The RunRunLive Podcast Episode 245 – Matt’s Fitness Transformation
[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi245.mp3]
Show intro by:
Tim Cleary – @AbueloRuns
RunRunLive – Podcast Intro
http://www.runrunlive.com/home/read-the-runrunlive-podcast-intro
Intro:
Hello and Welcome to the Meadowlands podcast as I sit here in the Marriott at the Newark NJ Airport, nestled snugly, nay warmly in the welcoming concrete niche between terminals A, B and C. Within a stone’s throw of acres of refinery, a major Budweiser brewery and the homes of the Jets and the Yankees. The only thing that you will not find around here are any meadows or open land.
This is Chris your host and this is the waining days of the RunRunLive Podcast, like a doomed and decadent empire it lumbers awkwardly to its death, or maybe not. We’ll see. And we have a great show for you today! We talk with Matt who has transformed his life through fitness, losing 80 pounds and running a sub three marathon in a few short years.
As you listen to Matt pay attention to the elements of his success. He had a reason to change and wanted to. He had the support of his company and his family. He had a mentor. He set goals. He stuck with it. Any and all of these things made Matt successful, but importantly you can use these same success factors to transform other new runners’ lives.
We also have the return of, or more appropriately the resurrection of, the resurrected runner who chimes in with another collection of his zany parody songs.
I have been running around 10 – 15 miles a week with my other workouts. I’m just trying to maintain enough of a base that I can get back. I know I’m soft right now. I can see how high my heart rate is on those easy runs. My fitness will take a while to come back. But I’m not going anywhere.
My foot still hurts and I got a call from the lady today to schedule an appointment for October. I’m quite hopeful. This is for the sonic meat tenderizer.
I just got back for a run around the airport. I like to explore airports. It freaks people out to see me running in the terminals. The Marriott here is connected to the parking lot for Terminal B, which is in turn connected to the parking lot of Terminal C and Terminal A. I ran around and up onto the garage roof.
At one point I followed a sidewalk out to where it ended in a cement point between two roadways. I was standing there looking around for possible escape routes when a police car pulls up and starts giving me crap. “How did you get out here?” and “You can’t be out here!”
At first I did not realize it was a rhetorical question and told him that I followed the sidewalk, but then I understood that I needed to go back the way I came because I could either be right or spend the night being beaten in a holding cell.
It took me around ½ hour to run all the terminals and parking lots and then it started to rain so I cut back over to the Marriott and jogged into the fitness center for a final 10 minutes on the treadmill. I spun it up to a 7 minute mile for a few seconds to see if I could remember what that felt like. I opined that at some point 15 years ago I could hold that pace for 26.2 miles.
I’m almost finished with my calamari, so On with the show!
Audio clips in this episode:
Sample -> Fdip295: Dr. George Sheehan – Facing the Future
Ann’s Running Commentary
http://www.annsrunningcommentary.com/?p=1472
Creator of Ann’s Running Commentary
Senior Advisor for Beyond Limits Magazine
Dr. Sarb’s Wellness blog
http://completecoach.wordpress.com/
Dr Sarb Johal Psychologist, Writer, Runner, Coach
sarb.johal@gmail.com | http://about.me/sarb.johal
| My latest post:What’s the point of vigorous exercise?Read more | Sarb’s blog |
My Books
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 Extra Corporeal Shockwave Treatment…
Featured Interview:
Matt Verley – Transformed his life from couch to sub-3 marathon from 240 lbs to 160 pounds.
Sure, Chris. All I have as far as social media is my Twitter handle (@mverley) and my Facebook (www.facebook.com/mverley).
Photo is attached.
Thanks again for the opportunity to be on the show. I can’t believe I didn’t know about this until last week. What a great production.
Quick Tip:
“Saved by the Dog – an equinox story” – http://www.runrunlive.com/lost-in-the-deep-dark-woods
Outro
Ah, my long suffering friends, I sure you have travelled well to the conclusion that there are beautiful places in New Jersey, but this is not one of them. Nevertheless you have driven your beat up taxis through the acrid, chemical soaked air across the stained concrete to the end of yet another RunRunLive Podcast. Episode 245 in the can.
Next week I’m probably going to talk to our friend Anne. I told her this week that I can’t end the podcast until I see her ironman race report.
I have a number of interviews lined up that I’m struggling to schedule. For some reason these folks want to do the interviews at night. I’m not on my best game at night. I think we can all agree that nighttime is for hunting zombies, not interviews.
Speaking of hunting, the coyotes around my house have been really active lately. They work up the most blood curdling chorus of howls in the dead of night. It sets Buddy, that crazy old coot off barking, verily destroying my REM cycles.
The other news is that I think I might want to run the Boston Marathon this year. I’m no longer a qualified runner so I’m going to need a waver bib. I sniffed around at some of the charities – I’d be interested if I could find the right fit.
There might be someone out there hwo needs a 14X qualified runner with 36 or so marathons under his belt and a fairly extensive social network. But I don’t want to take a major charity number away from someone who really cares about the charity.
It’s ok. I can get a number. And even if I couldn’t I’ve runs enough Bostons for 10 men. No need to be greedy. But I do love that old bastard of a race. We’ll see.
Thank you all for registering for my mailing list. I installed a MailChimp plugin on my wordpress site www.RunRunLive.com to comply with the CANSPAM laws. If you sign up now it will send you an email and ask you to confirm. I’m going to see if I can package up the show notes and send them to this list every week auto-magically.
I got some great, I mean really great, thoughtful responses to my question about what people get value from. You know what? Sure enough there are common threads. I know who my core market is and what they want. Now I just have to deliver it.
I spoke at a conference this week. And I like to speak. I’m not a great speaker, but I’m a good speaker and I do the work and practice my craft well enough, and I do enjoy it.
The key note address at this conference was an economist. He went through all the numbers and talked about potential trend lines and what might happen next.
You know, and I know that economists have no idea about what is going to happen next. They are forecasting the future based on history and even though we know that history will repeat itself, we don’t know when. It’s even more suspect to think that they can alter the future in any way.
As you get older and you live through enough calendars you start to understand the cycles. The economy, whatever that is, has cycles. Life has cycles. Your emotions and moods have cycles. Your fitness has cycles. Once you understand this it allows you to understand and survive the low cycles. It allows you to appreciate but not get carried away on the high cycles.
Humans have short memories and are always trying to forecast tomorrow from what is happening today. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but it probably won’t be what happened today. It is really out of our control. You learn to surf the cycles.
What is under our control is how we react to the cycles. What is under our control is what we say and do. The best leaders I have worked with act with the same acuity independent of what the business cycle is. They have mastered their inner game. They don’t overreact.
Another thing the economist said was that in the US only 20% of the people think that their kids will have a better life than they will. In China it is just the opposite. 80% of the people say that their kids will have a better life.
When you look at what is the primary driver of economic cycles, of recoveries and recessions, of booms and busts, it is emotion. You hear them speaking about the market ‘sentiment’, or ‘how the herd moves’. That’s right my friends the collective psyche of a nation determines its success and failure.
SO if you were one of the 80% of my neighbors who responded that your children’s life experience will be less than your own – I urge you to consider the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy. I urge you to say instead that my children will have the creativity, passion and vigor to create their own world and their own life that will make mine look like a paltry flaccid thing by comparison.
You can predict the future. You can make the future. The choice is yours.
Make a good choice for our children and I’ll see you out there.
Music to take you out is a swinging number called Swing That Thing by Johnny Ferreira. So – Swing that thing and I’ll see you next week.
…
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!
Songs sampled from Podsafe:
cursive-a_disruption_in_the_normal_swing_of_things
beau_hall-swing_down_-live-
Outro music:
johnny_ferreira-swing_that_thing
Outro Artists Bio:
Bio:
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
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