shaking.

And I’m telling her to calm down. It’s going to be ok. I’m fine. Stop freaking out – you’re going to give yourself a heart attack.

And she asks, what should I do?

And I say again, calm down, go to work. It’s going to be ok.

And I went home.

My bike is fine. I have done more damage to myself falling over in a parking lot.

So my friends, calm down, go to work, it’s going to be ok.

And I’ll see you out there.

WWW.RunRunLive.com

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A Quick Primer on RoboticsAi generated art of zombie goldfishThe word robot to describe a human-like machine was coined in a 1920 Czechoslovakian play called R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek.

Mechanical men have been part of our cultural zeitgeist since then. Robots are different than androids in that they are mechanical whereas androids are at least partly organic.

When you here the word ‘robot’ you may immediately picture Robby the robot from Forbidden Planet or maybe they robot from Lost in Space. This is the typical depiction. A mechanical version of ourselves. And they are benevolent, evil or just misunderstood.

When I think of robots, I picture industrial robots. Industrial robots have been around since 1962. So, guess what? They are as old as I am!

These industrial robots take different forms, but what they do is they automate a task that was done by a human. These robots are programmed to do the same task over and over again. They may be stand-alone applications, like a welding robot or they might be part of some larger automation.

They were created to automate tasks that were dirty and dangerous for humans. They are very good at repetitive tasks. Welding a seam, drilling a hole, or inserting a chip into a circuit board.

The way these have been programmed traditionally is at the individual movement. The program tells the robot to move a certain distance in the X, Y or Z dimension at a certain speed, and or to do something, like open and close the gripper.

Industrial robots, in this way are actually quite dumb. They will just repeat these movements over and over. They are not thinking. They don’t understand their environment. If something changes they cannot adapt to new feedback. All they do is discrete movement and action commends within a space and a time.

There is a whole catalogue of software that provides these commands for these robots. It is called control software. The actual mechanics of doing the work are hydraulics or electric motors built into the robots to provide the ‘animus’. There’s a whole science of control systems in the robot design to remove mechanical chatter, vibration and other mechanical forces that add variability to the movements.

The way industrial robots are deployed goes like this:

• A manufacturer has a repetitive task that they want to automate.
• They buy a robot arm that is capable of the task, in fact they probably design the production line form the start to use those robotic arms.
• They install the robot physically – typically these are bolted into the floor for stability.
• They have an engineer program the tasks in using the control software.
• They go through various levels of testing to make sure it’s doing what it’s supposed to do.
• They turn on the line and it helps build a run of 10,000 cars or a million mother boards.

If you’ve ever seen robots on a car production line, you’ll notice that the form factor is an arm. That’s the most common type of industrial robot. They are bolted to the floor, and they use some sort of tool to do some sort of task.

What are the advantages of using robots? Most people might say that they are cheaper than humans. That usually is a minor consideration. The real benefits are that robots can work in environments that are hostile to humans, they can do repetitive tasks with precision for an extended period of time, they can be more reliable and more precise in these tasks.

They also can be quite robust. A robot can move and manipulate large, heavy objects that a human cannot.

What are the challenges?

They are not very flexible. They are set up for one specific task, they can’t do anything else without being moved and reprogrammed. That’s why the most common application is high-volume repetitive tasks. They are an investment. That industrial robot arm is going to cost a couple hundred thousand bucks.

So really, the traditional industrial robot is just another machine in the factory.

Early in my career I implemented a business system in a robotic arm manufacturer. I remember how eerie it was to come into the plant in the mornings and see the robot arms going through their testing. With no humans around they would be doing their repetitive dances. Arms whirling around, picking up boxes and stacking them, then unstacking them. It was quite surreal.

But what about these new robots that we see that look like dogs or bipedal, like people?

Yeah, those are cool. This is a situation where, again, we always knew math around how this works but didn’t have the processing power to enable it. With the advances in edge computers and sensors we can now program the complexity of these movements into the machine.

It turns out that walking around and balancing is a really complex set of feedback and control mechanisms. It’s a hard problem. The other challenge is why? Why are we obsessed with making an electro-mechanical thing that moves around like us or our pets? What’s the application?

Different applications of robots are emerging sue to what is know as a convergence of forces. These forces are; first, labor is getting more expensive and harder to find, second, in an application of Moore’s Law, hardware id getting cheaper and more powerful at a very fast rate – (I’ll let the quants argue over whether that is exponential or arithmetic) – but, everything electronic is cheaper and faster every year.

These quadruped and bipedal robots are an area that currently is waiting on the cost/functionality inflection point – Despite advances and cool youtube videos, there is a challenge in cost justification. Sure, we can make them now, but why? To what end?

That’s why most of the robots in what is known as “Autonomous Mobile Robots” use wheels, like a car to get around. These are the ones you see delivering food or running errands or grabbing items in a warehouse.

Let’s unpack that “Autonomous and Mobile” part. Obviously, ‘mobile’ is the ability to move around by themselves. No extension cord. No tether.

How do they find their way around? How do they know where they are.

They navigate by having sensors that ‘look’ around at the environment for cues and then comparing that to a digital map.

Typically these robots are using a combination of LIDAR and cameras. The LIDAR is a type of RADAR that bounces beams of light off of the environment so the robot can ‘see’ what’s around it. The cameras use object recognition as well to ‘see’ objects. Then the control software tells them what to do when they see something.

This is why that self-driving car stops when a pedestrian steps in front of them. They see the person with their sensors and the control program tells them to stop or go around.

This is the same way the robots navigate around a warehouse without running into people or other robots.

But how do they know where they are? There are different ways for the robots to figure this out.

First, all autonomous mobile robots require wireless communication of some sort. They are connected to a network through wireless. They can use the network to triangulate where they are, but that is typically not accurate enough. They can also use GPS, but that isn’t quite accurate enough either.

What they actually use are ‘Waypoints’. What’s a waypoint? A waypoint is a physical or digital marker that tells the robot where they are. For instance, in the warehouse the robot my read a barcode at the end of a shelf with its camera and know exactly where it is.

By constantly reading waypoints and coordinating these with the other sensor, network and GPS data they can place themselves on the digital map. When they know where they are on the map then they can route themselves to the next place they need to be.

You can see how this convergence of technology is starting to approximate what we humans do.

Let’s say I want to drive to Starbucks to get a coffee. What am I going to do? I’m going to back out of my driveway. I’m going to check to see no people are walking and there are no cars coming , then pull out. When I get to the first intersection I’m going to stop if the light is red and when it turns green I’ll turn right, again checking to make sure no one is in the way.

That’s pretty much what a autonomous mobile robot is doing.

Remember, robots have been around for a long time, but the sensor and compute capacity is getting cheaper and more powerful every year – and that will start opening possibilities that were out of reach before.

If you then layer on Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, the robots are going to be able to get better by learning. They are going to get really good.

And the only question we will be left with is the ‘Why?’

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How to not fall down in the trails

Slightly Random AI Generated Art “Medieval Knights being chased by zombie bunnies”And other sad stories of endurance…

My friends, I was out in the trails this morning and I didn’t bring my phone, but I did bring my dog, and I was thinking about trail running in this season of my life and I was trying not to fall down.

That is a very Hemmingway sentence. You might disagree, because you have been told the power of Hemmingway’s writing was in the parsimonious sentence structure. This is true. He could do a lot of work with very short sentences. But he also like to string together longer sentences with disparate ideas that suggest a train of thought and a broader narrative.

Sentences like that one above that tell a story.

Wow – it didn’t take my ADDHD addled brain long to go sideways on this article about trail running did it?

Let’s get back on theme – “How not to fall down on the trails”… Microsoft word does not want me to use the phrase ‘fall down’. It tells me that is redundant. It wants me to simply say ‘fall’, because the ‘down’ part is implied. I disagree. I can just as easily fall up as down.

I’m leaving it.

You know over the years we have talked about trail running many times. We’ve interviewed many trail runners. That is part of my ongoing challenge with the RunRunLive podcast is that it’s hard to find new ground (see what I did there?)

A quick search of the RunRunLive website reveals the following articles:

https://runrunlive.com/trails-101

https://runrunlive.com/trail-running-for-beginners

https://runrunlive.com/trail-running-refresher

https://runrunlive.com/trails-101-how-to-fall-down

https://runrunlive.com/12-great-reasons-to-take-to-the-trails

https://runrunlive.com/5-great-reasons-not-to-run-trails-2

https://runrunlive.com/how-to-make-a-fly-hat-for-trail-running-2

So, feel free to go find those and read them.

But, everything old is new, and I am in a new season of life, so let’s search the couch cushions for some loose change together.

My goal is to run a 100K trail race on my birthday. That is what I am training for.

I am coming back from a long injury over the last 3 years and a specific calf pull from the Napa Valley marathon in March. My training for that race was quite light in terms of intensity and load. I did most of it on a paved rail trail with no variability and no elevation.

In pursuit of this new goal, I’m basically starting from scratch. I’m 3 weeks into my training and am just now starting to get up to some decent base mileage. I’m taking the build very slowly, on purpose, to stay healthy and get to the starting line.

My build has been mostly on trails. This means I need to become reacquainted with elevation and technical trail running technique.

Now you’re all caught up. That’s where our story starts.

I went out Sunday morning for my trail run with Ollie. 20 seconds into the run I caught a toe and slammed myself into the ground. I jammed my little finger and bruised the fascia around my ribs.

Later, I fell again on a particularly technical section, but was more aware, was able to chose how I landed and escaped injury.

My running life flashed before my eyes. I’m in a season of life where hitting the ground hard causes damage. There is no rolling and popping up with a smile on my face like a cocaine addled squirrel. There is only the wet thump of a large bag of overripe potatoes hitting the floor.

I need to not fall down if I want to make it to the starting line.

So my big brain went to work on the problem. How to not fall down?

First thing we need to tease out is why did I fall down? What were the circumstances? What are the causes? What’s new in this training cycle? What’s new in this season that makes gravity more pervasive in my life?

Here’s the first answer – when training for this type of event you are training tired. That’s part of the training.

These ultra distances require you to run tired, so you need to practice that in your training. You need to become accustomed to it.

I was physically tired. It was the end of a week where I got 4 good runs in and a long bike ride on the previous day.

My legs were tired.

By design – my legs were tired.

Check – need to be able to run on tired legs and not fall down.

I’m getting out early in the morning to beat the heat. This means I’m also just tired from not being awake. But, again, this is the norm for ultra distances. You are going to need to run at odd hours. Early in the morning and late into the night. It’s part of the race profile and you need to work that into your training.

Check – need to be able to run at odd hours, while tired, and not fall down.

Next question: Why does being tired cause you to fall down?

Great question.

And the answer is, because when you are tired your form gets bad. You tend to slouch and lean forward. When this happens it changes the way your feet hit the ground and you tend to drag your toes.

For both these falls I caught a toe. If your form is right, you won’t be dragging your toes and they won’t catch.

Form also helps with your leg lift. If your form is good then your leg lift and foot plant will be clean.

But, what else? What else caused this fall?

Two more things. Distraction and occlusion.

Yes – distraction. Cause and effect. I am at risk of falling when I try to dual task. If I raise my hand to swat a bug, or look at my watch or wipe sweat from my brow or take a drink from my bottle – all these movements create a perturbation in the force! They throw your balance and distract your attention for aa half-second and that’s enough to step wrong on a technical trail.

I would argue the same is true if you’re carrying a phone that is buzzing at you or even listening to something on headphones. Those distractions can cause a slight loss of focus that leads to the wet thump of a large bag of overripe potatoes ungracefully hitting the forest floor.

Occlusion is not being able to see the trail in front of you. This happens when the weeds close in too much or, for me, when the dog is being a jerk, which is also distracting.

(That was act two, of the ‘how to not fall down’ screenplay, by the way. The challenge part.)

(Next is act three – the resolution.)

Having big-brained my way through the cause and effect I put my learnings into practice this morning.

My legs were still tired. This time from doing a workout that included 100 squats and lunges. My Quads were rubbery. I was still tired, due to having stayed up late to watch the Boston Celtics vanquish the Dallas Mavericks in the finals and become the winningest franchise in NBA history.

I focused on not being distracted. I left the phone at home. I focused on keeping my form clean – hips forward, shoulders high.

I held a higher cadence with a shorter stride length. The shorter stride length gives you more balance and a better, more stable, foot plant.

I recognized the highly technical sections and made sure to pay attention and even, god help me, slow down a bit – especially where it was hard to see the trail.

And I yelled at the dog to get him out of my line of sight.

Which didn’t help much.

But, bottom line, I ran tired, I ran early, I’m increasing my load, and I didn’t fall down.

Or up.

Or sideways.

In conclusion, for those of you who are afraid of trail running because you end up rolling in the dirt like an oversexed wombat, there is hope.

Just go back to the basics.

Do the right things right.

Remove the distractions.

Yell at the dog and you too can learn to not fall down.

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Episode 5-5486 – Nutrition with Dr. Rachelhttps://shows.acast.com/runrunlive/episodes/episode-5-486-nutrition-with-dr-rachel

Hello my running friends.

Here we go – 2 episodes in a row!

On today’s show we talk to my nutrition coach Rachel. I’ve worked off an on with Rachel for many years. She recently earned her doctorate and she is looking for new clients.

She gave me a good excuse to do another chat. It all works out. You get another show and I get to catch up with Dr. Rachel.

I’ll talk a little about my nutrition journey in section one.

In section two I’ll talk a bit about the scary and fun world of artificial intelligence.

On with the show!

Section One – NutritionNutrition is the gift that keeps on giving. It seems to be a constant challenge for some people, especially in today’s world.

I was never what you would call obese. I think I topped out at 220 pounds in my late 20’s before I started running.

But, I was always a chubby kid. Not fat, but chubby. Endomorphic.

Many of us got into running to lose weight or to get fit. It’s a common story I have heard over the years. A person, male or female, gets to a point in their life and they feel unhealthy. Or a doctor tells them they need to change or they will die.

Then they come to running.

That’s not everyone. I have other running friends that are naturally skinny. They have never worried about eating what they want.

I have had the following conversation with them.

“Hey, let’s meet for ice cream at the ice cream place!”

Me: “I can’t eat ice cream.”

Them: “What do you mean?”

Me: “Well first of all it’s a dairy product and I try to avoid dairy products and second an ice cream cone is worth about half my daily caloric limit…”

Then we go get ice cream because, let’s face it, who doesn’t love an ice cream after a run on a hot summer day?

But, if I’m watching my nutrition that ice cream cone will set me back a day.

My point is, and Rachel makes this same point, each of us has a unique body that has unique needs and that deals with nutrition differently.

Which makes it hard to find universal solutions.

The challenge is knowing and having the right goals. If your goal is to lose 10 pounds, well that’s pretty easy.

That’s why it is very useful to work with a coach, if only for a couple of months, to understand how your particular machine interacts with food.

Because as much as we try to avoid it, the truth is that nutrition is a major contributor to your quality of life.

The challenge is how to have healthy nutrition all the time, to have nutrition that supports your life goals. As part of the lifestyle equation. That’s much harder.

Food comes with so much baggage. Emotional baggage. Cultural baggage. Political baggage. Even relationship baggage.

It’s really hard. Everyone has an opinion. Weight loss is an industry for a reason. It’s the best kind of business. It competes on fear and self-loathing which we apparently possess an endless supply of.

But that shouldn’t prevent you from getting help. Think of it as a research project. Go in with an open mind. Learn as much as you can and apply what works for you.

Find those little things, those particular foods, those specific lifestyle hacks, that work for you.

This week I got an offer from my company’s health plan. (I work for a big company now so I get these kinds of things all the time.) It is for the Real Appeal coaching program.

Apparently this is a weight loss program and it’s part of the health plan. So I signed up. Do I think I’m the target audience? No, probably not, but I might learn something.

They’re sending me a ‘Success Kit’ with a bodyweight scale and a food scale and a bunch of helpful stuff – all for free.

And then there will be online coaching.

Why not? I might learn something. Meet some new people.

What have I got to lose?

So, in summary, nutrition is a overgrown jungle of misinformation and personal peril, but, you should lean in. Take help where you can find it. Get some coaching and learn something.

You only have this one life so you should figure out how to live it well.

Featured InterviewDr. Rachell Shuck

Rachel Shuck holds her doctorate in Integrative Healthcare with an Emphasis in Clinical Nutrition. She has evolved from a runner chasing her own goals, including being a Boston Qualifier, to a beacon of hope for those lost in the maze of metabolic health issues. She’s not just teaching diet; she’s sharing the wisdom of holistic health. Her emphasis is on the crucial interplay of proper nutrition and the body’s innate healing capabilities. Her insights and experiences have graced platforms like Mind Body Green, Personal Growth, and Livestrong.com, bringing her message of health and empowerment to a wide audience. Her message is clear: Food is Medicine.

www.drshuck.com

https://www.instagram.com/dr.shuck/

http://tiktok.com/@drshuck

https://www.facebook.com/doctorshuck

Section Two – Fun with AII’m sure you’re all sick of AI talk. So…Let’s talk about AI.

First of all, AI isn’t a new idea. We’ve had the AI algorithms for decades, but we now have the technology to make it work.

I’m not here to explain how AI works. So…let’s talk about how AI works.

This is a bit like trying to dissemble an iceberg with a toothpick, but let me try.

One type of AI that is very useful is called machine learning. Machine learning is an algorithm that gets more accurate the more you use it. For instance, I work with software that analyzes the front and back of trailers in logistics to find the trailer identifier.

For a human this is really easy. You look at the back of the trailer and you see the number that is the trailer ID. For a camera with machine learning it is not so easy. You need to teach it what the back of the trailer is, what the number is, where it is and how this particular number is the one you want.

Because the back of that trailer may be a specific color, may have phone numbers, web addresses, weight and capacity numbers and even logos – but we don’t want any of those. So we train the algorithm to locate the back of the trailer, and pick out the number we want.

Believe it or not the initial training is manual and human intensive. An engineer needs to annotate hundreds of photos to show the algorithm what to look for.

But once it gets the picture (hah hah) it gets better and better.

On a cold start without any previous data we might get a 20% accuracy out of the algorithm. But, with an existing database of just 2 or 3 customers we’ll get a starting point of 80-90% accuracy.

If you look at the internet and the cloud as one giant database you can set learning algorithms of all types loose on this data and they can learn to do many things. Not just identify objects in photographs.

You’ve probably heard of large language models. All this means is that they have collected a giant amount of data and fed it to a learning algorithm. That might be photos, videos, words, or audio. The algorithm is trained on recognizing this data and then comes the magic.

I won’t even attempt to explain generative AI… So… generative AI is the next step after the learning algorithm has been trained on the big pool of data you can ask it questions and tell it to create stuff based on what it has learned.

For example if train an algorithm on hours of my voice and then tell it to read a script in my voice. Or I can tell it to write a script in my style and then read it in my voice. That is what you get with generative AI.

So anything, literally anything that we can do as humans we can train an AI to do. It might not be perfect, but it’s damn close and getting better all the time.

I won’t even attempt to prove it to you.

So let me prove it to you. Here is an AI generated ad for my apocalypse podcast created by an algorithm called ekoz.ai.

I gave it the description of my podcast, my elevator pitch, and 3 short clips of audio from one of my outros. Then I gave it this prompt.

• 30 second Ad for the after the apocalypse podcast by Chris Russell
• Make it Enthusiastic, Funny and compelling.
• Add dark atmosphere
• For use on other podcaster’s shows

And from that the AI wrote this script and created the audio for it.

…

I would even ever try to generate an ad for Hoka shoes by feeding the engine the descriptions from RunRunLive and some copy from Hoka’s website.

So here that is…100% AI generated based on my prompts.

Hey fellow runners, Chris here from RunRunLive, diving into something that genuinely lights up my running journey. You know I’ve laced up more running shoes than I can count, but let me tell you, Hoka running shoes have a special place in my heart.

Whether it’s pounding the pavement or exploring rugged trails, Hoka has been my go-to. Their shoes, like the Clifton and Speed Goat, offer that sweet spot of cushion and support, making them perfect for runners of all ages and keeping those pesky lower leg injuries at bay.

So, whether you’re a marathoner or a casual neighborhood jogger, give Hoka a try. They’re not just shoes; they’re your new partners in conquering miles with comfort and joy. Trust me, your feet will thank you.

I think it makes me sound a bit Canadian, but if you didn’t know me you could not tell this was AI, right?

And remember – this technology is in its infancy. This is the worst it will ever be.

This is why so much money is being pumped into AI right now, because it is going to change the way we live and radically change the way businesses operate.

AI has the potential to cure disease, to enable science and make us better, as a new, powerful tool.

This is on the scale of the invention of the personal computer or the internet.

It’s going to keep getting weirder!

I won’t even try to explain this last topic, that I’m surely not qualified to talk on ‘Why is everyone so afraid of AI?’

I would guess 80%+ of people have no understanding of what AI is other than what they’ve seen on TV. So…that, right there, is going to be a problem. People fear what they don’t understand.

But, even people who understand algorithms and the cloud and distributed data and large language models are nervous. Why? Well if I can automate audio and video and writing then I can automate almost every white collar job. This time around we’re not talking about factory workers or farmers. This time around, with AI, big companies are going to clear out all the expensive office workers.

You are going to see a massive dislocation of white-collar workers. That’s what the economists are worried about.

Second, if we can automate the good stuff with the algorithms, then we can also automate the bad stuff. We can create generative AI agents to do almost any crime and do it better and faster than humans. Think hacking or market manipulation or election fraud. It’s all going to happen. The cat is out of the bag.

Finally, the big one, the existential threat of human existence is the ‘General AI’. A general AI is indistinguishable from a human. It makes its own decisions.

Theoretically, at some point the AI gets so powerful that it can train itself and ‘generate’ itself. When that happens it becomes exponentially smarter and more powerful at the speed of light.

And no one knows how it will treat its creators. Will it be benevolent and help mankind transcend? Will it be evil and snuff us out? Or will it evolve so quickly that we are merely ants on the floor and motes in the ether?

OutroThat’s it my running partners. I’m going to attempt a 2-week release cadence for this show. I have a couple of inter views in the can and lots of ideas.

And I am on a comeback!

I’m one week into a new nutrition plan and I feel awesome. I joined the first of 52 weekly team calls with the coaching offered by my company. I think I may be an outlier for this program. This poor coach is going to get sick of my know-it-all ways quickly.

I set three big goals for this season of my life.

Number one is to run a 100K race on my 62nd birthday. I have signed up for the Mamba 100 outside of Memphis on November 8th. It look like an interesting race and course. It’s a trail race, but my first impression is that it’s not highly technical. It looks like a series of 14 mile loops. I contracted my coach and friend Jeff to coach me up.

Now, I’m no dummy. Sometimes… I know I can’t achieve this goal unless I focus on nutrition as much as fitness. And focus on strength and flexibility as much as miles.

So my second goal is to stay on a clean-eating plan and lose the weight. I set a stretch goal of 165 pounds before race day. I’ve never been that light. But, the number on the scale is secondary. The real goal is to get lean and strong and healthy. That’s the only way I’m going to get there.

To support this second goal I’m leveraging the nutrition coaching from my company. I also discovered that this coaching includes a virtual fitness app where I can pick workouts, sort of like a peloton scenario. I’ve done a coupe of these and I think they fit nicely into my strength and flexibility goals. Plus, I can stream the videos from my iPhone directly to the 65 inch Samsung smart TV I just bought.

My third goal is to publish the first book in my apocalypse series and learn how to do that in the process.

My overall goal is to create a lifestyle of joy and accomplishment over this summer.

Are you ready to join me?

Learn something new?

Share in the adventure?

Stay tuned…

…

I’ll see you out there.

WWW.RunRunLive.com

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Episode 5-5485 – Nate Talks About ParentingHello my running friends. And so, the universe finds us together again. It is a fine Monday morning at the end of April bleeding into May and the fulsome fecundity of mother nature bursts free from the oppressive bonds of winter.

The birds are singing, the rabbits are munching, the flowers show their timid faces in the new dawn of longer days and happier times.

And here we are.

I’ve been wondering how to fit this podcast into my life. I think I have the time, but maybe I don’t have the habit? Life is a delicate balance.

Maybe I could do shorter pieces and maybe automate some of the work?

It’s all good.

As I get older, I have less trouble letting go. Because as you get older you need to acquire the skill of letting go. You really don’t have a choice.

Well, my friends I don’t have an answer, which is not an uncommon occurrence. I’m not even sure if I’m asking the correct question.

But, here we are, you and I, again, once more, at the yawning chasm of a new episode of the RunRunLive podcast.

Today we are going to talk to our friend Nate about his new book. It’s about parenting. It’s about taking the long view. And I suspect it’s also about Nate choosing to leverage the serendipity he acquired alone with his thoughts running the roads of his life.

I’ll catch you up on what I’ve been up to.

I’ll probably talk some more about retirement as I try to work out may own transition plans.

It’s always a privilege to talk to you my friends,

I’ve missed you,

On with the show!

Section One – A brief history of timeCatching up

Hi. My name is Chris. I’m a Scorpio. Sorry, that’s an old joke from the 70’s. Something to do with pick up lines and long walks on the beach.

Item Number One – Who am I? and why do have a running podcast?

Well, as to the ‘who am I’ part, I have no idea. I feel compelled to deflect that question by quoting Douglas Adams, but I won’t. But, as for this podcast going forward, I’ll try to be more funny.

Did you know that most award-winning speeches have 3 jokes per minute? The people need to be entertained.

They need both bread and circus.

I can’t tell you who I am. But I can tell you some things that may lead you, sniffing like a terrier, in the right direction.

I like to learn. That can be a valuable attribute. It got me through school and a few iterations of higher education in good standing.

I like to read. You only get 2-3,000 books in your life, even if you choose well. I think I’ll make my quota. Currently I’m reading an annoying workbook on retirement, a semi-pornographic novel by Phillipe Jose Farmer called Image of the Beast and the third book of New York Time Best Seller Ryan nn Fantasy series “Traitor” because he friended me on Facebook.

Which leads into an entirely different vice. I like to write. I am of the generation that considered writing a higher calling, something good and sacred.

And this is why I originally started the RunRunLive podcast. (See? That’s what’s called a scene transition. It’s also a callback to the opening paragraph. I am blessed with a brain that sees the shape of stories and hears the rhythm in them.)

Rhythm is a hard word to spell. It’s got too many extra letters in it. I can never get it right. It’s Greek. It means patterns.

True Story: When I was a kid I once turned in some school work where I spelled Arthritis as Author-Writus – which delighted the teacher, but embarrassed me. I still have that memory some 50 years later so it must have burned like a searing brand on a steer’s flank.

So – back to the thread – I started writing about running in the early 2000’s. Short stories. I got paid for it too. I wrote race reviews for the Active.com website.

I was in the thick of my career at the time. I was running a startup software in the supply chain space. It was very stressful.

I had been a casual runner as a kid. I ran cross country in high school. I came back to it when I hit 30 to lose some weight. And like many of us I fell in love with running. I fell in love with the marathon. And it became part of the rhythm of my life. (See? See what I did there? I ties the randomness together and drop that unifying word and it gives you the reader, listener, a little jolt of chemical brain happiness.)

In 2007 I had been running hard and doing amazing things for a few years and decided to join the new creative form of Podcasting. I knew it would make me accountable. Force me to write and force me to learn those cutting-edge Web 2.0 skills. Force me to present and hone that storytelling craft.

And of course, give me an outlet for the angst and creative force that beat at my brain every day.

I decided to make it an interview based podcast as a hack. This way I could create content with very little preparation. Fill the air with someone else’s ideas. Take credit for other’s energy.

And that’s what I did for close to 15 years.

The R-H-Y-T-H-M of my life was a kaleidoscope of training and racing and writing and producing and traveling and talking to clients and in the end I received the unpredicted bonus of meeting you, my friends.

And that was the best part.

Now, my friends as I edge into a new season of my life, I want to thank you, but I also want to have a coffee with you.

Have you been on this journey with me?

Reach out to me. My email still is cyktrussell at gmail dot com. Send me an email of how you found us and what if anything the impact of RunRunLive has been for you. Send me an audio. Or better yet, let’s schedule a time to talk it through.

Because, as I was reading my retirement workbook this morning, I realized I need more community. I need you, my friends.

Featured InterviewNate Wagner

Nate is a dedicated husband and father of two daughters. When he’s not spending time with his family, you can find him pounding the pavement as a long-distance runner, pouring his thoughts into writing as an author or offering guidance and support as a therapist. His passion lies in assisting fathers to be more present and engaged in their children’s lives, striving to create stronger family bonds and more joyful homes.

https://www.intentionalnate.com/

Section Two – Friday Night FeelsFriday Night Feels – RRLOne of the ingenious ways I found to procrastinate this week was to submit a short story to one of the online science fiction podcasts. It is a story I wrote a few years back and I had been ruminating over the last few months that it might be a good fit to recycle somewhere.

I found it, did a pass of editing and sent it off.

This, is not the fun part of the story.

A couple days later I got an email from them saying that although I was surely a brilliant and handsome, talented fellow, the story was not a good fit for them.

This too, is not the fun part of the story…

I hadn’t invested much emotionally or otherwise in the submission process. It turns out it’s a fairly automated process and everyone uses the same submission workflow software. That was fun to figure out.

So – how do you think I felt about this automated rejection message?

Was I depressed? Was I angry? Was I shouting Why? Why? Why? At the heavens?

No. I was not…

I felt oddly pleased that 1) I had written something, 2) I had the gumption to submit it, and 3) they were able to reject it quickly and kindly.

But here too the funny part does not reside…

As these oddly pleasant thoughts were percolating through my morning cerebrum, I was also looking at Facebook, (another great procrastination technique). (If there were an Olympics for procrastination, I would be a real threat to medal, even if the Russian athletes were doping.)

The funny part is I happened to see a post on a page that I frankly look at only when all the other good sources of procrastination are exhausted, or I have a question about ISBN numbers – it’s a group called Writers Helping Writers.

And I don’t frequent it because it the same series of posts over and over again…

It’s starts with “Hey, I’m finally getting around to writing my novel does anyone have any ideas?”

Then it progresses to “I’m halfway through my first draft and I’m stuck on a metaphor about rutabagas…”

Then you get, “Yay, after 17 years I finished my novel!”

And finally, “I published my novel, and no one bought it and I’m considering ending it all!”

Since the blinking cursor was already in front of me, I wrote, and I quote, “Got my first rejection email this morning – made me feel strangely accomplished.”

And heedlessly went on with my day.

You can tune back in now – this is the funny part.

Then my Facebook starts blowing up. Literally blowing up. Kaboom.

It appears I struck a nerve with the angsty starving authors.

As of today – about 48 hours later at this writing – I have 815 ‘likes’, (or whatever those emoticon thingies are that allow people to tentatively express support without requiring actual empathy), and 121 encouraging comments, some quite lengthy, (and well written of course).

That’s the funny part.

As I was commiserating with a New York Times Best Selling author, (who reached out and befriended me because of said throw-away post) – Isn’t that always the way?

As a creative you can worry and sweat and pour your effort, talent and love into a piece and it will flop on the digital floor ignored and unloved.

Then you dash off a quick, thoughtless piece about your dog and it goes viral.

And that my friends is the lesson, because, like I said, ‘there is always a lesson’. We as creative do not get to decide the value of our work. Our calling is not to judge our work.

Our calling is to set it free.

When the time is right it will find its home.

And if you make just one person smile, or curse or role their eyes it has fulfilled its mission.

And so have you.

OutroAnd so as I move you to the exit my friends, let me catch you up on where I’m at.

Let me ‘splain…No there is too much, let me sum up!

With the New year I got my diet straight and started training for the Napa Valley marathon.

My doctor told me to not train too hard until I got results from a stress test with imaging. (There’s a long funny story there).

So, I trained by low volume and low intensity. 3 runs a week on the rail trail. But, since I dropped 15-20 pounds, I felt fantastic.

With only a couple weeks left to train, I told the coach we’d better throw some longer sessions in. I had a couple tempo runs and my long run was 16 miles. But, again, my diet was clean, so I felt great.

I ran Napa and had a great race. It was the race I had trained for. Everything after 16 miles was terra incognita, but it wasn’t my first rodeo and I was super happy with the effort and the time, given a year earlier I wasn’t even running.

It was a much stronger outing than the Marine Corps Marathon in the fall. And, most importantly the knee was fine.

‘All systems go!’ I was thinking.

But one odd thing happened on the Napa course. Around midway I got a camp in my right calf like someone shot me. I managed to flatten out my stride and ignore it for the rest of the race.

But here we are 2 months later and despite giving it a lot of time off the calf keeps hurting. Apparently, I pulled something. And, of course, I gained all the weight back.

So, I guess I’m starting at zero again. To everything there is a season. Turn, turn, turn.

With the weather getting nice I sure would like to get out into the woods for some refreshing trail runs!

This year was the 3rd year in a row of not running Boston after 21 years. It was fun to see all the hoopla, but also a little sad to miss out.

I think my Boston days are behind me. Maybe when I’m retired, I can have the time for all the maintenance and training it would take for me to qualify.

So – that’s it. I’ve got the Groton Road Race this weekend and that will be fun. I’ll probably just hike the course with Ollie to get my time in.

I will keep trying to get this out.

I think I can manage as long as I keep it short.

Hope you all are well.

teach your children well

Their father’s hell did slowly go by

Feed them on your dreams

The one they pick’s the one you’ll know by

Don’t you ever ask them why

If they told you, you would cry

So just look at them and sigh

And know they love you

…

I’ll see you out there.

WWW.RunRunLive.com

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Episode 5-484 – the one about the treeIntroduction:Hello and welcome to episode 5-484 of the RunRunLive Podcast. I’m calling it 5-484. That’s as good a number as any. At this point we are beyond the specificity of rational numbers and, some would say, rationality in general.

Today I’m going to tell a story about a tree. I’ll give you the update on my current entropy challenge. Because it’s always something, isn’t it? And I have an idea to start a new segment called “Stupid running questions.”

And, maybe I’ll talk about mortality.

Because I find mortality crowding into my life these days like a big, not-unfriendly, bear of a monster. Just smiling sheepishly and bumping me every now and then. Like when I try to be in the kitchen at the same time as my wife. We just bump into each other and get in the way.

That’s mortality. Here I am trying to make a quick salad and go about my day and then there is mortality going bump, bump, bump…reaching over my shoulder for the mustard.

Could be worse.

Could be morality getting in the way.

…

So, my friends I hope you enjoyed the festive season and all the Saturnalia celebrations?

Did you know that during the height of the Roman Empire the god Saturn was depicted holding a scythe. How do I know this? I mean I’m old but I’m not that old.

We know this because we have a couple Roman Towns from that time period preserved at Pompei and Herculaneum. These are the rare occasions where archeologist can date exactly.

And the God Saturn holds a scythe. Which is a tool, with a hooked blade on the end for harvesting crops.

Much to my disappointment, this depiction of the god Saturn with a scythe has nothing to do with the Grim Reaper. They just thought Saturn had something to do with agriculture.

You might ask why they celebrated an agriculture god in December? Shouldn’t that be the harvest celebration in the autumn? Well, yeah, but if you were a farmer from 2,000 year’s ago you would harvest the summer crops then sow the seeds for the spring crops and the whole process would wrap up by the winter solstice, and that’s Saturnalia.

The classic Grim Reaper, with his death’s head and cowl, holding a scythe was conjured up in medieval times, specifically during the black death, where the plague harvested men, women and children like so many stalks of ripe wheat.

Don’t get me started on the difference between a scythe and a sickle, or we’ll have to fight.

What does this have to do with running?

Nothing.

But what fun is life if you can’t scribble outside the paint-by-numbers area every then and now?

…

My training is going well. And let’s not forget about the bad knee. Remember I had a bad knee that kept me from running for 2-3 years?

Yeah, that doesn’t hurt anymore.

I’m prompted to say something about this because I find myself so easily moving on- like it was a mosquito bite or sour tasting burp – not the devasting injury that it was.

Every time I run into one of these physical roadblocks, even the ones that seem irreversible and unconquerable, I get through it and then – Hey! – it’s like it never happened.

The lesson? Humans, at least this human, are wired to forget. We live in the future and sometimes in the past.

Most of us are kinda shitty managing the present.

But, it is weird.

I ran into an acquaintance, an old neighbor, who I hadn’t seen for a while, and he asked; “Did I see you running again? Last time we talked you had a bad knee? What happened?”

I really had to think a about a useful response. But the answer was, “It got better.”

So there you have it.

It got better.

Let’s hope it stays better.

Of course there were consequences to the injury. I’m 30sec to a minute a mile slower. I’m still drawing the line at 3 runs times a week. I suppose I’ve transformed into a new athlete. Like being gestated in the injury cocoon for 2-3 years and then emerging, not as a butterfly, but more of a disheveled, dog-eared moth.

And of course the universe has no sense of propriety and won’t give me a break

We’ll talk about my current, ah, challenge in the outro.

But first we need to tell a story. A story about a tree.

…

The Tree.Somewhere in all the hours of schooling that I have amassed were courses in physics. I even got a degree in Engineering that requires some Physics. I like physics. I didn’t like the math, but I liked the theory of physics. It’s quite comforting to think that everything in the physical world can be described, calculated and solved by a set of basic, universal rules.

You’ve heard, perhaps of E=MC2? Energy is universally equal to mass times the speed of light squared?

How about F = MA? Force equals mass times acceleration? This is how you can determine how hard an object will hit something.

Or how about a variation of that, Torque, which is a type of force, equals the force times the radius.

By now I’m losing you. But Torque is how a hammer works. Or a pitcher throwing a fastball. You multiply the mass of the hammerhead by the length of the handle and you get the Bam! Or the Crunch!

Simplified, a long handle with a big weight on the end creates a lot of force at the point of impact.

For instance, a mature eastern white pine tree, that, in Latin is ‘Pinus Blancas’, which literally means ‘White Pine’ – so really guys, points for creativity – anyhow…A mature white pine tree up here in New England is over 100 ft tall and will weigh 4,000 to 6,000 pounds.

All that weight is up at the top where the pine needles are.

So, my friends, what I’m trying to explain is that the white pine trees that surround my house are essentially giant, evil hammers.

…

The Monday before Christmas we had a big storm roll up the east coast. It came out of the Gulf of Mexico and ripped across the country like an angry, ill-mannered tourist. It caused a lot of trouble with tornadoes and such as it tore through the south. Then it ran up the coast towards us.

It was weird for a December storm. It was warm and blustering high winds and torrential rains. More like a September hurricane than a December storm. We used to get snow.

But, the climate is changing.

I was sitting at my desk in my spare bedroom doing something entirely self-involved and unproductive as is my habit with the wind gusting and the rain driving against the windows.

Then there was a big BOOM! And the house shook like ship grounding itself on a reef.

Needless to say, I was startled. I went to see what had happened and sure enough a big pine tree had fallen against the other side of the house.

I called my wife who had gone to work and told her she should probably come back.

Startling as this was, I didn’t think there was much damage. The tree seemed to have glanced off the peak of the house and slid off onto the deck.

Half a big pine split off at a crotch about 20 feet up the trunk and that half had swung down with the weight of the rain and the force of the wind from that pivot point to crash just at the flat peak of the side of the house.

The storm was still raging, and I couldn’t see the top pf the roof. I peeked into the attic and didn’t see anything obvious.

No windows were broken. Everything seemed ok. I went back to work. I had some deals I was working on for the end of the year.

My wife turned around and made her way home.

A few minutes later I was on a call and there was a second boom. The other half of the tree had fallen on the deck.

…

I was not losing my mind. These things happen. This is one of the joys of home ownership. Stuff breaks. Stuff rots. Stuff falls.

You call the insurance company, and you do the dance and stuff gets fixed.

I still had internet and power, so, hey, there was really nothing for me to do.

Let the professionals handle it.

…

Everything seemed fine, enough, until a bit later, when Yvonne and I were standing in the kitchen and she asked, “Do you hear water running?”

I did hear water running.

And it wasn’t the icemaker.

Water was running in the ceiling of the kitchen. Water was dripping out of the light fixtures.

Uh oh.

I scampered back up into the attic to take a closer look. The tree had bashed a giant gash in the dormer on that side of the house. Which now was acting as a giant funnel for the rain, sloshing down into the attic, filling the ceiling and flowing down the walls.

I could no longer ignore the peril.

Super-hero, homeowner, Dad-brain engaged!

“I need to get a tarp on it.” I said with immense seriousness.

Experts will tell you that a 61-year-old man should not climb up on a second story roof in a raging storm.

But when super-hero, homeowner, Dad-brain kicks in all logic is cast aside.

I donned my cape, I mean a durable water-resistant jacket, and strode, in a manly fashion, chest high, jaw grimly set, as it were, into the breach.

I don’t own a ladder that will reach the second story roof. Well, technically I do but it’s an antique aluminum beast that weighs several hundred pounds and the flippy things on the side, that, in theory, allow you to extend it are broken. The flippy things are called rung-locks.

But, I do have a shorter ladder, It’s flippy things are also broken, but I can lift it when it’s extended.

With that ladder I can get up onto the porch roof.

And, then, ‘hold my beer’, I can pull the ladder up behind me, balance the ladder on the peak of the porch roof and scramble onto the top roof.

To make sure you have the correct picture, these are not flat roofs. These are pitched roofs with asphalt shingles. The pitch is about 33 degrees. You can walk on them, but it’s dicey on a good day.

All of this, I’m sure, sounds incredibly stupid and dangerous.

Which it is.

But that is the super-hero, homeowner, Dad-brain at work.

These were not normal circumstances. This is war! Desperate times!

In addition to the ridiculous, rickety ladder deployment, I had to somehow carry a tarp and a staple gun.

In the pouring rain. And wind.

Duty! Give your all for home and hearth…and hope the emergency room isn’t too busy.

I crammed the staple gun into a pocket and stuffed the tarp under my jacket like an overripe canolli.

I extended the ladder, leaned it against the porch roof and climbed away.

Yo ho!

Once ‘safe’ on the porch roof I pulled the ladder up behind me.

I balanced the ladder on the peak of the porch roof and scrambled up onto the second story roof.

A second story roof is really not that high. It’s around a 25 foot fall. It probably would only maim you depending on where your F=MA came to rest.

It certainly feels higher when you’re up there looking over the edge.

I began carefully crabbing around trying not to slide off the slick roof while trying clear as much tree off as I could so I could somehow get the tarp (which was still stuffed under my jacket) over the hole.

There were broken branches all over. One large branch had cleaved through the roof and was in the attic. I was kicking and pushing them off as best I could while hanging on and trying not to violate the forces of friction, that, once violated would shoot me off the slope of the roof into a not-so-comical free fall like Wiley E. Coyote.

As I was clearing the branches and trying not to die from my own mass times acceleration, one of the branches I shoved off slid along the roof and toppled my ladder.

This is one of those freeze-frame moment when you wish you hadn’t done something but it’s too late.

Now I was trapped.

On the roof of the house.

In a raging storm.

My wife was watching me this whole time, no doubt calculating life insurance benefits, but, as stupid as it was for me to scramble up the two roofs with the wrong ladder, there was no way she could do it.

What to do?

She asked if she should call the fire department.

No. That would be adding another layer of ridiculousness on top of the current absurdity, and it would break the man code as well.

Instead, I pulled out my mobile phone and called one of my running buddies. He’s a contractor and lives in the next town.

I asked, ‘Hey, can you come over with one of your ladders and rescue me from my roof?’

Lucky for me he was willing and capable of the rescue.

While I was waiting, I finished clearing the brush and managed to get the tarp over the hole, spread it out and use all the staples to secure it. (The roofers who came the next day to inspect told me I did a good job.)

Then, all that was left, was to sit in the pouring rain and wind on the top of my house and wait for my buddy to show. I told my wife she could go inside.

No use her standing in the rain looking up at me.

It was a peaceful absurdity, sitting there watching the storm from the roof. Like some ancient mariner in the crow’s nest of his ship plying a ship through the tossing green waves.

The rain soaked all the way through me. I was covered in pine pitch and needles.

But I was sanguine. The crisis had called and I had thrown myself into the teeth of the gale in response. Mildly heroic? Or just stupid? I think when you get away with it, maybe it’s mildly heroic.

After a while my buddy showed up with his contractor’s ladders in working order, and I was able to scramble down.

No one died.

Except the tree.

And that was suicide.

In the end the accounting will be significant.

The tree bashed into the side of the house and pushed that wall in. The joists in the roof were dislocated and, of course, there’s a big hole.

The tree destroyed my deck too, and all the furniture and the grill.

The rain got into the ceiling and the walls.

The old house will need extensive work.

The positive is it brought a bit of adventure into our lives over the holidays.

A story to tell.

We were forced to throw away a few truckloads of stuff from the attic – so we got some early spring-cleaning in.

But, my friends, that’s what insurance is for. It’s only stuff.

We have too much stuff.

No one died. A new project to keep us busy and distracted in our old age.

…

Thank you, my friends, for listening to my tree story.

I really appreciate the cool emails I get from people telling me how they are long time listeners and glad to hear my voice gracing the interwebs again.

Did you know they teach podcasting courses in college now? It’s an actual thing.

The industry as a whole…and it feels a bit ridiculous referring to podcasting as an ’industry’ doesn’t’ it? But, that aside, the industry took a hit in 2023 as advertisers pulled back from podcasts and the high-profile podcasting startups, fueled by the irrational exuberance that is venture capital, got caught up in the current venture capital winter.

Because, when the market tightens up those pesky investors start expecting silly things, like revenue and profit.

But, none of that matters to we independent producers who never had any expectations of payment. Those of us who write and produce because it is what we do like a shark swims or a scorpion stings.

Let me take you out with my new health challenge.

If you remember from last time, I had gone to my annual physical and my cholesterol was high. This was two checkups in a row that my cholesterol was high.

So the doctor decided to send me for a calcium cardio scan. Which is a thing they do, like a catscan that checks to see if you have calcium build up in your heart arteries.

The calcium build up, better known as ‘plaque’ is the end game of having high cholesterol. This is the old ‘blocked arteries’ story.

If your arteries get blocked up, it restricts blood flow and the old body doesn’t work without blood and the oxygen it carries. Eventually you have a heart attack. It’s called Coronary Artery Disease.

I asked the technician at the scan what happens next? He said ‘we send he results to your doctor, if you don’t hear anything that’s good, if there’s something wrong they’ll call you.’

And…the next day I see my doctor is calling me and leaving messages.

Rut Roh.

Long story short – I have calcium build up. It’s minor. The range can go up to 1,000, I’m at 71. Over 200 is a moderate risk. Less than 100 is minor risk, but it needs to be treated.

My doctor knows my lifestyle, so I asked him, “Hey, I’m starting a training cycle, like, what is my risk here? What am I supposed to do with this information?”

He recommended that I try to keep my heart rate down.

I was a bit blind sided by this. I have a healthy lifestyle, for the most part, and my diet is healthier than most – how does this happen?

It’s genetic.

I moped around for a week chewing on this new news. Feeling sorry for myself. I was just starting to feel strong again.

But, I shook myself out of the slump. Now I have a new project. Let’s see how much I can treat it with diet. I had fallen off the wagon while I was injured and I had been enjoying too many craft IPA’s, and I was 10-15 pounds heavy.

We’ll talk more about my expectations of relaxing into retirement with the things I enjoy, but, the more I thought about it the more I realized there were things under my control.

I already started the cure. I stopped drinking. I am down 5-6 pounds and have gone nearly 100% vegan. I should be able to get down another 15 – 20 in the next 2 months and we’ll see what the blood work says then. I’d like to stay off meds if I can.

I started training again. I’m going to stay in base-building mode for this cycle and not do the hard tempo I usually do.

And you know what? I feel great.

We held the 10th anniversary of the Groton Marathon on New Year’s Eve day morning. This year we staggered the starts, which was great. It meant when the 3 of us old-timers finished the half there were 30 people cheering us in.

5 days into my clean eating and no beer I felt great. Go figure. What a revelation! You mean if I fuel my body well, run lighter and not be slightly hung over it makes for better running?

It’s a Christmas miracle!

It’s going to be a busy year. It’s going to be filled with clear-eyed mornings, good books, dog hugs and friends.

I’m up for the challenge, are you?

If so I’ll see you out there.

View Details

RetirementMy good old running friends, I’m going to make an assumption; if you have been with me on this journey for the last couple decades, then you are old.

Old as dirt.

Old as the mountains.

Old as the universe.

Therefore, I believe I can shift my teachings to topics that old people are interested in.

This week I give you my thoughts on retirement.

Some people look forward to retirement. Some people are terribly afraid of it. Most people just ignore the concept until they find themselves retired and as confused as an old bear woken up in the middle of his hibernation, kicked out of his den into the cold, harsh, winter sun.

But, retirement, like death is going to come for us all.

Personally, over the past few years, I have looked forward to retirement. I see it as a mythical time of infinite freedom where I can do the things I always wanted to do but didn’t have time.

Yah know?

Like workout and write. That’s my retirement plan.

Workout and write and podcast.

Workout and write and podcast and read…

…and travel and …well I have a lot of ideas…but my point is…

As you get closer to retirement age, it changes the way you look at the world. It shifts what you value and what your priorities are. It shifts the urgencies of life.

It’s not scary, per se, but it is something new. It’s worth some consideration, some thought, and some words.

How to retire well? That becomes the question.

It’s funny how most of us in Western society have been sold a version of life.

It goes something like this:

You get born. You grow up. You go to school. You go to college. You get a job. You get married. You have kids. You work.

And, if you make good choices, and you are reasonably competent – at a certain age you can retire.

That’s the deal. You do your part Mr. WorkerBee and you will be rewarded with retirement.

Heaven help those who stray from this path. You will become an outlier and an outcast from society.

I suppose we could debate the value of this version of a ‘normal’ life, and maybe we’ll come back to that, because I think there is much to be discussed there.

Like how outliers and mutations to the set path create some of the most beautiful outcomes. Or how there can be purpose and beauty in the simplicity of choice.

But that’s not today’s topic.

Today’s topic is that last bit. “You get to a certain age and retire.”

When?

I’ve found this to be the focus of most pre-retirement conversations; “When can I retire?”

Typically, this is boiled down to a conversation about money. Somehow when filtered through the weird commerce of our world the question gets changed to “When will I have enough money to retire?”

Which is a reasonable question. But is not the same as the initial question, “When can I retire?”

I think the “When will I have enough money to retire?” question comes from the financial planning industry. If you ask a financial planner, of course, they will say you’ll never have enough money to retire, because that’s how they make their money.

If you ask the government they don’t want you to retire either.

It’s in everyone’s best interest for you to keep working hard and contributing right up until the end.

And by the end, I mean the real end, not retirement.

But here’s the real, unvarnished, unpolished, untreated, unambiguous truth.

The truth is, believe it or not, you can retire any time you want.

Nobody is stopping you. They can’t make you work.

“But I won’t be able to pay my bills!” OK, but that’s different.

I mean, yeah, depending on your circumstances, you may starve, you may lose your house and your kids may be thrown out of that expensive school, but those are all choices.

Again, you are confusing retirement with earnings.

I bet if you thought about it hard enough you could find a way to live on what you have.

Then there is the government’s definition of retirement. Of course I can only talk to what the US government rules for retirement are.

In the US we have a system where when you get to retirement age you are given a fixed income based on what your earnings were during your lifetime. You can start collecting it when you get to 62 years old. But the longer you wait the more you get. You get the most at 67 years old.

Why 62 years old? Because when they created the law no one lived much longer than 62 years old. It’s insurance logic. It’s based on statistics.

Again, the government wants you to keep productive until you die.

I won’t beat a dead horse, but when it comes to retirement, make sure you’re asking the right questions.

It’s really not about money.

I would bet most people are avoiding retirement out of fear. They have no idea what they are going to do if they don’t have that 9-5 job to give them purpose.

In the end, retirement, like life, is about finding purpose.

And that’s hard.

What’s different today is that people are living longer. You might get another 20-30 years of life after you retire.

So that retirement is more of a second life than a brief spell.

With all that potential free time to fill, you need a plan. Not a financial plan.

A purpose plan.

Just like life, you don’t need to wait for an epiphany. You can begin working on a plan.

Because the worst thing you can do when you get to retirement is nothing. Those are the people who fade away and die.

They invested all of themselves in work. When the work is gone, they have no purpose.

Sitting on the couch all day eating chips and watching soap operas is just as bad a life choice in retirement as it is in life.

What do you do while you’re waiting for that epiphany? Go looking for it.

Seriously, get out, get engaged in something and live.

This is the planning part. Make a list of all the things you have ever wanted to do and start planning.

Do you want to travel?

Are there events you always wanted to do?

Make that list.

What new things have you ever wanted to learn?

Make that list.

What are the things you never had time for?

Make that list.

This is your homework. Compile that big, long list of potential things to pursue, now, so that you have something to aim for in retirement.

Another thing you will realize when you start making the list is that you need to be physically fit or at least healthy to do many of these things.

You’re not going to live forever.

This is where being an athlete, having a healthy lifestyle, will pay off. With any luck we get a few more years of ambulatory, drug-free lifestyle than the fast-food coach potatoes.

But the clock is ticking so do those things first. Hike the trails. Ride across the country. Do all those things on your list.

That’s your homework. Make a list. Start planning. Ask the right questions.

Don’t ignore thinking about what your second life is going to be.

Before I move you to the exit there is one more thing.

Friends.

The people who live the longest in retirement have lots of friends. Lots of social engagement.

You need those connections.

So as you start your planning, as you are making your lists, also think hard about how you will build or join a community that you can be part of.

Open up that old address book and invite some people to dinner. Go to one of those events that you get invited to.

Open up and let people in.

Build people who you like to spend time with into your life.

Relationships can be taking and difficult, but they will keep you alive.

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RunRunLive Episode 5483 – The one about 5K’s and Relay races and retirement
…
Hello my running friends.
How are you doing today? It’s winter here in New England. The shortest days of the year are upon us.
The seasons change and so do I.
Which is a lyric from a song by the Guess Who called “No Time”, from an album called “Canned Wheat” released in 1969. The Guess Who was an influential Canadian rock band from Winnipeg of all places.
Randy Bachman from the band went on to success with Bachman Turner Overdrive.
Apologies for not getting a show out. I have ideas in my head. I just don’t have the animation to write them down and record.
Something is better than nothing they say. But, the older I get, the more I understand the value of nothing as well.
Today I’m going to catch you up on a few races I’ve run and some other stuff as I work my way into shape for my next race, which is the Napa Valley Marathon in March.
Now that I’ve put Boston aside as a goal race, I can add more fun stuff and travel races to my calendar. This year my wife and I will head out to Napa Valley to run the race and then hang around in wine country.
Because, my friends, life is short.
Memento Mori.
First up!
I ran a Thanksgiving 5K.
I did a lot better than I thought I would. This the Ayer Fire Department 5K. I’ve run it since it began. It’s in a good spot on the calendar. It’s late enough to be after, and not conflict with any fall event on my calendar. It fits into one of those between season windows where I’m not really training and can run whatever I want.
This race always terrified me a bit because I just don’t run a lot of 5K’s. I don’t train for 5K’s. It’s a really short distance for me. For a 5K, you’re basically running as hard as you can right out of the start.
It’s just abnormal for me to try to run that fast.
That being said, I have run hundreds of short races over the years. I started running in high school cross country. All those races were super short.
So I do know how to run a short race. Go out hard and try to hang on.
That’s just a whole lot of discomfort. Not something I really look forward to.
One of the big challenges I have these days is warming up. I know from tracking my heart rate during training that it takes 15-20 minutes for my cardiovascular system to get going.
For a 5K that means I’m basically finished before I warm up.
These 5K’s are more social events for me. All my friends from my club are at the race and it’s good to see everyone on the holiday and get a little exercise prior to eating. To be honest, I’m operating with a clean slate since the knee issue of the last few years. My goals are very simple. Have fun, don’t hurt yourself.
I picked up my number the night before to avoid the morning crush. We had a nice cold, dry morning. I got there early enough to run a bit of a warmup. In fact, I timed it so well that I was worried I was going to mis the gun.
I jogged a simple out and back from the back of the corral. I was looking at my watch coming back and knew it was close to the start time. I ran right into the starting line from the back with less than 3 minutes before the start.
Cut it close.
The good news is it seemed to help. I got a decent 1.5 mile warm up and go into the start warm.
I was not racing from the front and took slot for myself well back in the pack.
There are something like 500 people in the race. Lots of kids and random citizens that probably only run this one race with family each year.
I like the kids, because they go out like their hair’s on fire and then you start catching them after the first mile and they look so sad.
I went out as easy as I could, trying to find what felt like a 75-80% effort tempo. Of course, the first mile was a bit fast, but I held effort and pace well enough, and never went deep into the pain cave. The knee was achy but behaved.
I ended up finishing with a pace that surprised me. It was much quicker than I thought that effort would yield.
Here you see the my new reality and the wonderfully positive impact of reduced expectations. Here’s a race pace that would have been terribly disappointing in another lifetime, but now is quite unexpected and pleasing.
The power of lowering your expectations!
Running unexpectedly well in a race is a mixed bag.
It feels great, but it also gives you ideas!
And I need to be careful to stay within my constraints!
…
The second race I ran was the 2.5 mile leg of the Mill Cities Relay. Here’s another challenge with me and my buddies all getting older – it gets hard to find enough runners to fill a team! One of my running crew has been having some AFIB problems, (sound familiar?), and couldn’t run.
I sourced another runner from our club, but then she tripped on a training run days before the race and broke her arm!
I had to go deep into my network, but luckily my network of runners is deep! We got a sub, and we had a pretty good team.
Of course that didn’t keep us from blowing both of my hand offs.
I was running leg 3, the short leg, not because I’m any good at shorter distances, but because no one else wanted to do it. The short leg ends up being the hardest one logistically, because it’s, well, short.
We had some coordination challenges at the first hand off, because my #1 runner was leaving straight from the exchange, so I drove his car to the exchange and met my number 2 runner, who was the substitution, and had been dropped at the exchange by his wife.
We connected the two of them and sorted everything. We jumped in the pursuit vehicle and headed to exchange 2 where I would grab the baton.
As we pulled into the exchange I asked, “How much time do I have?” Someone said, “15 minutes” So I jumped out to start a 10-minute warm up.
Coming back from my warm up (at 7:40 of that proposed 15 minutes), I was doing a final pick up into the exchange area and was met by screaming race officials “171! Your runner is here!”
So once again I ran straight from my warmup into the race – from a pickup into the race leg!
I tried to hold good form and not blow up. I got passed a lot. But, I noticed that the pursuit car never passed me. So, I suspected that I might not have anyone to hand off to at the end.
Which was fine. The realization kept me from killing myself in the last few hundred yards into the exchange.
And, sure enough, I stood around for a few minutes waiting for my runner to show up.
So, yeah, we blew both of my hand offs. But, you know what? Nobody cared. We were out there to have fun, and our lackadaisical approach to logistics put an exclamation point on that.
We had a good time. I think we were still the fastest team from our club. Somewhere around 3:24 for 28 miles.
That’s it for this year.
Only race I have left is more of a fun run. That being the 10th anniversary running of the Groton Marathon. No one is running a full marathon. But, a bunch of use from my club will show up and do a variety of distances.
We set up our race clock. It is traditionally held of the last Sunday morning of December and this year that means the 31st, or New Years Eve (Day).
I’m going to run the ½ marathon version.
…
Since it appears that this season of the RunRunLive podcast is going to be about aging and the challenges of the aging athlete, I’m going to offer you a brief article around retirement planning.
…
\Outro
Thank you for your ears my friends. When I’m retired one of the things I may focus on is more podcasting!
I have started a training cycle for the Napa Valley Marathon on March 3rd.
We’ll see how it goes. I get flashes of fitness where I bust out these fantastic training runs and then I have workouts where I have no energy, everything hurts and it fights me the whole way.
Ollie the Collie is doing well. He does all my training with me. He’s turned into a great runner. I’m going to change his nickname from Ollie the killer collie to Brother Ollie.
Ollie is one of the topics I will explore more in future episodes.
We haven’t gotten the super-cold weather yet. It’s been hovering around freezing, plus or minus. We haven’t gotten any snow so the trails are still passable. But we had so much rain there are still a lot of soft spots to navigate. Until we get the hard freeze. Then it will firm up.
This will be the last you hear from me before the holidays, probably.
I have some adventures queued up for the new year.
I hope you all, my old running friends find peace and joy and love. Cherish your time. Hold your loved ones close.
And I’ll see you out there.

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Introductory Comments:Hello and welcome to episode 3-268 of the RunRunLive podcast. Today we are going to cover some interesting ground. We have an interview with Sean Donachy a coach from upstate New York who follows and teaches the Pose Method of running form.

The interview is 28 ish minutes long so I’ll try to be brief.

In Section one I’m going to take a real-to-life job situation and talk you through it. This is the situation of a professional who has a meeting with their boss to talk about compensation and some thoughts on the right and wrong way to do this.

My training has been fantastic. I’ve had a great cycle. I’ve gotten a solid 22 and 24 mile long run in with a number of really strong step up runs.

In section 2 I’m going to talk you through the concept of macro-cycles and periodicity in long training campaigns.

I spent last weekend with Buddy down at my house on Cape Cod. None of my family wanted to join me, which was good and bad. It was a beautiful weekend and I got to do what I wanted to without having to worry about anyone else’s schedule.

It was the end of my last peak training cycle so I worked in a 24 mile long run on the rail trail. I parked my car at the park in Harwich with a couple gallons of water and a cliff bar and ran a 6 mile out and back 4 times. This way I could stop at my car to fill my bottle and take a bite of Cliff bar every 6 miles.

It was hot and sunny and there’s not as much shade on the Cape as I have at home. The sandy soil and microclimate doesn’t support the big trees. There are only scrub pine and scrub oak. I got it done. I got to the trail late, around 9:00 and was out for 3:30, finishing up in the hot part of the day, but I’m fairly well acclimated to the heat now. And just kept my HR in or below zone 2 the whole time with some 3 minute surges every 20 minutes.

Sunday I ran a nice easy out and back from Chatham center and a couple miles out onto Chatham Light Beach. I went really slow and stopped to take pictures and such for another 6 miles and that gave me 57 miles for the week. That is a lot of miles for me and the most I’ve done since I got injured 2 years ago. I felt good to get that volume in and I’m tired but not injured and recovering quickly. I feel like a real runner again!

I know you might think it’s a bit boring on the rail trail running back and forth for 3 ½ hours but it was Saturday, so there were lots of tourists out there. I particularly like the female tourists who did not bring any suitable cycling clothes and treated me to lots of cleavage to inspire my jogging.

Towards the end of my 3rd out and back – so it would have been coming up on 18 miles – I caught up to a woman on bike and passed her on a slight hill. Remember, I’m running zone-2 slow and I felt bad passing someone on a bicycle so I said “There’s a little hill here.” To commiserate when I passed.

From behind me she was chagrined and said “Old bike!”

So I turned, pointed down and rejoined, “Old legs!”

I also passed a family of swans with the white mom and dad and four or five big brown teenagers. Swans are big birds when you see them up close.

I also got to listen through a stack of podcasts.

There are a couple new one’s I’ve found that are interesting. There’s a Ultra-Running podcast called the Rich Roll podcast that is interesting. One of his latest interviews was with John Joseph who is a vegan, Ironman, punk-rocker, Hari-Krishna monk that was interesting. Another episode about crewing at Badwater for Dean Karnazes was good too. But be warned that they are very long – sometimes over 2 hours.

Another interesting podcast I’ve been working my way through is called “Welcome to Nightvale”. It’s a theatre of the absurd production that is hard to describe but morphs public radio with science fiction and absurdist comedy. It’s like a warped version of “Prairie Home Companion”.

Therefore – in honor of Nightvale I’m going to give you my garden report in fan-fiction format as an homage.

The zucchinis have disappeared from the garden. Whether it is due to the end blossom rot or scavengers sneaking them through a rip in the space time continuum to an alternate universe is not know at this point in time.

We have harvested two or three tomatoes which surprises us because they were previously being eaten by an unknown creature of dark intent. Our suspicion is that this creature was trapped and eliminated by the overly aggressive Hops vine that has been churlishly throwing a web of spiny trip wires about in an attempt to waylay unsuspecting agriculturalists.

The beans that we harvested, much to everyone’s disappointment, do not appear to be magic.

Even the purple ones.

On with the show.

Section one:Thoughts on Asking for a Raise — http://www.runrunlive.com/thoughts-on-asking-for-a-raise

Featured Interview:Sean Donachy (pronounced Don-Ah-Kai)

Hi Chris:

Just wanted to send over a couple of pictures you could potentially use for the podcast. The one is my partner Julie and me with Dr. Romanov at our training. Also, our email for Run Erie is info@runerie.com. We are still working on getting the website up and running. Hope you are doing well. Thanks again.

Sean Donachy

Section two:Periodicity, waves, volume and quality in marathon training – http://www.runrunlive.com/how-to-use-waves-in-your-training

Outro:Good night kind princes and princesses, parting with episode 3-268 is such sweet sorrow, yeah?

Everyone send good vibes out to our friend Eric who is running Leadville again. I don’t understand it, but good luck. Also to Steve Speirs of the 100 pushups fame who is doing it as well. Enjoy running in the desert at altitude for 30 hours guys!

I have got my plans all set for the Eire marathon in Pennsylvania in September, the Denver Rock ‘n’ Roll in October and the Ft Myers marathon in November.

I’ve got a decision to make on Boston. I can either pay the $350 bucks and take the ‘you didn’t finish’ bib or roll the dice and hope I BQ at Pocatello on August 31st. The two registration periods don’t overlap. I’m leaning towards rolling the dice. What’s life without a little risk? And I feel really fit.

I’m in my taper for Pocatello and have been doing hill work this week. I invented a new workout for the Pocatello Marathon. It’s a version of an ‘Up-n-Over’. There’s a hill next to my office that is .4 Mi up on one side and .6 up on the other side, maybe 300 ft of gain. Instead of pushing it on the ups, I do the same workout and push it on the downs, recovering on the ups.

This is a solid leg workout. I’m in the low 6 min mile range on the downs. On the ups I’m moving pretty slow but still focused on form and getting the leg workout. I did 8 of these yesterday.

My weight isn’t perfect but I’m managing to keep it down in the low 180’s even with travel.

I put the Audio version of my second book of running stories up on my website. Go to RunRunLive and click on the Audio Books tab and you can buy it. It’s 60 stories worth of some really good stuff. I think you’ll like it. And plus, I know where you live, and I’m I could probably catch you.

That’s it for me. I have to go take the dog for a run and have some dinner.

Ciao,

Outro BumperThanks for listening folks I appreciate your support. RunRunLive is a free service for you because I like writing and telling stories.

I also love to meet folks so feel free to reach out to me at Gmail or any of the other social networking sites. I’m CYKTRussell. And as you know that’s Chris-Yellow-King-Tom-Russell with two Esses and two Ell’s.

My Website is http://www.runrunlive.com and most if not all of this content is posted out there. If you want the show notes to magically show up in your inbox when I publish a show in a beautiful HTML wrapper you can subscribe to the mailing list at my site. It’s a useful thing if you are moved by something I say and would like to see if what I wrote is the same thing! It also has all the links to everything and everyone I talk to and about.

Other than that, thank you for your attention, do epic stuff and let me know if I can help.

Ciao

Happy Song – Super Hero – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Superhero

Links for this showhttp://www.runrunlive.com/messing-around-with-a-kickstarter-project

Other products from Chris Russell you may be interested inThe Mid-Packer’s Lament

On Amazon

On Kindle

On Audio (Read by the author)

The Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy

On Kindle

Standard Links:http://www.runrunlive.com

http://www.runeratti.com

Http://www.coolrunning.com

http://www.Grotonroadrace.com

http://www.SQRR.org

www.midpackerslament.com

Contact:Cyktrussell At gmail and twitter and facebook and youtube

BioChris Russell lives and trains in suburban Massachusetts with his family and Border collie Buddy. Chris is the author of “The Mid-Packer’s Lament”, and “The Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy”, short stories on running, racing, and the human comedy of the mid-pack. Chris writes the Runnerati Blog at www.runnerati.com. Chris’ Podcast, RunRunLive is available on iTunes and at www.runrunlive.com. Chris also writes for CoolRunning.com (Active.com) and is a member of the Squannacook River Runners and the Goon Squad.

Tags -> Running Podcast, podcasts for running, podcast for runners, free podcast for runners, Running Blog, marathon, triathlon, mileage, sprinting, run, track, training, running clubs, running groups, running shoes, exercise, health, 5k, running, swimming, sports, injuries, stretching, eating, jogging, biking, trail race, 5K, 10K, Ultramarathon, jogging a good exercise, road runner, jogging tips, benefits of jogging, free running, running shoes, marathon training, running, jogging, health and fitness, runners, runner, Boston qualification, Marathon BQ, Boston marathon

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Hello my endurance athletic old friends.

Welcome to episode 5-481.

https://shows.acast.com/runrunlive/episodes/5-481-marine-corps-marathon

How are we on this fine fall day? Up here in New England we have set the clocks back and it is now officially dark at 4:30ish, which makes me want to stab myself in the eye with an olive fork… Is there such a thing as an olive fork?

We like to tell ourselves up, with puritanical zeal, and righteous fury, that all this lack of sunlight and crappy weather makes us harder and more able to transverse this fickle world filled with chaos.

We say things like, “I was doing hill repeats in the freezing rain,” – wearing that suffering like holy stigmata.

But, what if it’s all a lie? What if all the adversity just makes us grumpy and hard to live with?

I don’t know – but I do know the best policy is to take it one day at a time, do what you can and embrace what the universe brings you because time is short!

Those of you new to the RunRunLive podcast may be thinking “Chris, what the hell are you on about?”

And to you I would say “Just stick with it and it will eventually all make sense!” And, I’d be lying, because I have no intention to, and frankly, lack the ability to make sense most of the time, so I guess, my advice would be, “You’ll get used to it…”

Like a wart in an uncomfortable place.

I started this podcast In 2007 as a interview-based podcast to share. Share what? Well, originally, to share all the tribal knowledge I had accumulated as an amateur athlete. I figured that what I had learned, starting from scratch at 30 years old, embracing the sport and getting addicted in a sense, would be valuable to others.

Frankly I thought I had found the solution to all my life challenges. Out of shape? Go for a run. Overweight? Go for a run. Stressed out? Go for a run?

And by studying, learning from the old-timers and immersing myself in the culture I really thought I had the answers.

As we progressed through the years of the podcast I met new people and tried new things and, much to my surprise, got semi-internet famous. And this is where I am forced to remind everyone that being internet famous is not the same thing as being famous.

In the background I raised my kids and put them through school and stayed married. I worked and traveled and tried my best to live the adventure.

My running advice gave way to the other forms of advice indicative of the mid-career searcher type – business and self-helpy type stuff.

I even managed to blend in some of my creative endeavors, knowing that I’m a jaded author as well.

And sundry other diversions.

Here’s the truth. Most podcasts never make it past 10 episodes. Why? First because the creators have poor expectations.

They think it’s a commercial project, which it isn’t. You’re not going to make any money and you’re not going to get famous. Or they think it’s easy. Which it isn’t. Or they think they have a endless well of ideas, which they don’t.

We are currently at somewhere around 500 episodes because I never had those expectations. I focused on the simple goal of consistency. And, you may have figured it out by now, my brain is wired in a wonderful way. I never run out of things to say. My brain is like a box of demented, rabid weasels all trying to get out at the same time.

Some of you were on the ride with me. Through injury and success. Through constant reinvention and searching.

And here we are again.

I’m working on reinventing myself.

I don’t have the desire or bandwidth to do interviews anymore.

Instead I’m going to let a few of those weasels out of the box every once in a while to run around and bite unwary people.

Today we have a wonderful show for you.

I am going to talk about my Marine Corps Marathon.

And then I think I’ll talk a bit about my dog Ollie .

Finally I’ll ruminate on the training. Because I’m still learning.

So, you ready to have some fun? Let’s go for a run!

On with the show!

The 2023 Marine Corps MarathonWhere to start?

I’ve read a lot of bad race reports. My least favorite race report format is the stream-of-consciousness-linear format.

You know what I’m talking about.

I woke up at 8:37, went to the expo, picked up my number, met joe, bought some Gu, went back to the hotel, laid out my blue shirt, not my red shirt… Droning on and on like some super non-interesting Bloomsday.

My second least favorite race report is the “I had a bad race and I’m going to blame everyone else” format. It goes something like “Let me tell you how these stupid race directors ruined my weekend by not having the right type of rehydration fluid on the course, and my Garmin said 26.4, so they must have measured the course wrong…” Wah, Wah, Wah… Don’t we have enough negativity in the world? If you’re going to drown us with insufferable complaining, at least try to make it interesting.

My advice is always to write down, in bullet form, everything you can remember and what struck you soon after the race, then wait a few days to write it up.

Look at your list and find the most interesting thing, find the hook that will grab your readers by the throat. Start with that.

The example I use is “I was lying face down in the grass throwing up.” See? That’s a good sentence. That’s a good way to start.

Ready? Let’s go.

2023 Marine Corps Marathon – once more into the breach.

I was crying at the start. Not full on crying, but weepy overcome-by-emotion crying.

It wasn’t an artifice. I wasn’t weepy because I thought I should be weepy. I was weepy because I was emotionally overcome by the fact that I was back standing in the corral at the start of a marathon.

And I think that’s what defined this race. The fact that I got to the start.

I could leave the race report right there and you’d have most of the significant weight of it.

I got to the start.

Ok, I guess we’re done. Did you like my race report? Was it everything you wanted? No?

Kinda needy aint yah?

OK – so a quick review and scene setting to get us all in the same place.

What made this starting line so emotional. (And, since we’re friends an all, I get weepy all the time, so that’s not super special. I’ve gotten weepy at marathon starts before. When the sun is coming up on a crisp morning and someone is belting out the national anthem – it’s designed to pull on your heart strings.)

What made this start significant is 6 months or so earlier I had resigned myself to the evidence that I was done running marathons, and maybe done running all together.

In the spring of 2020, with the apocalypse raging, I went out for a hill workout. I was training for Boston. Something popped in my left knee. And that began a slow, chronic spiral down into inactivity.

By the beginning of 2023 I was running Zero miles. I was still fighting the good fight with biking and weightlifting, but I was losing the battle of the waistline.

It was 3 years and the knee still flared up any time I tried to run on it.

So that was my starting point when I was dared to sign up for MCM in April. Which gave me a scant 6 months to climb out of that well and into marathon shape.

I like having goals and this seemed like a good one. My old coach volunteered to train me.

We got to work.

And, I’ll circle back around to this training cycle at some point, because I learned a lot, but let’s suffice it to say that by October I had enough fitness to get to the starting line.

My wife and I drove down to DC on Friday and drove back on Monday. One of the things I regret, or would have done differently over the years, is to budget in those extra buffer days around the race.

I was always parachuting in for the race and then hopping, well usually limping onto a plane after the race. I should have given myself more time to smell the roses.

My youngest Daughter Teresa and her husband live in DC so that made it into a nice weeken of visiting.

And this is the point in our RunRunLive relationship where I can give you a big reveal and tell a story.

Back when I started podcasting about my running, my wife Yvonne said, do what you want but don’t talk about me or the kids on your podcast because the internet is all psychopaths and axe murderers. (she wasn’t wrong)

And over the years, I never did. Those were my rules when I started. My guardrails. Don’t talk about the family. I added my own commonsense rules of no politics, religion.

So here’s the big reveal… My social media handle has always been CYKTRussell. Those are the first initials of my family. Chris, Yvonne, Katie and Teresa.

My kids are all grown up now. Out of the nest. Off the payroll. They can fend for themselves.

We drove down Friday. On Saturday Teresa and I went to the Expo to pick up my number. Good thing we went early, because when we left the line to get in wrapped around the building. For some reason MCM always has a problem with this.

After that we went and walked around the National Arboretum. DC is full of cool parks and museums to play tourist at.

Yvonne and I had a hotel In Crystal City and being the seat-of-the-pants guy that I am I still hadn’t figured out how to get to the start line in the morning.

I was starting to stress over busses and trains when I actually read the race information and realized there was a shuttle bus to the start and back from the finish from Crystal City.

The place to catch this bus was only a block or so from the hotel. I walked over there and sure enough there was the shuttle stop, clearly marked and set up.

Piece of cake. No logistics in the morning.

I walked around a bit, bought a coffee at Starbucks for the morning, a couple cliff bars and a bottle of Gatorade.

Had a sandwich and a beer with Yvonne, laid out my kit, set the alarm and went to bed.

I slept great. I had no stress about the race. I wasn’t racing. I was just looking to finish. Just show up, do my thing and try not to die.

In the week before the race the weather forecast had started to stabilize on a predicted warm day. Not really warm, just warmer than optimal. No biggie, really, I wasn’t racing and a little sweat wouldn’t’ kill me.

For kit I had my Brooks baggy shorts, my Squannacook singlet and, for the first time in a road marathon, a vest. I had trained in the vest, and found it convenient for carrying things. It has two front pockets for 750 ml bottles and you can put a bigger bladder in the back as well.

For most of my training I just used one front pocket for the squishy bottle and used the other one for my phone. Sometimes I’d throw the second bottle in the back, but I never used the full bladder.

Since I wasn’t racing and I knew the course was well supported, I just took the one bottle. Seeing the warm forecast I threw some Endurolytes in too. And a small tube of lube.

That was it. I wore the old pair of Hoka Cliftons (that I’ll talk about in a bit). But basically it was the same set up I used for a long run on the rail trail.

I have run Marine Corps twice before. Once in 2009, where I went out way too fast and crashed, and again in 2014 “the year of 13 marathons”. I knew what to expect.

It’s a big race – 50,000 runners. There are lots of first timers and back of the packers.

It’s got pros and cons.

Sunday I rolled out of bed early, grabbed my coffee and my stuff, and walked down to the bus stop, hopped on the bus and was dropped in the massive holding area at the start.

I found a patch of grass and relaxed, did some yoga, talked to some people, and took some pictures.

I was an hour early.

Eventually we all started moving as a herd up the highway to the start.

People had different bib colors and I’m assuming these had some correlation to pace or corral but other than suggested paces there was not sorting of runners at the start. Just one big wave.

We had the announcements, the fly-overs and the weeping and were off.

I walked all the way to the starting line. Why waste energy? In this big a crowd there was no profit in trying to run.

The first few miles we were packed in like sardines. It made no difference to me. I just jogged along with the herd. But, If you waned to run some other pace you would have struggled.

There are some significant hills in the first few miles. You don’t’ realize it because you’re packed in, but they are there. The challenge on hills with a big pack and lots of rookie runners is that they slow way down on the up hills and the pacing random.

I was just jogging and chatting and coaching, but I’m sure there was a lot of energy wasted in this stop and go traffic jam in the early miles.

I also, because of the bad knee, had not trained on any hills. Zero hills. And, while it didn’t impact me in the moment, I would feel it in my quads let in the race.

On the positive side, my knee was fine.

I was planning to take a walk break every 10 minutes or so, but with the crowd I missed a some of them.

It was warm. Sneaky warm. It wasn’t hot, like full-sun-soaked-with-sweat-hot. Just a bit warm and sticky. I was eating some dates I had brought with me and taking the Endurolytes every so often to stay ahead of it.

I heard after the race that people thought it was really hot and humid. I think it peaked out at 77 degrees. I heard they were carting people off the course from heat exhaustion and that they shortened the course for the back-of-the-pack.

But honestly, I wasn’t working hard enough that I was ever soaked or uncomfortable.

But eventually it snuck up on me. Somewhere in the middle miles I realized I was thirsty and my bottle was empty. For the rest of the race I was playing catch up. Filling my bottle at every water stop and taking a cup of water and a cup of Nuun on top of that.

It was somewhere around the half marathon that I started getting tired and working in more walk breaks. It’s disheartening to look at your watch and realize that at the pace you’re going you’ve got another 2 hours of running!

I just didn’t have enough training.

By the time we got to the bridge over to Crystal City I was just grinding, fighting it all the way, walking a lot. I’ve spent enough time in the suffer cave in my life that it wasn’t emotionally terrible, it wasn’t an ‘end-of-the-world’ scenario. It was what it was and I worked through it for the last 6 miles, walk running and trying to take in the sights and sounds.

Some of the highlights from the course.

I talked to a lot of first timers. It was fun to be out there and mingling with my people again.

The disabled athletes, specifically the people pushing wheelchairs, were mixed up in the big pack with everyone else. Which was hard for them on such a packed course. But, they had the name of the athlete on a flag on the chair so you could call them out by name when you passed – which was cool.

There was some group from Massachusetts that was carrying big state flags ion the course – which was cool for me.

They had Cliff Blocks as the on-course nutrition, and sports beans – but they handed the whole sleeve to the athlete so the road was covered with these Cliff blocks like the tesserae of some broken Roman candy mosaic.

Late in the race they were handing out maple syrup packets. I can’t imagine a universe where I’m craving a warm shot of maple syrup on a hot day late in the race!

In front of the Capital we got to tell our congress jokes, like “We’re working harder then they are.” And “At least we’re getting something done…” yuckity yuck. The runners taking pictures semed to be from other countries.

People love this course, and, yeah, I can see it on the macro level, it hooks in all the sights and monuments, but, at the micro level there is a lot of cement and a lot of lumpy road and a lot of highway running. My feet were pretty sore after.

But that may have been from trying to get too much out of the old Cliftons. I hadn’t been running much, so I never bought new shoes for this cycle. Those old soldiers probably had 750 miles on them. A tactical mistake, maybe, but right in line with my not really giving a hoot about the race performance.

I was treated to this interesting interaction in animated Spanish between two runners. This lady was shoving something into the hands of another man and speaking at him in machine-gun-fire Spanish that I couldn’t Grok and the man was saying “Tenga! Tenga! Tenga!” which I think translates to “Got it!”

I decided that if I ever made a movie of this race with Quentin Tarantino, it would have this scene in it.

There was another lady I was running near who was really mad about something. She was grinding along cursing the universe. Different strokes I guess.

There was a guy in the last mile that was playing inspirational sermons on his phone and looked really intent.

There was a lady in the crowd with a sign that said “Run like a mad dog!” which I appreciated!

There were lots of marines in the race. You could tell by the way they carried themselves.

Towards the end things started to get pretty grim. The sun came out. There were casualties along the sides of the road. People on stretchers. People trying to stretch out cramps.

There were lots of EMT types stationed along the course. In general, it is a very well supported race.

It was a casting call for the walking dead in the final mile.

My head was starting to get fuzzy and the tunnel vision was coming on. My quads were strobing and I was afraid something was going to lock up on me. But, nothing bad happened and I just walked a lot and finally climbed the little hill up to the Iwo Jima monument to get my medal.

My watch said 26.77 miles – so clearly the course was measured wrong!

Just kidding.

There is a lot of walking in this race. They walk you ½ mile to get to the start and then send you on another long walk at the finish.

Since I had my phone with me I could take pictures and send texts and relax a bit in the grass while I drank some water and ate some watermelon.

I met Dave Foss over at the beer tent and he joined us for dinner with my family.

Yvonne and I got up early Monday and drove back.

My quads were a bit sore the next day and my hips were cranky, but the knee was fine and I recovered quickly.

At the end of the day I ran the race I trained for. Which is typically what happens. If you want a different result you need to have a different training effort.

That’s the way it works.

It wasn’t a great race. Frankly it was the second slowest marathon I’ve ever run. But, at the same time it was a significant milestone.

I was able to complete a training cycle.

I was able to get to the starting line.

And I was able to grind out the distance.

Goals achieved.

I can use this fitness a stepping stone and maybe, if I feel like it, put a proper training cycle in.

But, honestly, where my head is at right now, I’d rather enjoy 10 more years of running in the woods with my dog than killing myself to take 30 minutes off a road marathon finishing time.

You can have worthy goals that aren’t 10X what you’ve done before. It’s ok.

I really enjoyed the training. The race was a bit of a grind, but I’ll take it.

I run in the shadow of previous versions of myself.

And that gives me strength.

Outro:I really appreciate the outpouring of love and support from everyone when I dropped that last episode. I had no idea my feeble ramblings had such a formative impact on so many people.

I’m humbled by that.

I don’t know what’s next, but I’m thrilled to be considering what’s next.

I’ve signed up for the local 5K turkey trot – that’s my next outing.

I’m going to try to keep the training consistent to keep the fitness I’ve clawed back.

After that I’ve got a team for the Mill Cities Relay in December.

And, if I’m not mistaken, I signed up for the Napa Valley Marathon in the spring.

Good to be talking to you-all again. Reach out to me and say hi.

Tell Hoka they need to sponsor me.

Keep getting up. Keep moving forward. Reach for the next rung.

And I’ll see you out there.

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I’m a big fan of Ernest Hemmingway. Not the macho, bull-fighting alcoholic.

The writer.

Not the Man.

The word. The sentence and the paragraph.

Although, truth be told, I do appreciate the need for outsized characters in this Plain-Jane world of ours.

Characters who we can live through vicariously and show us that there can be ribaldry, glamor, and worthiness in pursuit of the perfect sentence.

We have a soft spot, it would seem, for swashbucklers and pirates.

These caricatures do us a great service as cardboard cutouts that we can try on for size and play at.

But the writing.

I remember the first time I read “Big Two Hearted River”. I was in college. Therefore, I was young, ignorant, and facile, but of course thought I was the smartest being in the universe.

The story made an impression on me. It was a study in using simple language to intensify the power of the language. The writing was hard-edged and powerful and beautiful – like a Bonsai tree trimmed to its perfect core truth.

I remember reading the Old Man and the Sea one day.

Sometime later.

I woke up at a friend’s house and it was lying around. I picked it up and read it. It’s only 26,000 words. Hardly a novella.

It’s a good read. Probably not as good as everyone would have you think. It won the Pulitzer. But that was because the literary world by this point knew they owed Hemingway something for the weight of his work on the world.

The profound impact.

Santiago, the unlucky Cubano who catches the Marlin says, in that work, “a man can be destroyed but not defeated”.

A man can be destroyed, but he cannot, will not, should not, be defeated.

Why?

Because the unlucky fools among us know that there is no destination. We know this because we got to the end, and they kicked us out ungracefully to the muddy curb.

And we found nothing there.

We live for the ride.

We need to look out the windows and sway sensuously to the music on the radio.

We need to live! Not just chase.

Sorry – got lost in my tendency to flowerize the language.

‘Flowerize’ is a word I just made up. But that’s perfectly ok. Shakespeare is credited by some to have invented over 10,000 new English words.

Santiago was a fisherman. Even when he could not catch the fish, he still got up every day and went out to fish.

I am a marathoner. And this weekend I will return to the marathon.

I would not call it a ‘triumphant’ return. I might even say the mako sharks of age have left me with a skeleton of ability.

But I feel strangely sanguine. Strangely optimistic. And overridingly happy.

Like I’m going home again. (With apologies to Thomas Wolfe)

…

“Hold one Chris!” You shout peevishly, “You were going to talk about the marathon and now you’re giving us a poor literature lesson, what gives Bucko?”

Who me?

The journey of this podcast over the last 20 years has been my journey. I take my investment in good books well read quite seriously.

Where else am I going to use this stuff?

4th wall broken.

…

How did I get from a career ending knee injury to lining up for an honest-to-goodness marathon this weekend?

Well…

There’s a story.

A story with striving, depression, chaos and derring-do!

Actually, no. It’s just a run of the mill story. But I will tell you.

…

It manifested at the end of February in 2020.

Many forces came together.

But one thing manifested.

The forces were me training hard for yet another Boston Marathon.

And, I don’t know if you remember this, but a potentially world-ending plague had settled in for a cozy vacation that had us all locked in our houses scowling nervously at our neighbors.

I went out for run. I was in pretty good shape. I had been maintaining a good level of fitness since the AFIB ablation incident of 2015.

I managed to requalify a couple times. But, honestly, I was carrying an ever increasing load of Ennui.

How many times could I throw myself at the marathon? Why should I?

Where was the exit?

Frankly I was psychologically looking for that ever-elusive soft landing.

I had just run a 100 miler, for lack of anything better to do and I was 58.

On that second to last hill repeat on that cool morning in the spring of my discontent. (And, let’s just say, right here and now that ‘second-to-last’ is the correct use of the word ‘penultimate’.

On that penultimate hill repeat, on that same old stretch of hilly road that I had been doing hill repeats on in servitude of the Boston Marathon for 20 years, something popped and there was a sharp pain in my knee.

The doctor said it was similar to a stress fracture. A deep bruise in the knob on the end of the bone.

It might heal. It might not.

Many appointments later. Many thousands of dollars pumped into the rigged slot machine that is the American medical system. And there was no clarity. There was no THING THAT I COULD DO to make it better.

There was only a knee that still hurt and no real solution other than the unspoken prognosis, the elephant in the room, of “you’re old.”

And of course, you go through the cycle.

I went through the cycle.

You all know the cycle.

Maybe a couple weeks off? Maybe some rehab?

But then it goes on and on and never gets better and you lose hope.

People disparage the concept of hope, but I think hope is the spark that enables all that slavish discipline you’re so proud of.

I tried to come back. I tried to walk-run. But every time the knee would complain.

I trained walk-run for the Flying Pig marathon in 2021. I had always wanted to run the Pig.

But the knee fought back and I downgraded to the half marathon, limping through it.

After that I came to terms with the fact that I was done running.

I had found the bottom.

I started trying to wrap my head around being done. I rolled it around in my head. What would it mean? What was next? How would I fill this hole?

I tried to cultivate a love of cycling and weightlifting. But, let’s face it, they are poor substitutes.

And yoga – let’s not forget the yoga!

I was forced to let running go.

This thing that had been such a big art of my life. This thing that had brought me so many gifts.

So many adventures.

So many friends.

And although I was empty, I was also very full.

Full of memories.

Full of gratitude.

Full of your friendships.

…

Then one morning as I was doing the social media dance that we cowards do when we are afraid to do real things in the real world, I saw that my friend, your friend, Ann had charity bibs for the Marine Corp Marathon.

Coach and Ann and I started joking about it. None of us were running. Someone dared someone. Coach told us if we ran, he’d coach us.

And I accepted the bet. Climbed back on the horse.

But this time was different.

I had survived the reset and was starting fresh.

I had let go.

I had no expectations.

I would take whatever the process gave me.

…

What would it give me?

The knee was sore and soft and weak.

What would it give me?

So coach and I started working.

The first challenge was volume. How much could I stand?

We settled on 3 runs a week.

When it hurt, I stopped. I discovered that the knee was most angry about running up hills.

I adapted almost the entire training cycle to be run on flat even ground.

I found a new passion for the flatness of the rail trail.

I took what it gave me.

I was tired after a couple miles. I was fat. I was slow. I walked a lot.

But I was happy.

I worked my way up from zero to an hour of running. And when I got there, I realized that, if this was all I got, I would be so happy.

I remembered the gift. The joy of being out there. Of feeling the morning air on your face and the leaves underfoot.

Funny Story:

Last week I took Ollie the Collie to the vet for his annual checkup. They pronounced him fit as a fiddle and noted that he had lost some weight.

Yes, he had.

So had I.

We were running again.

And we were happy.

And over the course of 4-5 months, I slowly got a little bit of my base back.

Consistency is the key to anything. I was slow, but I could now run continuously for 1:20 without gaping like a fish out of water.

The next challenge was the quality.

As the race approaches, all of us veterans know that you need some structured quality.

Hills were out. So the coach started to mix in some tempo runs. Run easy for an hour and finish the last 20 minutes hard. Accelerate and push the pace as you climb the ladder of the run.

I didn’t push any real speed work, but I worked the tempo.

Like an old piece of scrap iron red from the forge my body started to remember. Man and dog locked in the eternal battel with gravity on a trip that has no destination.

But I was not a slave to the training.

I worked in an all-day mountain hike. I worked in a 100-mile bike ride with my buddies. I ate what I wanted and didn’t worry too much about the pounds.

12 weeks out from the race the knee was good. Not strong but not painful.

Now we had a new challenge. My longest run had been 10ish miles.

You can’t run a marathon without some long runs.

So we began to climb the ladder in the Sunday long runs.

15 miles. No problem, last couple a bit of a struggle.

16 miles. Still struggling at the end.

Time to embrace reality. Time to once again work with what I had.

For my 18 miler I decided to walk 1 minute every 10 minutes.

Finally a 20 mile run capped off my campaign 3 weeks out.

I finished strong and happy.

I can still do it. The knee is good. I’m not struggling as long as I work within my constraints.

The hay is in the barn.

I’ve lost a minute or so off my pace. I haven’t been able to do much leg strength work because of the knee.

Surprisingly these last few tempo runs have seen relatively fast paces.

For where I am and what I have.

But that poses some interesting questions and opportunities for the future.

But I’m so confident and happy.

I’m so grateful to be able to ride this horsey ride again.

The sharks may have destroyed my mackerel, but they haven’t defeated me.

The truth to this story, hidden in there like a worm in the heart of a dog, is that I was able to get this back because I gave it up.

I let it go and it came back to me.

It is not our bodies that fail, it is our expectations that fail us.

No one cares how fast you go. No one cares how many medals are in your bottom drawer under the old bib numbers and signed posters and sweat stained hats.

Gifts cannot be taken.

Gifts can only be received.

I may not be indestructible.

But I’m timeless and alive.

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