[audio:https://runrunlive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi105.mp3|titles=Episode 105 – Richard the Elective Amputee Runner]

Episode 105- RunRunLive

Show intro by:

Kris Wheeler – 5wheelsrunning Lkrisrunning.blogspot.com

Intro:

Hello and welcome to episode 105 of the RunRunLive Podcast. This is Chris with a ‘C’, the mad dog and your effable and august host. Welcome back. It’s been a strange few weeks and life keeps wheeling along at a breakneck pace. How are you? How’s your running going?

One quick correction – in the interview last week I referred to the Boston Marathon as being on April 20^th this year, it is actually on the 19^th – sorry to have scared you. It’s a different date each year because it’s a Monday holiday the third Monday in April. It’s easy for me, I’m just rolling out of bed and hitching a ride 15 miles down the highway to Hopkinton, I don’t have to buy a plane ticket or book a hotel.

Today we have a very, very interesting interview with Richard who had his foot amputated so that he could continue running. Very interesting and beyond that he’s a guy with frankly a great attitude. We’ve got some other random audio bits, the flotsam and jetsam of my training, as is the stuff of my trade.

If you’re new to the show, maybe you are a recipient of a holiday iPod or have thrown yourself into a ‘new you’ get-in-shape program in the New Year, welcome – please stay with it. We will help you. We love company. And by ‘we’ I mean the millions of runners who haunt this world. Have you noticed that we are in the middle of a running boom? So Welcome, my friends.

I offer my bleak and pitiful audio inducements to continue your forward progress…or PROgress – see I’m multi-lingual, I speak fluent Canadian and UK with a smattering of Australian and I’m passable with Californian and at a total loss with Texan…but, what I do possess and posses firmly, is a love of running. Some might say I’m obsessed or obsessive, pero, aucontraire mon ami, mis amiga y amigos, I see it not as an obsession but as the key to the kingdom of health and sanity and happiness.

Yeah – I love running.

And I’m here to bring that love to you. Because through all the joys, triumphs and shipwrecks of our lives, this thing, this gift, this running buoys us, humbles us and is a constant and measuring force.

Take a deep breath. Hold it for a count of two. Now release it and when you release it release your stress and fears. Pawn your anxieties. And On with the Show.

Audio clips in this episode:

Ice bath chronicle…Hilly Harvard Run

Skits, commercials and parodies in this episode:

Groton Road Race commercial

Story time:

Text here

Equipment Check:

I had a great question about sunglasses. The question was how to keep them from fogging up when you’re running.

Backing up a step everyone should know that protecting your eyes is a good idea and that runners are more susceptible to damaging their eyes due to the amount of time they spend outside in the sun. You can wear a hat to block the sun from your face, but this only blocks the sun from above. Many times the sun will reflect up, especially in the winter from the snow, or from the water if you run along a lake, ocean or river, or even from light colored surfaces, like cement. So wearing sunglasses is good practice.

I usually go to one of the big box retail stores and rummage around in the cheap sunglasses for something suitable for running. I look for something lightweight with UV protection and not to tight fitting to the face. They have to be able to vent or they will fog up. I confess to never having bought the expensive sunglasses that are made specifically for running. The Yankee in me prevents the dispersal of $100 for a pair of sunglasses. I have bought sun glasses at race expos. These I have found to be twice as expensive as the cheap retail and not of a discernable higher quality.

Of course I’m willing to wear test any expensive glasses my friends at Oakley or Ray Ban want to send by – I’ll give you a fair and impartial review.

But the bottom line is that if you have the right fit, and there is enough air flow, they shouldn’t fog up.

I find mine fog up when I heat up and if I slide them down onto the end of my nose for a few minutes to let some air in, they clear up.

You can always use the old SCUBA diving method and spit into them, rinse the spit with water and this will slow fogging. There are also anti-fogging solutions that you can buy specifically for this purpose. I use to use them in my mask when I was diving. I’m sure you can get them online or at a dive shop. Did you know I’m a certified SCUBA diver? Any of you old enough to remember Jacques Cousteau? Behold the mighty Nautilus as he goes about his business on the sea floor…

But in summary – of and when you find the right pair of running sun glasses – guard them with your life – they are a rare and wonderful accoutrement.

Featured Interview:

Richard – Amputee

Links

Quick Tip:

Had an interesting set of questions from Sweet Daddy D about hill training. He asked if running a hilly route qualified as hill training. And the answer is yes and no. Certainly the more hills you work into your normal running the better able you are going to be to handle them in an event. But just running a hilly route is a bit non-specific if you intend to race a hilly race.

What I’ve found is that when beginners run hills they tend to change their mechanics on the hills, meaning they run slower, shorten their stride and hunch over into the hill. This is not a good way to train if you intend to race on hills. Essentially you are practicing struggling on hills and I’m not sure that is a useful skill to bring to a race.

A great way to get the specific work out you need for a hilly race is to run that hilly route at a constant effort level and without degrading your stride or mechanics when you go up and down the hills. Practice holding you normal running form. Stay upright. Focus on lifting your knees. Pretend you have strings or elastic bands tied from your hands to your knees so that each time you bring your hand up it pulls your knee up. Don’t worry about speed. Run by effort level. Your effort level should go up but not to the point where you are suffering. Find a strong ‘normal’ stride that you can use on the uphills and practice it on the hilly route.

When you get good at the mechanics of uphill running – then you can add some effort. Go out on that same course and run at a tempo effort level with those same strong mechanics. So an 8 on a 1-10 scale. Make sure you run through the tops of the hills and practice active recovery on the down hills.

This type of tempo hill run is an incredible work out and will make you a hero on the race course as you pass all the rest of the panting masses on your way to victory.

Outro:

Well folks – that’s it you’ve gotten 45 minutes older and not a wit smarter or better by listening to yet another fulsome episode of the RunRunLive Podcast.

I’m recording this from a trip to the Netherlands. I’ll try to collect some musings and send them over to the extra mile podcast. Next week we are going to talk to Jim who has created a iPhone app for track geeks…with all the noise about iPhone apps I was interested to understand the mechanics of it all and thought you might be as well.

I still have on my to-do to clean up my web site and get all my old episodes up for you, but I’m challenged by having the great fortune of too many opportunities to add value and am forced to triage my activities as best I can. There are so many things I want to do but they flee from me each day like a school of frightened minnows.

I read an interesting article about living in the present this week from a newsletter. The author said to forget about yesterday, it is gone. And forget about tomorrow it is an unknown. He said the only real time is right now, today. When today is gone it’s gone forever. When tomorrow comes it will be another today.

His point was to not carry the baggage of yesterday around with you and let it ruin your today. And as you have heard many times, I’m sure, the past is past, you can’t do anything about it, but you can change today. You can decide right now what you are going to do. You can decide whether today is a good day or not. It is a decision you make. The day doesn’t make a decision to be good. You make the decision to have a good day and you should because today is the only sure thing you have.

So choose well my friends, choose today to be the corner stone of a grand structure, a towering pavilion of happiness and fulfillment. And as you architect your pavilion look about you, because you might see me and I’ll see you out there.

Music tonight is a ditty named Jaquie from Transcendence go find it on the podsafe music network. Give the starving artist some love. ‘cause they’re doing what they can to color our world and should at least have Ramen Noodles to eat.

Ciao,