The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-308 – Angie – Pregnancy and the Marathon
(Audio: link)
Link epi4308.mp3
Intro Bumper:
https://www.crowdrise.com/TeamHoytBoston2015/fundraiser/christopherrussell
Hey, hey, hey my friends. How we doin? We’re sliding unceremoniously into spring up here in the northern hemisphere. Even though Boston broke the annual snowfall record this weekend it’s been melting nicely over the last 2 weeks.
The snow banks have receded from the roads like sulky, gray, hulking glaciers leaving room for me to run. The clocks have been changed forward by an hour and the sun doesn’t set until 7:00 PM. The sidewalks are filled with the hard detritus of winter cast off by the melting mounds. Pieces of battered cars, piles of sand and salt, tree branches and the bones of small animals all emerge like some post-glacial science project.
Now the potholes emerge in the roads. Great, dark, jagged rifts like portals to other, grimier universes. And if you need hubcaps just run my roads and you’ll have your fill. We got so much snow the plows didn’t really know where the roads were and ran wiilly-nilly into the margins breaking up curbs and decapitating mailboxes. It all lies sad and shattered on my routes.
I got out this weekend for 3 hours in a cold drizzle. My legs are good but my heart won’t let me push. It’s a bit frustrating. I’m working with Rachel again to strip some of the winter weight off as well and making some good progress. Eating clean has the added benefit of helping me recover and avoid the aches and pains of most marathon training cycles.
I’m starting to make big plans for big adventures for after I have my AFib zapped in the beginning of May. I’ll be coming out of that with a serious base fitness and if everything goes well quite a bit lighter as well. I want to get back on the trails and fall back in love with our sport.
Breathe the thick spring air and feel the Earth mother under my souls.
I bought a new truck. It’s a stripped down Nissan Frontier. No power anything, no cruise and a manual transmission. While a manual transmission is not foreign to me, I have driven manual cars before, it did point out how much other stuff I’m doing with my hands while driving. Like drinking coffee, eating fruit, listening to my iPhone and various other activities that now require me to juggle while I shift.
The one thing I had to change was the radio. It had a basic CD player in it with not even an Aux port. I procured a nice Pioneer radio with Bluetooth and Aux and USB and Pandora interfaces and a removable faceplate. I listen to a lot of audio on my phone during my commute.
I was amazed at how easy and cheap car radios are. I got it from Crutchfield.com with the installation kit for less than $100. I probably haven’t looked at car radios for more than 25 years but I remember them being much more expensive and difficult. I wired it up and stuffed it in the car in an afternoon. No muss, no fuss.
Now I have a truck. I can carry stuff. Like wood for my fireplace, soil for my garden rocks for my walls and junk away from my house for my sanity.
Today we have a great and informative interview with Angie from the Marathon Training Academy podcast about running and pregnancy. I’ve been wanting to find someone to have this conversation with for years. I ran through pregnancy, but I think an actual woman runner’s insight is probably more valuable.
In fact, this interview is so well done and full of value I think it’s the gold standard. 60 Minutes called and wanted to use it for one of their segments but I told them; “Look Maury, stick to your overbearing, weighty, world problem pieces and leave the real journalism to the runners.”
In segment one I’ll talk about how core strength and core flexibility and core balance are all related but different things.
In the second section I’ll talk about how to approach hard, emotional conversations.
I’m training away every day to be ready to run Boston in about a month. I’m not in a position to race it, but I’ll go in and make the best of it. I think I might default to the ‘don’t die’ strategy that I used successfully at New York this year. I’ve got the Eastern States 20 Miler on tap two weeks from now and that will tell me what I can expect.
Thank you to all of you for your support and kind words. I don’t read or respond in the show but I do appreciate the communications. I get the feeling that you are all good and decent folks doing the best you can with what you’ve been given, fighting the good fight and making a difference in the world.
So good on ya for that, pat yourself on the back, Happy St. Patrick’s Day and On with the show.
On with the Show!
Section one – Running Tips
Core, Flexibility, Balance and Strength
https://runrunlive.com/core-flexibility-strength-balance
Voices of reason – the interviews
Angie Spencer is a registered nurse, running coach, and busy mother of
three. She has competed 30 marathons in the last seven years and has built
her fitness back to marathon shape after two pregnancies. She and her
husband Trevor co-host the Marathon Training Academy podcast where they
help runners believe that they have what it takes to run a marathon and
change their lives.
Links:
Our website
http://marathontrainingacademy.com/
Our iTunes address
https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=35920887
Section Two – Life Lessons
How to approach a hard conversation – https://runrunlive.com/having-hard-conversations
Outro
And so it is goodbye… auf widersehen… We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when…
Trying to create this episode early because I have a business trip to Denver at the end of the week. We’ll see if the gods and the fates will let me. Got a lot going on. A lot of balls in the air, which makes it hard to shift the truck!
Like I said I’m coming into the final weeks before the Boston Marathon and I’m still collecting for Team Hoyt. I’ll sweeten the offer. If you donate to my team Hoyt fund I’ll send you, not just the new MarathonBQ book, but your choice of my other two books of running stories and I’ll even give you access to the audio of them.
The MarathonBQ book is getting great reviews – all 5-stars so far – for example -> “Even runners with no personal aspirations to qualify for Boston will find this book to be incredibly inspiring, with information that would benefit anyone who is contemplating running a marathon.”
Check it out on Amazon Kindle.
And finally we’re only weeks out from the Groton Road race and remember you can run virtual this year. Just go to www.grotonroadrace.com and look under the ‘races’ link.
I sure hope you folks are enjoying your lives. I hope you’re doing something useful. There are a lot of things I see in our world that we can fix. I don’t know but maybe we can even fix them just by doing the right, good and honest thing ourselves.
Sometimes I look at projects in my life and I get discouraged because they are so big and take so much work and they involve having hard conversations with people who will pull with all their might in the direction of the muddy quagmire of the status quo. We talked about how people tend to think they can’t do things, can’t influence things and can’t make a difference.
I think you can. Even if the last 5, 10 or 100 times you tried to have the hard conversation it collapsed in a grand, smoky pile of knee jerk recriminations. It doesn’t mean it’s not a worthy effort. It doesn’t mean you’re not making a difference. Keep trying. Don’t give up. All you have is today and what you do today matters so make it count.
Look at where you are today. Prepare for that hard conversation that will change your life and then have it.
And when the dust settles I’ll see you out there.
https://www.crowdrise.com/TeamHoytBoston2015/fundraiser/christopherrussell
http://www.grotonroadrace.com/