Episode 138 – Julie Anderson Chubby Mommy Running

[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi138.mp3|titles=Episode 138 – Julie from Chubby Mommy]

Show intro by:

Iain – @devoniain

http://www.devoniain.blogspot.com

Intro:

Hello and welcome to the practical philosophy podcast where we discuss the practical application of classical philosophy on your life. What is the relationship between Machiavelli and your marriage? Sun Tsu and your job? Von Clausweitcz and your home pet care? These are things you need to know!

But what is immensely interesting is the impact of the Socratic Dialogs on your garden. Unfortunately the impact on my garden this year was a bit of a loss. I had some happy creature take up residence inside the fence of my garden and the primary accomplishment of my vegetables was to keep some woodchuck well-fed and happy.

You know Thoreau talks of woodchucks a lot in Walden? Walden pond is less than 10 miles as the crow flies from my house and this is the RunrunLive Podcast and this is Chris your host and we have a lot to talk about today my friends.

Where to start? Let’s start with the meat. Today’s interview is with Julie Anderson who runs (pun intended) the “Chubby Mommy” running club. Her phone threw a couple static bombs into the interview but they are fairly overwhelmed by the fantastic content of our conversation and her radiant optimism.

I’ve been traveling like a manic lemming but my training is going well. I’ll include some audio from the 5k I ran last weekend plus a few other snippets from the hand-held.

I did something interesting this week. This was one of those things that I’ve been meaning to do but never got around to. I set up a survey to ask people their likes and dislikes about the RunRunLive podcast. If you want to have your say you can go fill it out too – I put it on the lower right sidebar of my new website runrunlive.com.

I also sent the survey to my mailing list, that, by the way, you can join by entering your name and email into the box with the big red arrow on the top right of the sidebar. If you sign up I give you access to an audio recording of one of my pieces called ‘how running a marathon can transform your life’ that you will find no-where else.

If you’re worried about spam you’ll be glad to know that the only I’ve sent to that mailing list so far is the survey!

So, Survey says! What did I get out of it? Well one thing is that I realize from the responses that it really isn’t MY podcast. From my end of the telescope it’s just a hobby that I do every week to motivate myself, learn new things and meet people. But you, YOU actually care what goes into it! So my learning is that I have to be careful and sensitive that I’m messing around each week with your podcast and I need to not let my whims step on your trust. I appreciate the feedback. Thank you. I’ll try to honor that trust.

Some specific things now: Generally…

– People like the interviews

– People like the quick tips

– People like inspiration and positivity

– Mixed on the music, mixed on the parodies

– Some folks objected to the chiropractor interview

– Some want to hear more about my races and results

– Some want more Buddy (me too)

Well – I’ll try to make it worthwhile for you! I’ll pull together the runrunlive staff this week at the runrunlive world HQ and we’ll see what we can execute on to make this a consistent experience for you, my friends.

I will take this opportunity to remind you of a couple things that I assumed you already knew:

First, I am not a doctor and any advice I or even my guests give you may not even be good for you. You need to make your own decisions about your life and your health.

Second Just because something works for me doesn’t mean it will work for you. Indeed! I may be the only person in the world that it works for, lucky me.

And third and finally remember that just because I do something doesn’t mean you can or should. I’m blessed with a sturdy body and a strong engine and I’ve been running for almost 40 years. I’m not recommending that you follow a 101 mile ultra mountain bike race with a hard 18 mile mountain race.

I’ve got the gift of perspective and longevity but I don’t know all the answers. This is a journey. It’s a journey for me and hopefully it’s a journey you can join me on.

Please feel free to send me email or reach me on Twitter. I’ll answer. Because I love interacting with people. That number again is CYKTRussell. At Gmail, at Yahoo on twitter and facebook.

Stop by and say ‘Hi’ sometime.

On with the show!

Audio clips in this episode:

Lots of Buddy.

Skits, commercials and parodies in this episode:

http://resurrectedrunner.blogspot.com/

Story time:

Race Report – Lex’s Run 5k.

So – you wanted more race reports… This will teach you…

Part of my problem with race reports is I want them to be good stories too. I want them to stand alone as pieces that are interesting and many times I just can’t find a way to tell the story that interests me and I don’t want to make you listen, or read something that isn’t interesting.

I don’t run a lot of 5K’s, but when I do…wait no that’s a beer commercial. What is it with those beer commercial copy writers? They must all have hypnotism degrees.

So, I’m supposed to start at the exciting point with a hook that will draw you in, right?

At the ½ mile mark I was still in the lead on the narrow dirt path. There were 4 of us. I was thundering forward at a 6ish pace, I had Luau on my right shoulder and ‘the guy we all knew was going to win’ on my left shoulder. With the other guy trailing right behind.

This isn’t how it is supposed to be. I’m not ever supposed to lead a race, especially a 5k. This isn’t right. It’s a perilous thing to upset the order in the universe this way. It can cause the end of the world if you’re not careful.

I turn to “the guy we all knew would win” and said, “This is a sad state of affairs! A 48 year-old midpacker still in the lead at this point in the race? You guys should be ashamed of yourselves”

I let my foot off the throttle as we went into the turn because I knew that hill was coming and I had no intent of holding that pace. I kept slowing to see when, like commuters following that car with the blue-hairs going 5 miles per hour under the speed limit – they would be forced out of pure frustration to pass.

And pass they did. The “guy we all knew would win”, sure now that there was no threat, put the hammer down and the 3 of them pulled away as I slowed to a crawl, not willing to break myself on this hill in the first mile.

I’m so soft these days. No killer instinct. In fact I slowed so much that to other runners from the chase pack passed me going up the hill. I retook one of them on the long downhill. I could see Luau in 4^th place a couple hundred yards ahead as he made the two mile turn, nice compact stride with a solid cadence in those blue Bikila’s like he was running down the beach.

From that point on there was not much hope of catching the 4^th place guy and no chance of the 6^th place guy catching me. I settled into a not-uncomfortable 80% effort pace and cruised home. Not much of a performance – but hey every day alive and vertical is a new PR in this world, yeah?

I finished 5^th overall and 4^th in my age group. That’s just how it is in Massachusetts. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a 40-something 6-minute-miler. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m midpacker and that keeps the universe on an even keel. No sense upsetting the karma.

Yes indeedy, I suited up and ran a 5k last weekend. You remember me talking to Doug – ReallyNotARunner – Doug – you have to change your handle – a few episodes back. This race is a labor of love that Doug and his wife Lex created so I went to meet some of the local Twitterati and show my support for some nice people.

We had absolutely awesome racing weather – overcast in the low 70’s. I threw Buddy the Wonder Dog in the car and we got lost trying to follow Google maps. He is a enthusiastic but innefective navigator. I didn’t get a good warm up in or any stretching or oiling. I got a couple strides and then it was gun time. Typical for me. I once ran through registration into the start of a ten-miler in Maine – having to pin the number on as I raced.

The problem with these short races is they always leave me feeling like I could do better. They are the cocaine of our sport. You feel compelled to come back and try again, to do better.

But I digress…The course was interesting. The people were nice. I got about $50 worth of stuff for my $30 entry fee. Knowing Doug I’m sure it’s going to get better exponentially and grow every year.

Why do you care? What’s your take away? Find a small first year race that you can go support – they can be fun and different!

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Equipment Check:

Featured Interview:

Julie Anderson, Chubby Mommy Running Club

Chubby Mommy Running Club:

The Brand, the Blog, the Book the Business

By: Julie Anderson – julieanderson@hotmail.com (541) 977-8282

Quick Tip:

I had an email from one of our friends this week about injuries. She had a friend who was injured and wouldn’t go to the doctor because the doctor was going to tell them to stop running. Her question was how to help her friend to come to grips with the injury?

Before I share my answer, it’s important to note that if you have the right doctor they won’t automatically tell you to stop running. I’ve had the doctor say to me, “I know you’re not going to stop running, but here’s how you can keep running and treat this injury.” I’ve also had the doctor tell me, “You can keep running, but it will delay your recovery and you may do permanent damage.” I go to a sports doctor so I know when he says you need to take 4 weeks off, I need to take 4 weeks off.

So – My brief answer was…

Running is such a large part of your life, a personal part, losing it is like losing a friend. You will go through the normal cycle of grieving. Denial (your friend), anger, sadness, acceptance and learning.

Once you know this your big brain can cope.

Once you set your immediate goals aside and take the long view you can move ahead in a positive manner.

I like to think of time off as a “great gathering of strength”. Time off allows not only physical healing but allows you to put this thing, this running, this gift in perspective.

Hope this helps.

I’ve got a corollary or codicil to this advice, since I know many people are close to their target races, and this is the worst time to get injured. I’ve been there. Something pops or pulls on that last 20 mile long run 3 weeks before you race.

Don’t panic! The good news is that you’ve got your training done, for the most part and you will carry the conditioning, even if you have to drastically reduce your mileage and effort for at least a month.

You’re not going to lose that much in those last weeks. Just start your taper early and back off. You can’t cram or catch up – just take what you have and bring it to the race.

I have run some of my best races this way, because I go into the race afraid. When I’m afraid I hold back in the first half of the race to make sure everything is going to hold. In the process I end up naturally running negative splits, which is where you have your best performances.

So remember – don’t panic! Got your towel?

Outro:

Ok folks that’s it you have floated aimlessly like an amorphic jelly fish through the ebbing tides of the runrunlive podcast – episode 138 in the can.

We have a couple excellent interviews coming up. We talk to this crazy Australian guy Tristan Miller who got laid off so he decided to pitch it all and go run marathons around the world for a year. He’s the kind of guy that I could have a blast hanging out and running with. And after that we our interviewing our good friend Annie who’s going to share with us how running got her creative juices flowing and sparked her to take up writing again. These are excellent examples of the awesome people we get to talk to on the runrunlive podcast.

Going forward I’ve got the WineGlass Marathon on October 3^rd with Michael up in New York. And of course Buddy and I are signed up for the World Wide Festival of races and you should too. And you may have heard of the Mojo Loco spontaneous relay race in Florida in December that I’m running with a bunch of my social media friends. That should be a hoot.

This time of year, every year, I try to caution my kids and all the other people in my world that I care about that it gets crazy for awhile. Everyone is back from vacation, kids are back in school, people get busy at work and everything seems to just go crazy! Everything is urgent. Everything is due now and people start getting stressed by the volume and strident nature of things that are falling out of the sky on them.

It’s ok. It’s just that time of year. You’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. The secret is to put your head down and keep moving forward. Life sometimes is like an ultra…you just have to forget about the pressures and keep moving forward. Remember what the Ultra-runners say: “CFM” continuous forward motion. As long as you can keep moving forward you’ll get through ok. So, wake up every day, decide to do your best to make a positive impact, smile and keep moving forward.

And I’ll see you out there.

Music tonight is a song called Michael and Anna by King Aparatus from the Podsafe music network and remember if you don’t like my music, you can go choose some and send them to me – I put a video up on my youtube feed that shows you how.

This song is two minutes and 30 seconds long, the perfect length for you, if you’re out running to pick it up into zone 3 or 4! Come on, work it!

Enjoy your week!

Ciao!