The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-356 – Talking Communities with Kevin Gwin of the Extra Mile

(Audio: link)

[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4356.mp3]

Link epi4356.mp3

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

Hey there! It’s a new year! I know we lost a lot of celebrities in 2016, but you and I made it, right?

So welcome to a new year. And welcome to the extra-mile edition of the RunRunLive Podcast. That’s right I grabbed our friend Kevin Gwin away from his Beatles albums and Galloway chatter to talk to me about communities of runners and how the world has changed since we started doing this a decade ago.

How was your 2016? Glass half-full or tank half-empty? I’m going to quote my favorite race ‘A’ goal. “I didn’t die!” The rest is gravy I guess!

Let’s see what I can remember…

I think we started the year running the Hangover Classic 10k on January first and jumping in the ocean. Then in January didn’t trundle the wife off to Phoenix for a quick vacation that included the Rock ‘n Roll Marathon and a bunch of cool sight-seeing?

Did I not run a bunch of the local races leading up to Boston? Like Derry and Stu’s and Eastern States? Did I not Have a great training cycle? The best in 5 years right?

Then we ran Boston and learned that lesson about going out too fast that somehow never gets learned. But, we checked off our 18^th Boston, didn’t die and raised some coin for the Hoyts.

Do I seem to remember capping off 10 years of Race Directorship of the Groton Road Race? The race and the club managed to survive my term and handed it off to someone even more capable!

There might have been a couple weeks in May where all that caught up with me and I slowed down with a small case of pneumonia, but you can’t get rainbows without rain.

I jumped out of that rough patch by running the Grand Canyon with my newly graduated Daughter. How cool is that for a bucket list checkoff?

The summer was a bit doldrum filled, but I capped it off with another nice vacation to Chicago, yes I did see a Cubs Game in Wrigley Field. Apparently my good karma rubbed off on those fellows later in the year.

I shook off the heat and placed in that trail marathon in Indy. I returned to my old friend the Wapack Trail for a long outing in the rocks on Labor Day.

Then I turned around and spanked that Spartan Beast a couple weeks later, making a fair amount of young people cry.

Somewhere in there I lost 15 pounds and showed up for the Portland Marathon lean and light. I got lucky with the weather and requalified.

I joined my club for the Ayer 5k tradition on Thanksgiving and our end-of-season shindig at the Mill Cities Relay.

This past Saturday I ran the 4^th edition of my very own made up marathon and I’ll tell you about that later.

Goodreads tells me I read 27 books. I know I wrote at least 52 articles. I pushed out 26 podcasts.

I trained almost every day.

Pretty good year, right? Was it perfect? Was it filled with challenges and accidents and side turns? Of course, it was. If everything is smooth sailing and your life isn’t filled with challenges you’re not living, you’re waiting to die.

I don’t know if any of that stuff would be considered worthy, or good or bad. I try very hard not to waste time keeping score.

It’s simpler. Get up and do stuff. Do what you can do. I have a sign by y desk that reminds me that consistency and practice are a reasonable substitute for genius, it says; “Work the Process.”

Anyway, today we talk with Kevin. In section one I’ll talk a bit about breathing. I was thinking about this topic this week and wanted to poke at it a bit. In section two I’ll probably pull some more nuggets out of the Drucker book I’ve just finished. (that would count as number one for 2017, if I was keeping score!)

…

BeforeI let you go I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported. We have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to member’s only audio.

I’ll also remind you that I have started raising money for team Hoyt for my 2017 Boston Marathon. I would appreciate any help you can give. The fundraiser is on Crowdrise (so I don’t have to touch any of the money) it goes straight to the Hoyts and supports acquiring equipment and supporting others who want to participate like the Hoyts do.

https://www.crowdrise.com/teamhoytboston2017/fundraiser/christopherrussell

My family and I go over to my Mom’s for Christmas Eve. I was driving around in the truck with Buddy doing errands on Saturday and she called me to see what time I was planning to come. I asked her who else was coming, because I had some nieces and nephews I was trying to get presents to.

And she must have thought I was qualifying the gathering because she said “It’s not the number of people who show up, Chris, it’s the quality of the people who show up.”

There ya go.

Happy New Year.

On with the show.

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Section one –

Breathing – https://runrunlive.com/breathing-for-endurance

Voices of reason – the conversation

Kevin Gwin from the ExtraMile Podcast

http://theextramilepodcast.blogspot.com/p/about.html

http://gallowayextramile.blogspot.com/

The Extra Mile Podcast is a podcast for runners of all abilities from any part of the globe.

In this podcast we encourage runners, no matter what their ability, to get in touch and send us their audio updates to tell us about their training, their races, or even if they’ve just taken up running. We welcome everyone in to our online community.

Some runners choose to record themselves out on a run, whilst others like to record in the comfort of their own home. Whichever suits you, why not record us a message and let us know how your running is going? You can use your computer, your MP3 player or any type of audio digital recording device to record something and email it in to us, we really would love to hear from you.

This podcast is listened to by many runners around the globe who often take the show out on their training runs and just love to hear about how other runners are doing – a bit like having a group virtual running buddies to keep them company.

Thanks for visiting the site and we hope you’ll add your voice to our growing global community of runners on the Extra Mile Podcast!

The Extra Mile Podcast-GALLOWAY EDITION is a podcast for runners of ALLabilities who want to learn everything they can about theGalloway RUN/WALK/RUNtraining method right from Jeff ! This podcast will Run/Walk you right through Jeff’s 30 week marathon training schedule and gently get you to the finish line of your fall marathon “INJURYFREE”!!!

Section two

The Effective Executive – https://runrunlive.com/the-effective-executive-peter-e-drucker

Outro

Alrighty my friends. New year, new lease on life, right? Blank slate for us. You my friend have diaphragmatically breathed your way through the end of Episode 4-356 of the RunRunLive podcast.

Strange cadence to the holidays this year. It seems like everyone disappeared for 2 weeks on the business side. I was trying to make calls and I couldn’t get a response out of anyone. Now this week they are all emerging from the woodwork with a corresponding urgency!

As of Monday I’m back on my clean eating wagon. It feels good. My goal is to see if I can get down to 165 pounds for the Boston marathon. It’s ironic that the government BMI tables have always told me I should be between 155 and 165 for my height. I always thought that was bull. At that weight I’m going to be somewhere in the 6-7% body fat. Should be able to see some of those ab muscles I’ve never seen!

I’m healthy and my training is going well. Coach has me in the build-2 stage, which means I’ll start ramping up the volume and working in some intensity.

I did one last idiotic thing to close out the year, well, actually two things.

I hosted the 4^th annual Groton Marathon. We made it more official this year. We set up the clock and had people ‘register’. We got some blank buttons with the club logo on them. I Left a piece of notebook paper on the tailgate of my truck and had people sign in their name, distance and make up a bib number.

The official bibs were the buttons. I gave them a sharpie to write their numbers on the button. Of course, given the geekiness of runners I didn’t just get numbers. I got two pi’s, a mu, a natural logarithm and a tally mark five. Then I had them write down their finishing time when they were done. So we could get results. I handed out handmade holiday ornaments as medals.

I got about 24 people to come out and run various differences. The ½ was very popular. Two other guys joined me for the full. Given the shape I was in it was probably about 4-6 miles more than I should have been running – but we got it done, finishing up around 4:09. It hovered just below freezing for the whole day.

I guess the lesson here is you don’t need to be a $150 Rock n Roll event to get out and have fun with your buddies.

Because of the odd way the holidays fell, the Hangover Classic was the next day. I ran the 5K with Teresa and we all jumped in the Atlantic, as is our tradition. It was interesting running the day after a marathon. I just stretched out and let my legs do what they wanted.

I survived. Now I’m back on the plan and ramping up for Boston. It’s good to have a compass point to steer towards.

On a different note, Buddy the old Wonder dog is doing ok. He can’t run much anymore because his his back hips are very weak now. He’s not in any pain, he just has trouble getting up and down. He still climbs the stairs and jumps up in the bed. He’s still perfectly mobile, but I think his running days are over.

He’s started his new career as a lap dog to keep the girls warm at night. Not a bad gig.

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We had a warm day with rain this week and it washed most of the snow and ice from the trails. I was able to get out for a run.

Out behind the pond I found a cell phone in the ground. I brought it home. It was a droid in an Otter case and it still had a charge on it. It was locked so I couldn’t tell whose it was. I brought it home and put it on the charge. It rang a couple times, but I couldn’t get to it in time. I ended up dropping it at the police station. I hope the owner thinks to call down there. I feel like I should put a sign up on the trail that says “I found your cell phone and left it with the Police.”

I also tried to give blood. Funny story. The Red Cross were sending me desperate emails. I tried to make an appointment on their website, but my experience is that making an appointment really has no impact on the process. It’s not the most organized process.

Of course the lady is taking my HR and I tell her it’s going to be low, but she enters it and the system flags it, and she has to call a doctor to get it overridden. Crazy right? I sometimes feel like we get penalized for being healthy.

Then they hook me up, she can’t find a vein, because, I guess I ‘m a bit grissley. She fishes around, calls the other guy over, he fishes around, they finally find some blood flow and get me going. Couple minutes later the next person wanders by and notices that I’ve dried up. She fishes around for awhile, then they give up. They unhook me and I’m done.

That’s it. They don’t get a bag of blood. I get a bottle of water, a t-shirt, a Dunkies gift card and a bruise. So, I’m not complaining but there’s an hour and a half of my life I think we could make better use of!

Anybody else have this challenge? Seems like a process that could use a bit of effectiveness consulting, eh?

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So my friends. Here we are in 2017. Ten years in. Remember when you were a kid and 10 years seemed like such a long wait? Now it’s the blink of an eye.

It’s up to you to slow it down. You have to grab time by the tail and hold on tight, or as Ferrris said, you might miss it.

We tend to get caught up and tied up by all the things undone, piled up and leering at us. I think you have to actively counter that. Especially in these early days of the calendar when we’re all thinking about goals and list and priorities.

I leave you with one of the sentiments from my daily practice.

Focus on executing today, living now, being present in today’s tasks and let the outcomes take care of themselves.

And..

I’ll see you out there in a healthy, prosperous and joy filled 2017.