The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-309 – Bryan Lyons on Pushing Rick in 2015
(Audio: link)
[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4310.mp3]
Link epi4310.mp3
Intro Bumper:
https://www.crowdrise.com/TeamHoytBoston2015/fundraiser/christopherrussell
Hello my friends, this is Chris your host and this is the RunRunLive Podcast episode 4-310. Welcome. We are in our final days of taper leading into the Boston Marathon. I’m ready. I’m right on my target race weight, I’m strong in the legs and I’ve done it a few times before.
I’m starting from the back this year in the last charity corral. It will take me awhile to get to the starting line and it will be crowded. Looks like we’re getting decent weather, cool and rainy. That’s actually my favorite racing weather.
One of my friends from the running club is getting a limo to take a bunch of us out to Hopkinton on Monday morning. There’s no checked bags from Hopkinton anymore so we’ll have to navigate the cool, wet weather on the morning with some throw away stuff. There will be a wind. I don’t know yet if it’s a head wind on not but as far back in the pack as I am there’s lots of shelter if you know what I mean.
I don’t know if I’ll be carrying my phone or not. I’d love to be unplugged but I don’t know how to get it into Boston otherwise without being separated from it for a day. It turns out this new iPhone6 fits perfectly into one of those ½ size snack baggies and you can use the phone through the plastic.
Today we have the great privilege to speak with Bryon Lyons who is taking over for Dick Hoyt in Pushing Rick this year. It’s a long one, but’s that’s ok. I think we cover some good ground.
In the first section I’m going to muse on this year’s Boston from my perspective, as is my annual tradition.
In the second section we’ll talk about how to use an external brain to get important stuff done.
I’m good to go for Monday. I have a red Team Hoyt singlet that I’ll probably put a long sleeve shirt on underneath because of the weather. It’s also got some rough bits that I’d like to keep off my nipples!
I still need to swing by Whole Foods and pick up some Hammer Gels for the race. I tried to cook up my own energy gels from organic peanut butter and cocoa powder but it was a disaster. It was like when you give a dog a spoonful of peanut butter and their mouth gets all stuck. I’ll have to keep working on that. Damn near choked me to death on my last couple long runs.
We might go long today, but I’ll keep my comments short.
On with the Show!
Section one – Running Tips
Tapering into Boston
https://runrunlive.com/boston-taper-time
Voices of reason – the interviews
Bryan Lyons
From Runners World
“Team Hoyt Racing at Boston With a Different Look
For the first time since 1980, Dick Hoyt won’t run behind his son. But Bryan Lyons, a longtime supporter and runner, takes up the cause.
By Liam Boylan-Pett;
April 9, 2015
Rick and Dick Hoyt with Bryan Lyons
Bryan Lyons (left, bib number 33864) at the 2014 Boston Marathon with Dick and Rick Hoyt.
In 2014, Dick Hoyt completed the Boston Marathon for the 32nd time—each year pushing his son Rick, who’s a spastic quadriplegic with cerebral palsy, in a custom-racing wheelchair. After last year’s race, Dick wanted to retire. Rick, however, wanted to cover the 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Boston again.
He’s going to—this year with a new running partner. Dr. Bryan Lyons, a dentist in Billerica, Massachusetts, and a family friend of the Hoyts, will push Rick in the 119th running of Boston.
“It was sort of shocking for [Dick] to ask me,” Lyons told the Lowell Sun. “My friends told me [the Hoyts] don’t want the big name, they want the big heart. If that’s the least that I can provide, I’m happy.”
This will be the seventh Boston Marathon for Lyons, 44, who has run for the Hoyt Foundation marathon team since 2008, with a best of 4:15:29, which he ran in 2010.
Lyons does have some experience running with Rick, 53. Since January, the two have completed a few shorter local road races and gone on training runs together, according to the Lowell Sun. If Rick isn’t available, Lyons puts sandbags into the wheelchair to simulate his weight.
Although Dick Hoyt, 74, won’t be running, he won’t absent from the marathon. He’s the race’s grand marshal, and will ride in a pace car ahead of the lead runners.
The Hoyt’s story, chronicled by Runner’s World in 2007, has inspired many. Since 1977 when Rick asked Dick to push him through a 5-mile race, the father-son duo has completed more than 1,100 races, including Ironman triathlons.
“Dick will continue to be at the head of the field, leading 30,000 runners on their trek to Boston,” Tom Grilk, Executive Director of the Boston Athletic Association, said in a press release. “Dick and Rick Hoyt will forever be synonymous with the Boston Marathon and the sport of running.”
Now, Lyons’ name will be attached, too. Once Dick decided not to run, Lyons was an easy choice for the Hoyts.
“Bryan will be out there, and he’ll do his best, we know that,” Dick Hoyt told the Lowell Sun. “He’s a great athlete, a great person, and the type of person that we want to be pushing Rick. And Rick wants Bryan to be the one to do it.”
Section Two – Life Lessons
Using an External Brain –
https://runrunlive.com/the-power-of-the-external-brain
Outro
That’s it my friends. Episode 4-310 in the can. We’ll see what happens over the weekend. I may do a race report or not. It’s a lot of work to write something that I am proud of. You don’t really know the appropriate theme until the race has been run, so you can’t prepare that much.
I’ve got the Groton Road Race coming up on the 26th and we’ve still got shirts if you want to register. We’d love to have you. Then I’m going in to get my heart fixed. Then…it will be summer time and the living will be easy.
I was out in California this past week. I flew out Saturday and came back on the redeye Tuesday night. I was in Huntington Beach. You may or may not know that Huntington Beach is known as Surf City USA. This is one of the centers of the surfing culture from Southern California.
There are surf shops and beach cruiser bikes and classic cars cruising in circles. It’s a surfer vibe.
Sunday I was wandering around the resort, killing some time before dinner and ended up going into a surf shop, where they sell shirts, baggy shorts and flip flops to the tourists. There were a couple young guys lounging behind the counter. They were your surfer dude types. Being me, I figured I’d chat them up.
I say “You guys look tired and bored.”
To which the one guy replies, “Yeah, we’re the surf instructors but they make us work in here.”
And the other dude says, “Yeah, man, Long night, ya know?”
I nod, as if I can commiserate.
He thinks I don’t understand. “I was up all night man, you know those Spanish girls…”
I try to act like that’s something I can relate to as I stand there in my business suit and mid-life crisis look.
He still thinks I don’t get it and says, “Ya know, man? The 6-2?”
I agree and move on, wondering what the hell ‘the 6-2’ means.
I tell the story to the guys I’m with and we come up with all sorts of theories around body type ratios and start-stop times. We Google it but the urban dictionary, while having some fairly unsettling definitions, doesn’t quite fit.
We spend the next couple days asking people and not getting any good answers. I go back to the shop but the dudes aren’t working.
At dinner that night I can see that the busboy is clearly a surfer dude cut from the same cloth. I call him over and tell him my story in a conspiratorial and hushed way, finishing with the big question. “What does ‘the 6-2’ mean?
He says “Well bro, it’s kinda hard to explain…”
I say “Just give it your best shot…”
He continues. “Well it just mean he was tappin that shit all night long…”
The mystery was solved. That’s all it meant. There were not ratios or timing or measurements involved.
Now you know. You’ve got early access to some surf slang. I can see the ultra runners using this one. How was the middle 50 miles? “It was the 6-2, bro, all trail, all night…”
With that I will leave you to your own adventures. Don’t wait. Step put the door and do it today. There will never be a good or convenient time to do epic stuff.
Enjoy your race.
I’ll see you out there.
https://www.crowdrise.com/TeamHoytBoston2015/fundraiser/christopherrussell
http://www.grotonroadrace.com/