The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-386 – Pat runs Boston
(Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4386.mp3]
Link epi4386.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 4-386. This is Chris, your host. How are we doing on the fine spring day? I love May. Don’t’ you? Up here in New England it’s a time of rebirth. The trees and bushes go from brown to green in the span of a few days like one of those slow motion nature videos.
We are close by the summer solstice. We get back all those long dark winter days. The sunrise today is 5:19 AM and the sunset is 8:02. Plenty of time to get stuff done! It’s still cool in the mornings and hasn’t gotten hot yet during the days. This is the week after Mother’s Day when those of us who have read the farmer’s almanac start planting our gardens, and those of us who are over enthusiastic have to replant what they killed by planting it two weeks ago!
Today I have an interview with Pat who is from Calgary and ran his first Boston this year in the epic weather. In section one I’ll give you a write up of the trail race I ran last weekend. And in section two a quick book report on the second book in the Takeshi Kovacs series. A real grab-bag of topics.
You might ask, Chris it seems like you’re just stuffing random topics into a show to make a deadline. And I would answer no, I’m embracing a random universe, I’m satisfying the souls of the renaissance woman and men who are endurance athletes and well… a deadline is a deadline!
My training for my first hundred miler is going as well as can be expected. I topped out a couple 50+ mile trail weeks and now I’m in a recovery week to get the benefit. With the long days I can go out in the morning in the forest behind my house. I can be back before most people are even up!
It’s beautiful out there. The trails are drying up nicely. I take Buddy the elderly wonder dog with me for the first 2-mile loop and he loves it. He’s a trooper. In the morning it’s cool and the bugs aren’t out yet.
Let me tell you the story about Buddy’s soccer ball.
Many moons ago when I was a soccer coach for my kids I ended up with a kid’s soccer ball in my bag of balls from the local field. It was one of the little ones for little kids. It eventually ended up in my front yard and became the dog’s soccer ball. Buddy never popped it, he just played with it. For a decade it was a fixture in the yard.
This spring, unknown to me, it disappeared. A couple weeks ago I was out in the trails and there was Buddy’s soccer ball a ¼ mile from the house on the trail. Then yesterday I was out and I saw it again, now maybe ¾ of a mile out on the trail.
It seems some friendly interloping dog came into our yard and took Buddy’s soccer ball for a carry in the woods. The problem is that I don’t come back the same trail I got out. But, yesterday it didn’t seem right to abandon it so I grabbed it and carried it with me as I was running through the woods.
I was like some grade schooler goalie given a coach’s penalty. “Take that ball with you and give me 20 laps!”
A muddy, half-deflated kid’s soccer ball isn’t as easy to carry as you would think. I didn’t want to put it under my arm, like an American football, because it was quite muddy. I had to sort of clench it in one hand. It was a bit unwieldy.
But, now it is back where it belongs. Lying in the grass beside an elderly border collie… until a thieving rover roves by once more.
On with the show!
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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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Section one – Wapack and Back 2018 – https://runrunlive.com/the-wapack-and-back-2018
Voices of reason – the conversation
Patrick Hanlon
Patrick Hanlon, 51, is an educator, writer and photographer based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He has been a long distance runner for the last 9 years and can be regularly found running along the Bow River. He has completed 11 marathons including Big Sur, Edmonton, Calgary, Nova Scotia, Nashville and Boston. His account of the 2018 Boston Marathon can be read at: Gratitude Versus Expectation: A Marathon Meditation
Section two – Broken Angels – https://runrunlive.com/broken-angels
Outro
Ok my friends you have stumbled down a rocky slope to the bottom of the mountain that was Episode 4-386 of the RunRunLive Podcast. Mission accomplished. Have a smoothie. Throw in some extra Kale.
I started figuring out the logistics for the 100Miler. It is the Burning River 100 in southern Ohio. It starts on Saturday July 28th at 4:00 in the morning. I am not going to try to guess a finish time but it will be some time Sunday Morning. It’s a point to point. They bus you out from the finish at 3:00 in the morning.
The course doesn’t look to bad. It’s only got a few thousand feet of gain and loss over the 100. So nothing like the Wapack. The timing is a bit troublesome. With that start time I’ll be running the last half of the race in the dark. Doesn’t sound like I’ll be getting much sleep that weekend.
I haven’t decided if I’m going to drive out and get a hotel or maybe rent a camper or something. I know I won’t be in any shape to drive afterwards.
And, this is where you come in. I need pacers and crew. Who wants to come pace me through a section of the last 50 miles? I’m going to be going super slow. It’s going to be the middle of the night. All you have to do is keep me on course and say encouraging things like, “Come on, you can barely see the bone protruding through the skin, rub some dirt on it and suck it up!”
Shoot me an email and we’ll make a date.
Guess what else?
I got my old motorcycle running this week. Yup, that bike that I bought factory fresh in 1985. It lives.
Here’s the story.
Last summer the clutch started getting soft on me and I didn’t have time, money or energy to attend to it so I just packed it away into the garage for the winter.
I dropped it off last week at the shop and had them take a look. With a clutch problem it can either be simple or hard. It might be simply air in the line or fluid or a leak in a line. Or it can be the slave cylinder or the oil seals where the clutch meets the engine. I was a bit terrified that this was going to be one of those take the engine apart kind of things.
I know from experience that if this was a car that clutch could run me $1500 dollars and I wasn’t really excited about spending that on a $1,000 motorcycle.
I called the guy and asked if they had figured out what was wrong.
He said, “You’ll have to call back later we’re still building the estimate.”
That sounded to me like I should start mentally preparing for the worst.
I called back. My heart sank when he said, “I’m sorry but it’s the slave cylinder and an oils seal.”
Then he continued, reluctantly, “It’s going to be $238 dollars.”
I heaved a sigh of relief and told him to go ahead. Got to love the simple engineering of a Honda motorcycle!
So, as it turns out, 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/