The RunRunLive Podcast Episode 209 – Ray Charbonneau – Chasing the Runner’s High
[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi209.mp3|titles=Episode 209 – Ray Charbonneau and the Runner’s High]
Show intro by:
Ray Charbonneau
— My books!
Chasing the Runner’s High
R is for Running
— Help with your computer:
ReallyFixIt.com
RunRunLive – Podcast Intro
http://www.runrunlive.com/home/read-the-runrunlive-podcast-intro
Intro:
Hello and welcome to the RunRunlive podcast episode 209. Today we have a great show for you. I’m chatting with a local guy from the Sommerville running club Ray Charbonneau who wrote a book about his experiences with running called The Runner’s High. I have to admit a lot of what Ray talks about seems eerily familiar!
I’ve got a review of the Gym Boss and a piece I wrote about the bicycle trainer as well.
How’s everyone doing? Starting to crank up those spring marathon plans? I did notice yesterday that even though we are in the heart of winter here in NewEngland the sun is starting to stay up later and later each week. Spring is on the way.
We had a listener who was at the Houston Marathon, she recognized Dave McGillivray and went up and said she heard him on the podcast. She said Dave looked surprised. Too funny.
How about those marathon trials, huh? I watched them and I was really impressed by a couple things. First Desi Davilla looks so strong and all business for the women. What’s cool about this is that she runs for the Hansons.
If you remember our interview with Sage Cassidy who runs for the Hansons back in episode 180 – the way you get on that team is if you have a lot of heart but don’t have enough perceived talent to land one of the big sponsors. I guess Desi is showing them what it means to have heart.
I’m training away. I totally broke my swimming form in an effort to improve – which seems a bit ironic to me. If you remember I’ve been swimming my whole life, I’m a certified open water SCUBA diver, I’ve been doing sprint triathlons for 7 years. But I’ve never been satisfied with my efficiency or ease in the races.
Early on I tried to self teach myself the Total Immersion method and it helped a lot. I got to the point where I had good balance and could swim comfortably for extended periods of time. But, I was still slow and didn’t have a race pace.
Over the last two weeks I’ve been working on my ‘catch’. The catch is where your hand and arm grab the water in front of you. I’ve got it so I can really feel my catch grabbing that pool of still water in front of me and it feels quite powerful and efficient. Unfortunately doing this has screwed up my learned balance so now I’m struggling again.
Now I’ve got to take the new catch, what they call the ‘high elbow catch’ and work my balance and rotation back around it.
Part of me says why am I messing with it? But, then I know that I can only grow if I change. And I may be struggling now, I mean really struggling, but maybe today is the day I’ll find the one piece that makes it all fall into place and I’ll end up better off.
One of the common traps we fall into, especially us older folks, is that we spend all our times focused on our strengths. Because it is comfortable. Coach says that he has swimmers who he has to force to go for a run. Unless you spend some time working on your weaknesses you can’t grow.
My heel is unfortunately sore this week for some reason after a few weeks of progress. I’m not sure what I’m going to do if it continues to resist. It’s a sticky wicket.
Hope you are all doing well. We’ll keep working on it.
On with the show!
Audio clips in this episode:
Ray Charbonneau from his “R is for Running”
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:
The Gym Boss -> http://www.runrunlive.com/beep-beep
Featured Interview:
Chasing the Runner’s High
My Sixty Million-Step Program
Chasing the Runner’s High is the story of how Ray Charbonneau pushed his addiction to running up to, and then past, his limits. Ray shares what he learned, what he should have learned, and what he still has to learn from running.
It’s a great read for runners or for non-runners who want to better understand their running friends!
Quick Tip:
The Pain Cave…-> http://www.runrunlive.com/the-pain-cave
Outro:
Ok my friends, you have chased the runner’s high to the end of yet another RunRunLive Podcast, episode 209 in the can.
I have been getting a lot of things crossed off my task list over the last few weeks because I haven’t been traveling as much. I’ve been spinning on the trainer, elipticing on the elliptical and spending way too much time in the gym.
When I’m stretching I get to look into the window where they do those group exercises. Some of the dance-type ones look really fun. The best one is that yoga class where they turn down the lights, put on some whale music and lay down on the mats. We used to do that in kindergarten. We called it nap time.
We’ve been working on the 2012 edition of the Groton Road Race. It will be on April 29th this year. Hope to see you there. www.grotonroadrace.com
Since I’ve been in the office I took the opportunity to sort my tasks and projects and see what aligned with my goals. I’ll share a couple little tricks I learned recently. One was to set my watch to chime every hour. This reminds me to stay on task when I drift off.
Another was to print out my daily schedule or diary for the week and actually schedule specific tasks and projects into specific time slots. This way if I have a project like “write a blog post” I can spend 30 minutes on it uninterrupted. Then when the 30 minutes are up I move on to what’s next. It helps you get more done.
Of course prior to this I picked the areas I wanted to focus on for the year. 3 work, 2 personal and 1 other. That way I can prioritize the tasks and projects appropriately because if you haven’t figured it out yet; you will always have more things to do then you have time to do them in. The art of managing this is to choose to work on the things that are important to you and say ‘no’ to those things that don’t fit into the things that are important to you.
…
We mentioned strengths earlier. I didn’t mean to not use your strengths. Just don’t use them as a crutch. You should absolutely know what your strengths are. There are books and websites that will catalogue your abstract strength for you if you don’t think you know. Knowing your strengths is a great starting point for growth.
When you’re starting something new don’t focus on achievement. Focus on getting the habit first. We see this in beginning runners all the time. They set some sort of expectation for themselves and give up when they don’t make fast enough progress.
Give yourself a break when you are leaving your area of comfort and going into a new area. Make this pact with yourself; the first 4 weeks will just be to learn. No expectations at all. Just focus on habit, consistent participation and learning. Give yourself permission to learn, and yes to fail. Otherwise you can’t grow.
As soon as you think you’ve got something mastered that’s when you start to rust. Don’t get sucked into that trap. We all may be brilliant and super-effective, but we all have room to learn and to grow.
What are the strengths that you are afraid to risk?
Take that risk. I’ll see you out there.
…
You can find me whimpering in the pool at Twitter, Facebook, DailyMile, YouTube, Google and Tumblr as cyktrussell that’s Chris yellow king tom Russell with two esses and two ells.
Leave me some of your whimpers at – 206-339-7804. Leave a message there it sends an audio file.
Hey! How about a show intro for your old buddy Chris? It is in the show notes and on the web site –- you will find all the other content on the website www.runrunlive.com
A little garage punk form podsafe to take you out. Show us your speed! 3kisses with pass_me_by
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
22-pass_it_on
Song 2-3
brain_buckit-passion_fruit_go_bananas
Outro music:
3kisses-pass_me_by
Outro Artists Bio:
Bio:
3 KISSES serve up their own unique blend of Texas Party Punk with a positive, party vibe. Martin Folkman, Publisher of the Musician’s Atlas says of 3 KISSES 3rd CD release, “Nut Job” combines pop, metal and punk into a musical fusion that packs more energy into a 3-minute song than all the WMD’s
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 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