The RunRunLive 3.0 Podcast Episode 3-287 – Zoe Romano kicks it up a notch !
(Audio: link)
[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi3287.mp3]
Link epi3287.mp3
To donate to my liver foundation fund for the Boston Marathon -> http://go.liverfoundation.org/goto/cyktrussell
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Introductory Comments:
Hello my friends and welcome to episode 3-287 of the RunRunLive podcast.
Well my friends here we are. With any luck I’ll be pushing this show out on the Friday before the 2014 Boston Marathon. Or should I say the “International melodramatic circus that has replaced the Boston Marathon”?
Let me stop right here and tell you that the first version of this intro was a whiney, negative speech about how my version of the Boston Marathon, that was very sacred and personal to me has been high-jacked by clueless national media a-holes. But bitterness is not how I want to roll!
So let’s back that up and ask a different question. What is going to be good about this year’s Boston Marathon? What beyond all the distasteful and idiotic melodrama… sorry, back that up, what will this year’s race mean to us and how will it positively impact the world.
BTW – I’ll leave the original text in the show notes if you really need a good whine….
What’s going to be good about this year’s race is that the attention of the world will be focused on our sport, and our community and our premier event. The world will get a glimpse of the running community I know. They might get to see the heroes of my life that have very little to do with bombs and deaths. These are the people that I’ve shared the roads of New England with for the last twenty years. Through twenty long cold winters we plied our craft on our roads, by our seashores, up our mountains and around our islands.
Look closely you’ll see the old veterans with their calm, ironic smiles relaxing in the field at Hopkinton High. Their faces are wan and hollow and hardened by long miles in the early morning in the biting cold. They come here because they can. They come here because there just happens to be a local marathon in April – not because it’s some monumental or overblown apparition.
These are my friends. These are my quiet heroes. Engineers, teachers, artists and, yes if the opportunity arises, men and women of insurmountable courage. They come into this thing not to prove anything. They come into this thing because it is sacred to us and we respect it and do our best to honor it.
With any small parcel of luck the frothing international press corps will get a glimpse of my heroes and they will take that with them from this year’s race. And we will change the world just by being who we are and doing what we do.
Un-deleted Rant here…
I mean, I get it. Everyone is all emotionally wrapped up in our race this year. Every TV I walk by has someone sobbing. I get it, but this is not the race I qualified for 15 years’ ago. That has been taken.
That race was a sacred and emotional exercise for me each year. It was the culmination of 3-4 months of lonely striving in a cold dark place with my friends. It was the celebration of this thing that was very hard, and very honest and very scarce and very good. Now it’s the simpering mediocrity of ‘Good Morning America’ and their sister evils.
My Boston Marathon is gone.
I will be dragging my old, tubby, broken body out to the starting line on Monday morning and accepting whatever comes with a good natured smile. I’m going to let the race come to me with whatever comes with it. Will there be dark moments? Will there be tears? Will there be smiles and laughter? I don’t know. Maybe a little bit of each.
The world is drawn to our raw emotions like predatory vampires. They want to share in the pain and suffering and yes the celebration too. They’ll all forget about us in a few years.
But, you know what? The Boston Marathon has always been a sweet, private time of suffering and celebration for me.
…
It’s going to be a long day for me. I’m not in the kind of shape I should be in to respect the distance. I’m still pretty beat up. But over the last 8 weeks I have focused on becoming less fragile and more flexible. These efforts combined with my knowledge of the course and my experience should get me across the line with a modicum of well-deserved suffering.
People have started to gather in the city. The streets are lined with media trucks. I’ve been fending off blog and media requests for comment these weeks. It doesn’t seem right. It feels like we’re having a rugby party in a church.
I don’t know what I expect. I’m sure this ennui is a personal problem. Different people grieve in different ways. There is no rule book. Different people celebrate in different ways. There are no rules.
…
Today we’ll be having a follow up chat with Zoe Romano who ran a tour de force on the Tour de France course last year. It’s a fascinating discussion with a person who, as we know, has a deep, inner strength. In Section one I’ll talk about my 5AM life hack project and in section two we’ll talk some more about this year’s Boston Marathon.
Let’s get this party started.
On with the show!
Section one:
The 5AM Life Hack – http://www.runrunlive.com/the-5am-life-hack
Featured Interview:
Zoe Romano
website: www.zoegoesrunning.com
Twitter: @zoeromano
Facebook: “Zoe Goes Running”
Photos and videos can be seen at www.alexanderkreher.com, although the trailer link is not live yet.
Zoe Romano is an innovative ultra runner and adventure philanthropist. She first fell in love with running while a student at the University of Richmond, from where she graduated in 2009 with degrees in International Studies and Spanish. She recently became the first person to ever run the entire 2,000 miles of the Tour de France route, averaging thirty miles – 
over a marathon – a day, and raising nearly $200,000 for a children’s charity. She encountered wild animals, rock slides, and four weeks of rain; and overcame injury, illness, and sun poisoning. This endeavor came at the heels of a successful run across the USA in 2010, during which Romano, at age 23, became the first female to complete a transcontinental run unsupported. Safely recovered from both feats, she now shares her story as a dynamic writer and speaker and provokes others to reconsider personal and professional limitations. Romano began training for each journey by running just six miles a day, a fact which she hopes demonstrates that we’re all capable of more than we think.
Section two: – http://www.runrunlive.com/my-boston-marathon-routine
More Boston Marathon
Outro:
It snowed on me this week in Chicago, and then again in Detroit and finally it followed me home to lay an inch or so of hard icy stuff on my home in Massachusetts. It was in the 20’s with snow on the ground when I woke up a couple days in a row for me.
That’s just not right in the middle of April. I had to go down and do my run on the treadmill Tuesday. I had no idea that it would be too cold to run when I packed. This weather has been something.
Like I said last week, I’ve been focusing on just getting a little bit stronger. Since the Umstead Marathon at the beginning of March. I’ve had about 8 weeks.
My ankle is almost healed, but still lurks. I did something to a ligament in there in December. I haven’t been doing any speed work and didn’t get much volume in. I’ve been limited to running 3 days a week. Over the last 2-3 weeks I’ve been able to get out in the woods with Buddy and our body, minds and souls have very much appreciated the change.
I’ve been doing a Abs, shoulders, back and arms workout on Mondays. I’ve been doing a solid leg strength workout on Wednesdays. I’ve been spinning on the stationary bike on Friday nights with some core thrown in and I’ve been getting 1250 meters in the pool every Saturday morning.
I’ve been at it fairly consistently. I should have some core strength built up and maybe a little healing.
Interestingly enough, I developed that same back pain that I had for last year’s marathon. I went to the chiro and he said it’s just the muscle that runs down from my clavicle. It hurts when I stop to walk and then start running again. My upright, hands-high, run-tall form actually makes it hurt because it scrunches up the back. But, as long as I know it’s just a pulled muscle of some sort I can ignore it.
Next week is the Groton Road Race. We’ve got everything lined up and sorted out for the most part. Registration is off a bit and I think it’s because the weather was so bad for so long. We made some improvements this year. We are having gender specific shirts for the women – because even though our art is fantastic t the women don’t like to wear generic shaped tees.
I’m quite looking forward to summer. I plan to take some time off from running to get my body healthy and then we’ll see what I feel like doing. I need to find a new adventure. Something the challenges and fulfills me. I’m thinking about spending some extended time down in Cape Cod – because I can work from anywhere really.
I need to recharge my batteries and re-find myself after this year.
Is your life meaningful?
How much of your day do you spend doing work that is important to you?
If today were the last day of your life would you do what you have planned today? Perhaps you would but you wouldn’t go through it like a mindless robot. You would try to life this day and do this work with purpose.
What’s stopping you from that today? Regardless of what you have on the schedule, what do you choose to do and how do you choose to do it?
You’ve got choices.
– You could continue this day and do it like you would have if you and I hadn’t had this conversation.
– You could come to the realization that you have a day planned that is not one that you would have chosen in your right mind – and you can choose to do something else.
– Or, you can look at you day and decide to use your unique gifts to make whatever you do today special and meaningful for whatever it is you do.
You’ve got nothing to lose. Today may or may not be the last day of your life, but either way we are all going to die and this life will be over before you know it. Today is really all you have. Your life is a series of todays that you need to make special and meaningful to you and the people you live with.
What about the job and the mortgage and the family and the adult responsibilities of our lives? You don’t have to pack your rucksack and wander off to live with the Sherpas in Nepal. But you don’t have to just show up either.
Today is an opportunity to change only one thing, the way you approach that work and life. This is completely under your control. Approach today’s mundane task with gratitude and, dare I say it, love.
Make them meaningful to you and you will notice something amazing and fulfilling happening. You will notice that they become fulfilling to those others that you interact with. Your purpose and intent will spread with a warm glow into your circle of influence.
Another wonderful symptom of making today meaningful is that it will open up access within you to your unique gifts. Your strengths will come to the surface in response to your meaningful and grateful approach to life. Those things that make you special, that have been hiding like scared bunnies under the desk in the routine of life will start to blossom.
Make today meaningful. If you want to follow me in the big circus my number is 25840 and I’m in Wave 3 corral 8. You shouldn’t have any problem because I’ll be out there for a long time.
So that’s it. We’ll chat again soon.
Cheers,
Outro Bumper
Thanks for listening folks I appreciate your support. RunRunLive is a free service for you because I like writing and telling stories.
I also love to meet folks so feel free to reach out to me at Gmail or any of the other social networking sites. I’m CYKTRussell. And as you know that’s Chris-Yellow-King-Tom-Russell with two Esses and two Ell’s.
My Website is http://www.runrunlive.com and most if not all of this content is posted out there. If you want the show notes to magically show up in your inbox when I publish a show in a beautiful HTML wrapper you can subscribe to the mailing list at my site. It’s a useful thing if you are moved by something I say and would like to see if what I wrote is the same thing! It also has all the links to everything and everyone I talk to and about.
Other than that, thank you for your attention, do epic stuff and let me know if I can help.
Ciao
Happy Song – Super Hero – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Superhero
Other products from Chris Russell you may be interested in
The Mid-Packer’s Lament
On Audio (Read by the author) – http://www.runrunlive.com
The Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy
Standard Links:
www.midpackerslament.com
Contact:
Cyktrussell At gmail and twitter and facebook and youtube
Bio
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.
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