The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-330 – Passer-by and telling stories (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4330.mp3]Link epi4330.mp3Team Hoyt Boston 2016 Campaign -> https://www.crowdrise.com/teamhoytbostonmarath/fundraiser/christopherrussellMarathonBQ – 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 episode 4-330 of the RunRunLive Podcast. This week I have a chat with Matt about his experience recording the MarathonBQ audio book for Audible. I haven’t got the green light from audible yet. They are still processing the finished product – which is a good sign because if they have issues with audio production they get right back to you. I was interested in chatting with Matt about what it was like to be on his side of the table recording my words and about the conversational story telling medium that podcasting has become. Podcast have become, or maybe they always were, the glue in community building. There’s really not much of a leap between you and I talking right now and the shaman telling stories as the firelight dances on the puebla walls in prehistory. It’s a human thing. In Section One we’re going to discuss how to come back from having the flu in the middle of your training cycle. In Section two we’ll talk about the good and bad of setting big hairy goals. I raced the Rock n Roll Phoenix marathon last Sunday. As a story telling experiment I journaled my thoughts the morning before the race, the day after and then two days after. I’m going to drop them in here to see if it gives you some insight into the runner’s mind. …It’s On with the show! Section one - Running TipsComing back from the flu - http://runrunlive.com/coming-back-from-the-fluVoices of reason – the conversationMatt – Passers-by http://passersby.libsyn.com/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/passers-by-passers-by-podcast/id1037890127?mt=2Matthew McDonough is a Podcaster and father hailing from Michigan. Matthew hosts the Passers-by Podcast, the podcast where a random guest comes on and tells their story. Section twoThe peril of the big goal - http://runrunlive.com/the-power-and-peril-of-setting-big-goalsOutro - Closing commentsMarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - http://www.marathonbq.com/qualify-for-the-boston-marathon-in-14-weeks/Well, my friends, apparently you have failed on you r time goal but you have successfully made it to the end of episode 4-330 of the RunRunLive podcast. I’m going to drop one more journal entry on you and we’ll head for the exits. I’m still looking for contributions for my Team Hoyt campaign for Boston 2016 if you can spare a dime. Registration for the Groton Road Race is open. April 24th 2016. Come up and say ‘hi’ – it’s our 25th anniversary. Wednesday Morning. Navajo Casino. Sitting in the coffee café listening to Dire Straits and waiting for the sun and my wife to get up. On a call this morning I was asked about the race. “When did you know?” “How did it go down?” “How are you feeling now?” “What are your plans now?” I’m quite at peace with my race and in general. That was somewhere around my 51st marathon. I would guess 75-80% of them have gone like this. Where I went in wondering what my fitness was and found out that it wasn’t what I thought. It’s a bit of a bell curve when you get enough races under your belt. And I mean races. Not the meandering parades that is becoming more and more the norm. For me a race means that I’m going to run my best time on that day with the fitness I have. If I’m racing I’m racing for time and the measuring stick I use is the Boston qualification standard. It doesn’t mean completing the 26.2 miles for the sake of a party and a pat on the back. But that’s a whole other conversation. My point is; when you’re racing a small percent of the time you are going to show up and have a great day. On those days it comes easily and you run above and beyond your training. Another small percent of the time you get the truly awful performance where you pull a muscle or have a cramp and the whole thing collapses into an ugly death march to the finish. On these days you run below the capabilities of your training. For the majority of my races it has just been work. Where the work starts early and the weight of the effort wears you down. It is not your day. You slow down and take the disappointment because it is what you have on that day. You end up asking those questions and trying to figure out what went wrong. Like your performances the majority of the fault lies not in the long tail items of weather, sleep, nutrition or any of the other thousands of influencers on performance. The majority of your race performance is due to your training. Your training has the largest influence on how you perform on that day. Thus, my training was bad. Not bad in the sense that I didn’t get enough volume or intensity. Bad in the sense that my timing was poor, I raced too much and I wasn’t consistent or focused. I didn’t peak well and I wasted all those miles. How do I feel? What do I do next? I was emotionally wrapped up in this race because I’ve been chasing this time for 5 years now and it’s starting to weigh on me. I also like to make races emotionally important to me because I find that urgency helps me focus my energy. It helps to ‘care deeply’ about the results. It helps to take that attitude into a race. It makes me less likely to give up. I do understand that it’s just a race. I do understand that it is not a judgment on me as a person and I don’t take it personally. One race doesn’t weigh on my self-worth. Emotionally, in my animal brain I get the disappointment, frustration and anger, but detached in my big brain I see it not as failure but as another data point from which to learn and improve. That being said I want to make promises that I can keep. It is always a challenging game in life to dangle that carrot far enough in front that you have to stretch and grow to reach it but not too far in front that you create a wash and rinse cycle of false expectations and failure. We’re on to Boston. And we’ll see you out there. …Tuesday Morning I got up early to watch the sun rise over the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was spectacular. Really something. I decided I at least needed to run a little bit of the trail down into the canyon. The Bright Angel trail head was right behind our cabin. It was 18 degrees out, which I wasn’t expecting. I put on 5 shirts under the finisher’s jacket from the race. I had tossed my cloth gloves during the race so I had to wear my dress gloves. The long switch backs clinging to the cliff face were covered in a packed snow. It wasn’t too bad. I was bit worried it would be sheer ice and all I had were the wine soaked Hokas – not really trail shoes. The descent was easy and I just kept my stride short and steady. I passed through rock tunnels and past petroglyphs high on the canyon walls. I decide to turn around after less than two miles because I didn’t want to get in trouble with the wrong shoes, no water, no food and my quads still sore from the marathon. Even so it was probably 1,000 feet of drop. Turning around and heading back up I was forced into a run-hike cadence almost immediately. The canyon rim is at about the same altitude as Denver and the air is pretty thin. I had to step aside to let a couple of mule trains pass. As I was pushing up out of the trail the day hikers were starting their descents and stepped aside with wide eyed wonder to see me churning up the path towards them. They apparently thought I had run up from the bottom. You look at something like the canyon that was worn down over millions of years of patient effort by the Colorado River and plate tectonics. Man can dig holes and move dirt with tractors but rain and melting snow can move continents with patient ablation. I thought about my life and my running and how happy I was to be that 53 year old guy running up out of the canyon on an icy trail to the astonishment of travelers. Maybe it’s that same patient, consistent work that will allow us all to leave behind immense and beautiful works of art, each in our own way. My advice to you today is to just keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t worry about the results. Don’t worry if no one except the mule deer and jack rabbit know and notice and – l’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/Http://www.marathonbq.comhttp://runrunlive.com/my-books