The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-340 – Becca Pizzi – 7 marathons, 7 continents, 7 days

(Audio: link)

[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4340.mp3]

Link epi4340.mp3

MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks – http://www.marathonbq.com/qualify-for-the-boston-marathon-in-14-weeks/

Hello my friends and welcome to episode 4-340 of the RunRunLive Podcast.

It’s Memorial Day Weekend this weekend in the States! It’s officially summer! Wow! I had a May to remember! I’m telling you, you will never hear me say “I’m overwhelmed” but these past weeks came close! I was back down in Atlanta this week and I caught some sort of stomach bug for a few days that sapped my energy – but this morning – Friday – I feel great!

Let me summarize my May adventures for you…

Came in Friday night from Atlanta. Was the second trip of the week having been in New Orleans earlier. Rented a car and drove up to Teresa’s graduation Saturday night for all day Sunday. Packed her up and drove back Sunday night. About 500 miles each way.

Repacked and headed out to Phoenix Monday, took Teresa with me. Had a conference at the JW Desert Inn Tuesday and Wednesday – Up at 7:00 AM east coast time, (4:00 AM local time) for calls, in the conference all day, getting my workouts in.

Meanwhile she slept late and floated around in the pool.

Grabbed a rental car Wednesday night and headed up to Flagstaff. Crashed out for the night, up early, drive up to the Canyon. Into the trail head at Bright Angel by 7:00 AM – Down to Phantom Ranch in about 3 ½ hours, turn around and push back up and out in around 8 ½ – 9 hours.

Jumped in the car and drove to Sedona for dinner and crashed. Up Friday morning for 7:00 AM east coast (4AM local time) for 3 hours of calls. Breakfast, short trail hike up Oak Creek, some yoga to loosen the creeky bodies up, shower and off again.

Sightseeing around Camp Verde and Montezuma’s Castle, an early barbeque dinner and off to the airport for a 10:30 redeye back to Boston Saturday morning.

Back on a plane Monday morning to Atlanta, suffered with a sore tummy and no energy all week.

And now it’s Memorial Day weekend! Made it! Didn’t drop too many things in the process except sleep, health most of my RunRunLive ToDo list. That’s why this show is all me! Didn’t have time to get any outside editing as I fell behind on my production schedule.

Did I mention you people are great? Did I mention I had a crazy spring?

But – as crazy as all that sounds, my life is nothing compared to what our guest today did. Becca Pizzi was the first American woman to do the 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days last year and we have a great conversation about it.

I’m going to give you the Becca interview right up front and then give you my overly-long Grand Canyon adventure summary. I’ll leave it at that because I don’t want to go over my time limit again!

Our Grand Canyon experience was pretty tough and totally cool. I’m so happy I was able to spend these days doing something interesting and worthy with my baby! We had a blast.

I’m fun to travel with because I’m a 30 year travel veteran. I have status and get treated really well. This gives me a certain chill fluidity in the chaos of the travel world. I just skate right through like a ghost, having a grand old time.

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Sometimes the universe seems to be against you. In all religions there is a universal trickster that trie to unravel your well made plans – Coyote, Loki, Shiva.

There was a lot of counter pressure that was trying to keep me from running the canyon. I had to schedule the skeleton of the trip a couple months ahead of time. I don’t know about your life but mine doesn’t lend itself to planning 2+ months out.

As soon as you put something like this on the calendar the world begins conspiring to make you regret it by coming up with far more important things that you should be doing on exactly that day.

You have to just bite the bullet, commit to something and then hold fast to the buffeting winds of circumstance.

Teresa and I had a great Father-Daughter moment. Running the canyon was a hard thing to do and that gives us that shared legacy of conquering hard things that is one of the most important aspects of an endurance sports lifestyle.

Life isn’t easy all the time. You get tired and you get knocked around. You show up and do the best you can with what you have. You try to be grateful for what you can squeeze free of the vortex of time and hold those moments and shared, sacred things close as something timeless.

On with the show.

Section one –

Voices of reason – the conversation

Becca Pizzi – 7 marathons, 7 continents, 7 days…

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/becca-pizzi-world-marathon-challenge-first-american-woman-to-complete/

Running is in my DNA. My Dad is a runner and inspired me to start running when I was a 6 years old. I ran my first race when I was 7 . I have never stopped, competing through college and running 44 marathons, including 15 Boston Marathons, qualifying for all of them and marathons in 24 USA states. I love running and share my passion with others, volunteering as a coach, coaching with Team In Training and Boston Fit, I’m a pace setter for Beast Pacing. I am an ambassador for Orange Mud trail running gear. Running permeates every aspect of my life – I’m a Mom… my daughter is seven and ran her first race in 2014. I’m a sister…my twin sisters are also accomplished runners. I’m a Bostonian…I have run 15 Boston marathons and wont ever stop. I’m a friend…I have built lifelong friendship over miles of training. I’m a business owner… I own a day care and manage an ice cream shop, both in my hometown Belmont MA!! I’m every runner…a real person that faces the challenges of everyday life, while making time for my the sport that I am so passionate about.

When I learned about the World Marathon Challenge, I immediately wanted to compete in this event in 2016. This event is 7 marathons, 7 days, 7 continents. The physical and mental demands of this race will be an awesome test of endurance. I will be the first American woman to complete the challenge and attempt to break women’s record time of 40:22:25.
The race director, Richard Donovan accepted my application and saved me a spot while I get organized!

This race and representing USA as the first American female runner to run this, means everything to me. But above all, I am doing this to inspire people!
I have the drive to complete this race, and I have the best resources in the world (cardiologist, nutritionist, coaches etc). It would be incredible to have you support me on this journey in which I have already been training for since January. I am committed to giving 200 percent. It would be my honor to represent the USA and become the first American female to run this race. Thank you to my friends who have heard me talk about this race for countless hours and to Joe and my family, this would not be possible without your support. Im truly very lucky to have so much love in my life. This is for my daughter Taylor told me I can so this, so it must be true.

View my complete profile

Section two

Grand Canyon- In and Out in a Day – https://runrunlive.com/grand-canyon-in-and-out-in-a-day

Outro

Well my friends that’s it – you may have been listening to 7 podcasts in 7 days on 7 continents but you have finished episode 4-340 of the RunRunLive Podcast.

It’s getting hot up here in New England. Summer has arrived. Buddy the old wonder dog has a full thick coat of black fur and isn’t really designed for the heat. He’s not running much anymore. The girls take him for walks in the woods and I bring him for the first 20 minute loop if I’m doing a slow trail run in the woods.

He gets out on the weekends with me to run errands and visit. He gets a lot of cuddling with the girls at night when they force him to sit with them on the couch while they watch TV. But, his distance running career is pretty much over. His hips hurt him too much for the long stuff and he never liked to run in the heat.

I can still remember him running all those miles with me that summer I trained for the Vermont 50. Buddy has a big heart. He’s a good dog. I’ll have to work in some swimming trips down to the pond for him this summer.

I have to tell you that I’m pretty beat up this week. I flew down to Atlanta as scheduled on Monday but have felt awful all week. I’ve got a sore stomach for some reason and have been really low energy. Some sort of stomach bug taking advantage of my biome being weak from the antibiotics onslaught a couple weeks ago.

All of this travel and weirdness makes working out a challenge. I was in such good shape for Boston and I feel like I’ve lost a lot of that. I’m definitely not going to run the Vermont marathon on Memorial Day. I’m instead going shift my training to focus on the Spartan Race at the end of July.

I’ve been looking into it and I do believe I’m in for a ‘learning experience’. I was a wrestler in high school but it’s been a long time since I’ve been in that kind of ‘total body’ shape. The first couple workouts have been comically challenging for me as I try to do just one chin up. But, that’s why we do these things, to learn something new and to be challenged.

I’ve been doing some research on the obstacles in the race and I think I can simulate some of them. There’s a lot of climbing, carrying, crawling and even some throwing. And hundreds of burpees – which we used to call squat thrusts. It’s like boot camp. Should be fun.

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I’m burnt out. With the travel, the pneumonia, the canyon and now some sort of stomach bug I’m feeling like I need to lay down for a couple days. But, I won’t. These kind of challenges are part of life. They are temporary setbacks. It’s important to position them in your plans as temporary setbacks.

There are small setbacks like these and big setbacks. You can’t use them as excuses to turn away from your course. The danger when you give in to setbacks is that it permanently changes your path. When you let those setbacks dictate to you what you can do it changes your velocity and your direction.

There are always going to be setbacks and challenges and they are always going to be poorly timed, inconvenient and unwanted. You have to accept that they are part of life. You keep moving and do what you can to recover and continue on your path. That’s grit, when you keep going even when it sucks.

If you keep moving, keep pushing, hold your course eventually the universe will bend back around to meet you in success.

So keep pushing – and I’ll see you out there.