The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-368 – Julia and the Endurance Epiphany

(Audio: link)

[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4368.mp3]

Link epi4368.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 4-368 the new summer, of the RunRunLive Podcast.

Happy 4^th of July to all my patriotic American friends.

Today we have a chat with Julia who has a great story. She had that moment in her life where she almost lost everything that led her to endurance sports. We get some many of these stories and it makes me wonder why people seem to need to get knocked up side of the head to make big changes in their lives? Maybe it’s just that we need to be shown that anything is possible.

I’m dropping this show on June 30^th. I am finishing up my 30-day 5 at 5 project where I simply got up and ran 5 miles at 5 AM every morning in the woods. I’ll give you my report out on that in one of the sections.

How are you doing? If you’re an ultra-marathoner you’re in the thick of your summer racing season. Likewise if you’re a triathlete or a biker you may be racing or training for a late summer race. If you’re one of those crazy marathon runners you probably need to start getting serious about your training plans for a fall race.

Such is the cycle of our lives.

I do love this time of year. I know many of you in Europe and in the great sun-beaten swaths of the Western US and in the densely humid jungles of the southern US, have been having some hot, hot, hot weather. But I, up here in New England have had a mild start to summer. We’ve had lots of rain and cooler temps.

The plants are happy and the little animals are thriving.

Buddy the old wonder dog ran my 5 at 5 project with me. I took him for a first loop and then went out again to get my miles. That seems to be a good fit for him and he loves the cooler weather.

How are your gardens doing? Mine was slow to get started due to the cool entrance of summer, but now my tomatoes, squash and cucumbers are coming on. My beans didn’t come up, but I was using seeds from 3-4 years ago, so no surprise really.

My berries are starting to come in and I am going to have a boatload of berries. Like I told you before I’ve got a bevy of apples on my trees as well so we might get some apples this year. How about you?

How’s your running? Your Swimming? Your biking? Your gardening?

What’s your next big race?

…

I watched a couple new movies since we last talked. The first one was John Wick 2, which I thought would be just another terrible action movie. I had low expectations. But it was good, for an action movie. They could have mailed it in and just done the typical guy with guns and cars Van Dame, Schwarzenegger, Stalone movie.

But they did more. They put in this Noir affectation that made the character less cartoonish and more likable. They did this thing with the fight scenes that included a lot of judo which was interesting. Not wire fighting like the Matrix or Bruce Lee type, but Olympic wrestling type moves.

And of course, lots of car crashes, explosions a high body count.

The other movie I watched was Trumbo. This is a sort of bio pic with Brian Cranston of Breaking Bad fame playing Dalton Trumbo.

I’ll give you a quick plot summary. Trumbo was one of the most famous, richest screen writes in Hollywood in 1947, but he also was a member of the Communist Party, which wasn’t a bad thing in 1944 when we were friends with Stalin, but was a very bad thing in 1947, as the beginning of the cold war kicked off a red scare.

Some wankers in the congress decided Hollywood was being run by communists and they were 5^th columnist set on infecting the population with their commie ideas. They proceeded to create this extra-legal body called the House UnAmerican Activities committee, with subpoena power to weed out the commies.

Now, technically, the constitution says we can believe in anything we want and the government can go suck it. But, in times of hysteria, power hungry politicians always find some boogieman to whip up that allows them to set those rules aside.

The committee subpoenaed 10, mostly screen writers, who became known as ‘the Hollywood 10’ to question. These guys thinking they had rights decided to not answer the questions, and the times being what they were, they went to jail for a couple years for contempt or obstruction or something. Trumbo was one of those.

Meanwhile, at the start of this, Hollywood banded together and tried to turn the tide and tell middle America how ridiculous all this witch hunting was. They totally over estimated their star power and totally misread the sentiment of working class Americans. Joe-sixpack didn’t have any love for these lefty, pinko, coastal elitists and wanted the commies weeded out!

Thus started the blacklist. The studio heads were basically arm twisted into committing to not employ anyone who was on the blacklist. The blacklist did what it was intended to and put people out of work and ruined or even ended their lives.

There is a great series that goes through this in detail that I would highly recommend you listen to before watching Trumbo. It’s on the “You must Remember This” podcast by Karina Longworth. She did a whole season on the blacklist.

I won’t belabor the politics in Trumbo. Sometimes when you look back on the blacklist people are incredulous that this happened. It did.

These guys were actually communists, but mostly armchair communists not Stalinist. There was a fair amount of anti-Semitism in this as well.

It’s a good move and knowing the history of the era makes it a better movie. Cranston is great.

The thing I really took away from it, more than the political parallels, was how Trumbo just kept working.

They took his job and made him persona non grata, but he just kept writing. He did what he was good at and eventually Hollywood came back around. He won two Oscars for screenplays that were attributed to other writers, in one case a made up name.

That’s the lesson here for me. Just keep your fire burning. Keep using your gift. Keep doing what you’re good at and the rest doesn’t really matter, does it?

On with the show!

…

I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported. What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to yet another Blue Apron or Hello Fresh ad. As a matter of fact, stop being lazy and go shop for your own food. We do 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

…

The RunRunLive podcast is Ad Free and listener supported. We do this by offering a membership option where members get Access to Exclusive Members Only audio and articles.

Yes, we are still working on setting up the separate podcast feed for the member’s content. Most recently I recorded and uploaded the first chapter of the zombie novel I’ve been writing for 30 years.

- Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you!
Exclusive Access to Individual Audio Segments from all Shows
- Intro’s, Outro’s, Section One running tips, Section Two life hacks and Featured Interviews – all available as stand-alone MP3’s you can download and listen to at any time.

Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com

Become a member

…

Section one – Long Run Pacing in a marathon plan – https://runrunlive.com/long-run-paces-for-marathon-training

Voices of reason – the conversation

Julia Khvasechko, LMT

Hi Chris

I don’t have a blog

I’m too busy living my life

I’ll give you some background

A bit about me

I have run 183 marathons in all 50 states twice and am half way thru round 3

I’m working on the continent, sept is AUS, aka continent #4

I completed Four 100 milers so far and many races of varying distances in between

All of this is remarkable to me since I only started running 12 years ago

But it gets better, 19 years ago I was on deaths door with an inoperable brain tumor

Also

I used to work in finance but switched careers to do what I love

Empower other runners & helping them feel good in their bodies

I pace races all over the country and own my own business, I’m a RYT, LMT, Running coach & am living the dream

Also through running I found the love of my life & got married on my course of my 50th state

There are a few articles out there about me

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XLxCfbwxB_0

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.massagemag.com/massage-therapist-sets-a-pace-at-the-new-york-city-marathon-33462/amp/

http://runningskirts.com/ambassadors/julia-khvasechko/

My best

Chris,

Many thanks for the book, I can’t wait to read it

I am so very impressed

I would also love to hear the finished product, kindly send it to me.

i am deathly shy and marathons gives me an opportunity to be social

I love pacing races and talking to people about running and one on one i’m okay but having to give a speech in front of an audience is too scary for me to even think about.

again, i’m so very honored to have been chose to be a guest on your show.

thank you for allowing me to share my story. if i can inspire one person, one person to push their limits and leave their comfort zone, then I have done my job.

I read somewhere once that you life should have meaning; so I want to become an inspiration to others so they can try to do more and become more than they are today. the most powerful weapon is the human soul on fire. and if you fire up people to run more, to run faster, to do more, then you are the true inspiration. thank you for your time and i look forward to reading your book.

my best,

Julia

…

Section two – 5 at 5 – https://runrunlive.com/5-at-5

Outro

OK my friends, have you been proposed to and married during this marathon of episode 4-368 of the RunRunLive Podcast.

Things are cooking. I’m busy. I’m working on a bunch of cool stuff.

One of the startups I’m working with in Boston is this smart garment company I told you about last time. They are going into a testing phase before they launch and are looking for runners so if you’re local and want to try some new tech and you’re training for a fall race let me know and I can introduce you. Even if you’re not local and you want to learn more I can introduce you for future stuff as they roll it out.

Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing for a fall target race. I think I’ll look for a Maine race in October or November. Maybe I’ll target MDI, I know Gary Allen, we’ve interviewed him at least twice, he’s the race director, I’ve always wanted to run that race and I need a Maine race.

I’m toying with doing a version of my own MarathonBQ plan to see if I can get some speed back. I’d have to modify it to have less volume, more cross training and more recovery days. I’d never survive it as written.

Not sue how Buddy is going to react now that we’re finishing up the 5 at 5. He may revolt. He’ll be waking me up at 5 in the morning and demanding to hit the trails! There are worse things.

Next week I’ve got a couple interviews lined up. I’ve got an Irish author who’s book I’m reading, sort of a literary mashup of Murikami and Born to Run. (Editorial note: When I throw out authors or movies or other factoids like that I usually provide a link to an explanation of just what the fine day I’m talking about in the show notes and the accompanying blog post)

I’m also talking with Tim the anxiety guy.

We’ll getone of those up for the next show or maybe I’ll pull Arnar from the smart garment company in to talk about robo-running.

I curated two old episodes up onto the members feed. Consider being a member, it keeps the lights on over here at the RunRunLive HQ. It’s fun for me to go back and listen to myself and what I was doing 5 or 6 years ago.

By the way, this episode is more than likely the 10 year anniversary of RunRunLive as a podcast. How about that? Here we are. Who would have thought it was possible? Over a million downloads later. Don’t be a stranger. Reach out and say ‘hi’. I’m entirely approachable but not so terribly interesting in person.

It’s funny how time moves around us and floats us and sometimes sinks us. Makes you think about what you are doing today and how it will change the flow of time for your tomorrows. One of my more philosophical answers that frustrates my business partners is that I don’t know what the outcome is, but I can tell you that I’m doing the things today that will put me in a position to change those outcomes.

And that’s the message for you. You can’t get off your raft that is being pushed along in the river of time. You can’t change the past. You can’t change the future. You can only choose what you do with your great personal fire, your gift today. And that can be enough to not only change your life but also change the lives of others.

It’s not set. You can do whatever you want. You just have to decide to do it.

Today I choose to talk to you. About running. And thinking. And experimenting with the fabric of the universe in my small dusty corner of it.

I’ll see you out there.