The RunRunLive Podcast Episode 157 – Marathon Quest 250 FUP
[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi157.mp3|titles=Episode 157 – Marathon Quest 250]
epi156.mp3
Show intro by:
Peter Herridge – http://arunningskeptic.blogspot.com/
Intro:
Hello and welcome to the freezing cold and snow podcast. (little feat) Yes indeedy, we hardy New Engalnders are getting beat to crap by winter over the last week. We got another 2-3 snow storms on top of what we already had. The snow is twice as deep as Buddy is high and he’s got a bad case of cabin fever. It got down to -6 Fahrenheit at my house last week.
When it gets that cold in Massachusetts things start to spontaneously break. Pipes freeze and break, water mains explode, cars stop working and all the headlights burn out. Ya know, all this snow and ice and cold makes people sad…
Heh, Heh, Tissue? To quote Little Feat Cold Cold Cold.
But, before I forget this is the RunRunLive Podcast and this is Chris your host and we’ve got a great show for you today. I know, I always say that…but, by now you’ve probably figured out that I try to be annoyingly positive in all things and am not beyond a little hyperbole if the mood strikes me.
Today we’ve got our wrap up interview with Martin from Marathon Quest 250. It’s just fascinating. Martin is 55 years old and ran 250 marathons last year AND raised a ¼ of a million bucks. So, next time you start to think you can’t do something, think about Martin and his marathons.
The interview has some background noise in spots because I was walking fur-boy in my neighborhood on the call and every dog had an opinion that night – think of it as adding to the authenticity.
We’ve got our usual tips, tricks for you with our random and eclectic mix of information, entertainment and inspiration.
I raced the Derry NH Boston Prep 16 miler this past Sunday and had a strong race. This is one of my favorite races historically. I’ve run it many times. It is a difficult course with close to 2k feet in elevation gain and loss with one monster mile-long hill at the 11 mile mark.
It was supposed to be zero degrees, but warmed up into the teens for the race and was quite comfortable. There were lots of people there from the Twitter world, and my two running clubs and it’s always good to see friends.
I ended up running with Alett’s hubby Hugh and he was great at pacing me. He kept telling me jokes on the uphills and he thought because I wasn’t laughing I didn’t appreciate it, but I loved it, I just couldn’t laugh and race up a hill at the same time.
We ran a good strategic race. We went out fairly hard at a conversational 7:20-7:30 pace, held back on the hill slowed to an 8:30 and closed it hard in the last miles hovering around a 7:00 – 7:20 pace. My last mile split was close to a 6:40 with an uphill finish. We ended up with a 7:25 average which was faster than I had expected. I know – boring race report, but I don’t have the cycles for a dramatic reenactment, sorry.
The danger of a strong race where you exceed your goals is it puts big thoughts in your head. Derry is a much harder course than Boston and you can draw a direct line on expected pace. A 7:25 pace at Boston puts me across the finish line at just over 3:16… so now I’m wondering out loud if maybe a 3:10 marathon is within my reach this year. That would be something!
Then of course my body started talking to me. I tweaked my right Achilles in the race so I’m taking a couple days off. My next race is my double down at the Hyannis ½ at the end of February.
Don’t forget registration is open for the Groton Road Race, so come up and see us.
On with the Show,
Audio clips in this episode:
Delta Airline announcement.
Gieco Commercial
Reading by Tom @OCDTriGuy – Thomas O’Reilly
Skits, commercials and parodies in this episode:
Story time:
Equipment Check:
Equip157
Had a question last week on Twitter about relays and lighting that I’m going to attempt to illuminate…get it? Illuminate? Ok how about ‘shed some light on’?
By the way folks I love it when people reach out to me on Twitter or Facebook or email. It keeps me motivated and gives me content for the show. Remember, that number again is cyktrussell – Chris Yellow King Tom Russell with two esses and two ells.
To paraphrase the question I got, it was “I’m running an overnight relay, what kind of headlamp do I need for the night leg I’m going to have to run?”
Remember, overnight relays, like Ragnar or Reach the Beach typically take 24 hours or so. Every team member will have to run at least one leg in the dark. And, yes, I have done this. My leg was a 13 mile slog in the middle of nowhere in CT at midnight in the pouring rain.
I would recommend a combination of both active and passive illumination.
Passive illumination is any reflective material or surface you can put on. I have several reflective items that I can wear including reflective sweaters, vests, hats, arm bands and the shiny bits in your shoes.
The point is that you should do whatever you can so that when a car’s headlights hit you, no matter what the angle you light up like a UFO. Late at night they don’t expect to see you. They may be sleepy or drunk. You need to really light up.
Active lighting is important because it warns the cars, but also shows you where you are going. There are two main categories, lights you wear and lights you carry.
Headlamps are great and you should have one on. I would also recommend a small hand held light of some sort – like a flash light. Not only for redundancy but also for a second perspective, or angle on the running surface. What I found, running at midnight in the pouring rain on a back country road was that the headlamp was not strong enough to cut through the rain and show me the road. I had a flashlight in my hand to see the bumps, holes and cracks in the road, otherwise you can twist an ankle or have a fall.
You can also point the handheld directly at oncoming cars or to the side to illuminate, say, a charging moose, without having to turn your whole head or body in that direction.
There are other lighting rigs you can use. I like the GoMotion system that has a large broad circle of light projected from your chest and a blinky light as a tail light. I interviewed GoMotion in episode “I’m too lazy to look it up go to RunRunLive.com and search the index for ‘GoMotion’.
Blinky lights are a great addition as well, especially as a tail light. I have a Blinky hat from Brooks with the blinker built into it on the back.
So – to sum up – Headlamps are a yes but you should have a handheld light as well and as much passive and active lighting as you can find.
Ten secrets to successful running
@OCDTriGuy
Intro: this is… you can find me at… where I …
Well, my friends we have turned the corner on the 10 secrets to a long, healthy successful running life. This week we hit the home stretch with secret #6. This week’s secret is called “Paying the Price”.
But first, a quick review for those of you coming late or keeping track, this was a 10 week series that I started to lay out a what the common success factors are for people who actually start running, stick with it and make it part of a successful life strategy.
I had done some informal surveying and found that many people want to start, but don’t know how. I also found that people who start exercising tend to start, get frustrated and stop. So I tried to tease out those attributes that make people successful, and string them together in a logical way to provide a framework for you, whether you’re just starting or trying to up your game.
Week one was committing to hold yourself accountable.
Week two was aligning your running with what is important to you.
Week three was the importance of taking action.
Week four was the old story about setting goals
Week five, last week, was how to create a good plan.
Now you are ready to pay the price.
Have you ever noticed that successful people, accomplished people, whether athletes or in any other realm of pursuit, are the people who paid the price?
The number one question new runners ask, (actually the number two question because number one is that unanswerable shoe question)…but the next question they ask, especially if they are struggling in the early phases of a program, is “How can I find the time?”
And the answer is simply that you don’t find the time, you make the time. What does that mean? That means that you are going to have to prioritize this thing that you have set out to do over something else.
If you went through the first five steps, (see now it’s tying all together), you should be able to do it. You should be sold on why, what and how you can do to create this prioritization and, hopefully, stick with it.
To summarize there are two ways you need to pay the price.
– One, is that you will need to sacrifice something to achieve something new
and
– Two, is that you will need to do the work.
Let me give you a couple specific examples – and these are my examples and by no means exclusive.
Paying the price is a universal success attribute, but we’ll stick to running examples.
Let me give you a couple of specific examples of ‘sacrificing’ or ‘giving something up’ to pay the price.
How about Ashley who ran across the country last year? She gave up a whole summer and all those things that a young woman would do during that summer to run across the country. But think about what she got in exchange!
How about a simple example; lunch. That’s right, lunch. How about doing some exercise instead of having a sit-down lunch in the cafeteria with your co-workers?
The best example is TV. The other adult I share my life with is sitting and watching Hawaii Five-0 right now, but I’m writing. What possible benefit to you, your health or the world in general do you get from spending an hour parked in front of the TV? Is giving it up a sacrifice? I guess so, but it’s also an act of prioritization.
How about the second aspect of paying the price, ‘doing the work’?
How did I manage to qualify for the Boston Marathon and how do I keep re-qualifying? It is important to me so every day I get up and I do the work. In fact anything I’ve accomplished in running is the direct result of paying the price by doing the work. I’m sure you find the same thing to be true.
Sun, rain or snow I’m out there working hard and because I am, like so many of you are, willing to pay the price day in and day out we accomplish things.
The great revelation, the thing that will surprise you, is that at some point making sacrifices and doing the work no longer feels like something you HAVE to do. It becomes something you want to do, it gives you a core confidence in your ability that creates a positive feedback loop and cascades into all aspects of your life.
In order to be successful at running, or at life for that matter, you need to be willing, to want to, pay the price through work and sacrifice.
It is a common thread through out all the entrepreneurs and athletes we have interviewed over the years. While the other kids are doing nothing the successful kids were studying.
It’s never too late. Your homework for this week is to keep a journal of the time you spend doing what over a couple of days. Find something in there that you can commit to replacing and do a workout instead. See if you can keep it up for a month.
Next week we are going to dwell on the importance of persistence.
Featured Interview:
Marathon Quest 250
Quick Tip:
A very Quick Tip on Oration for you. I was watching The State of the Union Speech the other night and since I’ve had some public speaking training I pick up on the speech writer’s tricks. And of course one of the things that Roman nobility were trained in was Oration in the Greek sense of the word and I pick that up from the History of Rome podcast.
I find it is absolutely true in life that so many of the leadership moments, the moments of truth require a inspirational word or two. This repeats over and over again in history, saving lives, turning tides and changing the moods of nations.
What you may not know is that all speech writers are like plumbers or mechanics – they use certain well known techniques. When writing for oration the most common trick is to use the ‘rule of three’. I do it all the time if you listen. How to you add gravitas or overwhelming emotion to your point? You use the rule three.
Using the rule of three will make your speeches more impactful, more passionate and could very well change your world. Do you see what I did just then? That was the rule of three in action. I made a point by stacking a repetition of three supporting elements on top of each other. It creates a wave or build of emotion in the listener and hammers home the point.
Try it in your next performance review or sales call and see how it works.
Outro:
That’s it my friends, my fellow travelers, we have suffered through a long flight in the middle seat of another RunRunLive Podcast – Episode 157 in the can.
We’ve got Operation Jack and Danny Abshire from Newton shoes coming up as we shovel our way through to the spring. If there is anything else you want to talk about just let me know.
Reach out to me and say ‘hi’ on any of the various social networks – I’m cyktrussell, I love hearing from you and we love hearing your voice so read something for us. I script all the words in the show so all you have to do is read – I’ll send you the script.
Speaking of reading someone sent me a list of “the 100 books everyone should read” I looked through it and was pleased to see that I had actually read most of them. I’m blessed to have that type of brain. I created a section on my website to list all the books that have been written by guests I have interviewed. I linked them to my Amazon affiliate account. If you click through and buy them I should get a commission. Take a look, if something tickles your fancy, click through and buy it to support the show and keep Mrs. CYKTRussell from ending me.
It’s all good.
…
I was sitting in the Atlanta airport today, drinking coffee, waiting on my flight to Boston and chatting with friends on Twitter. Someone asked me “how are you?” and I said “perfect”. Then they wanted to know if I was being sarcastic. And no, I was not. I had decided that I was going to be perfect today, and so I was.
“But Chris” you might say, “How can your day be perfect when your flight got canceled, you have piles of work to do, there’s another foot of snow waiting for you when you get home, etc. etc. etc.” Ahhhh…you see that’s where the secret lies. All of those things are the things you use to measure whether a day is good or bad. I decided to not have my emotional state, my day and my actions measured that way. I decided to declare m y day perfect. And so it is.
There’s a old story about a shoe company that sends two marketing scouts to a developing country to check on the market. The first one reports “There is no market for us here, no one wears shoes.” The second says “There’s an incredible opportunity for us here, no one wears shoes!”
I think you get my point. It is all in your perspective. You define the world through your personal lens. You only see what’s in your box. Many times what’s in that box has been defined by the media, your upbringing, and your culture. But the lens is yours, the box is yours, and you get to define it.
I’m guilty as well. I’m a neurotic mess most of the time. You’ve heard the doubt in my voice when I talk about the 1:30 half marathon on my calendar. It scares the hell out of me. Why? Because I’m afraid of failing – just like everyone else. I make people at work crazy because I tell them we need to learn how to fail more and fail faster. Because what we categorize as failure is by definition outside our box.
So my friends, my fellow travelers, my exhausted winter-lovers, are you trapping yourself in your box? Are you seeing the world through a fun-house lens of your own making? What could you do if there was no box? What could you do if there was no lens? Could today be a perfect day?
And I hope to share my perfect day with you, out there,
Music to take you out, from Music Alley, is a little Rockabilly for you to rock out on. If you want to follow up on any of the audio, songs, words or anything else on the show it’s in the show notes and on my website at www.runrunlive.com
Ciao,
Music:
From Podsafe
the_cherry_bombers-vultures.mp3
the_fump-my_cat_is_afraid_of_the_vacuum_cleaner_-_me_first_and_the_gimme_gimmes_style_by_power_salad.mp3
angie_and_the_car_wrecks-junkyard_blues.mp3
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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