The RunRunLive Podcast Episode 205 – Rick Big Runner Training
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epi205
Show intro by:
Russ in Dutchess – Russ Porter – http://www.breakfastmiles.blogspot.com/
Husband, father, financial analyst, runner, triathlete, Scout leader; I try to fit it all into the 24 hours that the day gives me. I’ve been running for about 11 years, including 5 years spent overseas in Spain and China. I’m now back to the US for at least a few years, and looking forward to running throughout the country, while raising my children. Although I’m a relatively slow runner, I like to race at many distances (5K to marathon), mainly to keep my training up and manage my weight. I’ve run 6 marathons in the US and abroad, and plan to keep up as long as my knees allow.
RunRunLive – Podcast Intro
http://www.runrunlive.com/home/read-the-runrunlive-podcast-intro
Intro:
Hello and welcome to the mid-winter solstice edition of the holiday chorus podcast where we raise our voices in cheerful harmony in praise. In praise of what? In praise of the endurance gods of course because this is the RunRunLive Podcast and this is Chris your host and we have a superdy duper show for you today.
I’m a little late getting this one out because I’m on vacation, if that makes any sense. I had a confluence of activities going on this week and I’ve had a hard time getting to the keyboard.
Today we talk with Rick a fellow endurance athlete who shares his stories of challenge and triumph. I hope you like it. I’m also going to share a post I wrote today about my physical therapy experiences and I’ll read you a story from my second book “The Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy” that I just converted and posted to the Kindles store yesterday. I’m a Kindle menace.
I also stole a clip from Peter Herridge again and his Spikes podcast. I was wondering why I found Peter’s voice so sonorous and comforting and then I discovered that he is a funeral director – so it all makes perfect sense now.
I’ve been working on stuff around the house, going to PT and working out a ton this week. I’m kinda-sorta base building and coach has me doing double sessions. I’m still not running but I’m spending many long hours at the gym on the bike, the elliptical, with the weights and in the pool. Frankly it’s exhausting. I’m not sure I have the bandwidth for 2 hours a day of training. Kinda blows the whole day, unless you start at the crack of dawn and then you’re a zombie all day.
I also went and gave some nice people at a bike shop a few hundred clams to do a computerized bike fit on me. It turns out the Fuji is a little long for me, but it was actually fit fairly well. I’m half-heartedly looking at getting a new bike but it just seems like such a commitment of time, money and emotion.
I also unpacked and started putting together my new fluid trainer only to find that they had sent me a broken skewer. The skewers I have – that’s the metal axle thingy with the quick release that holds the back wheel of your bike on – the ones I have are all square. The trainer clamps want a round ended one. Nashbar is shipping me a replacement, but that was a bit disappointing.
I’d prefer to be doing all this stationary bike riding in my own saddle and not on the stationary bikes at the gym. I’m scaring the hell out of the old people doing intense interval sets for an hour plus.
I had such big plans when the week started. I was going to get so much done. It seems time is a river and it has run dry on me.
Did my last PT this week. Going back to see Dr. Hester again. I’m debating jogging a 5k on New Year’s day – it’s a bit of a tradition. The heel is better, but I can still feel it.
Next week back to work.
Happy New Year!
Don’t bring me a figgy pudding. Bring me a shrubbery!
On with the show!
Audio clips in this episode:
Peter Herridge on Zen running.
http://www.runrunlive.com/products-page/midpackerslament
RunRunLive » Audio Products » MidPackersLament » The Mid-Packer’s Lament Audio Book
It took me a few months…but I kept at it and now can present to you The Mid-Packer’s Lament Audio book. This is ~50 running stories read into audio by the author (me) and ends up being 6-8 hours of audio.
The Mid-Packer’s Lament is a series of short stories on long distance running, racing and the human comedy inherent in all sports enthusiasts. This is the perfect book for runners and wannabe runners. There are stories about training, eating, special places and special races. There are stories about the accidental athlete in all of us and the stupid things we do for even amateur endeavors. Whether you are a weekend mid-pack runner or a competitive club runner, you’ll find something thought provoking and amusing that you can relate to in the Mid-Packer’s Lament.
Hope you enjoy consuming it as much as I enjoyed recording it!
Ciao, thanks, and I’ll see you out there.
Chris,
Skits, commercials and parodies in this episode:
Story time:
Equipment Check:
Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy story.
I wanted to include this piece because I re-read it this week while putting the kindle version of this book together. It struck me as really nice prose. It has nothing to do with running. It is more of a traditional ‘altered state’ piece like Kesey, Casteneda, Thompson, or Henry Miller. It’s amazing to me the beautiful things that the mind burps out when unencumbered by the ego, while the parents are away –so to speak.
Enjoy.
Featured Interview:
Rick – http://www.bigrunnertraining.com/
Welcome To BIG RUNNER TRAINING
I’m Rick Roberts. During the past 15 years I have received much obesity guidance, but very little related to walking or running while overweight or totally out of shape.
Prior to embarking on my personal walking and (slow) running journey, I weighed nearly 300 pounds and had high cholesterol, sugar and blood pressure levels. Medications were plenty. To say the least, I was dissatisfied with my situation. Maybe my former situation rings a bell with you.
Several years ago, I slowly walked a 5K to raise funds for a good local cause. At the walk, I chatted with several other overweight/out of shape individuals who had trained on their own (no training guidance was available for us ‘larger’ or ‘out of shape’ folks). All spoke of feeling healthier and losing weight during their training period. It was at that 5k that I developed a vision for improving my situation. Through trial, error, and research, I then developed a process to change my situation. The process involves walking and running slowly at first, for short distances with plenty of days off. The rest is history. I’ve completed over 70 road races and 11 marathons to date, and by 2017 will have completed a marathon in each of the fifty states.
If you are dissatisfied with your present situation, you are within a few clicks of changing your life! Let me share with you my vision of improving your life and the process to make it happen, all through our reasonably priced You Can Do This!! training programs and products. I did not start Big Runner Training for financial gain –I started it to help you!
– You Can Do This!!
Quick Tip:
Physical Therapy – Pokin and proddin at the PT – http://www.runrunlive.com/pokin-and-proddin-at-the-pt
Outro:
Ok my caroling colleagues, you have sung your way through the snowy, festively be-decked neighborhood to the end of yet another RunRunLive Podcast Episode 205 in the can.
Next week I think it’s an interview with Linda Quirk who has set up a charity similar to Back on my Feet. We had some Skype challenges but I think Jim the executive viceroy of podcast editing studies at the RunRunLive institute of technology has worked them out.
I’m going to jog a 5k up at the Hangover Classic on New Year’s Day. Then take my traditional plunge in the Atlantic. They are saying that they got their act together since last year when the race was horribly managed. It’s hard with a 30 year old race like that. They have a life of their own and when you have a leadership team transition things can go sideways.
We have these old races up here that are going to happen. They have a life of their own. You can’t cancel them you can only try to get the timing right!
I got another project done. I converted the second book of running stories “The Mid-packer’s Guide to the Galaxy” to Kindle and got it up on the Amazon Kindle store. Since this one is only an electronic book there are pictures and lots of other goodies in it. It covers the timeframe of 2005ish through 2008ish.
I know I’ve been throwing a lot of stuff at you folks recently. To summarize: My first book of running stories “The Mid-Packer’s Lament” is an honest to goodness dead tree book available on Amazon that I published in 2007. I recently converted it to kindle, and you can find that on Amazon. I also spent the last year reading it into audio – and you can get that on my website www.runrunlive.com under the audio products link. And finally the second compilation of running stories “The Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy” got converted to Kindle this week and is available at the Amazon Kindle store.
Apologies if you’re put off by my mercenary outbursts – but rest assured this is a hobby not a business. At least not a viable business. I do it because I have daemons in my head that force me to. I have a whole other really interesting career that puts bread into the mouths of the little Russells. I get maybe a couple hundred bucks a year from these books and such which does not even move my profit motive needle.
I’m exhausted from working out 2 hours a day. I feel like I’ve been living at the gym. Then taking the dog for a 1-2 hour hike every day – makes my available time window for value add pretty tight. I suppose I should focus on the things that I have gotten done versus the things I have not. Maybe I’m just too good at list building versus task resolution!
…
Which brings us to our New Year’s thoughts. I think people are too task based. That’s a game you can’t win. I think you set yourself up to fail every time you sit down and make a list of tasks. There will always be more tasks that NEED to be done than time to do them in.
What many people will do when confronted by this overabundance of tasks will try to sort out and filter on those tasks that are really important or really urgent. This is also a trap. For at least two reasons. The first being that there are typically more urgent/important tasks than you can accomplish. The second being that most of these tasks get their urgency from someone else.
If you really look at the tasks they don’t seldom align with what YOUR goals or purpose, you have inherited someone else’s urgency and importance. The net result is that you are going to focus all your wonderful human spirit and energy in getting things done that don’t get you anywhere and aren’t making you a better animal.
It’s interesting because you can always find enough tasks to keep you busy and stressed out, but you aren’t really choosing those tasks and hence aren’t driving your own bus and guess what? You’re abdicating your life to some other arbitrary set of hamster-wheel activity.
This is how you can get to the end of a 12 hour day and feel like you haven’t gotten anything done.
There’s another reason you never get everything done. It’s because you treat everything on your to-do list as a task. What you will see if you look a little closer is that many of these tasks are actually projects. A task can be accomplished with one discrete act of energy – like “set up an appointment with the Dr.”
“Write a book”, “Clean the house” and “lose 10 pounds” are projects. They involve multiple discrete tasks that have to be managed discretely. When you treat them like tasks on your to-do list you set yourself up to fail. When you write down your to-do list separate out the projects into a different list. They need to be planned separately.
Why am I telling you this? Well because a number of you are going to try to set New Year’s resolutions. I don’t know what a resolution is supposed to be but whatever form it takes unless it turns into a set of manageable discrete tasks and projects with goals and timelines you can’t get to them.
But THAT isn’t important either. THAT is Management. Management creates order from chaos. You need VISION and LEADERSHIP. Vision and Leadership create chaos from order and this is the first step.
You should not attempt to set goals or resolutions or projects or tasks until you decide what your purpose is. You need to know the ‘why’. Once you have the ‘why’ then the how is simply management.
If you have your purpose you can then hold up each new task or project for review as to whether it aligns with your purpose. In this way everything you do, day in and day out, moves you towards fulfilling your purpose. Each task list you go through fills you up instead of emptying you.
Don’t think about goals. Don’t think about resolutions. Don’t think about what you need have to do to make someone else happy or to avoid pain. Think about why you are here? What are your unique gifts? What fulfills you? What rocks your world? What is your purpose? How are you able to add value, to enrich our world?
Don’t expect to find instant answers. To live is to seek purpose. You won’t find answers but you will find the succor of owning your own life…of driving your own bus…of not being a victim.
It’s always easier for me to get my workouts in because they align with my personal needs and goals.
Seek your purpose in the New Year. And I’ll see you out there.
New-Outro
…
You can find me ruminating on Twitter, Facebook, DailyMile, YouTube – and Google as cyktrussell that’s Chris yellow king tom Russell with two esses and two ells.
You can ruminate with me by dialing – 206-339-7804. Leave a message there it sends an audio file.
Make a resolution in the new year to call in the show intro- today we heard from Russ in Dutchess – I always thought his twitter handle was the Russian Dutchess and I figured, hey whatever floats your boat So who knows what I’m assuming about you. Call in a in a show intro. It is in the show notes and on the web site –- you will find all the other content on the website www.runrunlive.com
All the music today has been from Jim Laskey’s choral group. It is a nice change from the usual punk rock madness.
Happy New Year,
Ciao,
…
Great news my running friends – my book of running stories “The Mid-Packer’s Lament” is now available in Kindle format at the Kindle store on Amazon.com! Just search on “Mid-Pack”. It’s a bargain at an easy $5 and all proceeds go towards supporting the underfunded pension plan of the retired cleaning staff at the RunRunLive world headquarters. I recently got a kindle myself and I love it. It does reading very well.
The Mid-Packer’s Lament is a series of short stories on long distance running, racing and the human comedy inherent in all sports enthusiasts. This is the perfect book for runners and wannabe runners. There are stories about training, eating, special places and special races. There are stories about the accidental athlete in all of us and the stupid things we do for even amateur endeavors. Whether you are a weekend mid-pack runner or a competitive club runner, you’ll find something thought provoking and amusing that you can relate to in the Mid-Packer’s Lament.
Music:
From Podsafe:
All music used in the show is from the Podsafe music network found at Music Alley. Please support the starving, socially minded artists sampled herein by purchasing some!
Song1
Song 2-3
Outro music:
Outro Artists Bio:
Bio:www.RessurectedRunner.com
Standard Links:
http://www.runrunlive.com
http://www.runeratti.com
Http://coolrunning.com
http://Grotonroadrace.com
http://SQRR.org
www.midpackerslament.com
Cyktrussell At gmail and twitter and facebook and youtube
Chris’ book on Amazon – > http://www.amazon.com/Mid-Packers-Lament-collection-running-stories/dp/141961584X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228687012&sr=8-1
Mid-Packer’s Lament E-book
Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy E-Book
Dial in number for RunRunLive is – 206-339-7804
Chris Russelllives and trains in suburban Massachusetts with his family and Border collie Buddy. Chris is the author of “The Mid-Packer’s Lament”, and “The Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy”, short stories on running, racing, and the human comedy of the mid-pack. Chris writes the Runnerati Blog at www.runnerati.com. Chris’ Podcast, RunRunLive is available on iTunes and at www.runrunlive.com. Chris also writes for CoolRunning.com (Active.com) and is a member of the Squannacook River Runners and the Goon Squad.
Email me at cyktrussell at Gmail dot com
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http://www.runrunlive.com/episode-205-rick-big-runner-training