The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-378 – End of Season Contemplation with my Coach
(Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4378.mp3]
Link epi4378.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, and welcome to the RunRunLive Podcast episode 4-378, This is your dear friend Chris. How is everything going? I’m trying very hard to get back on my publishing schedule. To get back in balance. Not just because I believe consistency is a big part of quality in the product you consume here.
I do appreciate your attention and I’m grossly aware of my duty!
I also need to keep writing to keep my own creative furnace fueled – which is why I started doing this in the first place – partly to help people, and myself, become better versions of themselves by sharing some of the tribal knowledge I’ve accumulated over the eons that I’ve been a practicing amateur endurance athlete. But also to keep my communication skills tuned up – writing as well as reading this copy to you with as much gusto as I can recruit!
Well maybe not gusto, but at least enviable sincerity.
Today we catch up with my coach, Jeff. He and I talk through the ups and downs of my 2017 training season. I like to use myself as a test subject to see what worked and what didn’t.
It’s always important to look back at your training, your successes and your failures, to see if you can learn anything. You’re never too old to learn.
We talked for a long time. I’m going to edit it down to a reasonable size, but I’ll post the raw interview on the members feed.
In Section One we will talk about over-training. How to realize when you’re getting over-trained, what the symptoms are and how to avoid it.
In Section Two I’ll tell you 10 things you don’t know about me. Like one of those Facebook posts.
It’s cold up here in New England now. We are in full on Winter. We’ve had some good snow to make everything festive. It’s below zero Fahrenheit this week.
More importantly how is Buddy the old wonder dog? Well, he just turned 14 years old. Which is pretty damn old for a border collie. He’s and old man! His hips don’t work so well and he’s deaf but he’s still mentally sharp.
He gets skinnier every day. Skinny old man. The kids dress him in sweaters this time of year. They use him as a blanket to stay warm when they’re watching TV. He is very warm. He is well loved.
He barks a lot. Just like an old man, he wants to be heard and doesn’t have time for niceties. He’ll stand in the front yard and bark at the woods at night. Picture it as a 98 year old man in his underwear yelling at the coyotes to stay off his lawn.
“…when I was a boy… we had real coyotes, not these namby pamby city coyotes they got now…”
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I ran out of podcasts to listen to last week. I’ve been changing phones a lot and have lost some of the regular ones I used to listen to. Some house cleaning and some pruning. Podcasts come and go. It’s an industry now and the old amateurs like myself are the anomaly.
I opened the app and was looking around and went to see what Steve was doing over at Phedippidations. The app sorted with oldest first, and I downloaded a couple of his marathon race reports from 2005. The BayState Marathon and the Cape Cod Marathon.
Steve did a great job with those old podcasts. Compelling and interesting stuff. Really well produced. Entertaining. You can hear how much in love he is with his training and racing and the newness of the sport and the community.
If you listen to the Baystate race episode you’ll hear my buddy Frank calling out Steve’s name at one of the first water stops, the one with the rock music playing. That’s the same Frank who ironically qualified at Baystate with me a few weeks ago. I wasn’t at the water stop in 2005. I was running the race. I think I ran both those races and came up short in both. I think that year I ran a race in Maryland around Thanksgiving to finally get my qualification.
That was a year and a half before I started podcasting but I would have been in the process of publishing my first book of running stories, The Mid-Packer’s Lament, (which is still available on Amazon).
I love that about the podcasting thing. Being able to capture a moment of time. Being able to freeze the river of time and that person you were. It’s a slice of self-awareness. That Steve didn’t know what the future would hold. That Chris didn’t know either. In our hopeful narratives we saw that moment as a waypoint on an upward slope into the future.
I think the one important take away for me is to understand that today, this race, this fitness, this Chris is a unique thing and may very well be as good as it gets.
Think about that. How would you run your race? How would you live your life if today was as good as it gets?
Seize the day. Savor that day. Today is all you have. The past is a old movie spinning sepia images across time. The future is nobody’s business. Today is your day. Use it. Enjoy it.
On with the show.
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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 me trying to sound sincere about Stamps.com or Audible.. (although, fyi, my MarathonBQ book is on audible) 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. There are book reviews, odd philosophical thoughts, zombie stories and I curate old episodes for you to listen to. I recently added that guy who cut off is foot so he could keep training and my first call with Geoff Galloway. “Curated” means I add some introductory comments and edit them up a bit. So anyhow – become a member so I can keep paying my bills.
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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.
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- Member only race reports, essays and other bits just for you!
Links are in the show notes and at RunRunLive.com
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Section one – The Symptoms of over-training – https://runrunlive.com/over-training-symptoms
Voices of reason – the conversation
Coach Jeff Kline
“Coach” as he is referred to by athletes has been training runners and triathletes globally for 20 years. The Coach is the founder and designer of Daily Fit Book. Although he is fully committed to the development and growth of DFB he will take on athletes of all levels that show a commitment and a strong desire to achieve new dreams and goals.
https://www.facebook.com/DailyFit22/
@dailyfitbook (twitter)
fitbook2 (instagram)
Section two – 10 things about me – https://runrunlive.com/a-little-bit-of-navel-gazing
Outro
Ok my friends you have wound down your training season to the end of 2017 and to the end of episode 4-378 of the RunRunLive Podcast. Well done.
What have we got going in the new year? Actually, big things!
I decided I needed to set myself up with a running goal that was a challenge. I signed up for the Burning River 100 in July and will chronicle my training for the race. Yeah, I know I said I’d never do it, but you hear in my conversation with coach that turning point.
Why not? I’ve done a lot of stuff in my life but I don’t have a belt buckle. And, there’s a good chance I’ll fail spectacularly either in my training or in the race itself. If so are going to set BHAGs you have to have a good chance of failure. That failure is the stuff that teaches you and forces you out of your comfort zone and forces you to grow.
So, calling all my ultra friends, I’m going to need advice, support and pacers! Here’s your chance VeganRunningMom, DirtDawg, Cooker, Leadfoot and all the others. Once in a lifetime opportunity to watch Chris Maddog Russell cry like a baby and soli himself.
In addition to this I’ll be running my 20th Boston marathon. And, yes, I am qualified. We’ll have to schedule something fun for that.
Oh, and I committed to finishing my zombie novel.
There are some personal and professional goals that you don’t care about that I’ll be chasing as well. 2018 is going to be epic! (one way or the other)
But, that’s all in the future. I’ll be wrapping up my 2017 season with the Groton Marathon. I’ve got 5 folks who said they were running with me. We’ll see who shows up because it’s going to be single-digit cold. But, you know my theory…If you do something truly stupid people will show up.
On the first of the year I’ll run the Hangover Classic with Teresa and then jump into the Atlantic Ocean, because that’s what you do, right?
And last but not least, I’m kicking off a 30 day Diet reboot on January first with my nutrition coach Rachel. I’ll be logging my food and stats and blogging about it every day. I’ll catch up with Rachel each week to review progress. I’ll probably record those weekly chats and put them up on the podcast feed. I thought it would be useful for people to hear my/our point of view on clean eating for endurance athletes.
Think that’s enough? Another one of my theories is when you have too much to do, schedule more stuff and it will sort itself out!
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I’ve been listening to a meditation podcast on the train in the morning called the Meditation Minis podcast. Episode 2 is about using meditation to clarify your vision, i.e figure out what you want to do. This is a great exercise to create goals for the new year.
She walks you into a meditative state. Then brings you into the future so that you are looking back on your life. And asks the simple question “What are three things that you wish you had done?”
I found that context very helpful to sort out the things I’m working on and what is important and what will make a difference.
Try it. Don’t put off your dreams. Put them down on paper and find a way to get them done in 2018.
And I’ll see you out there.
MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks – http://www.marathonbq.com/qualify-for-the-boston-marathon-in-14-weeks/