The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-354 – Thor Kirleis – UltraRunner Vs Lyme Disease

(Audio: link)

[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4354.mp3]

Link epi4354.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 4-354 of the RunRunLive Podcast. How’s everyone doing? We got our first snow on the ground up here in New England this week. It’s been a mild winter so far.

In today’s show we have a good long chat with my old buddy Thor about his experience with Lyme Disease. This is part of my series on athletes who have been challenged and have had to reconsider the role of running in their lives.

In section one I’m going to drop a piece on selecting a HR monitoring device (based on a listener question) and in Section two I’m going to share some timeless wisdom by Peter Drucker.

This past Sunday I raced the Mill Cities Relay. They gave me the ‘long leg’ of 9.5 miles and I was on a solid male senior team with 4 other guys from my club.

I’ll talk more about that race in the outro, but I’m running well and everything is cool with my training. I’m looking forward to the spring season.

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When you join me for my call with Thor today I want you to listen to his attitude. He’s super positive about life even when this insidious disease is tearing at him. His positive attitude is infectious, (horrible word-play unintended).

When I ask him how he coped he just stayed positive. That’s the lesson here. The things that impact your life have no meaning other than that which you give them. You can either ‘feed the good dog or feed the mean dog’ as the old story goes.

So stay positive. Be that infectious force for those around you. You deserve it and they deserve it too.

On with the show!

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Section one –

Heart Rate Training Devices – https://runrunlive.com/heart-rate-training-devices

Voices of reason – the conversation

Thor Kirleis – UltraRunner Vs Lyme Disease

From Thor on 12/7/2016 –

“This morning’s run, a 3.2 mile plod of really slow loop, marked 13 years of covering at least a mile on foot each and every day. I used to say that it is my Streak Running anniversary, and it used to be through 12 years, but illness robbed me the ability to run for long stretches of days between then and now, though it never dragged me so low that I could not complete a mile even if walking (though I did come close two or three or four times to not making even a mile). So while I am now back to running, still with some challenges related to illness, I’m still motivated to celebrate my health (ironic, huh?) with a mile a day (I say even more fitting). This will be the last time that I explain how my streak isn’t any longer official, because to me it was never meant to be “official”, as in qualifying for this list or that list or anything other than me celebrating each and every day my health and ability to prance and play, and now sometimes walk… for 13 years!”

Section two

5 Prctices of effective executives – https://runrunlive.com/the-5-practices-of-effective-executives

Outro

All-Righty-Then, you and I have battled off a host of nasty internal pathogens to the end of episode 4-354 of the RunRunLive podcast. How about that?

Like I said in the intro I raced last weekend. The long leg is leg 4 out of 5 and it’s a quite doable flat to downhill course along the Merrrimack River. The challenges are sometimes the weather is dicey in December (there can be a head wind at the end) and you don’t get much of a chne to warm up.

The leg before the 9.5 is the short 2.5 leg, so you’re basically driving to the exchange, jumping out of the car and racing. My old body does better with a thorough warm up these days, especially on cold weather days.

I went out fast. We had a rival club team with a 3 minute head start on us that I could potentially catch if everything went well. I laid down the first 3 miles at a sub-7 pace, but I wasn’t feeling it. I felt heavy.

I have been letting the diet slip since Portland and I think it caught up with me. I ended up averaging somewhere between 7:15’s and 7:20’s which, given where I’ve been over the last 5 years, I’m thrilled with. My HR was great but my legs were heavy and I wasn’t running clean. I was sore from the effort. I whined to coach and he said I’m racing too much. But that’s what he always says!

My Heart is strong and my aerobic base is huge so I’m feeling pretty good about the spring season. I can always fix my diet and if I can stay healthy I should be able to get some good performances!

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I was drove into my old office in Burlington last week. It’s behind the mall. Anyone who knows anything about American culture knows that the malls do 85% of their business in the short time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

My usual route when I’m coming off the highway, is to cut through the mall to ‘cut the corner’ on the turnpike and save a few stoplights and a little time. This time of year, even in the middle of the day the mall is busy. The parking lot is full. There are people, cars and general holiday freneticism.

I rounded a corner by the old Sears store in my truck and saw a woman pushing a stroller crossing the road. It’s a tight corner so I surprised her. There was never any danger of me hitting her, because I saw her, and I’m not driving recklessly, but she is in that no-woman’s-land of the crossing. You know – Less than half way across. Too far to turn back. Forward momentum into the middle of the street.

I can see that combination of fear and anger on her face. She’s doing the Newtonian physics in her head when she sees my truck come around the corner. She sees the very small chance that I might be checking my email or twiddling with the radio and she is going to have to sprint for the curb or die.

But there’s more to that look. There’s the harried nature of the young mother’s life. She’s got a million errands to run and has to drag the kid with her. She’s probably already well behind schedule on her mental check list.

I brake to a stop and wave her across.

As she bustles by I notice the stroller. In it is a child, maybe 2 years old, all bundled up against the cold. He’s wearing a bear hat with bear ears. He’s got the biggest smile on his face. Like riding around in the stroller in his bear hat on, on a cold, gray, November day is the coolest adventure ever!

Watching them cross, the mom probably wasn’t havening a great day, but, the kid was having a fantastic time.

Maybe he didn’t know he was supposed to be miserable? Which attitude are you going to have during these holidays?

I’ll see you out there.