The RunRunLive Podcast Episode 151 – David Hirshfeld Holabird Sports
[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi151.mp3|titles=Episode 151 – David Hirshfeld Holabird Sports]
Show intro by:
Dragon Software – British English Jane…
Intro:
Hello and welcome to the Save the Antelope Foundation podcast where we cataloged the various sub-species of hooved wild antelope in need of charitable intervention by the World Save the Antelope Foundation. As you may well be aware ‘Antelope according to Wikipedia is a term referring to many even-toed ungulate species found all over the world in places such as Africa, Asia, and North America.
And they’re good runners too. Although apparently humans are better at distance running and that is why this is the RunRunLive Podcast and this is Chris your host – And it’s cold almost everywhere. I was talking to a guy in Spain this morning and Europe is being treated to a taste of Siberia this week. Don’t lose heart, the cold weather is good for you, burns more calories!
We’ve got a great show for you today. I interview David Hirshfeld the owner of Holabird (spell it) Sports. This is an outfit that started as a tennis club in Baltimore. I wanted to talk to them because they do a good job with online marketing and I was interested to get his perspective on the impact of the online channel versus the brick and mortar. I’ve had good luck getting some older hard-to-find shoes from them.
What’s new with Chris? Well – if you listened last week you heard my Palm Beach saga where I missed my goal time by 54 seconds. I spoke with Coach Jeff PRS and we decided to try again at Hyannis in February. This will give me time to get some more quality training in. I haven’t signed up yet, but I’m 98% decided. This will be ok because any training I do will roll over into going for a good time at Boston in April.
I attended the Mojo Loco virtual relay race this past weekend where we ran 90K from St. Augustine FL to Daytona Beach FL. Met some nice folks. I through a couple videos up on my youtube feed (cyktrussell) and on my video blog at www.runrunlive.com Others who were there did a bunch of recording, most notably Steve from Phedippidations who was broadcasting non-stop. So – you can go to his site as a central repository if you’re interested, I’m the guy with the beard in the flamingo-print shirt. It was more of a social gathering than a race, but it was nice to meet some folks in their protein form.
I lost my iPod on the flight back from Florida – so I’m not sure what to do about that – maybe I’ll try training without it to develop a bit more toughness in my hard runs. If anyone has a used MP3 player they want to share send it on over.
I had the Camry in this week for a fix because I was losing air in one tire. Turns out I had a nail in the tire. Just a caution for you folks that you should check your tire pressure every couple weeks because a blowout on the highway can kill you – and we don’t want that to happen.
On with the show!
Audio clips in this episode:
Ali the Runner’s cool blog post on why she runs.
http://www.marathonconfessions.com/
Skits, commercials and parodies in this episode:
Story time:
Equipment Check:
Cold weather dress:
One of the things that came to the top of the Beginner Runner Survey was what to wear. Since we are, in my hemisphere, going into the deep part of winter, I’ll give you my thoughts on this. This, again, is just what I do and you should ask some other runners what they do. I tend to be fairly utilitarian in my dress code when running and any fashion considerations do not even make my radar screen.
First of all I always run outside in the winter. The only time I’ll stay in is maybe in an ice storm, but I’ll run in a snow storm and I’ll run, even workouts and races, down to negative degrees Fahrenheit. How do I do this? Am I some sort of super-human? No, I’m just a normal runner and I dress appropriately.
There’s really two main bits you have to get right. First, you have to keep your core warm and second you have to protect those extremities that are prone to Mr. Frost’s bite.
For the core:
For your core you really want to invest in a good pair of thick winter tights. Go to your favorite online running store and buy some that are specifically labeled “winter” tights. Don’t be afraid to buy them big because I find they run on the small side. I have winter tights and spring/fall tights. I wear the winter tights when it gets below freezing.
I don’t were any special layers under them, maybe some technical underwear, but that’s it. If you’re concerned about frost bite on your umm…naughty bits as Monty Python would say, you can layer on some bike shorts or just stuff a fleece hat down there to cut the wind.
For the upper core you are looking for three things, you want to keep your inner layers as dry as possible, you want to get some wind protection and you want to keep warm. For my undershirt I wear any technical race Tee shirt. Depending on how cold and windy it is I may wear long or short sleeve, and I may even wear two shirts layered, but it’s important that these shirts be technical enough to wick the sweat away from your body. You don’t want to have wet clothes retaining water against your skin when it’s cold out or you will get the chills.
On top of these I wear a fleece sweater. I find the fleece breathes and wicks while keeping me warm. I have two of these. One is very big and has a hood and a half-zipper front. I like this one because I can pull the hood up and pull my hands into the sleeves when I’m cold and unzip the hood if I get hot.
I have second sweater that is tighter and does not have the hood, but is made out of a material called illuminite that is highly reflective and I wear this on the roads at night, it keeps me warm and keeps me from getting killed by a car.
For the non-core parts of your body you have some options, depending on how cold it is. I like to wear a basic fuzzy ski hat that I can roll down over my ears when it’s cold and roll up or take off if it gets hot. If the temperature falls into the single digits I will wear a fleece balaclava – this base layer really keeps you warm and you can adjust it so only a small portion of your face is showing.
On my hands I typically wear only a pair of plain old cotton running gloves. I’ve tried the technical gloves but I find the cotton gloves to be a good, cheap solution. If my hands get cold I can pull them into the sleeves of my sweater. The cotton gloves are great for wiping your face or nose and you can take them off when it gets hot.
I don’t do anything special with my shoes and socks. I know there are wind guards you can buy or make that cover the front of your shoe in the cold, but It’s never been an issue for me, even when running in a foot of snow.
This doesn’t have to break the bank. The tights are the only thing you really need to not scrimp on. The sweater you can buy at any department store, I use old tech race Tees as my under layers the gloves are less than $5 at any winter race expo and the fuzzy hats are the same one’s you’d wear skiing.
Don’t be afraid to run outside in the winter, just dress for it, be careful and enjoy it for what it is.
Featured Interview:
David Hirshfeld – Holabird Sports
Affiliate Link here.
Quick Tip:
Another big hitter on the Beginner Running Survey was the question, how do I go faster and longer. Let me take a swing at this.
First of all, if you are a beginner, please give your body time to get used to the act of running. Ramping up your mileage and intensity in the first year will most probably result in an injury that will put you on the sidelines. Really, most coaches say that it takes up to 2 years to build a good base from which to do advanced training if you are a beginner.
If you think you are ready to get more serious and you have a good base of running 3-4 times a week for 3-4 months then the only way to get faster and go longer is to run faster and longer. Sounds obvious right? But, how do you get started?
A good place to start would be to get your body ready for more load and more intensity by doing some strength and flexibility exercises for a couple months. Work 2-3 days of total body workout with light weights into your week.
Focus on stretching and flexibility for the important running systems, like your hamstrings, your achiles, your ITB, your quads. Go online, or ask a coach for some flexibility routines and dedicate some time to it. Hold those hamstring stretches for 5 minutes. See if you can get to the point where you can touch your toes or touch your head to your knee. You can either do it now, or after you’re injured, your choice!
When you’re ready start bringing your miles up by working in a long run every other weekend. For me this might be a 20 miler. For you this could be a 5 miler. Just keep extending it by a mile or so every other week.
There is a huge gain in performance when you increase your weekly mileage from 15 to 25, another big gain when you bring it up to 40 or 50 and professionals will go into the 70 miles per week range. I usually try to train in the 30 – 50 miles per week zone.
When you are comfortable with the miles you can load on intensity. This can take many different forms. Intervals, fartleks, hill charges, tempo runs, track workouts and progression runs. The key is to bring your pace up into the ‘working hard’ zone. The serious among us may do this 2 or 3 times a week. I would recommend to get started you do some sort of tempo workout once a week for a few months.
One easy and safe way to ease into tempo work is to finish the last mile or so of your normal run with a hard effort. Bring it in hard. This is good because your body is warmed up and it will make you feel great. If you just do this one thing 2 or 3 times a week – you’ll feel the difference.
This was not intended as a detailed instruction, just an overview of approaches to getting faster and going longer. Please consider getting a coach to help you do this, and please remember that there are rest days and rest weeks worked into these schedules. Not even idiots like me run hard every day.
Hope that helps.
Outro:
Ok that’s it, if you have made it this far you have failed to exit yet another RunRunLive podcast, Episode 151 in the can. Hope you enjoyed it and maybe took away one little schnibblet – that’s a technical term – schnibblett of useful information.
I got great feedback from last week’s show. Apparently the rarity of my race reports makes them quite popular! See, I DO listen to feedback.
I’m back in the training saddle after taking a week relatively off. I’m going to see if I can push through the boundaries that are holding me back. There’s only one way to find out what’s on the other side of that line and it’s to go there.
Coming up – I have a chat with Gary Robbins one of those ultra runners from the west coast of Canada – funny guy – great chat. I’ve been slowly recording the stories from my book, “the Mid-Packer’s Lament” but it’s taking longer than I hoped and I still have to normalize and edit them, but I’ll keep working on it.
I had fun at the Mojo Loco last weekend. I wrote a blog post on it over at my site, RunRunLive.com but I’m not going to do much more reporting on that. The folks were fun to hang out with and I think this whole spontaneous social relay is a great idea – if anyone needs help putting one together drop me a line. We’ll probably do more this year.
Coach Jeff at PRS fit took a look at the video I made of myself running on the treadmill and thinks I can get more efficient by running more forefoot, especially at slower paces. So, I ‘m working on re-engineering my stride for that. What the heck, why not! I had a long post-race call with him and recorded it – I’ll either put it up as two episodes or just put the audio up in my site.
…
One of the things I was reminded of meeting people I haven’t met before was the stress of being put into social situations. Especially this time of year where you may be forced to go to your spouse’s Christmas party or other social gathering. You may find yourself surrounded by strange people and uncomfortable silences.
I’m really bad at social situations but I’ve developed a couple simple tactics that get me through it.
I’ll tell you what you don’t want to do. You don’t want to get drunk at the office party, but that’s a whole other topic! You don’t want to be a bore. Bores talk about themselves. Bores don’t let you finish your sentence. Bores show no interest in what you’re saying and change the subject to themselves as soon as possible.
What you do want to do is smile and make good eye contact with the people you are meeting. Look at that spot right on the bridge of the nose between the eyes. Make it a point to remember their names and use them often – as Dale Carnegie trainees will tell you a person’s name is the sweetest sound to them.
Then ask them questions about themselves and their work and their families. Take a genuine interest in the answers. If you do this they will think you are the nicest person they have ever met and you may actually learn something interesting. You’re never going to learn anything interesting if you keep interrupting and talking about yourself.
It’s not hard but you’ll be special if you make the effort.
And I’ll see you out there,
Music to take you out, from Music Alley, is out_of_order-gimme_noise It’s about 2:15, so try a little tempo pick up because this song is a bit of a rocker –
Ciao,
Music:
From Podsafe
out_of_order-gimme_noise (1)
out_of_order-rosy
out_of_order-secret
Standard Links:
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 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.
Email me at cyktrussell at Gmail dot com
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