Episode 211 – Joel Phillips from Reasons2Ride

[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi211.mp3|titles=Episode 211 – Joel Phillips Reasons2Run]The RunRunLive Podcast Episode 211 – Joel Phillips from Reasons2Ride

epi211.mp3

Show intro by:

Dave Robertson– the Naked Runners http://www.thenakedrunners.com/

RunRunLive – Podcast Intro

http://www.runrunlive.com/home/read-the-runrunlive-podcast-intro

Intro:

Hello and welcome to the MonkeyMan podcast where we swing through the trees taking all sorts of leaps of simian fancy.

Alas, you may have guessed that, even though I’m 98% chimp, this is your favorite Humanzee host Chris and this is the RunRunLive Podcast where we explore the very fabric of endurance endeavors with a fine tooth curry comb.  So squat on a comfortable branch and let me groom your back hair for nits because we have a great show for you today.

We have a lovely chat with Joel from Reasons2Ride who shares with us how he has transformed his life, continues to transform his life and is working to give back to the community and share the gifts he has found.

I find it’s actually a common trajectory for thinking humans and intelligent apes.  We start out life focused on ourselves.  We got through challenges and transformations and at the end we look to find self fulfillment through giving back, through helping others.

It’s a common pattern.  A philosophical maturity curve if you will.  It’s well documented in psychology and history.

Thanks for the feedback on last week’s weepy show.  Yes, I am running.  I’m already up to 3 miles so far.  Too soon to make any major predictions but we’ll continue to take it as it comes.

In today’s show I’ll share a summary of my plantar fasciitis treatment recommendations as I posted earlier this week.  I’ll also give you a bemused bike-trainer-movie review.

Here’s an extra credit tip for you. If you use your laptop and have an internet connection you can go to YouTube and play playlists.  Either your own or someone else’s.  This way you can queue up a continuous loop of music videos to watch on the bike trainer.

I took a Total Immersion swim clinic this past weekend and it really helped me visualize some of the mechanical problems that have been frustrating my swimming.  What I think I’m doing, what I see in my mind’s eye, and what I’m actually doing are two different things.

It is invaluable to have someone watch you real time and give you the correctional feedback.

Maybe one of my biggest moments of enlightenment as I re-engineer my swim stroke is a greater empathy for new runners.  I can see now the act of running, the mechanics of running in its different forms that just come naturally to me may be impenetrably hard for someone just starting.

I can tell you to ‘run tall’ or ‘relax into your stride’ and it may be meaningless without that real-time feedback.  I’m going to think about how to do a better job of explaining the specifics to people, maybe some videos.

So, my friends sit back and scratch your selves because maybe man was not designed to walk on his hind legs.

On with the show!

Audio clips in this episode:

Mélange at the beginning was as follows…

Chris and Buddy in the driveway

Inspirational music from the IronMan video

Audio from the Miracle on Ice broadcast

Audio from Animal House

Audio from Independence Day

All borrowed from YouTube.

Clip of my unofficial theme song “Indestructible” by Rancid…

http://www.runrunlive.com/products-page/midpackerslament

RunRunLive » Audio Products » MidPackersLament » The Mid-Packer’s Lament Audio Book

 

It took me a few months…but I kept at it and now can present to you The Mid-Packer’s Lament Audio book.  This is ~50 running stories read into audio by the author (me) and ends up being 6-8 hours of audio.

The Mid-Packer’s Lament is a series of short stories on long distance running, racing and the human comedy inherent in all sports enthusiasts.  This is the perfect book for runners and wannabe runners.  There are stories about training, eating, special places and special races.  There are stories about the accidental athlete in all of us and the stupid things we do for even amateur endeavors.  Whether you are a weekend mid-pack runner or a competitive club runner, you’ll find something thought provoking and amusing that you can relate to in the Mid-Packer’s Lament.

Hope you enjoy consuming it as much as I enjoyed recording it!

Ciao, thanks, and I’ll see you out there.

Chris,

 

Skits, commercials and parodies in this episode:

Story time:

Equipment Check:

Plantar Fasciitis Summary –

Featured Interview:

Joel Phillips Reasons2ride – www.reasons2ride.com

I am not a former world champion. I know no glory beyond high-school sports.

I never bothered to record a personal best in anything. I have made many mistakes.  I decided to settle rather than reach. I was unhappy, unmotivated and disinterested.

I changed.  I found self-confidence. I became motivated. I have purpose and desire. I chose to live.

All my life I have struggled with my weight and a deep-seated lack of self-confidence. I rediscovered self-confidence riding a bicycle, and that has led to a complete lifestyle change.

I am currently training to participate in the 2012 “Ride the Rockies” event. I am also working to develop a non-profit program called Reasons2Ride. Its purpose is to inspire people to ride a bicycle. The mission is to promote a fun/healthy life style and increase the awareness about the obesity epidemic in this country and do something to reverse the trends.

I plan to lead by example and do what is necessary to take a 290lb frame and get it in shape to ride over 400 miles through the Rocky Mountains in June of 2012. Help support a worthy cause and join me in this grass-roots effort to inspire, and change lives.
Thank You,
Joel Phillips
Founder/President/Executive Director

 

Quick Tip:

Bike Trainer movie reviews –

Outro:

Ok my friends, you swung through the hanging vines of the forest canopy to the end of yet another RunRunLive Podcast, episode 211 in the can.

Next week we talk to Andy Holgate author and accidental IronMan.  Great interview, interesting guy.

I’m kicking off a new project for all of us.  As I’ve been gathering Twitter friends I see that all of you have blogs or websites.  What I’m going to do is build a link area on my site where we can post your links and description and in return you can post mine and we’ll create a giant ball of world-dominating linkage.  So, send me your links in a 140 char description and I’ll post it up.

I’ve had a couple excellent swim workouts by working the total immersion drills in and I just might figure out how to endurance swim.  My goal was never to be fast.  My goal was always to be efficient and to be able to enjoy a long swim, mindlessly, without fighting it the whole way, like how I run.

It so goes against my nature not to just work harder. There’s a lesson there.

Swimming is such a complex series of discrete coordinated movements.  I told the folks on face book it was like trying to juggle angry rabid octopi.  You focus on one thing and another thing goes awry.  Especially if you learned to swim at a young age like I did.

When you are confronted by an overly complex problem with too many moving pieces instead of working harder to try and manage it all you need to simplify.  This is what Total Immersion does.  It starts with body position and floating and works up to breathing and swimming.  But you focus on mastery of the basics before moving on to the complex.  Because the complex ends up being just an ensemble of the basics.

You see this in all sports coaching.  All successful coaches work on mastering basics.  When I coached soccer I quickly realized that what won games was winning the 1-on-1 defensive interactions, the correct position on the field and the basic skills, not complex schemes.

I come against this in business all the time too.  There are too many things to focus on.  Focus on doing the important basic things with a studied excellence.

When you take on too many aspects too quickly without mastery of the basics, you fail.

There is a thing called a monkey trap.  It is a basket with a skinny neck, like the neck of a bottle.  They put a big piece of fruit in the basket.  The monkey reaches down the neck to grab the fruit, but once the monkey has the fruit in its hand, the hand won’t fit back out through the opening.

The monkey is trapped because it won’t let go of the fruit. That’s a monkey trap.  In our world it is a metaphor for over-reaching and trying to hang on to too many things at the same time.

So, my friends, try to focus on mastery of the few things, of the basic things that each act of industry contains and you may find your confidence returning.

Don’t reach your Vibrams with their prehensile toes into your own monkey trap.

And I’ll see you out there.

You can find me monkeying around at Twitter, Facebook, DailyMile, YouTube, Google and Tumblr as cyktrussell that’s Chris yellow king tom Russell with two esses and two ells.

share your own simian soliloquies at – 206-339-7804.  Leave a message there it sends an audio file.

Don’t be a damn dirty ape, call in a show intro it keeps the wheels of progress greased here at RunRunlive Place-    It is in the show notes and on the web site –- you will find all the other content on the website www.runrunlive.com

Music To take you out is a happy and whimsical tune called -song_for_amonkey by corey_tut Smile, like the lucky and hppy person you are.

See you next week.

Ciao,

Great news my running friends – my book of running stories “The Mid-Packer’s Lament” is now available in Kindle format at the Kindle store on Amazon.com!  Just search on “Mid-Pack”.  It’s a bargain at an easy $5 and all proceeds go towards supporting the underfunded pension plan of the retired cleaning staff at the RunRunLive world headquarters. I recently got a kindle myself and I love it.  It does reading very well.

The Mid-Packer’s Lament is a series of short stories on long distance running, racing and the human comedy inherent in all sports enthusiasts.  This is the perfect book for runners and wannabe runners.  There are stories about training, eating, special places and special races.  There are stories about the accidental athlete in all of us and the stupid things we do for even amateur endeavors.  Whether you are a weekend mid-pack runner or a competitive club runner, you’ll find something thought provoking and amusing that you can relate to in the Mid-Packer’s Lament.

Music:

From Podsafe:

All music used in the show is from the Podsafe music network found at Music Alley.  Please support the starving, socially minded artists sampled herein by purchasing some!

Song1

brick_daniels-one_monkey_dont_stop_the_show

Song 2-3

erick_hovey-fight_that_monkey

Outro music:

corey_tut-song_for_amonkey

Outro Artists Bio:
Bio:

Standard Links:

http://www.runrunlive.com

http://www.runeratti.com

Http://coolrunning.com

http://Grotonroadrace.com

http://SQRR.org

www.midpackerslament.com

Cyktrussell At gmail and twitter and facebook and youtube

Chris’ book on Amazon – > http://www.amazon.com/Mid-Packers-Lament-collection-running-stories/dp/141961584X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228687012&sr=8-1

Mid-Packer’s Lament E-book

Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy E-Book

Dial in number for RunRunLive is – 206-339-7804

Chris Russelllives 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.

Email me at cyktrussell at Gmail dot com

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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