Intro: By Phil Moneypenny
Email: P.Moneypenny@mac.com
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Intro
Today I’m going to interview a good friend of mine Chris Shaffer. Chris is a great runner, a teacher, a high school running coach and a new dad. He’s also an Ironman triathlete and he and I have had the good fortune to spend a bunch of time out on the road together – although he’s way faster than I am when he puts his mind to it.
But in all those miles with Chris I did stop talking long enough to tease out some of the details of his life and I think he’s a great example of ordinary people doing extraordinary things and a good example for all of us.
Chris was what’s known in track circles as a ‘thrower’ in school. He did the bulky muscled things like shot put and discus.
He had some health challenges and retooled his body to become and endurance athlete. Recently Chris and his wife decided to step out of the rat race in Massachusetts and move to Vermont. They left their jobs here and built their own house in Vermont. Chris is now a science teacher and coach for the local school.
I hope you enjoy talking with Chris – he’s the type of solid guy that I wish I could be.
I’m also going to throw in a audio of a story from my first book “the mid-packer’s lament” that a wrote after I first started running with my dog Buddy (before he was ‘the wonder dog’) Hope you enjoy it. You can see my books on my website www.runrunlive.com – and you can find the “Running with Buddy” stand-alone audio there as well.
I set up a forum module on my site this week and you can go there to post anything you want – but especially post your entries to win one of the 5 pairs of Patagonia release trail shoes I’m giving away thanks to Vibram.
Running with Buddy
Interview with Chris,
Outro –
Sorry – that’s it. Your runs almost over. I’ve run out of salient material to throw at you. And the sun sets on another RunRunLive Podcast or Run-Run-LIVE as my British friends insist on saying.
I appreciate the opportunity to share these moments of the shifting sands of our lives together. I hope we added value.’
I continue to be busy, hope you are too. You know you don’t HAVE to work, you GET to work. So smile – it’s amazing how much it makes people uneasy when you’re able to smile in those tough times at work. You’re a runner, an endurance athlete – just push on through, keep moving forward and when all else fails – smile!
I’ve got some good interviews queued up. I’m going to talk with the Vibram guys. I‘ve got my eye on another inspirational speaker too – I like those – even if they don’t have anything to do with running.
I’m still training like a maniac for the Wilderness 101 mtn bike ultra. I’m trying to keep enough running miles up so I can be ready for the New England Ragnar ultra with the twitter team. That will translate to 40-60 hard New England miles over 2 days – which will be a test. I’m Thinking of doing some triple days to prepare – run in the morning, run at lunch and then run at night…we’ll see.
I’m still kinda –sorta doing the 100 pushups 200 situps program. I got stuck at day 4 in the Push up program so I’m just doing day 4 until It gets easy. Day 4 is still 60 pushups!
I stopped the squats because my knees were starting to ache with all the mtn biking, trail running and the squats at the same time. See I listen to my body. Which is an excellent point. You may think I’m some crazy obsessive runner type and yeah I do love training and throwing myself into big physical challenges, but because of all the time I’ve spent on the trail and the road I’m very attuned to my body’s signals and I know when I’m at risk and adjust accordingly. I pay attention to the indicator lights.
I try to keep a certain fitness level so that It’s not too much of a reach when I go for a new event. I’m betting that the fitness from the MTN bike ultra is going to bleed over into the Ragnar and the Ragnar will bleed over into my fall marathons.
I was listening to SteveRunner today on my run with Buddy and boy is he getting serious these days! He was diatribing about purpose. Sometimes I don’t know what my purpose is. Sometimes I think our most noble purpose is just to keep moving forward and to keep attempting things that other people say are impossible, and crazy. I think that is a unique strength that runners and endurance athletes have.
Write this down – and tape it to your desk – “I can do anything, I am not afraid”… That’s what it’s all about.
Music tonight is 9thstreet_shakedown-get_drunk_and_shake_demo.mp3