Podcasts about verrazano bridge

The TCS New York City Marathon stands as the crown jewel of marathon experiences, combining breathtaking urban scenery with unparalleled cultural immersion across all five boroughs. Coach Christine and travel expert Ashley of Mystical Dream Travel break down this iconic event from every angle - revealing why it's simultaneously the most coveted and logistically challenging marathon in the world.From its humble beginnings in 1970 as a Central Park loop to today's massive five-borough celebration drawing over 2.5 million spectators, we explore what makes this race truly special. You'll discover the dramatic Verrazano Bridge start, the electric energy of Brooklyn that can make or break your race, and the notorious silence of the Queensborough Bridge that tests even the strongest mental game.This comprehensive guide covers everything from strategic spectator locations to post-race recovery tips, including the "hidden ultra marathon" of getting around NYC on race day. We share insider secrets about securing your entry through various methods - from the challenging lottery system to charity fundraising, qualifying times, and even the virtual marathon option that guarantees next year's entry.Whether you're dreaming of your first NYC Marathon or returning to conquer the five boroughs again, this episode delivers practical advice alongside inspiring stories from the race's rich history. Learn about iconic moments like Grete Waitz's nine victories and Shalane Flanagan's breakthrough American win that inspired a generation.Ready to take on New York? Join our Stride Collective or Women of World Marathon Majors communities where we support each other's extraordinary journeys toward marathon success. Share your NYC Marathon dreams, questions, and experiences - we're here to cheer you every step of the way!Have questions or want to chat? Send me a text!Support the showJoin the newsletter list for updates, special offers, and exclusive behind-the-scenes content.Join fellow pod and running enthusiasts at The Stride Collective community on Facebook or follow us on Instagram.

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L'éphéméride de la semaine 47 raconté par Isabelle. Le sujet porte sur le VERRAZANO bridge.Retrouvez tous les liens des réseaux sociaux et des plateformes du podcast ici : https://linktr.ee/racontemoinewyorkHébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Kimberly Darling joins us as we explore her inspiring journey through the New York Road Runners 5 Borough Series, balancing life as a military spouse and a full-time working mom. Revel in the unique energy that propels her from the bustling Times Square of the United Airlines NYC Half to the idyllic streets of the Brooklyn Half.Kimberly opens up about how these races reignited her passion for running, setting new goals for 2024. Each run presents its own challenges and triumphs, from the mental hurdles of the Bronx 10 Miler to the iconic experience of running under the Verrazano Bridge in Staten Island. Her vivid storytelling paints a picture of New York's vibrant spirit, fueled by enthusiastic spectators and the incredible camaraderie found on the road.Join the conversation as we uncover the nuances of maintaining fitness routines while on vacation and the surprising difficulty of a few of the courses. Kimberly shares logistical insights for future NYRR participants, offering tips on navigating its unexpected terrain. We also touch on the importance of flexibility and adaptability in achieving long-term running ambitions, illustrating the balance between structured training and life's unpredictability. A lighthearted chat about New York's iconic foods rounds out the episode. Kimberly's journey through the five boroughs is an inspiring testament to determination, community, and the sheer joy of running.Have questions or want to chat? Send me a text!Support the showJoin the newsletter list for updates, special offers, and exclusive behind-the-scenes content.Join fellow pod and running enthusiasts at The Stride Collective community on Facebook or follow us on Instagram.

Today's pasuk is the first of a new unit in the list from the Maharal called Pesukeh Chisayon/refuge. We finished the pesukei bitachon and we are now onto those that mention the word chisayon/refuge. Tehilim 18, 3 יְהֹוָ֤ה ׀ סַ֥לְעִ֥י וּמְצוּדָתִ֗י וּמְפַ֫לְטִ֥י אֵלִ֣י צ֭וּרִי אֶֽחֱסֶה־בּ֑וֹ מָֽגִנִּ֥י וְקֶֽרֶן־יִ֝שְׁעִ֗י מִשְׂגַּבִּֽי׃ Hashem is my Rock and my fortress, and my rescuer, my God, my rock in whom I take shelter. My shield, and the horn of my salvation; my stronghold. These are all words describing tremendous strength and fortitude. They aren't necessarily describing that he clearly relies on Hashem, but that Hashem is a great protection for him. We invoke this pasuk every morning in our prayers where we say in Shaharit, in the Beracha of Yotzer , Eloheh Avraham /God of the world, in Your great mercy… and we go on to describe God, Adon Uzenu/the God of our strength, Sur/the rock Misgabenu/of our fortress , Magen Yishenu/the shield of our salvation . Misgav BAdenu/the One who is our fortress in protection , and the Avudarham says that this Tefila is based on this pasuk of David Hamelech. So, every day we mention how God has this special power over us. David Hamelech uses many terms, but we're just going focus on one of them, which is Suri . God is my rock . Sali , also means My rock. What is this about the rock that David Hamelech is mentioning? Simply, it's a metaphor. God is like a rock that He saved me . But Rashi tells us he's referring to a specific incident in the story in Shemuel א ,perek 23. David Hamelech was hiding behind a mountain and the people of Shaul were surrounding the mountain, getting closer and closer to him. He did not know where to go. Then, just at that moment, An angel came to Shaul . He looked like a human but he was actually an angel from God, say the commentaries, who said, ‘ Mahara/go fast. You have to move now. It's not time for a local dispute between you and David. It's not time for an internal issue. We have a massive Pelishtim attack at the border. You have to refocus your army.' When Shaul heard that, he left, at the last moment and he went to the Pelishtim. They called that rock, Selah Hamachlekot/the Rock of the Argument. The Radak, quoting from the Targum, explains that there was an argument between Shaul and his men. They were passionate; they were so close to getting David. But Shaul, the king, said, “ No, our responsibility is to the country.” They therefore left, and David Hamelech was saved. That's why David Hamelech said, “ God is my Selah/my rock, referring to the rock where they had this argument. How is this relevant to us? It's extremely important. If David Hamelech did not tell us this story, we would never have known about how this angel got involved in saving him. God is our protection . The word מחסי Machsi , Rashi says, we translate as refuge . The Chet and Chaf are interchangeable. It also means אכסה Echseh/ He's my cover. Kisoy is a cover . God covers me. He covers me up when I, or things about me, shouldn't be seen. God covers up for me. Something like this happened to someone I know recently. A man told me he was driving on the Verrazano Bridge one night, coming back from Deal, admittedly speeding. (He shouldn't speed. It was a mistake. He wasn't paying attention. It was late at night and the roads were open and he was going way over the speed limit. We're not condoning his actions.) The officer pulled him over and took his license. The man said, “ Hashem, I can't afford a ticket now. I can't afford points. En Od Milevado. I'll never do it again. You're in charge. I'm sorry I made a mistake. And Hashem, you can make anything happen.” Normally they take your license and registration for around 10 minutes. But literally seconds later, the cop came back to the car and said, “ You're a lucky man. I just got a call on my radio. There was a shooting (or robbery) not far from here. I have to leave. Don't speed again.” So, Hashem can send that angel. In this case, it wasn't an open angel, but there are situations that we'll never know about. Of course, we try to be honest and do everything right, but they could check anyone's taxes and they'd get in trouble. Who knows if they were looking to audit somebody and then some angel of God came and asked the guy to get a cup of coffee and he went to the next file and skipped your file… we don't know. But we have to understand how Hashem is always protecting us. And that's this pasuk. Hashem Sali/He's my rock, David Hamelech used this to remind himself of the miracle of the rock. These are beautiful, beautiful messages and lessons hiding in these pesukim. יְהֹוָ֤ה ׀ סַ֥לְעִ֥י וּמְצוּדָתִ֗י וּמְפַ֫לְטִ֥י אֵלִ֣י צ֭וּרִי אֶֽחֱסֶה־בּ֑וֹ מָֽגִנִּ֥י וְקֶֽרֶן־יִ֝שְׁעִ֗י מִשְׂגַּבִּֽי׃ Hashem is my Rock and my fortress, and my rescuer, my God, my rock in whom I take shelter. My shield, and the horn of my salvation; my stronghold. The rabbis tell us the best time to remember these is in our prayers. Make a little mark on your siddur. I have a dear friend, who, anytime he hears a nice thought on the siddur, he puts it into his siddur and boosts his kavana . So tomorrow morning, remember- Sur Misgabenu/ God is my Rock , the rock of my protection. Magen Yishenu/ He's my shield. By remembering these concepts, we will earn Hashem's special protection.

Just this week, video of a UFO taken by a passenger on a plane coming in for a landing at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York, made international news. Video footage of UFOs constantly appears online and more often than not leads to a dead end for researchers trying to identify witnesses or turns out to be faked. In this case, not only was the witness identified, but she appeared on News Nation for an interview, along with a researcher looking into the case who considered the video to be authentic.The witness is Michelle Reyes, who was capturing video of the New York skyline while sitting next to her daughter, who had the window seat. The Verrazano Bridge is centered in the frame as a black, elongated, oval-shaped UFO goes whizzing by from right to left, which in this case is northeast to southwest. Reyes posted the video on Facebook, and researcher/investigator Ben Hansen (who was a guest on PodcastUFO on February 16, 2021) managed to find her and interview her. Read more →Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/podcast-ufo--5922140/support.

The House voted to renew FISA, a tool for the government to spy on Americans without a warrant. Days after the Baltimore Key Bridge disaster, a container ship nearly hit NYC's Verrazano Bridge. The federal government has been illegally surveilling Americans and labeling them as domestic extremists in a secret portal called DSAC. The Biden administration has approved $153 billion in student loan debt forgiveness. A former State Department official says that Hunter Biden is untouchable because he was advancing a CIA project in Ukraine to swing the natural gas market towards NATO. A Russian Investigation Committee found that the Ukrainian gas company Burisma funded the terror attack in Moscow. Former FBI Agent and current CIA Contractor, Gavin O'Blennis, says they can put anyone in jail. US Marshals arrested a Michigan lawyer after submitting “evidence of numerous crimes.” Three key swing states have seen skyrocketing numbers of people registering to vote without a photo ID through a program that allows voters to use a social security number instead. Washington state lawmakers passed a bill that would provide up to $2,000 to those who report others for “hate crimes” and “bias incidents.” The woman who found Ashely Biden's diary was sentenced to a month in jail.

Frank Morano discusses some of the hottest topics and gives his opinion. Frank talks about the solar eclipse and then Frank talks about the tanker ship that almost crashed into the Verrazano Bridge. Frank talks about the NYPD unleashing a program that will attach what is called a barnacle to windshields until you pay your traffic tickets and then Frank talks about the disaster of congestion pricing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Specifically the Verrazano Bridge.

Brandon Tierney sent Gio a HR call for Alex Verdugo. Gio kind of likes it but the rest of us think it's terrible. We told callers not to call with their own HR calls or they would be banned. They kept calling but Al never put any of them through. There's an eclipse this coming Monday. Jerry returns for an update but first BT is here to talk about the comments Sal made about him for taking off the first week of baseball season. Jerry starts with audio of the Yankees winning again as they head home with a 6-1 record. Steve Cohen was on CNBC and he's not panicking yet. The Rangers beat the Devils last night as they dropped the gloves as soon as the puck dropped. In the final segment of the hour, the MTA wants to charge the NYC Marathon to use the Verrazano Bridge.

Hour 1 The Rangers and Devils game started with 8 guys fighting as soon as the puck dropped. The main event was Matt Rempe vs Kurtis MacDermid. Some fans don't like the fighting, but Boomer likes it when it's played within the unwritten rules. Jerry is here for his first update and has audio from the line brawl that started the Rangers/Devils game. The Bills sent Stefon Diggs to the Texans. Mike Francesa wants the Jets to draft the offensive lineman from Notre Dame, Joe Alt. If they don't, he said they ‘should be shot'. Joe Benigno is now doing ads for Manscaped and Jerry has the audio. The Yankees got back on track in Arizona yesterday. Aaron Judge had a HR and an RBI double. Ohtani hit his first HR of the season, and his first as a Dodger. In the final segment of the hour, Gio said there's a new sheriff in town when it comes to breaking NFL news: Antonio Brown and his new network, C-T-ESPN. He predicted Stefon Diggs to the Texans a while ago. Antonio Brown does a ‘cracker of the day'.  Hour 2 Speedy Claxton, the head coach at Hofstra, advised one of his kids to enter the transfer portal because he was so good. He's now in the Final Four with Alabama, and his name is Aaron Estrada. We talked about a new structure for college football from a company called College Sports Tomorrow. We also remembered the great Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers' story that Mike Francesa thought was real. Jerry returns for an update and starts with the sounds of last night's Rangers/Devils line brawl as soon as the puck dropped. The Bills sent Stefon Diggs to the Texans. The Yankees start the season 6-1 with a win in Arizona. Alex Verdugo hit his first HR as a Yankee. Steve Cohen was on CNBC to talk about trying to make the fans happy. In the final segment of the hour, Sal and BT talked about the comments made about Sal when BT took off during the opening week of baseball. Gio thinks Sal kind of backtracked on that one saying he missed his partner. Gio felt a legitimate issue between the two coming over the radio. Boomer called it, ‘the beginning of the end for them'. Gio said no way.  Hour 3 Brandon Tierney sent Gio a HR call for Alex Verdugo. Gio kind of likes it but the rest of us think it's terrible. We told callers not to call with their own HR calls or they would be banned. They kept calling but Al never put any of them through. There's an eclipse this coming Monday. Jerry returns for an update but first BT is here to talk about the comments Sal made about him for taking off the first week of baseball season. Jerry starts with audio of the Yankees winning again as they head home with a 6-1 record. Steve Cohen was on CNBC and he's not panicking yet. The Rangers beat the Devils last night as they dropped the gloves as soon as the puck dropped. In the final segment of the hour, the MTA wants to charge the NYC Marathon to use the Verrazano Bridge.  Hour 4 Tiger Woods' friend said he's abstaining from sex while he gets ready for the Masters. Gio wonders if that works for golf. Boomer talked about the TGL, Tomorrow's Golf League. Gio said he has no interest in watching guys hitting into a simulator. Justin Thomas broke up with his caddie right before the Masters. Jerry returns for his final update of the day and starts with Steve Cohen on CNBC talking about the TGL. Jerry has audio from Devils radio from the start of the Rangers game where there was a line brawl. Mac Jones told the media he likes to do some rapping which he never told anyone because he played in New England. The Moment of The Day involves Joe Benigno's partnership with Manscaped. In the final segment of the hour, Gio has some headlines and wants to see if you can pick out the fake story. The real story involves the self proclaimed world's sexiest albino.

Laura talks with Len Berman about the MTA charging marathoners to use the Verrazano Bridge, What the abortion fight will me to the election, and crime in NYC.

The MTA said they want to charge the NYC marathon $750,000 to use the Verrazano Bridge.

The All Local Afternoon Update for Friday, January 12th 2024

Want to know about the journey of running the iconic New York City Marathon? Join Coach Shelby and Coach Christine as they take you through its rich history, from its humble beginnings with 127 competitors in 1970 to its transformation into a five-borough race in 1976. We'll talk about Grete Waitz, who set the world on fire by clocking the first sub-230 women's marathon. We'll also guide you through crucial decisions to make for a successful race day, covering things like transportation, baggage check, and expo time. Get a sense of the marathon day experience as we recount our own adventures, from the thrill of taking a ferry to the start line to the electric atmosphere of running with the elites and even spotting celebrities! Imagine the breeze on the Verrazano Bridge, the lively entertainment on Fourth Avenue, and the memorable aspects on the Queensborough Bridge. Continuing to celebrate our Anniversary, we have some fantastic goodies for our Time for Brunch supporters. So whether you're preparing for a marathon or just looking to relax with an engaging discussion, you wouldn't want to miss this one. If you are looking for more considerations to add to your NYC prep, you'll want to read the blog here. Support the showJoin the newsletter list to receive updates, special offers, and exclusive behind-the-scenes content. Want to become a member of Time for bRUNch+ to show your support of the show? Join here.Join the bRUNch bunch on Facebook or follow us on Instagram.

Khanya Mtshali asks Jarred Thompson and Tyriek White about their novels The Institute for Creative Dying and We Are a Haunting. They share their experiences of publishing their first novels and muse about craft, literary influences, religion, death, transatlantic history and creative responses to infrastructural decay. Khanya Mtshali is a writer and critic from Johannesburg. She has an MA in Cultural Reporting and Criticism from New York University and has been published in The New Yorker, Africa Is a Country, The Johannesburg Review of Books and other places. She is the author of It's Not Inside, It's On Top: Memorable Moments in South African Advertising (Tafelberg, 2021) and she has published an introduction to the book, Last Interview and Other Conversations: Billie Holiday (Melville House, 2019).   Jarred Thompson is a literary and cultural studies researcher and educator and works as a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Pretoria. He was the winner of the 2020 Afritondo Prize and has been the recipient of several prestigious scholarships. His debut novel, The Institute for Creative Dying, is published through Picador Africa and Afritondo UK. Tyriek Rashawn White is a writer, musician, and educator from Brooklyn. He is currently the media director of Lampblack Lit. He has received fellowships from Callaloo Writing Workshop and the New York State Writer's Institute, among other honours. He earned an MFA from the University of Mississippi and is the author of the novel, We Are a Haunting (Astra House, 2023). In this episode we are in solidarity with detained Chinese writer and journalist Dong Yuyu. We call for his freedom. You can read more about his case here: https://www.pen-international.org/news/pen-international-joins-pen-centres-worldwide-in-call-for-release-of-chinese-writer-and-journalist-dong-yuyu.  As tributes to him, Tyriek reads from “On My Way out I Passed over You and the Verrazano Bridge” by Audre Lorde, Jarred reads “Still at War with the Stoics” by Jacques Coetzee and Khanya reads “Twenty Questions for your Mother” by Mahtem Shiferraw. This podcast series is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Embassy in South Africa to promote open conversation and highlight shared histories.

GETTIN' SALTY EXPERIENCE PODCAST Ep.141 -Our special guest will be 28 year FDNY veteran Captain Bob Rainey. He went to proby school in 1973 and was assigned to Engine 27. He was Laid Off from July 1, 1975 to March 1976. Reappointed March 1976 under Housing and Urban Development funding & assigned to Ladder 11 from March 1976 until March 1977. In 1977 he transferred to Tower Ladder 18. He was promoted to Lt. in 1984 and worked in Battalion 26 in the South Bronx before being assigned to Tower Ladder 21. He was promoted to Capt in 1991 worked in Division 3 covering before being assigned to Engine 26 in 1992. He retired in 2000. He responded to the Collision of the (Container Vessel) Sea Witch and SS Esso Brussels fire under the Verrazano Bridge in June 1, 1973 and then the collapse of the former Broadway Central Hotel on Aug. 3, 1973, which killed four people. Thats just the start....... You don't want to miss this one. You can also Listen to our podcast ...we are on all the players #GOAT #lovethisjob #GiveBackMoreThanYouTake #theBatCavewww.youtube.com/gettinsaltyexp...

„Are you ready, John?“ „Yeah!“ Mit John Wick: Kapitel 4 zieht der wortkarge Auftragskiller in seine vierte Schlacht gegen die hohe Kammer. Zeit also, dass wir uns die Action-Reihe mit Keanu Reeves in unserem John Wick Podcast einmal vorknöpfen. Dafür hat sich Daniel mit Vicky und Helmut von Popcorn zum Mitnehmen kompetente Unterstützung ins Filmtoast-Continental geladen.John Wick Podcast: Zwischen Action-Ballett und Gewalt-OrgieIm Jahr 2014 begann in zweierlei Hinsicht eine neue Ära. Zum einen leitete John Wick eine neue Zeit des westlichen Action-Kinos ein. Zum anderen zog sich Keanu Reeves mit ebendieser Rolle aus dem Sumpf mittelmäßiger Filmprojekte.In unserem John Wick Podcast besprechen wir die Faszination der Reihe, was diese im Vergleich zur damaligen Action-Konkurrenz einzigartig erscheinen ließ – und was Clint Eastwoods Western damit zu tun haben. Natürlich gehen wir zudem auf die Personen ein, die unmittelbar mit dem Erfolg von John Wick verbunden sind.Da ist natürlich einerseits Keanu Reeves zu nennen, klar. Doch auch die beiden ehemaligen Stunt-Choreografen Chad Stahelski sowie David Leitch betraten mit ihrem Regie-Debüt die große Bühne. Und das direkt mit einem Mega-Erfolg. Pures Glück oder lang geplanter Erfolg? In unserem John Wick Podcast findet ihr es heraus.John Wick: Chapter 4 – Das MeisterstückNatürlich möchten wir auch den neuesten Teil der John-Wick-Reihe nicht außen vor lassen. Mit John Wick: Kapitel 4 möchte das Tag-Team aus Stahelski und Reeves noch einmal alles aus der Figur des wortkargen Assassinen herausholen.Die Laufzeit von fast drei Stunden mag da erst einmal abschreckend wirken. Ob sich das vierte Kapitel der Rachesaga daher zäh wie Kaugummi oder so rasant wie eine Motorradverfolgung auf der Verrazano Bridge anfühlt, verraten wir euch im John Wick Podcast. Zudem klären wir, wie uns die neuen Charaktere wie Donnie Yens Caine getaugt haben.Natürlich darf auch die Fragen aller Fragen nicht fehlen: Schafft es John Wick: Kapitel 4 erneut, bei der Action einen draufzusetzen? Darüber reden Helmut und Daniel zunächst spoilerlos, dann mit Spoilern, je nachdem, ob ihr den Film bereits sichten konntet. Und das solltet ihr! Denn der neueste Serienzugang feuert einige der kreativsten Szenen der letzten Jahre aus seinen Rohren.Wer mehr von unseren Gästen hören möchte, der kann auf allen wichtigen Podcast-Kanälen Popcorn zum Mitnehmen abonnieren. Schaut auch gern auf Instagram vorbei. Zudem wollen wir euch noch auf das neue Umfragen- sowie Kommentar-Feature bei Spotify hinweisen. Wenn ihr uns dort hört, lasst uns gerne ein paar Sätze dar, wie euch die Episode gefallen hat und stimmt ab, welches euer liebster John-Wick-Film ist. Wir freuen uns auf eure Nachrichten.Timecodes(00:00:00) Intro & Vorstellung(00:05:24) Was haben wir zuletzt gesehen?(00:07:06) Faszination John Wick: Unser Einstieg(00:11:01) John Wick (2014)(00:55:09) John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)(01:21:00) John Wick: Chapter 3 (2019)(01:47:28) John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)(02:07:27) Kleiner Spoilerteil(02:18:33) Unser Fazit zu John Wick: Chapter 4(02:24:19) Weise Worte zum Schluss

This is the All Local 4pm Update for January 12th 2023. 

Phil Keoghan and I talk about his fatherhood journey. We discuss the values he is looked to instill into his daughter as she was growing up. In addition, we talk about how they work together in the TV industry and how they balance that family work dynamic. After that we talk about his upcoming season of his show, Tough As Nails. Phil shares with me who inspired this series and why he feels this TV series is important. We also talk about his creative process. Lastly, we finish the interview with the Fatherhood Quick Five.  About Phil Keoghan  Phil is the host and co-executive producer of CBS' multi-Emmy Award-winning reality series The Amazing Race and the host of National Geographic Explorer. He is arguably the most traveled host on the planet. Visiting more than 100 countries Phil has been sharing his stories in front of a TV camera for almost 30 years. He has been on many adventures. For instance he rode his bicycle from LA to New York. He has had a five-star meal on top of an erupting volcano of Stromboli. In addition, he has the unofficial world record bungy jump and putting a golf ball across Scotland. Plus he changed a light bulb on top of the Verrazano Bridge and went diving the world's longest underwater caves and swimming from Asia to Europe across the Bosporus. Phil lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their daughter. Follow Phil on Twitter at @PhilKeoghan and Instagram at @Philiminator. Check out his show Tough As Nails on CBS.  About Tough As Nails  Tough As Nails celebrates real people in real life that are real tough! It give the folks who work long hard days to keep the country running the opportunity to compete and prove how tough they are. Phil was inspired by his grandfather to create the show. Athletic Brewing Company Is This Week's Sponsor Athletic Brewing Company is pioneering a brewing revolution. They are a non-alcoholic beer company dedicated to making great-tasting craft brews. Athletic Brewing is headquartered in Milford, CT. Its lineup of innovative near beers allows you to enjoy the taste and experience of refreshing craft brews without sacrificing your performance, passions, or good taste. They're fit for all times, made for all palates, and enjoyed by anyone who loves great craft brews. Whether you're looking to cut out alcohol for life or just for a night, you shouldn't have to sacrifice your ability to be at your best. Right now, NEW Athletic customers can receive 20% off their FIRST order of TWO 6-packs or more. Visit athleticbrewing.com and use the code ART20 at checkout by March 31, 2023. About The Art of Fatherhood Podcast  The Art of Fatherhood Podcast podcast follows the journey of fatherhood. Your host, Art Eddy talks with fantastic dads from all around the world where they share their thoughts on fatherhood. You get a unique perspective on fatherhood from guests like Joe Montana, Kevin Smith, Danny Trejo, Jerry Rice, Jeff Foxworthy, Patrick Warburton, Jeff Kinney, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Kyle Busch, Dennis Quaid, Dwight Freeney and many more.

In this week's episode, The Network is in the building together for the first time! They telling us what they'd do if they won that billion dollar lottery (5:06), if it's ever a smart move to turn down $100k to have dinner with Jay-Z (37:21), and if they'd be willing to pay for their woman to have plastic surgery (41:44)... all that & more! -- Subscribe to No Politics Network

NICCCCEEEEE…. Probably the best episode number we'll come across. We got some special guests from the other side of the Verrazano Bridge aka BRRRROOOOKKKLYN!! Definitely don't want to miss out and hear some wild Bar stories that went down in the BK from our special guests.

Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 800 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls Check out StandUpwithPete.com to learn more Robert “Rob” Serra's first day as a New York City firefighter was Sept. 11, 2001. Having completed the FDNY training on Sept. 10, the 2001 Hobart graduate expected to have the day off. On his way to try out for a FDNY hockey team, Serra crossed the Verrazano Bridge and saw the World Trade Center's twin towers on fire. He immediately grabbed his gear and made his way downtown – where he checked in with the first “white helmet” he saw, an identifier of FDNY Fire Chiefs. Despite having no experience, Serra says, “it never crossed my mind not to go.” The day changed his life forever. “Pretty much as soon as I got down there, I started to bleed from my nose.” Like thousands of first responders, emergency workers and civilians on Sept. 11, Serra suffers from illnesses as a result of exposure to toxic ash and debris on the day of the attacks and in the months following, when he worked at the Staten Island recovery site to search for the personal effects of victims. Having undergone surgery to remove nasal polyps, Serra now faces neurological damage– including neuropathy and fibromyalgia, which has led to intense bouts of shaking, nerve pain and trouble walking. Learn more about Rob Serra  The Firefighters Podcast is the hottest podcast in America, literally. Host Rob Serra, FDNY (ret.) is a 9/11 First Responder, an advocate, a dad and an all around great guy. Recored in Staten Island the pod will inform and connect a hungry audience and create a home for the country's 1.15 million firefighters — and their friends, families and fans. And they've got a lot of fans. Host Rob Serra is authentic as it gets. Born and raised in Staten Island, New York, his first day on the job was September 11th. He's been directly involved advocating for the health issues first responders have experienced as a result ever since. The show will include interviews with firefighters and first responders, celebrities, and the always popular and delicious Firehouse cooking segment. Everybody loves firefighters. Now they have a podcast. PETER COYOTE began his film career at 39, after living nearly a dozen years in the counter-culture during the 1960s and 70s. Since then, he has performed as an actor for some of the world's most distinguished filmmakers, including: Barry Levinson, Roman Polanski, Pedro Almodovar, Steven Spielberg, Walter Hill, Martin Ritt, Steven Soderberg, Diane Kurys, Sidney Pollack and Jean Paul Rappeneau. To date he has made over 150 films. In 2006 he had a major role in three televison series: The Inside on Fox-TV, the 4400 on USA Channel and played the Vice-President to Geena Davis's President on Commander in Chief for ABC-TV until the show's end. In 2011 he starred as the District Attorney in the new version of Law and Order – LA. In 2000 year he was the on-camera announcer of the Academy Awards Ceremony, taking the heavy-lifting off co-host Billy Crystal's shoulders for the detailed announcements and data which played live to an estimated one billion listeners. In 2007 he was prominently featured as an old boxing promoter in Rod Lurie's “Resurrecting the Champ” with Samuel. L. Jackson and Josh Hartnett, and also as Sally Field's disreputable writing teacher on the television series, “Brothers and Sisters.” He recently completed a six hour series called The Disappearance which aired last year. Most recently, he played Robert Mueller to Jeff Daniel's Jim Comey, and Brendan Gleeson's Donald Trump. The series is called The Comey Rule and will be released this year on SHOWTIME.   Mr. Coyote has written a memoir of his counter-culture years called Sleeping Where I Fall which received universally excellent reviews, appeared on three best-seller lists and sold five printings in hardback after being released by Counterpoint Press in 1999, it was re-released in November of 2010 and has been in continuous release ever since. It is currently in use as a source text for Sixties Studies in a number of universities including Harvard where he was invited to teach “The Theater of Protest” last year.   An early chapter from that book, “Carla's Story, won the 1993/94 Pushcart Prize for Excellence in non-fiction. His new book, The Rainman's Third Cure, released in April, 2015 is a study of mentors and the search for wisdom and he is currently readying a new book for publication in 2021-(TITLE) The I Behind the Mask: The Lone Ranger and Tonto meet the Buddha.   Mr. Coyote is well-known for his narration work, and has voiced 150 documentaries and TV specials, including the nine-hour PBS Special, The West. In 1992 he won an EMMY as the “Host” for a nine-hour series, called, The Pacific Century which also won the prestigious duPont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism.   In 2010 he recorded the12 hour series on The National Parks for Ken Burns and has recently completed the voice-work on Mr. Burns most recent series—a 16 hour special on The History of Country Music. He won a second Emmy for his narration on The Roosevelts, and has also done Prohibition, The Dust Bowl, and an 18 Hour series on Vietnam with Ken Burns. Mr Coyote and Mr Burns just completed a long series on Ernest Hemingway. In 2011 he was ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest and in 2015 received “transmission” from his teacher, making him an independent Zen teacher. He makes his home on a farm in Northern California, and considers working on his 1952 Dodge Power-Wagon his longest lasting addiction. He has 40 fruit trees and loves to make jam and walk with his two dogs.   Peter Coyote Episode 276 Peter Coyote Wikipedia Peter Coyote Movies IMDB Peter Coyote Books Peter Coyote with me on Episode 14   SUPPORT THE SHOW BY SUPPORTING  one of the sponsors of the show!   Indeed.com/StandUp TrueBill.com/standup     Check out all things Jon Carroll Follow and Support Pete Coe   Pete on YouTube Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram

Hector (aka DADDIO_69 on Twitter) is the sixth guest on the 3rd Annual 12 Days of @DillosDiz Social Media (formerly Twitter) Ohana! 12 consecutive days, 12 podcasts, 12 guests never before heard on the Theme Park Thursday! Jen and Frank chat about the VelociCoaster, holiday traditions, Disney nostalgia, and the history of the Verrazano Bridge! Presented by DillosDizResort.com - Patreon Memberships Available Beginning at $1! Dillo's Diz. 55 Gerard St. #987. Huntington, NY 11743 Theme composed by Matt Harvey. Intro and Outro performed by Lindsay Zaroogian. The @DillosDiz Fact Checker IS Mel Dale. Feedspot's Top 25 Siblings Podcasts You Must Follow AND Top 90 Disney Podcasts You Must Follow. ONE STOP SHOP ALL THE @DillosDiz LINKS! Order your copy of Amy Ratcliffe's latest offerings, Star Wars Battles that Changed the Galaxy, The Art of Star Wars Galaxy's Edge and A Kid's Guide to Fandom. DIllo's Diz Resort Guests: Theme Park Rob, Long Island Frank from The Magical Hour Podcast, Schmelty, The Cretin's Guild, Nathaniel Hardy, Dr. Val of #FigmentsInTime, The Disney Bucket List Family, Lee Taylor, Shannon Bohn, The Morning Monorail Podcast, Allison Quinn, Michael Matande, Lexi Andrea, Adam Elmers, Adventures with Stephers Question or Comment? We LOVE interacting with listeners! FOLLOW Dillo's Diz on TWITTER: https://twitter.com/dillosdiz FOLLOW Dillo's Diz on INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/dillosdiz/ SUBSCRIBE to Dillo's Diz on YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/dillosdiz LIKE Dillo's Diz on FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/DillosDiz/ Check out Blogs, Archives, and Throwbacks at DillosDiz.com. E-Mail Dillo's Diz at DillosDiz@gmail.com!

Becoming a championship medalist — or an Olympic medalist — is an ambitious goal that many athletes dream of. But are we training the right way? In reality, training to be an Olympic runner is more than just stretching your physical limits; it's also about your recovery, mental strength, environment and so much more.   In this episode, famed Olympic runner Rod Dixon joins us to talk about his journey in becoming an Olympic medalist and his victory at the NYC marathon. He shares why creating a strong foundation is crucial, no matter what you’re training for.    If you want to learn from and be inspired by one of New Zealand’s greatest runners, then this episode is for you!   Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health programme all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.   Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer  Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? ​​Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle?  Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   Lisa’s Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements  NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that is capable of boosting the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements that are of highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 capsules NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 Capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 Capsules Quality You Can Trust — NMN Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combat the effects of aging, while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health  Metabolic Health   My  ‘Fierce’ Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover the necessary foundation an Olympic runner used to create a solid training base. Learn to believe in yourself and avoid being influenced by others. Understand how to build a strong mentality to handle self-doubt and hesitation. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limit Podcast by becoming a patron! You can choose between being an official or VIP patron for NZD 7 and NZD 15 per month, respectively. Check out the different benefits of each in the link.  Rod’s KiDSMARATHON is a running and nutrition educational programme organised to help children in the United States and the world! Check out his website. Connect with Rob: LinkedIn Episode Highlights [05:01] How Rod Grew Up with Running Rod shares that his brother John was a significant part of his running career. John helped coach Rod while Rod was young.  He fondly remembers his time growing up and always running from place to place.  His father used to explore and travel around Australia by bike, while his mother played basketball and did gymnastics.  [11:42] Early Years of Training  Learn by doing. You can run the same race twice, but don’t expect a different result when you do everything the same. Run differently. Rod grew up loving cross country racing, especially the beach races through dunes.  It was during this time that he was inspired to reach for the 1968 Olympics. His brother, John, immediately put him on a training regimen.  Once you have a goal, you need to know how to reach it and what you’re prepared to do for it. Multiple amazing runners inspired Rod to keep going for his goal. Tune in to find out who! [19:13] Approach to the Foundations Get the timing right first, not the miles. The foundation is to start with running long and slow.  Rod's brother, John, also helped keep a logbook of his training. This enabled them to narrow down what to improve and work on.  Athletes don’t get better from training; improvement comes from rest and recovery.  Learn to prioritise your health. This will bring more results than just pushing yourself too hard on your training all the time.  Know that there’s a period for different types of training. There will be times when you’ll need to set your foundations and conditioning right first.  [25:20] Rod’s Journey Towards Becoming an Olympic Runner Getting acclimated to an area is essential to planning an Olympic runner’s training regimen.  With the help of John, Rod realised he was a strength runner. This knowledge became crucial in planning for his races. When you train with runners, it will be a race. Train with marathon runners, and it will be a long and slow run. Choose your training partners based on your needs. Rod’s training with runners helped him learn more than just racing. His nutrition improved, too.  Listen to the full episode for Rod’s exciting account of his Olympic journey—from qualifications to his training!  [36:47] Handling Self-Doubt Rod shares that he also had bouts of self-doubt. During these times, he would look for his brother John, his mother and his grandmother.  Ground yourself and just run, not for training but to clear your head and be in the moment.  In a lot of things, confidence matters more than ability. The more confident you are, the more it will bring out your ability.   Don’t be influenced by bad habits.  What matters is finishing the race. Finishing in itself is already a win.  [42:02] Life as a Professional Athlete Training effectively resulted in Rod becoming an Olympic runner, medalist and breaking records.  Rod shares that he works full-time in addition to taking on small jobs to balance the costs.  Tune in to the episode to hear the ups and downs of being an Olympic runner and a professional athlete.  [50:07] Transition from Short to Long Races After his experiences as an Olympic runner, Rod wanted to focus on cross country and longer races.   Once you have your foundations, you will need to adjust your training for long races. It's not going to be much different from what you're already doing.  Rod shares that he had to work towards the NYC marathon through conquering half marathons and many other experiences.  Build on your experiences and learn to experiment. Rod discusses his training in the full episode!  [1:04:47] Believe in Your Ability When preparing for a big race, you need to protect your mindset and remember that running is an individual sport — it's all about you.  Don’t be influenced by others. Learn to pace yourself and run your own race.  A race starts long before you set your foot on the track. Listen to the full episode for Rod’s recounting of the NYC marathon.  [1:21:23] Build and Develop Your Mentality People will often hesitate when they face a hill. When you’re in this situation, just keep going.  Sometimes, some things won’t happen the way you want them to. But certainly, your time will come.    7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘John would tell me. He said, ‘You know, you've run the same race twice expecting a different result.’ He said, ‘You've got to run differently.’  'He said, 'You know, you set a goal, but I won't tell you how to do it. So, you've got to figure out what you're prepared to do. And I think, [it was] then [that] I realised it was my decision making and I had to focus.' ‘You don't improve when you train, you improve when you recover.’ ‘Just remember to learn by doing.’ ‘I just thought this [the race] is about me. It's not about anybody.’ ‘I learned all that in my road racing. That sometimes, you just can't run away from people, but you can find out their vulnerable moments. And when they would come into a hill, they would hesitate because they’d look up the hill. And that's when you try.’ 'My mother had said that sometimes, things won't happen the way you want them to. Sometimes, you know, you're watching this, but your time will come at another point or another time. And I realised then what she was saying when I had one that was my defining moment. It just took longer than average.'   About Rod Rod Dixon is one of the most versatile runners from New Zealand. For 17 years, Rod continuously challenged himself with races. His awards include a bronze medal from the 1972 Olympic 1500m, two medals from the World Cross Country Championship and multiple 1500m championship titles from the United States, France, Great Britain and New Zealand. But most importantly, he is well-known for his victory at the 1983 New York City Marathon. Now, Rod is passionate about children's health and fitness due to the lack of physical exercise and nutrition among children. Through KiDSMARATHON, he helps thousands of children learn the value of taking care of their bodies and developing positive life-long habits. The foundation has since made a difference in many children’s lives.  You can reach out to Rod on LinkedIn.    Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn from the example of an Olympic runner. Let them discover how to achieve more as runners or athletes through self-belief and a trained mentality. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa   Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Your host here, Lisa Tamati. Great to have you with me again. And before we head over to this week's exciting guest, just want to remind you, we have launched our premium membership for our patron programme for the podcast. So if you are loving the content, if you're enjoying it, if you're finding benefit in it and you want to help us keep getting this good content out to people, then we would love your support. And we would love to give you some amazing premium membership benefits as well. Head on over to patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N patron.lisatamati.com, and join our exclusive membership club, only a couple of dollars a month. It's really nothing major. But what it does is it helps us make this content possible. As you can imagine, five and a half years of doing this for love, we need a little bit of help to keep this going if we want to be able to get world-leading experts and continue to deliver such amazing content. So if you can join us, we'd be really, really appreciative of it. Head over to patron.lisatamati.com.   And a reminder, too, if you are wanting help with your health, if you're wanting to up your performance. If you're a runner, and you're wanting to optimise your running, then please check out our programmes, we have our Running Hot Coaching Program, which is a package deal that we have. We make a personalised, customised programme for your next event. Whether it's a marathon or a 5k, it doesn't really matter, or a hundred-miler, we're up for that. And we're actually programming people for even much, much bigger distances than that. So if you want to come and join us over there, we'd love to see you at runninghotcoaching.com. That's personalised, customised running training programmes that will include everything, from your strength programme, your mobility work, your run sessions, your nutrition, your mindset, all of those sort of great aspects, you get a one-on-one session with me. You get video analysis of how are you running and how can we improve your actual form, plus your customised plan. And if you want ongoing support, then that's available as well. So, check that out at runninghotcoaching.com.   We also have our epigenetics programme, which is all about testing your genes, understanding your genetics, and how to optimise those genetics. So, eliminating all the trial and error so that you can understand how do you live your best life with the genes that you've been given? What is the optimal environment for those genes? So right food, the right exercise, the right timings of the day, what your dominant hormones are, what social environments will energise you what physical environments, what temperatures, what climates, what places? All of these aspects are covered in this ground-breaking programme that we've been running now for the past few years. It's really a next level programme that we have. So check out our epigenetics programme. You can go to epigenetics.peakwellness.co.nz, that's epigenetics, dot peak wellness.co dot.nz or just hop on over to my website, if that's a little bit easier, at lisatamati.com, and hit the work with us button and you'll see all of our programmes there.   Right over to the show now with an amazing guest who is one of my heroes, a hero from my childhood actually. Now I have Rod Dixon to guest. Rod Dixon, for those who don't know who he is, maybe you were born only in the past 20 years or so, and you really don't know. But if you're around when I was a kid, this guy was an absolute superstar. He is a four-times Olympian; he won a bronze medal at the 1972 Olympics. He's a runner, obviously, he won in the 1500 meters bronze medal. He's won multiple times championships and cross-country running, and who really one of his biggest successes was to win the New York City Marathon and absolute mammoth feats to do back in 1983. So hope you enjoy the insights that Rod Dixon is going to provide for you today. If you're a runner, you will love this one. But even if you just love interesting, amazing people then check out this interview with Rod Dixon.   Lisa: Well, welcome everybody. Today. I have an absolute legend with me on the show. I have Rod Dixon, one of my heroes from way back in the day, Rod, welcome to the show. It's wonderful to have you on Pushing the Limits. Thanks for taking the time.   Rod Dixon: Lisa, thank you. I mean, of course, I've known about you and read about you but this is our first time, and it's come about through the pandemic. So, some good things have come out of this.   Lisa: There’s definitely some good things come out of it. And I've definitely known about you sort of pretty much my entire, since I was a little kid. So you’re one of my heroes back in the day, so I was like, ‘Oh, wow’. And the funny thing is, we got to meet through a friend in America who just happened to know you. And I was talking with them, and they're like, and I'm like, ‘Can you introduce me?’ Via America we've come, but to get you to Kiwi, so wonderful to have you on the show, Rod.    Rod, you hardly need an introduction. I think people know sort of your amazing achievements as an athlete and runner are many, and we're going to get into them. I think one of the biggest, most incredible things was winning the 1983 New York City Marathon. And that iconic image of you with your hands in the air going, and that guy behind you not such good shape. That's one of the most famous images there is. But Rod, can you tell us a little bit about your story, where you came from, how did that you were such a good runner? Give us a bit of background on you.   Rod: I think, Lisa, I started… I was born in Nelson, and living out at Stoke, which is just not far out. And my brother, John, three years older, he went to Stoke Primary School. And so, I was in a centre, I think. And my mother came out to check on me. And there’s a young Rod, and he sees, and he said in the centre, ‘I'll go and take my shower now’. And that was my chance to then put all the things that I've learned of how to climb over the gate. And I climbed over the gate, then off I went. My mother got the phone call from the Stoke school. ‘Where is your son, Rodney?’ He said, ‘Oh he’s at the back, hanging in the sand’, and she's, ‘No, well, he's down here at the Stokes school with his brother’. Because we used to walk John down to school and walk and go and meet him to walk him back. And so, I knew that way. And here is my chance, so I think, Lisa, I started when I was four years old, when I ran out.   Lisa: When you are escaping? And your brother John. I mean, he was a very talented, amazing runner as well. And actually, he's got into it before you did. Tell us a little bit of his story,  because he was definitely been a big part of your career as well. Tell us about John a little bit.   Rod: Yeah, well, my mother's family were from Mishawaka. They're all farmers. And fortunately, they were tobacco farmers, hot guns, and sheep and cattle. And so, we would be over with the family a lot of the time. And of course, a big farm, and John would always say, ‘Let's go down and catch some eels’ or ‘Let's go chase the rabbits’. And so we're on, outside running around all over time. And I think, then we used to have running races. And John would say, ‘Well, you have 10 yards and say, for 20 yards, 50 yards, and see if you can beat me down to the swing bridge.’ And I would try, and of course he’d catch me. So, there was always this incredible activity between us. And my dad was a very good runner, too. And so, we would go down for our, from the north we’ll go down to the beach for swim. Pretty well, most nights we could walk and run down there. So we would all run down. And then we would run along the beach to the estuary, and run back again.    And then my dad, of course, he would stride out and just make sure that we knew our packing order. Slowly but surely, you see John waited for his moment where he beat dad. And I think, dad turned around and came back to me and he said, ‘I won't run with John, I'll just run with you’. So, I knew what the story was that I had to do the same, but it took me another couple of years before I could beat my dad. So, running was very much an expression, very much part of us. We’d run to school, we’d run home. I would deliver the newspapers in the neighbourhood, most of the time I would run with dad. So, and then at 12 years old, I was able to join the running club, the Nelson Amateur Athletic Harriot and Cycling Club. There’s three or four hundred in the club, and it was just incredible because it was like another extension of the family. And so we would run on farms and golf courses and at the beach or at the local school, sometimes the golf cart would let us run on the golf club. So, there was this running club. So the love of running was very part of my life.   Lisa: And you had a heck of a good genetics by the sound of it. You were just telling me a story,  how your dad had actually cycled back in the 40s, was this around Australia, something like 30,000 miles or something? Incredible, like, wow, that's and on those bikes, on those days. And what an incredible—say he was obviously a very talented sports person.   Rod: I think he was more of an adventurer. We’ve got these amazing pictures of him with his workers in those days, they have to wear knee high leather boots. He’s like Doctor Livingstone, explorer. And so he was exploring and traveling around Australia, just his diaries are incredible. What he did, where he went, and everything was on the bike, everything.. So, it was quite amazing, that endurance, I think you're right, Lisa...   Lisa: You had it in there.   Rod: ...there’s this incredible thing and genetically, and my mother, she played basketball, and she was very athletic herself and gymnast. So I think a lot of that all came together for us kids.   Lisa: So you definitely had a good Kiwi kid upbringing and also some very, very good genetics, I mean, you don't get to the level that you have with my genetics that much. We're just comparing notes before and how we're opposite ends of the running scale, but both love running. It’s lovely. So Rod, I want to dive in now on to a little bit of, some of your major achievements that you had along the way and what your training philosophies were, the mentors that you had, did you follow somebody and started training? Who were you— so, take me forward a little bit in time now to when you're really getting into the serious stuff. What was your training, structure and stuff like back in the day?   Rod: Well, it's very interesting, Lisa. This was after did, in fact, incredibly, he was working, and with Rothmans, and he would travel the country. And he would come to the running clubs to teach the coaches, to impart his principles and philosophy with the coaches. And my brother being three years older, I think he tended to connect with that more so, as younger kids. And but we were just pretty impressed, and Bill Bailey used to come in as a salesperson, and he would come and we'd all go out for lunch with Bill and he would tell stories. And we were fascinated by that, and encouraged by it, and inspired by it. So, I think what John did, as we started, John will get to Sydney in 1990. And he noticed that young Rodney was starting to — our three favourite words, Lisa, it’s learned by doing. So I would learn from this race and I would adopt something different. I would try. When I knew, I mean, John would tell me, he said,  ‘You've run the same race twice expecting a different result.’ He said, ‘You've got to run differently’. And I would go out train with John and then he would say, ‘Okay, now you turn around and go back home because we're going on for another hour’. So he knew how to brother me, how to look after me or study.    And so really, as I started to come through, John realised that maybe Rodney has got more talent and ability than I do. So, he started to put more effort into my training and that didn't really come to us about 18. So, he allowed those five, six years just for club running, doing the races, cross-country. I love cross country — and the more mud and the more fences and the more steep hills, the better I ran. And so that cross country running say I used to love running the beach races through the sand dunes. And I love trackless, fascinated with running on the grass tracks because of  Peter Snell and yeah Murray Halberg. And also too fascinated with the books like The Kings Of Distance and of course, Jack Lovelock winning in 1936. One of the first things I wanted to do was to go down to Timaru Boys High School and hug the oak tree that was still growing there, 80 years old now, Lisa because they all got a little oak sapling for the end, and that is still growing at Timaru Boys High School,   Lisa: Wow. That was so special.   Rod: There's a lot of energy from all around me that inspired me. And I think that's what I decided then that I was going to take on the training, John asked me, and I said yes. And he said, ‘What do you want to do?’ And he said, and I said, ‘Well, I just listened to the 1968 Olympics on my transistor radio’ — which I tell kids, ‘That was Wi-Fi, wireless’. And I said, I want to go to the Olympics one day. And he said, ‘Right, well, they know you've made the commitment’. Now, obviously, during the training, John would say, ‘Well, hold on, you took two days off there, what's going on? So, that’s okay’, he said, ‘You set a goal, but I told you how to do it. So you've got to figure out what you're prepared to do’. And I think then I realised it was my decision making and I had to focus.   So I really, there was very, very few days that I didn't comply — not so much comply — but I was set. Hey, my goal, and my Everest is this, and this is what it's going to take.   Lisa: And that would have been the 19, so 1972.   Rod: No, 1968.   Lisa: 1968. Okay.   Rod: So now, I really put the focus on. Then we set the goal, what it would take, and really by 1970 and ‘70 or ‘71, I made the very, my very first Kewell Cross Country Tour. And I think we're finishing 10th in the world when I was just 20. We realised that that goal would be Olympics, that’s two years’ time, is not unreasonable. So, we started to think about the Olympics. And that became the goal on the bedroom wall. And I remember I put pictures of Peter Snell, Ron Clark and Jim Ryun and Kip Keino on my wall as my inspiration.   Lisa: Your visualisation technique, is that called now, your vision board and all that. And no, this was really the heyday of athletics and New Zealand, really. I mean, you had some, or in the 70s, at least, some other big names in the sport, did that help you — I don't think it's ever been repeated really, the levels that we sort of reached in those years?   Rod: No, no. know. It certainly is because there was Kevin Ross from Whanganui. He was 800, 1500. And then there's Dick Tyler, because he went on incredibly in 1974 at the Commonwealth Games, but Dick Quax, Tony Polhill, John Walker wasn't on the scene until about ‘73 right. So, but, here are these and I remember I went to Wanganui to run 1500. And just as a 21-year-old and I beat Tony Polhill who had won the British championships the year before. So we suddenly, I realised that —   Lisa: You’re world class.   Rod: First with these guys, I can — but of course, there were races where I would be right out the back door. And we would sit down with it now, was it tactics, or was it something we weren't doing in training, or was it something we overdid the train. And we just had to work that out. It was very, very feeling based.   Lisa: And very early in the knowledge  like, now we have everything as really — I mean, even when I started doing ultramarathons we didn't know anything. Like I didn't even know what a bloody electrolyte tablet was. Or that you had to go to the gym at all.  I just ran, and I ran slow and I ran long. And back then I mean, you did have some—I mean absolutely as approach what’s your take on that now like looking back and the knowledge we have now that sort of high mileage training stalls. What's your take on that?   Rod: Well, John realised, of course I am very much the hundred mile a week. John realised that and the terrain and I said, ‘I don't want to run on the right job. I just don't like that.’ He said, ‘Okay, so then, we’ll adapt that principle, because you like to run on the cross-country and mounds all around Nelson’. Yeah. And, and so we adapted, and I think I was best around the 80, 85 miles, with the conditioning. There would be some weeks, I would go to 100 because it was long and slow. And we would go out with the run to the other runners. And the talk test showed us how we were doing.   At 17, I was allowed to run them, Abel Tasman National Park. And of course, the track was quite challenging in those days, it wasn’t a walkway like it is now. And so you couldn't run fast. And that was the principle behind bringing us all over there to run long and slow. And just to get the timing rather than the miles.   Lisa: Keep it light then, the time is for us to use it.   Rod: So, he used to go more with time. And then after, we’d come to Nelson and he would give John time. And John would, of course, I would have to write everything down in my diary. And John would have the diaries there. And he would sit with Arthur and I would go through them. And afterwards, we would give a big check, and say that ‘I liked it. I like this, I liked it. I like to see you doing this’.  And because we're still the basic principles of the period with the base as the foundation training, as you go towards your competitive peak, you're starting to narrow it down and do shorter, faster, or anaerobic work and with base track. And John, we just sit straight away, you don't improve when you train, you improve when you recover.   Lisa: Wow, wise.   Rod: Recovered and rest and recovery.   Lisa: Are you listening, athletes out there? You don't get better training alone. You need the rest and recovery, because that's still the hardest sell. That's still the hardest sell for athletes today, is to get them to prioritise the recovery, their sleep, their all of those sort of aspects over there. And like you already knew that back then.   Rod: And I said once again, just remember to learn by doing. So, unless you're going to record what you've learned today, you're not going to be able to refer to that. Sometimes John would say, ‘Ooh, I noticed today that you didn't do this and this. Bring your diary over.’ And on those days, of course, it was a blackboard and chalk. And he would write the titles at the top. And then from our diary, he would put under, he would take out, and he'd put under any of those headings. And then we'd stand back and said, ‘Now look at this. There's three on this one, nine on this one, two on this one, six on this one.’ We want to try and bring the lows up and the highs down. Let's get more consistency because this is your conditioning period. We don't need to have these spikes. We don't need to have this roller coaster. I want to keep it as steady as we can because it's a 8, 10-week foundation period. So those are the ways that we used to be. And John just simply said, he would say, when you wake up in the morning, take your heart rate. Take your pulse for 15 seconds, and write it down. And then he would say ‘Look, the work we did yesterday, and the day before, yesterday, I noticed that there's a bit of a spike in your recovery on Tuesday and Wednesday. So instead of coming to the track tonight, just go out for a long slow run’.   Lisa: Wow and this was before EPS and heart rate monitors, and God knows what we've got available to us now to track everything. So what an incredible person John must have been like, because he also gave up pretty much his potential, really to help you foster your potential because you obviously genetically had an extreme gift. That's a pretty big sacrifice really, isn’t?   Rod: He was incredible. And I just saw him yesterday, actually. And he used to live in the Marlborough Sounds. And of course, now that moved back to Nelson and so it's wonderful. I mean, I would always go down there and see him, and I used to love—well, I wouldn't run around — but I was biking around, all around the Marlborough Sounds, Kenepuru Sound. and I do four- or five-hour bike rides in the head. He says to me, ‘What was your big thing?’ And I said, ‘Well, I saw three cars today, John, for three hours’, and he said, ‘Oh, yes, and two of those were in the driveway’. It was amazing. I just loved down there, but now he's back here we see each other and talk and we go through our bike rides, and we go for a little jiggle, jog, as we call it now.   Lisa: And so he helped you hone and tailor all of this and give you that guidance so that you boost your really strong foundation. So what was it, your very first big thing that you did? Was it then, would you say that for the Olympics?   Rod: I think qualifying — no, not qualifying — but making the New Zealand cross-country team, The World Cross Country Team at 1971. I think that was the defining moment of what we were doing was, ‘Well, this is amazing.’ And so, as I said, 1971, I finished 10th in the world. And then then John said, ‘Well, what are you actually thinking for the Olympics? Are you thinking the steeplechase or the 5000 meters?’ And I said, ‘No, the 1500.’ ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Oh, Jack Havelock, Peter Snell, John Davies’, and then, he said, ‘Good. You're committed, so let's do it’. Okay. Of course, once I have announced that, then, of course, I got all the — not criticism — but the suggestions from all the, ‘Well, I think Rod's a bit optimistic about the 1500. He hasn't even broken 1’50 for the 800 meters. He hasn't yet been broken 4 minutes for a mile. He wants to go to the Olympics. And I think he should be thinking, and John said, ‘Put the earmuffs on.’   Lisa: That is good advice. Don’t listen to the naysayers.   Rod: Off we go. And then slowly, but surely, I was able to get a lot of races against Dick Quax and Tony Powell, and Kevin Ross, in that. And then I remember, in Wellington at Lower Hutt, I was able to break the four-minute mile, then I got very close in a race to the Olympic Qualifying time. And then of course, you look at qualifications. And a lot of those runners didn't want, they already realised that they hadn't got anywhere near it. So they didn't turn out for the trials. So John gave up any idea of him going to the Olympics. And he said, ‘I'm coming to Auckland to pace you. And this time, you will stay right behind me. And when I move over and say go, go’. And so because we've done a couple of these earlier in the season, and ‘I said that I can sprint later.’ And of course, I missed out at the time, but this was it. And so, he said, ‘Our goal is for you to win the trials and to break the qualification’. And he made it happen. He said, he ran in one second of every lap to get me to 300 meters to go.  When he moved over, and he said ‘Go!’ I got the fight of my life and took off.   Lisa: You wouldn't dare not, after that dedication order. And you qualified you got–   Rod: I won the trials and qualified. And Tony Polhill had qualified in his and he had won the national championship. So he qualified when the nationals and now I've qualified and won the trials. So, they actually, they took us both incredible. He was an A-grade athlete, I was a B-grade athlete. You got everything paid for, be in your head to train.   Lisa: Yes, I know that one. And so then you got to actually go to the Olympics. Now what was that experience like? Because a lot of people, not many people in the world actually get to go to an Olympics. What's it like? What's it like?   Rod: So we went to Scandinavia, and to Europe to do some pre-training. And on those days, we used to say, ‘Well, no, you got to acclimatised’. I mean, nowadays you can kind of go and run within a few days. But in my day, it was three to four weeks, you wanted to have  —   Lisa: That's ideal to be honest.   Rod: Yeah, if they were right.   Lisa: Yeah. Get their time and like that whole jet lag shift and the changing of the time zones, and all of that sort of stuff takes a lot longer than people think to actually work out of the body. So yeah, okay, so now you're at the Olympics.   Rod: So here we were, so and John gave me a written for a track that schedule every day, and this was a training, and he had bounced with knowing that I was going to be flying from London to Denmark. And then, we're going to go to Sweden, and then we're going to go to Dosenbach. And so he expected in all the traveling, all the changes, and really a lot of it was I was able to go out there pretty well stayed with that. Now again, I realised that that wasn't going to work. And but what he had taught me, I was able to make an adjustment and use my feeling-based instinct, saying, ‘What would John say to this?’ John would say this because those all that journey, we'd have together, I learned very, very much to communicate with him. Any doubts, we would talk, we would sit down, and we would go over things. So, he had trained me for this very moment, to make decisions for myself. Incredible.   Lisa: Oh, he's amazing.   Rod: Absolutely.   Lisa: That’s incredible. I'm just sort of picturing someone doing all that, especially back then, when you didn't have all the professional team coaches running around you and massage therapists and whatever else that the guys have now, guys and girls.   Rod: It was the two days he knew that I would respond, it would take me four to five races before I started to hit my plateau. I found early in those days that — see, I was a strength trainer to get my speed. I came across a lot of athletes who had speed to get their strength. And so, what I wrote, I found that when I would go against the speed to street, they would come out of the gate, first race and boom, hit their time.   Lisa: Hit their peak.   Rod:  Whereas, I would take three, four or five races to get my flow going. And then I would start to do my thing. My rhythm was here, and then all of a sudden, then I would start to climb my Everest. I've been new. And so John said, ‘These are the races that the athletic, the Olympic committee have given us. I want you to run 3000 meters on this race, I want you to run 800 meters if you can on this race. If you can't run 800, see if you can get 1000. I don't want you running at 1500 just yet. And so, then he would get me under, over. Under, and then by the time that three ball races, now it's time for you to run a couple of 1500s and a mile if you can. Then, I want you to go back to running a 3000 meters, or I want you to go back out and training’.   Lisa: Wow. Really specific. Like wow.   Rod: He was very unbelievable. Also to that at that time, I had these three amazing marathon runners, Dave McKenzie, our Boston Marathon winner, Jeff Foster, who is the absolute legend of our running, and a guy called Terry Maness. And John said to me, ‘Don't train with quacks and all those other guys. Run, do your runs with the marathon runners’. You see, and they would take me out for a long slow run. Whereas if you went out with the others, you get all this group of runners, then they’d all be racing each other.   Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t race when you're training   Rod: Your ego. With the pecking order, when you ran with the marathon runners, there was no pecking order.   Lisa: It's all about pacing and —   Rod: And of course, and I would eat with them too because I learned how to eat because they were better eaters than me. I would eat more carbohydrates and more organic foods because it was the long run. I learned to do that. It was interesting because Jack pointed out to me said, ‘Now you see those two guys that were at the track today. And they were doing, and you are quite overwhelmed because they are your competitors and they were doing this incredible workout’. And I said to them, I said, ‘Woop, that what I was up against’. And Jack said, ‘Put it behind you. I want you to come to the dining room with us tonight, and we'll try and see if we can sit with them or near them.’ And I’m sure enough, there they were over there and they were talking. And they were pushing their food all around their plate and they weren't eating much’. And Jack said, ‘Look at you, you've eaten everything, and you're going back for seconds and thirds. If they're not replacing their glycogen, they won’t be able to run very well in a couple of days because they're not eating right’. So that gave me the confidence. Oh, I'm eating better than them. So they may have trained better. And sure enough, you didn't see them at the track. And the coach had taken them off because they were obviously racing too hard, they were racing their and not recovering.   Lisa: Recovering. Yeah, so don't be intimidated. Because it's very easy, isn't it, when you start to doubt your own methods and your own strategies, and you haven’t done it right, and so-and-so's got it better than me, and they're more talented. And this is — all that negative self-talk, and you found a couple of guys to go, ‘Hang on, you've got this part better than they've got.’ What a great sort of mentoring thing for them to have done, to put you in that sort of good headspace. On the headspace thing, how did you deal with the doubts? Did you ever have lots of self-doubts? I mean, I know I certainly I did, where you don't feel good enough. Like you're what am I doing here? The old imposter syndrome type thing? Did that ever rear its head in your world? Or were you able to focus and...?   Rod: No, absolutely, Lisa. I mean, I would often, fortunately, I could go to John with any question. There is nothing, no stone left unturned. He was amazing. Because he sensed it too, by the way, that being that brother, playing and training. And he was very, very connected with me because he would train with me, and he would sense things. And he'd say to me, he said, ‘Oh, you’re a little bit down today, aren’t you?’ and he said, ‘What's happened?’ There are like bit of a bullying going on in school and this or that, or ‘That girl won't talk to me anymore, and I love her’ and that stuff.   Lisa: Yeah, yeah, all that stuff.   Rod: And so he was like Marian, my mother. She was very, very on to me, too. She would sit with me and talk with me. And her mother, my grandmother, amazing, amazing people. And I will say this, right now, when my mother was 95 years old, she asked me to come and sit with her on her birthday. And she held my hand. And she said, ‘You can call me Marian from now on’. And I said, ‘Wow, this is fantastic’. And that was my mother's gift to me because I've always called her mother. I never call her mum. No. Always ‘mother’. And that relationship with my mother was very, very powerful, and it came through in my running. And John would now and again have to kind of toughen me up a little bit — that was incredible balance. So I never had anything that I had, I took to bed with me, I never had anything that I would go out.   Lisa: Get it all out.   Rod: I would say, sometimes, if you're running through the Dan Mountain Retreat. And he said, ‘I know what you get yourself wound up’. He said, ‘Stop, take your shoes off, and hug a tree.’   Lisa: These guys is just so like, what astounds me is that your mom, your brother, these good mentors and coaches that you had were so advanced. And this is the stuff that we’re talking about now, like, I'm telling my athletes to take your shoes off and go and ground yourself every day. And go hug a tree and get out in the sunlight and get away from the screens and do all these basic sort of things. But back then there wasn't that, like, there wasn't all this knowledge that we have now, and they obviously innately just nurtured. It sounds like you had the perfect nurturing environment to become the best version of yourself.   Rod: Yes, I think so, Lisa. I was very, very, — and wonderfully, even in the club, in our running club, get this, our chairman of our running club was Harold Nelson, 1948 Olympian. Our club captain was Carrie Williams, five times Australasian cross-country champion. And they took time to run with us kids. They didn't all go out and race. The club captain and Harold would come down and talk with us kids and we would run. And then, I remember Carrie Williams, when he took us for a run. And he said, ‘Right’. He said, ‘Now there's a barbed wire fence in, there's a gate’. And he said, ‘We've got the flag there and the flag there’. He said, ‘You got a choice of going over the barbed wire fence or over the gate’. He said, ‘Come on, you boys, off you go’. And of course, 9 out of 10 went over the gate. And a friend of mine, Roger Seidman and I, we went over the barbed wire. And then he said, ‘Why did you do that?’ And I said, ‘Because it was shorter.’ And they turned to the others, and he said, ‘I like his thinking’. And he said, ‘You've got to have, to jump over a barbed wire fence, you've got to have 100%, you got to have 90% confidence and 10% ability.   Lisa: And a lot of commitment. That is a good analogy.   Rod: Things like that, all started to, there's this big, big jigsaw puzzle. And all those pieces started to make sense. And I can start to build that picture. And when I started to see the picture coming, I understood what they were telling me. And once again, learn by doing — or another word, another thing that John had above my bed was a sign, ‘Don't be influenced by habits’.   Lisa: Wow, that's a good piece of advice for life. I think I might stick that on my Instagram today, Rod Dixon says.   Rod: And, of course, wonderfully, all these I've carried on with my programme that I did with the LA marathon, and bringing people from the couch to the finish line now. And when I was going through, we're putting through, I started off with five or six hundred. But I got up to over 2000 people. And basically, it's the matter that I used for my kids’ programme is, ‘Finishing is winning. Slow and steady. The tortoise won the race.’   Lisa: Well, that's definitely been my bloody life history, that's for sure. Finishing is winning and the tortoise wins the race. Yeah, if you go long enough, and everyone else has sort of stopped somewhere, and you're still going. That was my sort of philosophy, if I just keep running longer than everybody else, and whatever. Let's go now, because I'm aware of time and everything, and there's just so much to unpack here. I want to talk about the New York City Marathon because it was pretty, I mean, so you did the Olympics. Let's finish that story first, because you got bronze medal at the 1500 at the Olympics. Now, what was that like a massive, life-changing thing to get an Olympic medal? You did it four times, the first time?   Rod: I mean, my goal, and I remember, I've still got a handwritten notes of John. And our goal was to get to the sideline at the first heat. And if you can qualify for the next thing, would we give you this, that, if you're there, this is what we've worked for. And of course, and I remember 1968 again, when I was listening to my transistor radio, to the 1500 meters with Keino and Ryun, Jim Ryun, the world record holder, Kip Keino, Commonwealth champion from Edinburgh in 1970. And here he was, this incredible race, and we were absolutely going in there, listening to it, and it was incredible. And to think they said that four years later, I'm on the start line, and beside me, is Kip Keino.   Lisa: Yeah, it'd be, it’s pretty amazing.   Rod: And then the next runner to come and stand beside me was Jim Ryun, the world record holder and here I am. And I'm thinking because I don't pick it out, when we got the heats, well you've got the world record holder, silver medallist, and you've got the Olympic gold medallist in my race, and only two go through to the next leap. So I'm going for it but I never, I wasn't overwhelmed by that because John has said to me, our goal is, and I wanted to please John by meeting our goal, at least get to the next round. Well, history has shown that Jim Ryun was tripped up and fell and I finished second behind Keino to go through to the next round. And then and then of course, I won my semi-final. So, I was in the final, and this was unbelievable, it’s no doubt is –   Lisa: It’s like you’re pinching yourself, ‘Is this real?’ All that finals and the Olympics. And you ended up third on that race, on the podium, with a needle around your neck on your first attempt in a distance where the people sent you, ‘Yeah, not really suited to this tribe’.   Rod: And what was amazing is that just after we know that we've got the middle and went back to the back, and after Lillian came in into the room to congratulated me and Bill Bailey. And they said, ‘You realise that you broke Peter Snell’s New Zealand record’. And I was almost like, ‘Oh my god, I didn't mean to do that’.   Lisa: Apologising for breaking the record. Oh, my goodness. I'm sure that's just epic. And then you went on to more Olympic glory. Tell us from...   Rod: So at that stage, we went back to… New Zealand team were invited to the Crystal Palace in London for what they called the International Athletes Meet. And it was a full house, 40,000 people, and I didn't want to run the 1500 — or they didn't actually have a 1500 — they had a 3000, or two mark, this right, we had a two-mark. And that's what I wanted to run, the two mark, and that was Steve Prefontaine, the American record holder, and he just finished fourth at the Olympics. And I went out and we had a great race — unbelievable race. I won it, setting a Commonwealth and New Zealand record. He set the American record. And that was just like, now, it was just beginning to think, wow, I can actually run further than 1500.   Lisa: Yeah, yeah, you can. You certainly did.   Rod: So we got invited to go back to Europe at ‘73. And so we have the called, the Pacific Conference Games in ‘73, in Toronto. So, I asked the Athletic people, ‘Can I use my ticket to Toronto, and then on to London?’ Because I had to buy—may they allow me to use that ticket. And then Dick Quax and Tony Polhill said they were going to do the same. And then we had this young guy call me, John Walker. And he said, ‘I hear you guys are going to England. And could I come with you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah’, because he didn't go to the Olympics, but he ran some great races, we thought it was heavy. And he said, ‘Now do you get me the ticket?’ And I said, ‘No, you have to get the ticket’. And he said, ‘Oh, how do I do that?’ And I said, ‘If you, can't you afford it?’, and he said, ‘Not really’. I said, have you got a car? He said, ‘Yes’. I said, ‘Well, sell it’. And he said, ‘Really?’ So he did. And my reasoning is that, ‘John, if you run well enough, you'll get your tickets back again, which means you'll be able to buy your car back again.’ And that was John...    Lisa:  Put your ass on the line and forward you’re on, because this all amateur sport, back in the day. And it was hard going, like to be a world-class athlete while trying to make a living and  how did you manage all of that, like, financially? How the heck did you do it?   Rod: Well, before I left in ‘73, I worked full time, eight hours a day. I did a milk run at night. I worked in a menswear store on a Friday night. And then of course, fortunately, I was able to communicate with Pekka Vasala from Finland. And he said, ‘We can get you tickets. So the thing is, get as many tickets as you can, and then you can cash them in’. Right. But then, so you get the ticket, of course, there you wouldn't get the full face of the ticket because you were cashing it in. But if you got enough to get around. And you did get expenses, double AF and those rows you're able to get per diem, what they call per diem. Yep. But by the time you came back, you kind of hopefully, you equal, you weren't in debt.    Lisa: Yeah.    Rod: Well, then you go back and comment for the Sydney Olympics. Very good friend of mine allowed us to go do shooting and we would go out every weekend and then sell with venison. Yeah. And that was giving another $100 a weekend in, into the kitty.   Lisa: Into the kid. And this is what you do, like to set, I mean, I must admit like when I represented New Zealand, so I did 24-hour racing and it's a ripe old age of 42. Finally qualifying after eight years of steps. And I qualified as a B athlete, I did 193.4 in 24 hours and I had to get to 200. I didn't make the 200, but hey, I qualified. And then we didn't even get a singlet, we, and the annoying thing in my case was that we qualified for the World Champs but they wouldn't let us go to the World Champs. And I've been trying for this for eight years before I could actually qualified. And I was desperate to go to the World Champs and then just on the day that the entries had to be in at the World Champs athletics, New Zealand athletic said, ‘Yes, you can actually go’ and I'm like, ‘Well, where am I going to pull $10,000 out of my back pocket on the day of closing?’ So I didn't get to go to the World Champs, which was really disappointing. So I only got to go to the Commonwealth Champs in England and got to represent my country, at least. Because that had been my dream for since I was a little wee girl, watching you guys do your thing. And my dad had always been, ‘You have to represent your country in something, so get your act together’. And I failed on everything. And I failed and I failed, and failed. And I was a gymnast, as a kid, it took me till I was 42 years old to actually do that and we had to buy our own singlet, we'd design our own singlets, we didn't even  get that. And that was disappointing. And this is way later, obviously, this is only what 2010, 9, somewhere, I can't remember the exact date. And so, so fight, like you're in a sport that has no money. So to be able to like, still has, to become a professional at it, I managed to do that for a number of years, because I got really good at marketing. And doing whatever needed to be done —  making documentaries, doing whatever, to get to the races. So like, even though I was like a generation behind you guys, really, it's still the same for a lot of sports. It's a hard, rough road and you having to work full time and do all this planning. But a good life lessons, in a way, when you have to work really hard to get there. And then you don't take it for granted.   Now, I really want to talk about the New York City Marathon. Because there’s probably like, wow, how the heck did you have such a versatile career from running track and running these,  short distances? It's super high speeds, to then be able to contemplate even doing a marathon distance. I mean, the opposite ends of the scale, really. How did that transition happen?   Rod: Yeah, I think from ‘73, ‘74, I realised that John Walker's and then Filbert Bayi and some of these guys were coming through from the 800,000 meters. And so I knew, at that stage, it was probably a good idea for me to be thinking of the 5000 meters. So that was my goal in 75 was to run three or four 5000 meters, but still keep my hand in the 1500. Because that was the speed that was required for 5000. You realise that when I moved to 5000, I was definitely the fastest miler amongst them, and that gave me a lot of confidence, but it didn't give me that security to think that they can't do it too.   So I kept running, the 800s, 1500s as much as I could, then up to 3000 meters, then up to five, then back to 3000, 1500 as much as I can. And that worked in ‘75. So then we knew that programme, I came back to John with that whole synopsis. And then we playing for ‘76 5000 meters at the Montreal Olympics. Pretty well, everything went well. I got viral pneumonia three weeks before the Olympics.   Lisa: Oh my gosh. Didn’t realise that.   Rod: Haven’t talked about this very much, it just took the edge off me.   Lisa: It takes longer than three weeks to get over pneumonia   Rod: And I was full of antibiotics, of course. It might have been four weeks but certainly I was coming right but not quite. Yeah. So the Olympics ‘76 was a disappointment. Yeah, finishing fourth. I think the listeners set behind the first.   Lisa: Pretty bloody good for somebody who had pneumonia previously.   Rod: Then I went back to Europe. And then from that point on, I didn't lose a race. And in fact, in ‘76, I won the British 1500 meters at Sebastian Coe and  Mo Crafter, and Grand Cayman, and those guys. So, then I focused everything really on the next couple of years, I’m going to go back to cross-country. And I'm going to go back to the Olympics in 1980 in Moscow, this is going to be the goal. And as you know, Lisa, we, New Zealand joined the World Cup. And we were actually in Philadelphia, on our way to the Olympics, when Amelia Dyer came up to John Walker, and I said, ‘Isn’t it just disappointing, you're not going to the Olympics’. And I look at John and go...   Lisa: What the heck are you talking about?   Rod: No, and we don't? New Zealand joined the boycott. So at that stage, they said, ‘Look, we've still got Europe, we can still go on, we can still race’. And I said, ‘Well, I'm not going to Europe. I'm not going to go to Europe and run races against the people who are going to go to the Olympics. What? There's nothing in that for me’. And I said, ‘I heard there's a road race here in Philadelphia next weekend. I'm going to stay here. I'm going to go and run that road race. And then I'll probably go back to New Zealand’.   Well, I went out and I finished third in that road race against Bill Rogers, the four-time Boston, four-time New York Marathon winner, Gary Spinelli, who was one of the top runners and I thought, ‘Wow, I can do this’. And so, I called John, and we started to talk about it. And he said, ‘Well, you really don't have to do much different to what you've been doing. You've already got your base, you already understand that your training pyramid’. He says, ‘You've got to go back and do those periodisation… Maybe you still got to do your track, your anaerobic work.’ And he said, ‘And then just stepping up to 10,000 meters is not really that difficult for you’.    So, I started experimenting, and sure enough, that started to come. And in those days, of course, you could call every day and go through a separate jar. I had a fax machine, faxing through, and then slowly but surely, I started to get the confidence that I could run 15k. And then I would run a few 10 milers, and I was winning those. And then of course, then I would run a few races, which is also bit too much downhill for me, I'm not good on downhill. So I'll keep away from those steps to select. And then I started to select the races, which were ranked, very high-ranked, so A-grade races. And then I put in some B-grade races and some C. So, I bounced them all around so that I was not racing every weekend, and then I started to get a pattern going. And then of course, I was able to move up to, as I said, 10 mile. And I thought now I'm going to give this half marathon a go. So, I ran the half marathon, I got a good sense from that. And then, I think at the end of that first year, I came back rank number one, road racing. And so then I knew what to do for the next year. And then I worked with the Pepsi Cola company, and they used to have the Pepsi 10K races all around the country. And so I said, I’d like to run some of these for you, and do the PR media. And that took me away from the limelight races.   And so, I would go and do media and talk to the runners and run with the runners and then race and win that. And I got funding for that, I got paid for that because I was under contract. And so I was the unable to pick out the key races for the rest of the set. And then slowly but surely, in 82, when I ran the Philadelphia half marathon and set the world record — that's when I knew, when I finished, I said, ‘If I turn around, could you do that again?’ And I said, ‘Yes’. I didn't tell anybody because that would be a little bit too —   Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Praising yourself.   Rod: So I just thought I'd make an honest assessment myself. And when I talked to John, he said, ‘How?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I couldn't’. And he said, ‘Well then, we’re going to look at that’.   Lisa: We got some work to do.   Rod: He said, ‘What we will do in 1982, you're going to come back and you're going to run the Pasta Marathon in Auckland, and that was going to be my trial. And Jack Foster was trying to be the first 50-year-old to break 2:20. So, I got alongside Jack and I said, ‘Now this is my first marathon. What do I do?’ And he said, ‘I see all these runners going out there and warming up and I don't want to run 29 miles...   Lisa: For the marathon? I need to do some extra miles warmup.   Rod: ‘Use the first mile as a warmup, just run with me’. I said, ‘That'll do me’. So, I went out and ran with Jack and then we time in, started down to Iraq, and we're going through Newmarket. And he said, ‘I think it's time for you to get up there with the leaders’. He said, ‘You're looking at people on the sidewalk. You're chatting away as if it's a Sunday run. You’re ready to go’.  I said, ‘You're ready?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, go’. And so, alright, because this is Jack Foster.   Lisa: Can't leave him.   Rod: 1974 at 42 years old. Jack said, ‘You can climb Mount Everest,’ I would do it. Yeah. So, I got up with the leaders and join them and out to Mission Bay. And on my way back, and I was running with Kevin Ryun, he who is also one of our legends from runners. And Kevin, he said, ‘We're in a group of four or five’. And he said, he came out, he said, ‘Get your ass out of here’. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You're running too easy. Make you break now.’ So I said, ‘Yes. Kevin’.   Lisa: Yes, Sir, I’m off.   Rod: So I ran one that and then that was when I talked with John, that was going to be the guidelines that maybe not another one this year, but certainly look at 83 as running a marathon at some point.   Lisa: How did you work the pacing? Like going from such a shorter distances and then you’re going into these super long distances, where you're pacing and you're fuelling and all that sort of thing comes into it. Was it a big mind shift for you? Like not just sprint out of the gate, like you would in, say, 1500, the strategies are so very different for anything like this.   Rod: Certainly, those memories of running with the marathon boys in 72. And I went back to Dave McKenzie and Jack Foster and talked to them about what it takes. And then, John, my brother, John was also too, very, very in tune with them, and he knew all the boys, and so we started to talk about how it would be. And he said, ‘So I want you to do, I want you to go back to doing those long Abel Tasman runs. I want you to do those long road aerobic runs, and just long and slow.’ And he said, ‘I don't want you going out there with your mates racing it. I want you to just lay that foundation again.’ And he said, ‘You’ve already done it’, he said, ‘It's just a natural progression for you’.   So it was just amazing, because it just felt comfortable. And at that time, I was living in Redding, Pennsylvania, and I would be running out or out through the Amish country and the farms and roads, they're just horse and cats.   Lisa: Awesome.   Rod: I had this fabulous forest, Nolde Forest, which is a state park. And I could run on there for three hours and just cross, but I wouldn't run the same trails. I mean, you'd run clockwise or anti-clockwise, so. And then, but I kept — I still kept that track mentality and still did my training aerobically but I didn't do it on the track. Fortunately, the spar side, they had a road that was always closed off only for emergencies. And it was about a three-

In this episode, I talk with Kelly Taylor of the National Park Service. Kelly manages the Assateague Island National Seashore Visitors Center in Maryland, which sits at the foot of the Verrazano Bridge that takes visitors from the mainland to the national and state parks. It’s got everything you need to learn about the island’s inhabitants, from the fish in the bay to the birds on the beach, touch tanks, film, books, and much, much more. Recorded May 2018 and produced January 2021.

Episode 46 was a meandering conversation of whatever was on our minds!  We talked about everything from the Verrazano Bridge bouncing in the wind, the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree lighting, Joe Causi playing video games in his basement, our favorite Christmas movies, the soft pretzel lady at the Staten Island Shop Rite, Joe's connections with Christmas lights and Playstation 5's, his appearance in the Italian Tribune Newspaper and so much more!  Give us a follow on our Facebook page for more: https://www.facebook.com/brooklynsownpodcast    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're still on a summer break beibis, so here are some favorites from our archive. ---- FELIZ AÑO FAM! We're starting the year with a v cute collab with Latina podcasters Estephanie and Lina from Bag Ladiez, who come in to guest DJ and unpack some baggage. No oversize maletas here! We chat about el Bronx, re-naming the Verrazano Bridge after a bodega cat (Misu Bridge anyone?), and why "Be Careful" is Cardi B's most Dominican song (cuidao conmigo!). Featuring music by Raulín Rodriguez, Flor de Toloache, Mykki Blanco ft Princess Nokia, Mario Vazquez, José Gonzalez, and Cardi B. Show notes: www.radiomenea.com/blog/2019/01/04/episode-66-bag-ladiez?rq=bag%20ladiez Follow Bag Ladiez: @bgladies www.instagram.com/bgladiez twitter.com/bag_ladiez Follow us: instagram.com/RadioMenea twitter.com/RadioMenea facebook.com/RadioMenea

Drew Petersen (Artistic Director, Trusty Sidekick Theater Company) takes me to the basement bar of Beecher’s Handmade Cheese where we chat about immersive theater, Drew’s punk rock beginnings, and the future cultivation of theater for young audiences. With a $2.62 million grant (based on the daily income from NYC’s George Washington Bridge, Verrazano Bridge, and Hugh…Read more TWO: Drew Petersen | Beecher’s Handmade Cheese

Yes, he is in fact a “lord”. But that is a whole conversation for another time.Lord Matthew Scheckner is the Global CEO of Advertising Week, a platform where businesses and brands are discussing what he calls society’s “real issues” in a collective of conferences, seminars, special events and live entertainment in New York City, Mexico City, London, Tokyo, Sydney and Johannesburg.But prior to bringing together international professionals for Advertising Week, Matt fostered an entrepreneurial drive and work ethic that spanned from washing dishes, to the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and starting an his first agency during the emergence of sports marketing.If you’re looking for inspiration, advice and wisdom from a master networker who has created a global community, bringing together many tens-of-thousands to congregate internationally, this is a conversation you’ll want to listen carefully. In this conversation, we discuss Matt’s super interesting career trajectory to Advertising Week, the surprising reason he focused on advertising, his thoughts on corporate responsibility around data & privacy issues, the importance of opportunities to connect on a human level with other people, and how Advertising Week has become a platform for business and social impact. Click here to listen on iTunes - Apple PodcastsRecognitions:Global CEO of Advertising WeekFounder of Stillwell PartnersGraduate of Emory University Topics discussed in this conversation include:6 countries, heading into 16 years in NYGraduating from Emory in 1986 as a professional breeding groundOriginally planning to be a lawyerFirst jobs delivering the Penny Saver (for a literal penny!), the New York Post, working at bagel shops and delis, and many other odd jobsInterning at the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce in the 80’s The emergence of “sports marketing” and treating sports as economic development“The Commission on the Year 2000” – Matt’s first job out of college, under NYC’s Mayor KochMaximizing utilization of the waterfrontTax implications of the MeadowlandsBecoming the first Executive Director of the New York City Sports Commission at age 23Winning the 1998 Good Will GamesBuilding the olympic sized pool in Eisenhower ParkThe downfall of these programs with Mayor GiulianiMatt’s first business venture in sports marketingDabbling in a multitude of projectsDDB4 A’s – The American Association of Advertising AgenciesThe ideation for Advertising WeekMatt’s business modelRadio City eventsA secret apartment in Radio City, The Roxy SuiteProposing the first Advertising Week event to Mayor Bloomberg in 2004The first opening gala at Gracie MansionSeed money 4A’s, Omnicom, IPG, Publicis, Havas, WPPChanging from non-profit to for-profitMatt’s partner, Lance PillersdorfExpanding to London, Tokyo, Mexico City, Johannesburg, to a global networkYear-round content businessWhy Advertising?The importance of exclusive locations for AW’s special eventsHighlighting the social and experiential part of lifeHow to grow an international network around the globeGetting quoted in The Wall Street Journal Matt’s motivation and driveThe challenge to create authenticity in each international locationLeveraging the AW platform to talk about important “real issues”Emma Stone on mental health and wellnessNikki Sixx of Motley Crue and the United States Surgeon General discussing the opiod crisisD&AD Impact AwardsCannes LionsSocial Impact topics: Health & Wellness, Diversity & Inclusion, Sustainability, Responsible ProductionMatt’s perspective on how social impact is emerging in businessesUnilever and sustainabilityBrands that are doing good are good for businessCorporate responsibility around advertising and over-consumption of mediaData and privacy issuesHow Matt measures success for himself and his businessValuable advice for entrepreneursBio:Matt Scheckner is CEO of Stillwell Partners, a New York City based boutique consultancy. Stillwell is best known as the producer of Advertising Week, the world’s largest advertising / marketing / media industry summit. The Week is conducted in New York City, London, Tokyo, Sydney and Mexico City and launches in Africa in 2019. Under Scheckner’s leadership, which dates back to 2004, the B2B event has evolved into a vibrant, global tent-pole event and is the world’s pre-eminent annual platform uniting the ad tech, brand/client, creative, marketing and media communities. Scheckner’s signature recipe of blending thought leadership with one-of-a-kind evening experiences for the entire industry ecosystem propels Advertising Week. The annual festival-style event is now in year fifteen (15) in the USA, going into year seven (7) in Europe, year three (3) in Tokyo and just a few months ago launched successfully in Mexico City and Sydney. Planning is well underway to launch in Africa in 2019 and Advertising Week’s related year-round content initiatives, notable AW360, continue to grow.Stillwell’s origin is derived from Coney Island. For 20+ years, on the historic corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues, Stillwell has produced the annual Nathan’s 4th of July Hot Dog Eating Contest and ESPN broadcast. Scheckner has served on the Board of Governors of the Friars Club and stands alongside such luminaries as Milton Berle, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, and Henny Youngman, as winner of the “Friar of the Year” - - a distinction he was awarded by his fellow Friars in 2011. He is active with many causes, including the launch of War Child in the United States, Comic Relief UK, London’s Roundhouse and Tuesday’s Children, which honored Scheckner as their 2013 Gala Honoree. Scheckner also served as Chairman of the World Trade Center Memorial Communications Advisory Council and led a public campaign that generated $300 million towards construction and completion of the World Trade Center Memorial. From 2006-2008, Scheckner served as Consigliere at Yahoo!, where he produced the industry’s first digital Upfront, “Broadband on Broadway” in 2007 and managed the corporation’s relationships with Madison Avenue. He also conceived and produced major corporate experiential programs around the world - - from Cannes to Pebble Beach - - and led the company’s support of the Tribeca Film Festival, an early harbinger of the modern-day explosion of creative content streaming on the web. For more than a decade (1995-2006), Scheckner owned and ran Empire Sports & Entertainment, a New York City-based marketing and strategic consulting firm. One of Empire’s largest clients was Radio City Productions. Under Scheckner’s direction, Empire produced major events outside the Music Hall including the 1997 opening of Arthur Ashe Stadium, Pepsi’s 1999 Centennial Celebration, which featured Ray Charles, Riverdance and the Rolling Stones and several Super Bowl Halftimes. Scheckner also played a central role in shaping the Music Hall’s overall strategic plan including its acquisition by Madison Square Garden and landmark renovation in the year 2000. Empire also served as SFX’s marketing agency developing strategies to secure more than $200 million in sponsorship across SFX’s live sports and entertainment properties. The company also partnered with Ken Sunshine and the Nashville-based Opryland to produce “Always . . . Patsy Cline” Off-Broadway. The show ran for a year at the Variety Arts Theater. Prior to incorporating Empire in 1995, Scheckner served as Counsel on Sports Marketing for the flagship office of Hill & Knowlton, a global public relations firm where he founded the firm’s sports and entertainment practice.From 1987 through 1994, Scheckner served as Executive Director of the New York City Sports Commission, a not-for-profit organization founded during the Koch administration. During his tenure with the Commission, Scheckner was directly responsible for successful bids for the 1993 Olympic Congress of the USA and the 1998 Goodwill Games. He saved the Jerome Boxing Club in the South Bronx from eviction and secured City funds to renovate the Club; fulfilled New York City Marathon founder Fred Lebow’s request to secure the entire Verrazano Bridge as the Marathon’s starting point; closed Central Park for the Tour de Trump cycling race; stopped City government in it’s tracks by bringing Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton and Larry Holmes to City Hall; led New York City’s bid to host 1994 World Cup matches; and successfully secured City and Community Board approval to stage an Indy Car Race in lower Manhattan. Prior to assuming his post with the Sports Commission, Scheckner served as a Policy Analyst with the Mayor’s Commission on the Year 2000, a blue-ribbon planning group, where he was responsible for the Commission's work on demographics, economic development, education, transportation and water front development.Among Scheckner's other professional honors, he was selected as a member of Crain's New York Business "Forty Under Forty" at the age of 28. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Marketing at the New York University Management Institute, and was appointed coordinator of NYU's annual Summer Institute on Sports and Event Marketing in 1995. In 1998, Scheckner was appointed to a similar post as an Adjunct Professor of the Columbia Graduate School of Business. Globally, Scheckner has lectured in Sao Paolo with Pele on sports marketing, among other venues.Scheckner resides in Port Washington, NY with his wife Ila and their children, Benny and Eliza. Sadly, his dog Lambeau passed in 2010 but lives on in memory. He is a graduate of Emory University with a Bachelor of Arts. Regarding personal pursuits, Scheckner has the distinction of having been one of two severely injured softball-playing Friars during a 2009 outfield crash in Central Park; he is an avid golfer; and competes with pride in the Friars Pool tournaments, having finished as high as 6thplace.

FELIZ AÑO FAM! We're starting the year with a v cute collab with Latina podcasters Estephanie and Lina from Bag Ladiez, who come in to guest DJ and unpack some baggage. No oversize maletas here! We chat about el Bronx, re-naming the Verrazano Bridge after a bodega cat (Misu Bridge anyone?), and why "Be Careful" is Cardi B's most Dominican song (cuidao conmigo!). Featuring music by Raulín Rodriguez, Flor de Toloache, Mykki Blanco ft Princess Nokia, Mario Vazquez, José Gonzalez, and Cardi B. Show notes: www.radiomenea.com/blog/2019/01/04/episode-66-bag-ladiez Follow Bag Ladiez: https://soundcloud.com/bgladies https://www.instagram.com/bgladiez https://twitter.com/bag_ladiez Follow us: instagram.com/RadioMenea twitter.com/RadioMenea facebook.com/RadioMenea

Grand Coulee Dam.  Air-conditioning.   Hoover Dam.  Empire State Building.  Over 3 million miles of highway.  Golden Gate Bridge.  Verrazano Bridge.  Holland Tunnel.  George Washington Bridge.  Automatic transmissions.  Commercial jet travel. Electric refrigerators.  That and more took place 1900-1960.   Since then…?  Almost nothing!  What! Why? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Grand Coulee Dam.  Air-conditioning.   Hoover Dam.  Empire State Building.  Over 3 million miles of highway.  Golden Gate Bridge.  Verrazano Bridge.  Holland Tunnel.  George Washington Bridge.  Automatic transmissions.  Commercial jet travel. Electric refrigerators.  That and more took place 1900-1960.   Since then…?  Almost nothing!  What! Why? 1960 is approximate date marking the end of Christianity as the respected central organizing force in American society.  That date also marks the end of our ability to build really significant projects like bridges, dams and highways.  Are they connected?

Launching the employee development movement: this week Paul and Rich talk to Jen Dary, the founder of Plucky, “a consulting firm that helps companies with their people.” They discuss the value of retention over hiring, how to reframe thinking about career paths, Jen’s “employee development” approach to human resources challenges for both people and companies, and a pivotal conversation while stuck in traffic on the Verrazano Bridge.

Jane Sobel Klonsky is our talented guest. She is an award-winning photographer and her latest work is the book, Unconditional, featuring stories of senior dogs. She and her filmmaker daughter Kacey also work on a continuing project called, Unconditional Stories, featuring more stories through photography and video. Website http://unconditionalstories.com Facebook https://www.facebook.com/unconditionalstories1/ Jane Sobel Klonsky launched her photography career in 1976 as the first photographer to scale the cables to the top of the Verrazano Bridge to get a shot of the start of the New York City Marathon. Jane was the official photographer of the New York City Marathon for the next 10 years. For nearly thirty years, Jane was a major player in the world of commercial and sports photography, with clients including Adidas, Black & Decker, Club Med, Pepsi, Nike, Coca-Cola, Xerox and Miller High Life. Her work has taken her around the world to Kenya to shoot photos of a family of Maasai Warriors; to record an international running competition in Tokyo; and to chronicle the untouched beauty of far-reaching places like Papua New Guinea and Myanmar (Burma). Known for her award-winning lifestyle photography, as well as for her work in fashion, travel, landscape and sports, her work has been published widely, and has been the subject of several books, including one based on a 50,000 mile cross-country photographic tour of rural America taken with her photographer husband, Arthur, and two Great Danes. She continues to do extensive work for Getty Images. In addition to being a mother to Kacey, Jane lives with her husband, their two therapy dogs, Charlie and Sam, and a cat, Humphrey, in rural Vermont. Some of the rescue organizations mentioned Thulani Program https://www.facebook.com/ThulaniProgram/ The Grey Muzzle Organization https://www.facebook.com/GreyMuzzle/ Muttville https://www.facebook.com/Muttville.Senior.Dog.Rescue/ Article in the Washington Post from March 2017 on Senior Dogs https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/03/03/more-people-are-adopting-old-dogs-really-old-dogs/?utm_term=.d7fedda1bac9   About Nancy and Harold Rhee We have been married over 20 years, fostered over 60 dogs in the past four years, and we love animal rescue and the amazing people who dedicate their lives. And of course, the dogs and cats! If you want to learn more about Nancy and Harold, go to our About Us page at http://thisispawprint.com/about or listen to our introductory podcast episode, "Fifty Puppies and a Podcast." http://thisispawprint.com/000 About Pawprint Pawprint (or Paw Print) is a weekly podcast dedicated to animal rescue, adoption, and the heroes who make it happen. Volunteer, walk, adopt, or foster a dog, cat, rabbit, or other wonderful pet through your local shelter, humane society, SPCA, pound, and animal control. Stop abuse, and help increase animal protection, welfare, and rights.  http://thisispawprint.com http://animalrescuepodcast.com Don’t miss any new episodes. Sign up for our email list If you want to join our animal rescue community and receive two free bonus dog-training resources from Irith Bloom, positive reinforcement dog trainer, go to http://thisispawprint.com/ask. Irith can be found at http://www.thesophisticateddog.com/ About Pawprint’s Music All of Pawprint's music is composed by Luke Gartner-Brereton. Luke is based in Australia, and he composes a wide variety of songs and musical loops http://vanillagroovestudios.com http://soundcloud.com/luke-gartnerbrereton

Runar Gundersen has run the NYC Marathon 36 times and is the unofficial mayor of the race, even though he is from Norway. He shares common mistakes and what you can do to avoid them. Serena Marie, RD, busts food myths around bread and canola oil. She shares what upsets her (or you could say ticks her off) when it comes to carbohydrate recommendations for people with Type 2 Diabetes. To find out the top 11 Strategies to Live the Running Lifestyle, please click HERE. Why Runar has run the NYC Marathon Why take the ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island rather than staying at a hotel on Staten Island How the wave system works at the starting line How ElliptiGo could potentially help Runar Why blue is the best wave to be in and how to get in it What hills are the hardest on the course and how to tackle them Where the most enthusiastic crowds are along the course Sport Suds is a show sponsor and my go-to detergent to thoroughly clean my clothes and remove any lingering odors. What I especially like about Sport Suds is that it's free of dyes. As a listener of the show, you'll receive a 25% discount when you head over to Sport Suds and type in the code "RUNLIFE" at check out. Serena Marie, RD, discusses an article in the September 2015 Oprah magazine issue: Eat Like a Viking. Why Rye bread is better than Wonder bread, but what would be an even better choice Serena's take on root vegetables and why they're a good idea Why free-range protein is something she recommends What type of yogurt Serena recommends and why The low down on canola oil vs. olive oil What most "upsets" or "ticks off" Serena, makes her “feisty” and drives her "batty" Top Three Take-Aways from Runar regarding the NYC Marathon: Make it easier on your body and mind by staying in the Times Square Area. Save your body for later in the race by especially not going out fast on the Verrazano Bridge and zig-zagging to go your race pace. Soak up the crowd support especially in Brooklyn, First Avenue and around Central Park in Manhattan. Top Three Take-Aways from Serena Marie, RD, regarding the Nordic Diet The Mediterranean Diet is the most-researched diet and we should eat more like Mediterraneans rather than the Nordics. Serena recommends this as there is more long-term research on the benefits of the Mediterranean diet. Every step toward a more nutrient-dense and balanced diet is something Serena applauds. It's one step at a time so make sure to celebrate the small changes you are making. A diet rich in carbs is not balanced. If you're doing a lot of hard work outs with sprints, that is the time to eat a higher percentage of carbs. The best sources of carbs are from nutrient-dense vegetables such as beets, root vegetables, and potatoes paired with a fat. Serena and I are in the middle of our Fall Marathon Series that has us running the Chicago (completed!), NYC, and Philadelphia Marathons. Want to be part of the fun and run your own Marathon on the installment plan with us while supporting Action for Healthy Kids, Serena, and me, Kari Gormley? Head over to TheRunningLifestyle.com/my262 and join us. You will receive a certificate of accomplishment and a special Skype call with a special guest and other TRLS teammates to celebrate running 26.2 miles over a six week period (you can do more!!!!). You also are given access to a special Facebook group with your teammates, Serena Marie, RD, and me. Special welcome to Heather from Ohio, Joan from North Carolina, Helena from New Jersey, Becky from Pennsylvania, Tracy from Florida, Kate from Australia, Kathleen from New York, Elizabeth from New Jersey, Julie from Florida, and Annette from Florida. Come join these lovely people and put your running lifestyle goals out there and make it happen (just like Mariah Carey sings). Contact: Runar B. Gundersen: Website: RunarWeb.com Serena Marie, RD: Website: www.SerenaMarieRD.com Facebook: /SerenaMarieRD Twitter: @SerenaMarieRD Instagram: SerenaMarieRD

Interludes 1.2 - NYC Marathon (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/NYC.mp3] Link NYC.mp3   Act one – The Bridge Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros – All in a Day  Freezing and about half way across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the wind was blowing sideways at 20-30 mph with gusts up to 50 mph.  Physical shivers racked me in the Orange Staging Area on the island.  My giant trash bag cut the wind but did little to warm me.   I was thankful to have the giant trash bag but would have rather had a full size wool blanket or poncho like Clint Eastwood wore in the spaghetti westerns.  Or a down jacket.   The temperature was not that bad.  It was in the high 30's Fahrenheit, but the cutting wind dropped the perceived temperature to single digits.  I was feeling it.  We were ½ mile or so in, still on the upward slope of the bridge with a steady stream of runners.  I didn't want to get in the way of anyone trying to race, but I recognized this as THAT iconic photo that everyone takes from this race and had to find a way to get it.   I was not racing this race.  I had my iPhone with me to facilitate these sorts of moments. I felt compelled to fill the social media void with my fuzzy pictures of randomness to show my sponsors, the good people from ASICS America that, yeah, I do occasionally attempt some content of the typical race-blogger type.   I saw my chance and jumped up onto the 2-3 foot wide barrier that separates inbound and outbound traffic on the top deck of the bridge.  Safely out of the flow I pulled off one glove with my teeth and took a few shots of the horizon, the cityscape beyond the river and the bridge.  … There's a guy a few feet away on the median with me who has one of those giant cameras.  I don't give him much thought.  There are camera-people all over the place on this course.  One guy is lying on his belly shooting the runners' feet as they swarm across the bridge.  Who am I to get in the way of their art?   Then I notice this guy is moving closer to me and it's a bit creepy because when I glance his way he's focusing on me, so I just try to ignore him and get my shots.  Turns out he's the photographer for Rueters and he's giving me the iconic ‘Seinfeld moment' of the weekend.  In the picture he takes I'm holding up my cell phone, yellow glove dangling from my teeth.  Desperately clutching last year's orange parka, with the wind trying to blow it out of my hands.  I've got my gray ASICS beanie, a long sleeve ASICS plain red shirt (not anywhere thick enough for this wind assault on the bridge), ASICS Shorts, and my E33 race shoes with the green calf sleeves.  The caption will read; “A runner takes a selfie on the Verrezano Bridge at the start of the NYC Marathon”.  It wasn't a selfie, but who am I to argue with the media moguls of New York.   Ironically those were the last pictures I took during the race because I realized my phone was going dead and I might need the GPS to get back to the hotel later at the finish.  I powered it down.   I'm also wearing a scarf that I bought on the street corner in mid-town.  I would wear that scarf for the whole race.  Rakishly tied like the adornment of a WWI fighter pilot in an open canopy.  I fantasize about founding a whole line of racing scarves.  I will call this version “The Sopwith Camel”.  I can buy them on the corner for $5 and sell them to triathletes for $50 – (I'll just tell them it takes 6 seconds off their run times – triathletes will buy anything).  The last piece of clothing is an impromptu gator I've constructed by tearing the pompom off and gutting the Dunkin Donuts hat they gave us in the athletes' village.  Ingenuity bred by desperation.  I would have gladly gutted a Tauntaun from the ice planet Hoth with a light saber and crawled into its bowels for the body heat if that was an option.   I'm also holding a plastic shopping bag.  In that bag is 3 Hammer gels and an empty Gatorade bottle.  I held on to the Gatorade bottle thinking that I might need to refill it on the bridge given that I'd just finished drinking the contents.  If I have to relieve myself I want to be tidy about it.   Every time anyone has ever talked about the NYC marathon to me, somehow the conversation always ends up at “If you're on the lower deck of the bridge you get peed on by the guys on the upper deck.”  In fact there are signs along the start that threaten disqualification for anyone caught doing so.  But on this day I don't see a single guy attempting the feat.  It would take a brave and talented man to relieve himself in this cross wind and temperature.  The orange parka is from last year's race.  I have upgraded from my plastic trash bag.  The trash bag was good, but this is warmer, and I need to get my core temp back up to normal. Ironically when I got my trash bag out I realized that it was slightly used.  At one point I think it had actual garbage in it.  I just grabbed it from my car.  When I laid out the trash bag the night before I realized it wasn't ‘fresh out of the box' but, it is what it is, and I wiped it down with hotel face towels.  I used the bib safety pins to carefully scribe perforations for the head hole and the arm holes, like in old computer paper or junk mail, so I could easily push the patches out in the morning without having to chew out a gash with my teeth.   When you exit the holding area from the staging area into the starting line on the bridge they have big boxes to donate your throw away clothes to the homeless.  I knew my core temperature was low from the bone rattling shaking and shivering and I looked for an opportunity to better my sartorial situation.   I thought a nice hooded sweatshirt, or knit pullover would be the perfect upgrade to run the first couple miles in until my core temp came back up.  At the homeless boxes I tore off my plastic bag and grabbed that thick, quilted, finisher's poncho from the 2013 race.  They don't have arm holes but they are giant and you can wrap them around you like your grandmother's cardigan.  I made a joke that I hoped the guy who tossed it didn't have Ebola or bed bugs.   I had a politically incorrect but amusing mental picture that they should bus the homeless out to the start and have them set up on the bridge so people could pick the homeless person they wanted to give their old sweatshirt to.  It would be a nice way to mainstream the disadvantaged of the city.  They could hand out cups of fortified wine, like Thunderbird or Mogan David to warm the aspirants at the start.  In the starting coral I had a couple guys from Indiana take my photo.  America the beautiful played and I reluctantly took off my hat.  They played New York, New York, which was awesome, and then, without further fanfare, we bent our thousands of feet into the wind of the narrows.  Plastic bags and clothing of all sort blew sideways through the crowd and wrapped around people like suicidal jelly fish.   We were off. Frank Sinatra – New York, New York Act two – The elites and the bloggerati  I walked into the lobby groggy from my flight and a bit lost in time and space.  I had been battling the cold that tore through North America the previous week and trying to get enough sleep to beat it back.  I was coming off a short week and had run the Marine Corps Marathon 5 days earlier.   ASICS had asked me to fly Thursday night to be there in time for the Friday morning warm up run.  I was taking a rare day off on Friday to accommodate.  They flew me down on the short hop shuttle into Kennedy from Boston and had a limo waiting to take me to the hotel.  I definitely felt like a poser, but did my best to roll with it.  When confronted by these situations where you feel the imposter syndrome creeping into the back of your lizard brain I've found it best to have a sense of humor.  Smile and enjoy yourself.  Try not to talk too much and try to inquire and understand the new people you meet.  ASICS was putting me up at The New York Palace Hotel, a five-star joint on Madison Ave in midtown across the street from St. Patrick's Cathedral.  It was a beautiful hotel with spacious rooms – definitely not the Spartan accommodation of a journeyman marathoner.  The travel part didn't bother me.  I spend most of my time in hotels and airplanes.  I'm a hearty and hale adventurer.  But, I'd be lying if I didn't feel a bit different, a bit fish out of water to be part of an industry sponsored junket of sorts.  Not icky per se, but more like the guy without a cool costume at a costume party.  … In the Lobby Noelle, our ASICS Liaison, was chatting with a couple guys. She noticed me lurking about in my head to toe ASCIS gear and introduced herself.  I could have sworn one of the guys was Ryan Hall but I'm such a meathead with the social graces I didn't want to make a faux pas.  Eventually Noelle introduced me them and the young blond guy leans in, shakes my hand and says, ‘Hi, I'm Ryan.'  The other guy introduced himself as Andy. I would soon learn this was Andy Potts the Ironman Champ.  It cracked me up that Ryan had the humility to assume I didn't know who he was.  Moving to the bar with Noelle we ordered drinks and waited for the other out-of-towners.  … “Mini-Marathoners” – that's what they called them.  They were 5 inch tall statuettes of us.  They had taken photos of us and rendered them, with the latest computer aided design, into mini 3D renditions of us in full stride.  Noelle passed them out while we – the ASCICS Blogger team - were having drinks.  They were a big hit.  I met two of the other bloggers, Megan ‘Irun4Wine' from Florida and Brian ‘PavementRunner' from the Bay Area.  Brian's mini marathoner had a hilarious beer belly, which Brian does not possess in real life.  Megan's mini marathoner had brilliant red hair, which she does not possess in real life.   Megan Wood (Copello) - @Irun4Wine www.irunforwine.net Megan Lee - @RunLikeAGrl - www.runlikeagrl.com Brian Kelly - @PavementRunner – www.pavementrunner.com Gregg Bard – NYCGregg – www.NYCSweat.com My mini marathoner was excellent.  They gave me back a full head of hair, made me skinny, took at least 10 years off me and made me look vaguely like Will Wheaton.  I'll take it.  Of course the jokes flowed in.  Does it have kung fu grip?  Is it a bobble head? Yeah, you know you've made it when they are making action figures of you… … New York City is a funny, kinetic and desperate place.  I walked the streets of midtown doing some people watching.  Beat down, bowlegged men in suits trucking down the sidewalk.  The street vendors.  The tourists, always looking up in awe.  The many languages and all the smokers!  It was like being in Paris in 1970 with all the cigarette smoke being exhaled into my personal space.   I circled the hotel, over to Park Ave and 1st and 48th and 54th, getting the lay of the land, taking mental notes of restaurants and stores and milestones.  The Helmsley, Grand Central, the ebb and flow and surge of pedestrians.   I passed a fruit vendor and decided to take the plunge.  I was quite proud of myself having procured some bananas and plums and pears.  It was later that I discovered the vendor had put the fruit stickers over the moldy spots.  Ahh…New York, a kinetic and desperate place.  … Friday morning dawned gray but I was up before the sun.  I went to the Starbucks next door and treated myself to a coffee and oatmeal, not knowing what the day might have in store nutritionally.  We had a rendezvous with the cars to shuttle us over to the park for our ‘warm up run' event.  Noelle was the leader like a tour guide with her charges in tow we all boarded limos for the ride over and gathered in a restaurant for coffee and sundries.   Among the assembled crowd was a throng of actual journalists from places like Rodale and USAToday.  Nice, literate and sporty journalists, guests of ASICS all assembling for coffee and bagels and selfies with the elites.  Coach Kastor was there holding court and he was in charge of the morning exercise.  Andy Potts was there as was Ryan and some other elite athletes from the ASICS stable.  My new friend Grace ‘LeanGirlsClub' was there and I gave her a big hug.  As was the other Megan, ‘RunLikeAGirl' and Greg, ‘NYCSweat'.  The blogger team was complete.    And then we went for a run. Up until this point it was just super surreal for me.  All this attention for a journeyman marathoner of little account.  I won't lie.  It felt a little icky.  I love running.  I love talking about, writing about and rolling around in the smell of running.  But, it's my hobby, not my job.  All these industry folks and media people subconsciously gave me the heebee-jeebees and I consciously determined to smile and be humble and ask people about themselves.   Coach Kastor led us around the park and out to the finish line.   This is where it all got normal for me again.  As soon as I felt the kinetic relief of feet hitting pavement my whole world resolved back to that happy place.  The veil dropped and I was out for a run with some new friends.   We were all taking pictures and chatting as we jogged around the park.  I told Coach Kastor how perfect his form was.  I chatted with Ryan and Andy and Coach about races and shoes and injuries and all those things that we default to like old men in a café over coffee.   This is the human and democratic sinew of our sport.  It is the most human of endeavors.  To run .  We paused for team pictures.  I look lean and happy in my short shorts.  Noelle told me that the only other person she knew who wore short shorts was Ryan.  That's good enough for me!  Back in the restaurant for coffee and schmoozing.  I had a chance to chat with Andy Potts about his Kona race.  I asked what I thought was an interesting and erudite question about how he resolves the challenge of dropping into a flow state during the grueling endurance intensity of an ironman with having to stay aware of the immediate tactics of the race?  Up until this point it had been all small talk and banter but when we started talking about racing his inner competitor came out.  He got serious and intense.  I saw the character of the Ironman champion emerge from the shadows.  He told me about how when someone makes a move, “You don't let them go, they take it, and it's up to you to decide whether you're going to let them take it.”  I chatted with Ryan Hall too.  It was just small talk.  With the intent of small talk I asked him what he had coming up next.  He got a bit dark, dropping the California persona.  I realized that I unintentionally had asked a question that he got asked often with different intent by reporters.  A question they asked that really was “When are you going to live up to the expectations that the world has burdened you with.”  Here's a man that can crank out 26.2 sub-5 minute miles.  He's got nothing to prove to me.  I just wanted to talk about running and racing and geek out about the sport we love.  There were some speeches as the elites all gave us their tips on running our marathons.  At some point Deena Kastor came in and she gave us a talk as well.  She filled a plate at the buffet and sat at a table to pick at it.  I saw that the other bloggers were sort of hovering behind her chair so I took the initiative and asked Noelle to ask her to chat with us a bit.  Deena was a sweetheart and immediately acquiesced.  She told a story about the Philadelphia ½ marathon that I had read somewhere before.  She told Megan that she loved the “Irun4Wine” blog name because she ran for wine too!  … The Clash – City of the Dead Act three – the first half There is a strange dynamic between New York City and Boston.  It's a bit of a love-hate relationship.  Like sisters that were born too close together and forced to share the same room.  The typical exchange I had while in the city follows:  New Yorker: “So…Where are you from?”  Me: “Boston” Them: “I'm sorry” Me: “That's quite alright.”  Them: “You know what I like about Boston?”  Me: “No, What?”  Them: “The ride to the airport when I know I'm getting the hell out of there!”  You think I'm joking.  I had this exact conversation with more than one person.  They weren't being mean. In the zeitgeist of the New Yorker anyone living anywhere else is only doing so until they can figure out how to move to the Big Apple.  I won't bother telling them it isn't so.  They wouldn't hear me anyhow.  Another conversation I had was this one: “How many times have you run the New York City Marathon?”  “This is my first.”  Why haven't you run it before?”  “Because it's a giant pain in the ass.  It's expensive, hard to get into and hard to get to.” “Well, you must be excited about running the best marathon in the world!?”  “Yes, I've run it 16 times, but I hear this one is pretty good too…”  … After we got off the windy chaos of the bridge and into the protecting streets of Brooklyn it warmed right up.  We were moving.  Everyone was happy, happy, happy with the early race excitement of finally being out there after much anticipation and wait.  I tossed my sundry items of extra clothing away as we exited the bridge, taking care to place them downwind and out of the way.  The first few miles as athletes discarded clothing you had to watch your step.  The wind was swirling items around.  Bags and shirts and blankets were doing mad dances in the street.   The sun was peeking through and the building blocked the wind intermittently, changing it from a sideways bluster to an occasional vortex as you crossed side street gaps.  They had removed much of the tenting and the mile markers due to the wind.  I heard they also had to change the wheelchair start at the last minute as well to get them off the bridge.  As is always the case in the first few miles of a marathon I was running easy and in my element.  The pack was thick, but not as thick as you'd expect with a record 56,000 plus participants.  You could find a line and run free without side-stepping or pulling into the gutters.   The crowds were consistent and vigorous, lining the course.  I was my usual chatty self and talked to a couple people with Boston Marathon shirts on.  I had forgotten to bring my Garmin so I had no idea on pace or hear rate.  I just ran.  You should try that sometime.  It's quite liberating.  At my age the heart rate data just scares me anyhow.   Without the mile marks I had to ask runners where we were and back into the pace.  My plan was a bit muddy and half-hearted.  I figured I could run 5 minutes and walk one minute and that would be a nice easy 4-hour-ish marathon.  Having run Marine Corps seven days previously I knew I wasn't in a position to jump on this race with any enthusiasm.  With the combination of no mile marks and feeling fine I forgot my plan to take walk breaks and just ran.   I stuffed three gels down the back of my glove and carried the sleeping phone in the other hand.  I had a baggie of Endurolytes in the shorts pocket.  I had my room key in an interesting key-card size back pocket I had discovered in these ASCIS shorts, (that I was wearing for the first time).   I had to add the extra security of a bib-pin to hold this mystery pocket closed because it had no zipper.  Thank heavens I had ignored my impish impulse to wear the short shorts.  The extra 4 inches of tech fabric might have kept me out of a hospital trip for hypothermia.  I kept the scarf.  … Whereas I had no need to pee off the bridge I did start assessing the porta-john distribution patterns with some interest.  They seemed to show up every few K.  The first few had long lines.  I saw an opportunity around 10K and took care of my Gatorade recycling problem without a wait.   This first stretch through Brooklyn was wonderful.  Everyone on the course was happy to be running.  The folks in the crowd were abundant and enthusiastic.   There were several road-side bands, mostly playing classic-rock genre music, which I thought was great, but it reminded me of how old I'm getting that 80% of the people in the race had no idea what I meant by statements like “This was from their Fillmore East Live album!”  I would rather have a less-than-fully talented live rock band than someone blaring the Rocky theme song out a window.  I pulled up beside a young woman with a giant smile on her face.   Me, smiling and pulling up alongside; “Hi, how you doing?” Her, gushing; “This is Great!, Isn't this Great!?” “Yeah, it's something.  Where are you from?”  “Oh, I live here.  Isn't this Great?”  “Sure, why is this so great?”  “The People! They're just great!”  “What do you mean? They're acting nice for a change?” Her, scowling, and turning to look at me. “Where are you from?”  “Boston!”  “Oh, I'm sorry.” “Have you run this before?” “No it's my first time.”  “Do you have some sort of time goal?”  “No, I'm just enjoying myself.”  “Well, I would recommend saving some of this enthusiasm for the last 10k, you may need it.”  I had three goals for this race My A goal was don't die, my B goal was don't die and my C goal was don't die.  I'm proud to say I met all my goals.  Additional bonuses were that I squeaked under 4 hours and had a blast.   Act four – the Village “My doctor told me I'd never run again.” Was one of the interesting snippets from conversations I had while waiting in the cold.   The New York City Marathon, like many big city races has a substantially large block of waiting.  For those who are not sponsored athletes it start at 3 or 4 in the morning getting to and waiting on the ferry to Staten Island.  For me it meant a leisurely walk, once more led by our ASICS tour director Noelle down to the Sheraton to board the chartered busses that would drive us to the start.  Early marathon start time tip:  Go to Starbucks the night before and order a nice high-quality coffee.  This way when you wake up in your hotel room you have coffee ready for your breakfast no muss, no fuss. OK, it's cold, but it's better than messing with the hotel coffee maker for some weak-ass crap that won't get your pipes moving.  We had to get up early, but the ‘Fall back' time change mitigated that and it wasn't a hassle at all.  It was still a long, stop and go ride out to Staten Island.  As we sat on the bridge in traffic the bus rocked from side to side in the wind.   I had been being a proper dick for the last couple days making fun of the other runners who were super-concerned about the cold weather forecast.   “40 degrees? Are you kidding? Up where I'm from that's shorts weather!” Turns out the joke was on me.  When we offloaded and made our way to the staging areas the wind gusts tore through me.  My thin tech-shirt, shorts and snarky Boston attitude were no match for the wind-chill.   By the time we had taken some more group photos before breaking up for our respective staging areas my teeth were chattering.  It wasn't that cold, but it was overcast and the wind was ripping through us.  I got into my slightly used giant trash bag, to find my staging area, but by that point it was too late and I chilled to my core, and a couple millimeters of black plastic wasn't going to help.  The starting area of the New York City Marathon is the most giant, complex operation I've ever seen at a race.  First the buses disgorge you into a triage area where a gaggle of friendly NYC police officers filters you through metal detectors and pat downs.  Then you disperse off into the color coded ‘villages'. Once in the village you watch the giant screen for your start wave to be called.  When your wave is called you make your way to one of several coded exits.  When the wave in front of you moves to the start line, you progress through your exit to the holding pen.  Then you get released to the starting area on the bridge for your start wave.   All of this is coded onto your bib.  For example I was Orange, B3.  This meant I went to the Orange village and moved to exit B when my wave, wave 3, was called.  In reality what it meant was me wandering around showing my bib and asking people where I should be.   I didn't check a bag, so I didn't have to deal with the bag check at the start or the bag retrieval at the end.  Which meant a couple lines I didn't have to stand in, but also the risk of hypothermia at the start and at the finish if I got the clothing thing wrong.  I didn't die, but I sure would have loved to have had a throw-away sweat shirt! As I made my way through this hyper-organized, on a grand scale machine I thought about What 56,000 people all in one place looks and sounds and feels like.  This is the size of one of Caesar's armies, with which was conquered Gaul and Britania.  Imagine all these people carrying swords and running at another similar, bristling force?  The scale of it is moving and thought provoking.   In the Orange village I found my free Dunkin Donuts hat and got some coffee.  I heard my name called and got to spend some time with a couple of RunRunLive friends, Krista Carl, shivering on a piece of grass with them, taking selfies and waiting for our waves to be called.  One thing I have to give the race organization credit for is access to porta-johns.  I think these folks had procured every porta-john in the free world.  They were in the village and more importantly in the various queuing areas at the exits and start.  There's no way you could have that many people waiting around for that long without access.  No one was denied their personal respite.   Dust Rhinos – New York Girls Act five – the Expo After the warm up run with the rest of the team and the elites I was riding the elevator back up to the room.  I was chatting with Jason Saltmarsh from Saltmarshrunning.com and another young woman got in the elevator.  We small talked up a couple floors Jason got off leaving just the young woman and me.  I asked her “So what do you do for ASICS?”  She looked a bit befuddled and responded, “I'm Sarah Hall…”   It was a bit awkward for both of us but I smiled my way through it, saying, “Oh, I just ran with your husband…”  After geeking out with the elites I was all fired up and feeling very grateful for having been given the opportunity and invitation.  When I got back to the room I sat down recorded a YouTube video to publicly thank ASICS and muse on the unifying force that running and our community is. Had to get that off my chest.  Apparently the fact that I was taking the day off didn't register with anyone at work because the emails and phones calls were dogging me all day too.  Isn't that one of the truisms of life?  Nothing going on all week and then when you take a day off all hell breaks loose?  I beat back some emails and started putting together some material for a podcast.  I had nothing else to do and it was still early in the day on Friday so I figured I'd go down to the expo and pick up my number, and beat the rush.  I was still smarting from the previous week when I had wasted 3 hours standing in line on Saturday trying to pick up my Marine Corps bib.  Cell phone to ear I set off to find the Javits Center and the Expo.  Outside the hotel the well-dressed bellmen ushered me into a waiting cab for the quick ride.  The cabby, as is usual, was from some non-English speaking part of the African subcontinent but was able to make it clear to me that the Javits Center wasn't a good enough fare for him and tossed me out of the cab at the end of the block.   Ahhh New York, funny, kinetic and desperate place.  And they wonder why Uber is so popular… Being a marathoner, with time heavy on his hands, and nothing better to do I decided to hoof it the 2 miles or so over to the Expo.  Along the way I could get some work done, take some pictures and really just relax and enjoy the day.  As I drew nearer I picked up a few other strays from various parts of the world all questing in the same direction.   The triage at the expo wasn't bad and I got through to pick up my bib and shirt fairly quickly, but I may have accidentally cut the line.  The ASICS store in the Expo with the race specific gear was GIANT.  I would have bought a hat but I already had so much gear form ASICS and I didn't feel like fighting the line that snaked all around the store.   Wandering around with glazed over look I felt a tap on my shoulder.  “Are you Chris from RunRunLive?”  It was Brandon Wood, not the Brandon Wood the opera singer ironman, but another Brandon Wood @IrunAlaska who was in from said northern territory for the race.  We had a nice chat.   Later in the day I had another one of those Seinfeld moments when I cracked open the race magazine that they were handing out and saw Brandon's mug staring out at me as one of the featured runners.  I sent him a tweet and it turns out nobody told him about it and he was thrilled to get his 15 minutes.   I wandered around and noted Ryan and Sarah signing autographs, but didn't stand in that line either.  I'm not much for lines.  The Kenyans were there on display as well including Wilson Kipsang the eventual winner and Geoffrey Mutai, last year's winner.  I went by the Garmin booth and tried to make them talk me into buying a new watch but they couldn't close. I got bored and wandered off to find the buses back to midtown.  Apparently these buses were running from Grand Central and back to the Javits but it was a bit of a madhouse.  It was easier to take the bus back than to locate the right bus in traffic on the streets outside Grand Central.  Back at the hotel I beat back the tide of emails and I met Megan @Irun4Wine and her newly minted hubby for a few drinks, grabbed some Chipolte for Dinner and went back to the room to write and work on the podcast.  Reel Big Fish - Beer Act Six – the race Even though there were 56,000 runners in this race I never felt crowded or restricted.  As we rolled through Harlem with its gospel choirs and on into Queens the roads were wide and free flowing.  There were a couple times where the roads pinched in for some reason but I never felt like I was having to side step or trip.  The pack was dense, but you could get through it.  As we got into the middle miles I started to work in some one minute walk breaks every ten minutes or so whenever convenient water stops appeared.  With this cadence I would pass and repass the same people several times.  There were a bunch of people with orange shirts that said “Imagine a world without Cancer” and I had that thought running through my head, thinking about my Dad and Coach and all the other people I know that end up on the losing end of this disease.  Another stand out attribute of this race versus any other is the number of international participants.  I must have missed the memo but apparently you were supposed to run in the standard uniform of your country.  In my wave there were Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, France, Brazil, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Australia, South Africa, and tens of other uniforms with flags that I couldn't decipher.  It was almost like the Olympics in a way because all the French wore the same uniform and all the Swiss wore the same red uniform and all the Aussies wore the same green uniform.  It made it easy for me to know whether an ‘Allee Allee' or Aussie Aussie Aussie! Was appropriate.   It also made it hard for me because no one was responding to the constant stream of humorous comments that stream from me during a marathon.  I's say something funny or ask a question only to be rejoined with a blank stare and a shrug.  Compounding this was the high percentage of ‘double-budders' who had an ear-bud on both ears and were unaware and unresponsive to the other 56,000 runners.  Seems a bit of a waste to me.  To be out on this course in this city with all these people and these big crowds and then seal yourself off into your own little world.   Not being able to communicate with people I amused myself with riling up the crowds and high fiving the little kids along the course.  I would run along the curb yelling “Who's gonna give me some sugar?!”   After the first hour, at one of my walk breaks I swallowed an Endurolyte and ate the Espresso Love Gu I was carrying.  I had already carried that gel through 2-3 entire marathons without eating it and I figured its time had come.  My body felt fine.  I wasn't paying attention to splits or pace.  It was just another Sunday long run with a few tens of thousands of friends.  Through these middle miles the course reminded me somewhat of the Chicago marathon as we passed through neighborhoods, each with its own character.  Except, unlike Chicago, on the NYC course there are some hills.  Nothing steep or horrible but some long gradual pulls nonetheless.  I wouldn't call it a ‘hard course', but it's not pancake flat either.  The other interesting topographical elements were the bridges.  There are five bridges, including the one you start on.  When I'm not racing I don't bother looking at the course map.  Part of it is I'm just not compulsive that way and part if it is the extra element of adventure this provides me as the course rolls itself out in front of me real-time.   The Queensboro Bridge was one of these adventurous surprises.  This comes right after the 15 mile mark and, including the approach and decent is over a ½ mile long.  This means you've got this 500-600 meter hill that just seems to keep going up and up.   The strangest thing was this was the first quiet place on the course.  We were on the lower deck, the inside of the bridge and the wind was blocked by the superstructure for the most part.  After all the screaming and noise and wind we were suddenly confronted with silence and the sounds of our own striving.  It was a bit eerie.  Not the silence per se, but the absence of noise in the heart of this race in the heart of this city.   This is where people were starting to show signs of tiring.  I had to side step some walkers and pay attention to the holes, lumps and buckles in the road that were common more or less across the course.  A not small group of runners congregated at the ‘overlook' gaps in the bridge to take pictures.  I trudged on up the hill in the eerie quiet to the soft sounds of treads and breathing and the rustling of clothing broken occasionally by the wheel noise of traffic on the upper deck above our heads.   Coming down the long down-slope of the Queensboro Bridge I find myself runner just behind an Amazon.  This young woman is tall, muscular and blonde like something out of a cheerleading movie.  My old heart and mind swoons.  I lose my train of thought and stumble into a collision with one of my international friends.  I smile at him apologetically, shrug my shoulders in the direction of the Amazon and sheepishly say “Sorry, I was distracted.”  His broad grin tells me that some things are the same in any language.  A couple characters I keep passing due to my walk break rhythm is a pair of Irish guys in their Green national uniforms.  One of them has, I'm guessing his name, Cleary, on the back.  Knowing that they speak a related version of my native tongue I make a comment on one of my passes, “Tough day, huh fellahs?”  Mr. Cleary looks at me and rejoins without missing a beat in his best and lovely brogue, “Fucking Brilliant!”  You know what they say?  ‘If it wasn't for whiskey and beer the Irish would rule the world.' I believe that to be true, and a fine lot of mad, philosopher, poet kings they would make.  As we crossed Manhattan for the first time I was starting to get a little tired.  I ate another gel at two hours and another Endurolyte.  I wasn't crashing or bonking or hitting the wall or any of that other poetic nonsense, I was just getting tire.  It had been a long week.  Someone said we'd be coming back this way and I quipped, “If we've got to come back, why don't we just stay here?” As we cruised down the broad reaches of First Avenue I was trying to apply my drafting skills to stay out of the wind.  I'm very good at drafting.  You need to find someone about your height who is running a nice even pace and you snuggle up into their wind shadow.   Drafting works even better in a big race because you can sometimes find two or three runners in a group creating a nice big pocket.  In big races you can draft a ‘double-budder' for miles and they won't even know you're there. You just have to not bump them or step on them.   But, running down First Avenue I couldn't figure the wind out.  As you went by the cross streets it would start as a head wind then shift around and end up as a tail wind.  It was a constant swirl that made it hard to find a good pocket to run in.  The sun was out now.  It was after noon and warm.  I was wishing I had worn sunglasses.  Act seven – Saturday Saturday morning before the race Brian the PavementRunner has organized a tweet up on the steps of the Library in Midtown.  The idea was we'd all promote it, get a big group of people, take some pictures and head for some coffee, then drop by the ASICS Times Square Store. It was a good plan but we woke up to a dreary cold drizzle.  We went anyhow and had some fun with the people that did show up.  We took some pictures, had some coffee and made our way over to the Big ASICS store.   The ASICS store near Times Square is a showplace store.  It has an old New York Subway car in it that is really cool.  This is where we took a couple more pictures that ended up making the rounds.  @RunMikeRun from Twitter took one of all of us in the subway car with his GoPro on a pole rig and that shot ended up being picked up by Runner's World.    Greg, Megan, Megan, Brian, Noelle and I all climbed up into the window display and took some great goofy shots with the manikins that made the rounds too.  We ended up having a nice lunch over near Rockefeller Center and then drifting off in different directions.  Some of these folks were understandably worried about having to run a marathon the next day.  I wasn't.  My goals were simple. Don't die.  Back at the hotel I used the afternoon to finish up the podcast and get some other stuff done.  Having no plans for the evening I wandered about Midtown, got some sundries and ended up getting a plate of pasta and a beer at TGI Fridays.  I picked up my Starbucks for the next morning and settled in.  I wasn't sure I knew how to set my iPhone alarm for the time change so I called the hotel operator and asked for a 4:45 wake up call, which was really a 5:45 wakeup call…I guessed. I laid all my race kit out in ‘Empty' runner format on the floor.  Tried to wipe the garbage off of my garbage bag and commenced to watch a little TV.  There was some really stupid zombie movie on that I started watching but reconsidered whether that was such a good idea the night before a race.  I fell asleep.  I slept fine, like a man with no secrets and many friends, and my eyes popped open at 4:30 (really 5:30) fifteen minutes before my wakeup call, like they usually do.   Act eight – the finish All the walking around the city, fighting the cold and wind all morning, and having run a marathon 7 days earlier started to wear on me as we crossed over into the Bronx by Mile 20.  I wasn't bonking.  I was really tired.  I skipped the three hour gel and Endurolyte and started taking a minute walk every 5 minutes.   Looking at my watch and backing into the pace I was on a 3:40 to 3:50 finish schedule if I kept the fire stoked.  I was tired though and I only had the one goal, which could be accomplished with any finishing time.   Coming down the bridge into the Bronx there was a larger woman running a bit loosely in front of me.  There was also one of those giant orange traffic cones in the middle of the road.  I don't know how she managed to do it, but she caught her toe on the cone and started to flail.   It was one of those slow motion moments for me.  She was in that state where she was off balance and wind-milling her arms for purchase on that razors edge between falling and not falling.  She was right in front of me.  I reached out and grabbed her as best I could until she regained her heading and rejoined the flow.  Coming back into Manhattan was a bit rough as I was super tired and not having much fun anymore.  I just wanted to get it done.  The race finished in Central Park but to get there you have to climb a long, long hill that just seems to go on forever.  I was passing the walking wounded and the walking dead but I was still on plan to attain my primary goal of cheating the grim reaper once more.  Once you get into the park it's another mile-plus of rolling hills to the finish.  When you make that turn into the park it's still a long way to the finish if you're hurting but at that point you know you've got it.  Along that long climb up Fifth Avenue and through the Park the crowds become loud and roaring.  It's a constant assault of praise and exhortation as the runners struggle through to the finish.   I crossed the line and had enough brain power left to stop my watch.  It said 4:00:03.  I turned on my IPhone to get a finish line photo and felt a tap on my shoulder.  It was Brian the @PavementRunner who had finished a couple steps behind me.  He had carried a GoPro and taken video of the race for ASICS.  Later I would learn that my actual time was 3:59:52.  That's nice.  And, I didn't die.  I was glad to see PavementRunner.  First because he's a nice guy and a familiar face, and second because I was clueless as to what we were supposed to do next and where we were supposed to go after the finish.  I didn't check a bag so getting one of those quilted race parkas was high on my priority list as the sun was starting to get low in the New York skyline.   Brian and I found the special, VIP exit that we were supposed to use and the volunteers were fantastic.  They were like hotel concierges telling us in great detail where we needed to go and how to get there. We found the parkas and the food and even the warming tent where we sat for a while to get some energy back for the walk to the hotel.   In another helping of irony, the woman sitting next to us in the warming tent was from the next town over from where I live.  Brian and I set out to find the hotel and joined the long stream of thousands of trudging warriors in blue parkas like Napoleon's Grand Army retreating from Russia.  Brian seemed to think he knew where we were going so I followed his lead until I saw water in front of us and intoned that even with my limited geographical knowledge of the city I didn't think there was a river between Central Park and Midtown.   We turned around and did some more walking.  My legs felt great.  I felt great.  This was an easy one that hadn't left a mark on me other than the tiredness of doing it. We stopped to take some tourist pictures in front of Radio City and the Tonight Show banner.   The people passing us in the streets of the City were very nice to us.  They were friendly and congratulatory.  It was a nice, warm and welcoming vibe that I've got to give the natives credit for.  They like their race.  Brian asked me what I wanted to eat and I didn't have to think about it.  God help me, and apologies to the planet, I wanted a big, juicy cheeseburger with bacon, fries and a beer.  Brian concurred.  After we washed up at the hotel that's just what we did.   After Brian walked us three blocks in the wrong direction which was beginning to become one of our running gags of the weekend we settled into Bill's Burgers and consummated our burgers and fries.  The waitress, seeing our medals, refused to let us pay for our beers.  I was starting to like these people.  On the walk back to the hotel I led Brian into St. Patrick's Cathedral where a late mass was being held.  I crossed myself with holy water and genuflected to the altar and it somehow felt as if we had God's blessing on this day.  I was grateful.  Act nine – the selfie that wasn't a selfie Monday morning as I flew back to Boston for a full day of work the tweets and emails started to come in.  “Were you standing in the middle of the Verrazano Bridge wearing an orange parka taking pictures?”   “Yeah, I was.”  “You're on the cover of the Wall Street Journal!” “No Kidding? Can you scan that and send it to me?”  And there I was in full freezing to death glory perched on the median taking pictures.  A final Seinfeld moment and another great Irony that this Boston boy was gracing the cover of their Newspaper.  The caption said “A runner takes a selfie on the Verrazano Bridge at the start of the NYC Marathon.”   It wasn't a selfie, but I guess I don't have a say in that.  Then it got picked up by CNN as one of their “Selfies of the Week” and somehow I'm in the same gallery as Madonna and Barack Obama.   Act ten – the end At the end of the day when I met all my new blogger friends for celebratory drinks at pub. (my kind of place).  Grace's boyfriend said “So, I guess you won the editor's challenge, then?”  Honestly, it was the first time the thought had entered my mind that there was any contest involving finish time, especially between me and these social media friends.  A bit jolly from the beer, my windburn subsiding into the cheery glow of my cheeks I turned to my new friends and said; “If there's one thing that I've learned from all the marathons and all the years is that you have to celebrate every one.  You don't know what's' coming next.  Celebrate today and now and every race because this could very well be as good as it gets.”  Skankin Pickle – Thick Ass Stout  

Interludes 1.2 - NYC Marathon (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/NYC.mp3] Link NYC.mp3   Act one – The Bridge Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros – All in a Day  Freezing and about half way across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the wind was blowing sideways at 20-30 mph with gusts up to 50 mph.  Physical shivers racked me in the Orange Staging Area on the island.  My giant trash bag cut the wind but did little to warm me.   I was thankful to have the giant trash bag but would have rather had a full size wool blanket or poncho like Clint Eastwood wore in the spaghetti westerns.  Or a down jacket.   The temperature was not that bad.  It was in the high 30’s Fahrenheit, but the cutting wind dropped the perceived temperature to single digits.  I was feeling it.  We were ½ mile or so in, still on the upward slope of the bridge with a steady stream of runners.  I didn’t want to get in the way of anyone trying to race, but I recognized this as THAT iconic photo that everyone takes from this race and had to find a way to get it.   I was not racing this race.  I had my iPhone with me to facilitate these sorts of moments. I felt compelled to fill the social media void with my fuzzy pictures of randomness to show my sponsors, the good people from ASICS America that, yeah, I do occasionally attempt some content of the typical race-blogger type.   I saw my chance and jumped up onto the 2-3 foot wide barrier that separates inbound and outbound traffic on the top deck of the bridge.  Safely out of the flow I pulled off one glove with my teeth and took a few shots of the horizon, the cityscape beyond the river and the bridge.  … There’s a guy a few feet away on the median with me who has one of those giant cameras.  I don’t give him much thought.  There are camera-people all over the place on this course.  One guy is lying on his belly shooting the runners’ feet as they swarm across the bridge.  Who am I to get in the way of their art?   Then I notice this guy is moving closer to me and it’s a bit creepy because when I glance his way he’s focusing on me, so I just try to ignore him and get my shots.  Turns out he’s the photographer for Rueters and he’s giving me the iconic ‘Seinfeld moment’ of the weekend.  In the picture he takes I’m holding up my cell phone, yellow glove dangling from my teeth.  Desperately clutching last year’s orange parka, with the wind trying to blow it out of my hands.  I’ve got my gray ASICS beanie, a long sleeve ASICS plain red shirt (not anywhere thick enough for this wind assault on the bridge), ASICS Shorts, and my E33 race shoes with the green calf sleeves.  The caption will read; “A runner takes a selfie on the Verrezano Bridge at the start of the NYC Marathon”.  It wasn’t a selfie, but who am I to argue with the media moguls of New York.   Ironically those were the last pictures I took during the race because I realized my phone was going dead and I might need the GPS to get back to the hotel later at the finish.  I powered it down.   I’m also wearing a scarf that I bought on the street corner in mid-town.  I would wear that scarf for the whole race.  Rakishly tied like the adornment of a WWI fighter pilot in an open canopy.  I fantasize about founding a whole line of racing scarves.  I will call this version “The Sopwith Camel”.  I can buy them on the corner for $5 and sell them to triathletes for $50 – (I’ll just tell them it takes 6 seconds off their run times – triathletes will buy anything).  The last piece of clothing is an impromptu gator I’ve constructed by tearing the pompom off and gutting the Dunkin Donuts hat they gave us in the athletes’ village.  Ingenuity bred by desperation.  I would have gladly gutted a Tauntaun from the ice planet Hoth with a light saber and crawled into its bowels for the body heat if that was an option.   I’m also holding a plastic shopping bag.  In that bag is 3 Hammer gels and an empty Gatorade bottle.  I held on to the Gatorade bottle thinking that I might need to refill it on the bridge given that I’d just finished drinking the contents.  If I have to relieve myself I want to be tidy about it.   Every time anyone has ever talked about the NYC marathon to me, somehow the conversation always ends up at “If you’re on the lower deck of the bridge you get peed on by the guys on the upper deck.”  In fact there are signs along the start that threaten disqualification for anyone caught doing so.  But on this day I don’t see a single guy attempting the feat.  It would take a brave and talented man to relieve himself in this cross wind and temperature.  The orange parka is from last year’s race.  I have upgraded from my plastic trash bag.  The trash bag was good, but this is warmer, and I need to get my core temp back up to normal. Ironically when I got my trash bag out I realized that it was slightly used.  At one point I think it had actual garbage in it.  I just grabbed it from my car.  When I laid out the trash bag the night before I realized it wasn’t ‘fresh out of the box’ but, it is what it is, and I wiped it down with hotel face towels.  I used the bib safety pins to carefully scribe perforations for the head hole and the arm holes, like in old computer paper or junk mail, so I could easily push the patches out in the morning without having to chew out a gash with my teeth.   When you exit the holding area from the staging area into the starting line on the bridge they have big boxes to donate your throw away clothes to the homeless.  I knew my core temperature was low from the bone rattling shaking and shivering and I looked for an opportunity to better my sartorial situation.   I thought a nice hooded sweatshirt, or knit pullover would be the perfect upgrade to run the first couple miles in until my core temp came back up.  At the homeless boxes I tore off my plastic bag and grabbed that thick, quilted, finisher’s poncho from the 2013 race.  They don’t have arm holes but they are giant and you can wrap them around you like your grandmother’s cardigan.  I made a joke that I hoped the guy who tossed it didn’t have Ebola or bed bugs.   I had a politically incorrect but amusing mental picture that they should bus the homeless out to the start and have them set up on the bridge so people could pick the homeless person they wanted to give their old sweatshirt to.  It would be a nice way to mainstream the disadvantaged of the city.  They could hand out cups of fortified wine, like Thunderbird or Mogan David to warm the aspirants at the start.  In the starting coral I had a couple guys from Indiana take my photo.  America the beautiful played and I reluctantly took off my hat.  They played New York, New York, which was awesome, and then, without further fanfare, we bent our thousands of feet into the wind of the narrows.  Plastic bags and clothing of all sort blew sideways through the crowd and wrapped around people like suicidal jelly fish.   We were off. Frank Sinatra – New York, New York Act two – The elites and the bloggerati  I walked into the lobby groggy from my flight and a bit lost in time and space.  I had been battling the cold that tore through North America the previous week and trying to get enough sleep to beat it back.  I was coming off a short week and had run the Marine Corps Marathon 5 days earlier.   ASICS had asked me to fly Thursday night to be there in time for the Friday morning warm up run.  I was taking a rare day off on Friday to accommodate.  They flew me down on the short hop shuttle into Kennedy from Boston and had a limo waiting to take me to the hotel.  I definitely felt like a poser, but did my best to roll with it.  When confronted by these situations where you feel the imposter syndrome creeping into the back of your lizard brain I’ve found it best to have a sense of humor.  Smile and enjoy yourself.  Try not to talk too much and try to inquire and understand the new people you meet.  ASICS was putting me up at The New York Palace Hotel, a five-star joint on Madison Ave in midtown across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  It was a beautiful hotel with spacious rooms – definitely not the Spartan accommodation of a journeyman marathoner.  The travel part didn’t bother me.  I spend most of my time in hotels and airplanes.  I’m a hearty and hale adventurer.  But, I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a bit different, a bit fish out of water to be part of an industry sponsored junket of sorts.  Not icky per se, but more like the guy without a cool costume at a costume party.  … In the Lobby Noelle, our ASICS Liaison, was chatting with a couple guys. She noticed me lurking about in my head to toe ASCIS gear and introduced herself.  I could have sworn one of the guys was Ryan Hall but I’m such a meathead with the social graces I didn’t want to make a faux pas.  Eventually Noelle introduced me them and the young blond guy leans in, shakes my hand and says, ‘Hi, I’m Ryan.’  The other guy introduced himself as Andy. I would soon learn this was Andy Potts the Ironman Champ.  It cracked me up that Ryan had the humility to assume I didn’t know who he was.  Moving to the bar with Noelle we ordered drinks and waited for the other out-of-towners.  … “Mini-Marathoners” – that’s what they called them.  They were 5 inch tall statuettes of us.  They had taken photos of us and rendered them, with the latest computer aided design, into mini 3D renditions of us in full stride.  Noelle passed them out while we – the ASCICS Blogger team - were having drinks.  They were a big hit.  I met two of the other bloggers, Megan ‘Irun4Wine’ from Florida and Brian ‘PavementRunner’ from the Bay Area.  Brian’s mini marathoner had a hilarious beer belly, which Brian does not possess in real life.  Megan’s mini marathoner had brilliant red hair, which she does not possess in real life.   Megan Wood (Copello) - @Irun4Wine www.irunforwine.net Megan Lee - @RunLikeAGrl - www.runlikeagrl.com Brian Kelly - @PavementRunner – www.pavementrunner.com Gregg Bard – NYCGregg – www.NYCSweat.com My mini marathoner was excellent.  They gave me back a full head of hair, made me skinny, took at least 10 years off me and made me look vaguely like Will Wheaton.  I’ll take it.  Of course the jokes flowed in.  Does it have kung fu grip?  Is it a bobble head? Yeah, you know you’ve made it when they are making action figures of you… … New York City is a funny, kinetic and desperate place.  I walked the streets of midtown doing some people watching.  Beat down, bowlegged men in suits trucking down the sidewalk.  The street vendors.  The tourists, always looking up in awe.  The many languages and all the smokers!  It was like being in Paris in 1970 with all the cigarette smoke being exhaled into my personal space.   I circled the hotel, over to Park Ave and 1st and 48th and 54th, getting the lay of the land, taking mental notes of restaurants and stores and milestones.  The Helmsley, Grand Central, the ebb and flow and surge of pedestrians.   I passed a fruit vendor and decided to take the plunge.  I was quite proud of myself having procured some bananas and plums and pears.  It was later that I discovered the vendor had put the fruit stickers over the moldy spots.  Ahh…New York, a kinetic and desperate place.  … Friday morning dawned gray but I was up before the sun.  I went to the Starbucks next door and treated myself to a coffee and oatmeal, not knowing what the day might have in store nutritionally.  We had a rendezvous with the cars to shuttle us over to the park for our ‘warm up run’ event.  Noelle was the leader like a tour guide with her charges in tow we all boarded limos for the ride over and gathered in a restaurant for coffee and sundries.   Among the assembled crowd was a throng of actual journalists from places like Rodale and USAToday.  Nice, literate and sporty journalists, guests of ASICS all assembling for coffee and bagels and selfies with the elites.  Coach Kastor was there holding court and he was in charge of the morning exercise.  Andy Potts was there as was Ryan and some other elite athletes from the ASICS stable.  My new friend Grace ‘LeanGirlsClub’ was there and I gave her a big hug.  As was the other Megan, ‘RunLikeAGirl’ and Greg, ‘NYCSweat’.  The blogger team was complete.    And then we went for a run. Up until this point it was just super surreal for me.  All this attention for a journeyman marathoner of little account.  I won’t lie.  It felt a little icky.  I love running.  I love talking about, writing about and rolling around in the smell of running.  But, it’s my hobby, not my job.  All these industry folks and media people subconsciously gave me the heebee-jeebees and I consciously determined to smile and be humble and ask people about themselves.   Coach Kastor led us around the park and out to the finish line.   This is where it all got normal for me again.  As soon as I felt the kinetic relief of feet hitting pavement my whole world resolved back to that happy place.  The veil dropped and I was out for a run with some new friends.   We were all taking pictures and chatting as we jogged around the park.  I told Coach Kastor how perfect his form was.  I chatted with Ryan and Andy and Coach about races and shoes and injuries and all those things that we default to like old men in a café over coffee.   This is the human and democratic sinew of our sport.  It is the most human of endeavors.  To run .  We paused for team pictures.  I look lean and happy in my short shorts.  Noelle told me that the only other person she knew who wore short shorts was Ryan.  That’s good enough for me!  Back in the restaurant for coffee and schmoozing.  I had a chance to chat with Andy Potts about his Kona race.  I asked what I thought was an interesting and erudite question about how he resolves the challenge of dropping into a flow state during the grueling endurance intensity of an ironman with having to stay aware of the immediate tactics of the race?  Up until this point it had been all small talk and banter but when we started talking about racing his inner competitor came out.  He got serious and intense.  I saw the character of the Ironman champion emerge from the shadows.  He told me about how when someone makes a move, “You don’t let them go, they take it, and it’s up to you to decide whether you’re going to let them take it.”  I chatted with Ryan Hall too.  It was just small talk.  With the intent of small talk I asked him what he had coming up next.  He got a bit dark, dropping the California persona.  I realized that I unintentionally had asked a question that he got asked often with different intent by reporters.  A question they asked that really was “When are you going to live up to the expectations that the world has burdened you with.”  Here’s a man that can crank out 26.2 sub-5 minute miles.  He’s got nothing to prove to me.  I just wanted to talk about running and racing and geek out about the sport we love.  There were some speeches as the elites all gave us their tips on running our marathons.  At some point Deena Kastor came in and she gave us a talk as well.  She filled a plate at the buffet and sat at a table to pick at it.  I saw that the other bloggers were sort of hovering behind her chair so I took the initiative and asked Noelle to ask her to chat with us a bit.  Deena was a sweetheart and immediately acquiesced.  She told a story about the Philadelphia ½ marathon that I had read somewhere before.  She told Megan that she loved the “Irun4Wine” blog name because she ran for wine too!  … The Clash – City of the Dead Act three – the first half There is a strange dynamic between New York City and Boston.  It’s a bit of a love-hate relationship.  Like sisters that were born too close together and forced to share the same room.  The typical exchange I had while in the city follows:  New Yorker: “So…Where are you from?”  Me: “Boston” Them: “I’m sorry” Me: “That’s quite alright.”  Them: “You know what I like about Boston?”  Me: “No, What?”  Them: “The ride to the airport when I know I’m getting the hell out of there!”  You think I’m joking.  I had this exact conversation with more than one person.  They weren’t being mean. In the zeitgeist of the New Yorker anyone living anywhere else is only doing so until they can figure out how to move to the Big Apple.  I won’t bother telling them it isn’t so.  They wouldn’t hear me anyhow.  Another conversation I had was this one: “How many times have you run the New York City Marathon?”  “This is my first.”  Why haven’t you run it before?”  “Because it’s a giant pain in the ass.  It’s expensive, hard to get into and hard to get to.” “Well, you must be excited about running the best marathon in the world!?”  “Yes, I’ve run it 16 times, but I hear this one is pretty good too…”  … After we got off the windy chaos of the bridge and into the protecting streets of Brooklyn it warmed right up.  We were moving.  Everyone was happy, happy, happy with the early race excitement of finally being out there after much anticipation and wait.  I tossed my sundry items of extra clothing away as we exited the bridge, taking care to place them downwind and out of the way.  The first few miles as athletes discarded clothing you had to watch your step.  The wind was swirling items around.  Bags and shirts and blankets were doing mad dances in the street.   The sun was peeking through and the building blocked the wind intermittently, changing it from a sideways bluster to an occasional vortex as you crossed side street gaps.  They had removed much of the tenting and the mile markers due to the wind.  I heard they also had to change the wheelchair start at the last minute as well to get them off the bridge.  As is always the case in the first few miles of a marathon I was running easy and in my element.  The pack was thick, but not as thick as you’d expect with a record 56,000 plus participants.  You could find a line and run free without side-stepping or pulling into the gutters.   The crowds were consistent and vigorous, lining the course.  I was my usual chatty self and talked to a couple people with Boston Marathon shirts on.  I had forgotten to bring my Garmin so I had no idea on pace or hear rate.  I just ran.  You should try that sometime.  It’s quite liberating.  At my age the heart rate data just scares me anyhow.   Without the mile marks I had to ask runners where we were and back into the pace.  My plan was a bit muddy and half-hearted.  I figured I could run 5 minutes and walk one minute and that would be a nice easy 4-hour-ish marathon.  Having run Marine Corps seven days previously I knew I wasn’t in a position to jump on this race with any enthusiasm.  With the combination of no mile marks and feeling fine I forgot my plan to take walk breaks and just ran.   I stuffed three gels down the back of my glove and carried the sleeping phone in the other hand.  I had a baggie of Endurolytes in the shorts pocket.  I had my room key in an interesting key-card size back pocket I had discovered in these ASCIS shorts, (that I was wearing for the first time).   I had to add the extra security of a bib-pin to hold this mystery pocket closed because it had no zipper.  Thank heavens I had ignored my impish impulse to wear the short shorts.  The extra 4 inches of tech fabric might have kept me out of a hospital trip for hypothermia.  I kept the scarf.  … Whereas I had no need to pee off the bridge I did start assessing the porta-john distribution patterns with some interest.  They seemed to show up every few K.  The first few had long lines.  I saw an opportunity around 10K and took care of my Gatorade recycling problem without a wait.   This first stretch through Brooklyn was wonderful.  Everyone on the course was happy to be running.  The folks in the crowd were abundant and enthusiastic.   There were several road-side bands, mostly playing classic-rock genre music, which I thought was great, but it reminded me of how old I’m getting that 80% of the people in the race had no idea what I meant by statements like “This was from their Fillmore East Live album!”  I would rather have a less-than-fully talented live rock band than someone blaring the Rocky theme song out a window.  I pulled up beside a young woman with a giant smile on her face.   Me, smiling and pulling up alongside; “Hi, how you doing?” Her, gushing; “This is Great!, Isn’t this Great!?” “Yeah, it’s something.  Where are you from?”  “Oh, I live here.  Isn’t this Great?”  “Sure, why is this so great?”  “The People! They’re just great!”  “What do you mean? They’re acting nice for a change?” Her, scowling, and turning to look at me. “Where are you from?”  “Boston!”  “Oh, I’m sorry.” “Have you run this before?” “No it’s my first time.”  “Do you have some sort of time goal?”  “No, I’m just enjoying myself.”  “Well, I would recommend saving some of this enthusiasm for the last 10k, you may need it.”  I had three goals for this race My A goal was don’t die, my B goal was don’t die and my C goal was don’t die.  I’m proud to say I met all my goals.  Additional bonuses were that I squeaked under 4 hours and had a blast.   Act four – the Village “My doctor told me I’d never run again.” Was one of the interesting snippets from conversations I had while waiting in the cold.   The New York City Marathon, like many big city races has a substantially large block of waiting.  For those who are not sponsored athletes it start at 3 or 4 in the morning getting to and waiting on the ferry to Staten Island.  For me it meant a leisurely walk, once more led by our ASICS tour director Noelle down to the Sheraton to board the chartered busses that would drive us to the start.  Early marathon start time tip:  Go to Starbucks the night before and order a nice high-quality coffee.  This way when you wake up in your hotel room you have coffee ready for your breakfast no muss, no fuss. OK, it’s cold, but it’s better than messing with the hotel coffee maker for some weak-ass crap that won’t get your pipes moving.  We had to get up early, but the ‘Fall back’ time change mitigated that and it wasn’t a hassle at all.  It was still a long, stop and go ride out to Staten Island.  As we sat on the bridge in traffic the bus rocked from side to side in the wind.   I had been being a proper dick for the last couple days making fun of the other runners who were super-concerned about the cold weather forecast.   “40 degrees? Are you kidding? Up where I’m from that’s shorts weather!” Turns out the joke was on me.  When we offloaded and made our way to the staging areas the wind gusts tore through me.  My thin tech-shirt, shorts and snarky Boston attitude were no match for the wind-chill.   By the time we had taken some more group photos before breaking up for our respective staging areas my teeth were chattering.  It wasn’t that cold, but it was overcast and the wind was ripping through us.  I got into my slightly used giant trash bag, to find my staging area, but by that point it was too late and I chilled to my core, and a couple millimeters of black plastic wasn’t going to help.  The starting area of the New York City Marathon is the most giant, complex operation I’ve ever seen at a race.  First the buses disgorge you into a triage area where a gaggle of friendly NYC police officers filters you through metal detectors and pat downs.  Then you disperse off into the color coded ‘villages’. Once in the village you watch the giant screen for your start wave to be called.  When your wave is called you make your way to one of several coded exits.  When the wave in front of you moves to the start line, you progress through your exit to the holding pen.  Then you get released to the starting area on the bridge for your start wave.   All of this is coded onto your bib.  For example I was Orange, B3.  This meant I went to the Orange village and moved to exit B when my wave, wave 3, was called.  In reality what it meant was me wandering around showing my bib and asking people where I should be.   I didn’t check a bag, so I didn’t have to deal with the bag check at the start or the bag retrieval at the end.  Which meant a couple lines I didn’t have to stand in, but also the risk of hypothermia at the start and at the finish if I got the clothing thing wrong.  I didn’t die, but I sure would have loved to have had a throw-away sweat shirt! As I made my way through this hyper-organized, on a grand scale machine I thought about What 56,000 people all in one place looks and sounds and feels like.  This is the size of one of Caesar’s armies, with which was conquered Gaul and Britania.  Imagine all these people carrying swords and running at another similar, bristling force?  The scale of it is moving and thought provoking.   In the Orange village I found my free Dunkin Donuts hat and got some coffee.  I heard my name called and got to spend some time with a couple of RunRunLive friends, Krista Carl, shivering on a piece of grass with them, taking selfies and waiting for our waves to be called.  One thing I have to give the race organization credit for is access to porta-johns.  I think these folks had procured every porta-john in the free world.  They were in the village and more importantly in the various queuing areas at the exits and start.  There’s no way you could have that many people waiting around for that long without access.  No one was denied their personal respite.   Dust Rhinos – New York Girls Act five – the Expo After the warm up run with the rest of the team and the elites I was riding the elevator back up to the room.  I was chatting with Jason Saltmarsh from Saltmarshrunning.com and another young woman got in the elevator.  We small talked up a couple floors Jason got off leaving just the young woman and me.  I asked her “So what do you do for ASICS?”  She looked a bit befuddled and responded, “I’m Sarah Hall…”   It was a bit awkward for both of us but I smiled my way through it, saying, “Oh, I just ran with your husband…”  After geeking out with the elites I was all fired up and feeling very grateful for having been given the opportunity and invitation.  When I got back to the room I sat down recorded a YouTube video to publicly thank ASICS and muse on the unifying force that running and our community is. Had to get that off my chest.  Apparently the fact that I was taking the day off didn’t register with anyone at work because the emails and phones calls were dogging me all day too.  Isn’t that one of the truisms of life?  Nothing going on all week and then when you take a day off all hell breaks loose?  I beat back some emails and started putting together some material for a podcast.  I had nothing else to do and it was still early in the day on Friday so I figured I’d go down to the expo and pick up my number, and beat the rush.  I was still smarting from the previous week when I had wasted 3 hours standing in line on Saturday trying to pick up my Marine Corps bib.  Cell phone to ear I set off to find the Javits Center and the Expo.  Outside the hotel the well-dressed bellmen ushered me into a waiting cab for the quick ride.  The cabby, as is usual, was from some non-English speaking part of the African subcontinent but was able to make it clear to me that the Javits Center wasn’t a good enough fare for him and tossed me out of the cab at the end of the block.   Ahhh New York, funny, kinetic and desperate place.  And they wonder why Uber is so popular… Being a marathoner, with time heavy on his hands, and nothing better to do I decided to hoof it the 2 miles or so over to the Expo.  Along the way I could get some work done, take some pictures and really just relax and enjoy the day.  As I drew nearer I picked up a few other strays from various parts of the world all questing in the same direction.   The triage at the expo wasn’t bad and I got through to pick up my bib and shirt fairly quickly, but I may have accidentally cut the line.  The ASICS store in the Expo with the race specific gear was GIANT.  I would have bought a hat but I already had so much gear form ASICS and I didn’t feel like fighting the line that snaked all around the store.   Wandering around with glazed over look I felt a tap on my shoulder.  “Are you Chris from RunRunLive?”  It was Brandon Wood, not the Brandon Wood the opera singer ironman, but another Brandon Wood @IrunAlaska who was in from said northern territory for the race.  We had a nice chat.   Later in the day I had another one of those Seinfeld moments when I cracked open the race magazine that they were handing out and saw Brandon’s mug staring out at me as one of the featured runners.  I sent him a tweet and it turns out nobody told him about it and he was thrilled to get his 15 minutes.   I wandered around and noted Ryan and Sarah signing autographs, but didn’t stand in that line either.  I’m not much for lines.  The Kenyans were there on display as well including Wilson Kipsang the eventual winner and Geoffrey Mutai, last year’s winner.  I went by the Garmin booth and tried to make them talk me into buying a new watch but they couldn’t close. I got bored and wandered off to find the buses back to midtown.  Apparently these buses were running from Grand Central and back to the Javits but it was a bit of a madhouse.  It was easier to take the bus back than to locate the right bus in traffic on the streets outside Grand Central.  Back at the hotel I beat back the tide of emails and I met Megan @Irun4Wine and her newly minted hubby for a few drinks, grabbed some Chipolte for Dinner and went back to the room to write and work on the podcast.  Reel Big Fish - Beer Act Six – the race Even though there were 56,000 runners in this race I never felt crowded or restricted.  As we rolled through Harlem with its gospel choirs and on into Queens the roads were wide and free flowing.  There were a couple times where the roads pinched in for some reason but I never felt like I was having to side step or trip.  The pack was dense, but you could get through it.  As we got into the middle miles I started to work in some one minute walk breaks every ten minutes or so whenever convenient water stops appeared.  With this cadence I would pass and repass the same people several times.  There were a bunch of people with orange shirts that said “Imagine a world without Cancer” and I had that thought running through my head, thinking about my Dad and Coach and all the other people I know that end up on the losing end of this disease.  Another stand out attribute of this race versus any other is the number of international participants.  I must have missed the memo but apparently you were supposed to run in the standard uniform of your country.  In my wave there were Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, France, Brazil, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Australia, South Africa, and tens of other uniforms with flags that I couldn’t decipher.  It was almost like the Olympics in a way because all the French wore the same uniform and all the Swiss wore the same red uniform and all the Aussies wore the same green uniform.  It made it easy for me to know whether an ‘Allee Allee’ or Aussie Aussie Aussie! Was appropriate.   It also made it hard for me because no one was responding to the constant stream of humorous comments that stream from me during a marathon.  I’s say something funny or ask a question only to be rejoined with a blank stare and a shrug.  Compounding this was the high percentage of ‘double-budders’ who had an ear-bud on both ears and were unaware and unresponsive to the other 56,000 runners.  Seems a bit of a waste to me.  To be out on this course in this city with all these people and these big crowds and then seal yourself off into your own little world.   Not being able to communicate with people I amused myself with riling up the crowds and high fiving the little kids along the course.  I would run along the curb yelling “Who’s gonna give me some sugar?!”   After the first hour, at one of my walk breaks I swallowed an Endurolyte and ate the Espresso Love Gu I was carrying.  I had already carried that gel through 2-3 entire marathons without eating it and I figured its time had come.  My body felt fine.  I wasn’t paying attention to splits or pace.  It was just another Sunday long run with a few tens of thousands of friends.  Through these middle miles the course reminded me somewhat of the Chicago marathon as we passed through neighborhoods, each with its own character.  Except, unlike Chicago, on the NYC course there are some hills.  Nothing steep or horrible but some long gradual pulls nonetheless.  I wouldn’t call it a ‘hard course’, but it’s not pancake flat either.  The other interesting topographical elements were the bridges.  There are five bridges, including the one you start on.  When I’m not racing I don’t bother looking at the course map.  Part of it is I’m just not compulsive that way and part if it is the extra element of adventure this provides me as the course rolls itself out in front of me real-time.   The Queensboro Bridge was one of these adventurous surprises.  This comes right after the 15 mile mark and, including the approach and decent is over a ½ mile long.  This means you’ve got this 500-600 meter hill that just seems to keep going up and up.   The strangest thing was this was the first quiet place on the course.  We were on the lower deck, the inside of the bridge and the wind was blocked by the superstructure for the most part.  After all the screaming and noise and wind we were suddenly confronted with silence and the sounds of our own striving.  It was a bit eerie.  Not the silence per se, but the absence of noise in the heart of this race in the heart of this city.   This is where people were starting to show signs of tiring.  I had to side step some walkers and pay attention to the holes, lumps and buckles in the road that were common more or less across the course.  A not small group of runners congregated at the ‘overlook’ gaps in the bridge to take pictures.  I trudged on up the hill in the eerie quiet to the soft sounds of treads and breathing and the rustling of clothing broken occasionally by the wheel noise of traffic on the upper deck above our heads.   Coming down the long down-slope of the Queensboro Bridge I find myself runner just behind an Amazon.  This young woman is tall, muscular and blonde like something out of a cheerleading movie.  My old heart and mind swoons.  I lose my train of thought and stumble into a collision with one of my international friends.  I smile at him apologetically, shrug my shoulders in the direction of the Amazon and sheepishly say “Sorry, I was distracted.”  His broad grin tells me that some things are the same in any language.  A couple characters I keep passing due to my walk break rhythm is a pair of Irish guys in their Green national uniforms.  One of them has, I’m guessing his name, Cleary, on the back.  Knowing that they speak a related version of my native tongue I make a comment on one of my passes, “Tough day, huh fellahs?”  Mr. Cleary looks at me and rejoins without missing a beat in his best and lovely brogue, “Fucking Brilliant!”  You know what they say?  ‘If it wasn’t for whiskey and beer the Irish would rule the world.’ I believe that to be true, and a fine lot of mad, philosopher, poet kings they would make.  As we crossed Manhattan for the first time I was starting to get a little tired.  I ate another gel at two hours and another Endurolyte.  I wasn’t crashing or bonking or hitting the wall or any of that other poetic nonsense, I was just getting tire.  It had been a long week.  Someone said we’d be coming back this way and I quipped, “If we’ve got to come back, why don’t we just stay here?” As we cruised down the broad reaches of First Avenue I was trying to apply my drafting skills to stay out of the wind.  I’m very good at drafting.  You need to find someone about your height who is running a nice even pace and you snuggle up into their wind shadow.   Drafting works even better in a big race because you can sometimes find two or three runners in a group creating a nice big pocket.  In big races you can draft a ‘double-budder’ for miles and they won’t even know you’re there. You just have to not bump them or step on them.   But, running down First Avenue I couldn’t figure the wind out.  As you went by the cross streets it would start as a head wind then shift around and end up as a tail wind.  It was a constant swirl that made it hard to find a good pocket to run in.  The sun was out now.  It was after noon and warm.  I was wishing I had worn sunglasses.  Act seven – Saturday Saturday morning before the race Brian the PavementRunner has organized a tweet up on the steps of the Library in Midtown.  The idea was we’d all promote it, get a big group of people, take some pictures and head for some coffee, then drop by the ASICS Times Square Store. It was a good plan but we woke up to a dreary cold drizzle.  We went anyhow and had some fun with the people that did show up.  We took some pictures, had some coffee and made our way over to the Big ASICS store.   The ASICS store near Times Square is a showplace store.  It has an old New York Subway car in it that is really cool.  This is where we took a couple more pictures that ended up making the rounds.  @RunMikeRun from Twitter took one of all of us in the subway car with his GoPro on a pole rig and that shot ended up being picked up by Runner’s World.    Greg, Megan, Megan, Brian, Noelle and I all climbed up into the window display and took some great goofy shots with the manikins that made the rounds too.  We ended up having a nice lunch over near Rockefeller Center and then drifting off in different directions.  Some of these folks were understandably worried about having to run a marathon the next day.  I wasn’t.  My goals were simple. Don’t die.  Back at the hotel I used the afternoon to finish up the podcast and get some other stuff done.  Having no plans for the evening I wandered about Midtown, got some sundries and ended up getting a plate of pasta and a beer at TGI Fridays.  I picked up my Starbucks for the next morning and settled in.  I wasn’t sure I knew how to set my iPhone alarm for the time change so I called the hotel operator and asked for a 4:45 wake up call, which was really a 5:45 wakeup call…I guessed. I laid all my race kit out in ‘Empty’ runner format on the floor.  Tried to wipe the garbage off of my garbage bag and commenced to watch a little TV.  There was some really stupid zombie movie on that I started watching but reconsidered whether that was such a good idea the night before a race.  I fell asleep.  I slept fine, like a man with no secrets and many friends, and my eyes popped open at 4:30 (really 5:30) fifteen minutes before my wakeup call, like they usually do.   Act eight – the finish All the walking around the city, fighting the cold and wind all morning, and having run a marathon 7 days earlier started to wear on me as we crossed over into the Bronx by Mile 20.  I wasn’t bonking.  I was really tired.  I skipped the three hour gel and Endurolyte and started taking a minute walk every 5 minutes.   Looking at my watch and backing into the pace I was on a 3:40 to 3:50 finish schedule if I kept the fire stoked.  I was tired though and I only had the one goal, which could be accomplished with any finishing time.   Coming down the bridge into the Bronx there was a larger woman running a bit loosely in front of me.  There was also one of those giant orange traffic cones in the middle of the road.  I don’t know how she managed to do it, but she caught her toe on the cone and started to flail.   It was one of those slow motion moments for me.  She was in that state where she was off balance and wind-milling her arms for purchase on that razors edge between falling and not falling.  She was right in front of me.  I reached out and grabbed her as best I could until she regained her heading and rejoined the flow.  Coming back into Manhattan was a bit rough as I was super tired and not having much fun anymore.  I just wanted to get it done.  The race finished in Central Park but to get there you have to climb a long, long hill that just seems to go on forever.  I was passing the walking wounded and the walking dead but I was still on plan to attain my primary goal of cheating the grim reaper once more.  Once you get into the park it’s another mile-plus of rolling hills to the finish.  When you make that turn into the park it’s still a long way to the finish if you’re hurting but at that point you know you’ve got it.  Along that long climb up Fifth Avenue and through the Park the crowds become loud and roaring.  It’s a constant assault of praise and exhortation as the runners struggle through to the finish.   I crossed the line and had enough brain power left to stop my watch.  It said 4:00:03.  I turned on my IPhone to get a finish line photo and felt a tap on my shoulder.  It was Brian the @PavementRunner who had finished a couple steps behind me.  He had carried a GoPro and taken video of the race for ASICS.  Later I would learn that my actual time was 3:59:52.  That’s nice.  And, I didn’t die.  I was glad to see PavementRunner.  First because he’s a nice guy and a familiar face, and second because I was clueless as to what we were supposed to do next and where we were supposed to go after the finish.  I didn’t check a bag so getting one of those quilted race parkas was high on my priority list as the sun was starting to get low in the New York skyline.   Brian and I found the special, VIP exit that we were supposed to use and the volunteers were fantastic.  They were like hotel concierges telling us in great detail where we needed to go and how to get there. We found the parkas and the food and even the warming tent where we sat for a while to get some energy back for the walk to the hotel.   In another helping of irony, the woman sitting next to us in the warming tent was from the next town over from where I live.  Brian and I set out to find the hotel and joined the long stream of thousands of trudging warriors in blue parkas like Napoleon’s Grand Army retreating from Russia.  Brian seemed to think he knew where we were going so I followed his lead until I saw water in front of us and intoned that even with my limited geographical knowledge of the city I didn’t think there was a river between Central Park and Midtown.   We turned around and did some more walking.  My legs felt great.  I felt great.  This was an easy one that hadn’t left a mark on me other than the tiredness of doing it. We stopped to take some tourist pictures in front of Radio City and the Tonight Show banner.   The people passing us in the streets of the City were very nice to us.  They were friendly and congratulatory.  It was a nice, warm and welcoming vibe that I’ve got to give the natives credit for.  They like their race.  Brian asked me what I wanted to eat and I didn’t have to think about it.  God help me, and apologies to the planet, I wanted a big, juicy cheeseburger with bacon, fries and a beer.  Brian concurred.  After we washed up at the hotel that’s just what we did.   After Brian walked us three blocks in the wrong direction which was beginning to become one of our running gags of the weekend we settled into Bill’s Burgers and consummated our burgers and fries.  The waitress, seeing our medals, refused to let us pay for our beers.  I was starting to like these people.  On the walk back to the hotel I led Brian into St. Patrick’s Cathedral where a late mass was being held.  I crossed myself with holy water and genuflected to the altar and it somehow felt as if we had God’s blessing on this day.  I was grateful.  Act nine – the selfie that wasn’t a selfie Monday morning as I flew back to Boston for a full day of work the tweets and emails started to come in.  “Were you standing in the middle of the Verrazano Bridge wearing an orange parka taking pictures?”   “Yeah, I was.”  “You’re on the cover of the Wall Street Journal!” “No Kidding? Can you scan that and send it to me?”  And there I was in full freezing to death glory perched on the median taking pictures.  A final Seinfeld moment and another great Irony that this Boston boy was gracing the cover of their Newspaper.  The caption said “A runner takes a selfie on the Verrazano Bridge at the start of the NYC Marathon.”   It wasn’t a selfie, but I guess I don’t have a say in that.  Then it got picked up by CNN as one of their “Selfies of the Week” and somehow I’m in the same gallery as Madonna and Barack Obama.   Act ten – the end At the end of the day when I met all my new blogger friends for celebratory drinks at pub. (my kind of place).  Grace’s boyfriend said “So, I guess you won the editor’s challenge, then?”  Honestly, it was the first time the thought had entered my mind that there was any contest involving finish time, especially between me and these social media friends.  A bit jolly from the beer, my windburn subsiding into the cheery glow of my cheeks I turned to my new friends and said; “If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from all the marathons and all the years is that you have to celebrate every one.  You don’t know what’s’ coming next.  Celebrate today and now and every race because this could very well be as good as it gets.”  Skankin Pickle – Thick Ass Stout