Podcast appearances and mentions of wilson kipsang

Kenya can be said as the Mecca of the running world. Kenya has come to be the home of world-class athletes such as Eliud Kipchoge, Wilson Kipsang, Abel Kirui, David Rudisha, Florence Kiplagat, Edna Kiplagat, amongst others. Though most of us are recreational runners, we are pushing the limits in our own way, and the Kenyan runners set an aspirational north star for us. As a recreational runner, we have a lot of questions related to how Kenyan runners train. In this episode, we discuss topics related to: What is unique about the training that sets Kenyans apart? How many miles do they put in a day or week? How do they recover from their hard training? What is their nutrition like? How do they preventing injuries? GUEST INTROS: HUGO VAN DEN BROEK Hugo van den Broek is a former elite marathon runner, with a personal best of 2h12. He has coached amateur and elite runners from all over the world. His athletes ran at the 2008, 2012, and 2016 Olympics and had World Best performances in 2009 and 2015. When coaching his athletes, Hugo uses a combination of experience (he has been in the world of running for more than 30 years) and his scientific knowledge thanks to his M.Sc. degree in Human Movement Sciences. Hugo and his wife Hilda Kibet have been living and training in Iten, Kenya, since 2007. They both retired from professional running in 2015 and have 3 daughters. The couple has a guesthouse where they accommodate amateur and elite runners from all over the world, and organize running camps called ‘Kenya Camp' for amateur runners who want to experience training in Kenya under professional guidance. VIJAYARAGHAVAN VENUGOPAL Vijay was our first guest for our very first episode on marathon training and now again. It's been a pleasure to witness Vijay on and off the track focused on sports and nutrition. Vijay has recently visited Kenya and get to see how Kenyans train, and brings the perspective of a recreational runner. Vijayaraghavan Venugopal is an avid sports enthusiast, he is the father of an aspiring mid-distance national junior athlete, and himself an 8-time sub-3-hour marathoner. Amongst the marathons include Boston, Berlin, Chicago and Paris. He is also the co-founder and CEO of the nutrition brand Fast&Up. RELATED EPISODES Supplements for Runners Marathon Training Breaking 3 Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly workouts, and tips that will help your running

As an introduction, I've been a Maurten ambassador since 2017, where the company officially introduced themselves on the world stage at the 2017 Tokyo marathon. The winner Wilson Kipsang was featured using Maurten. So I've had a lot of experience using the product from the onset and through the subsequent new products. In this episode, I give an overview of the recommended Maurten marathon fuelling strategies, which is a reference guide for you to refine based on the individual. With that being said, in this episode I will give you a breakdown of my Maurten fuelling strategy from my last four marathons, explaining what did and did not work for me. If you find this value in this episode, please do share with your community and let me know. Thank you to the supporters of my work. For new supporters the way that you can help support my work is becoming a patreon, please click the link below. ————————————————————— Thank you to my patreons your help pays for editing, equipment and much more. If you value the content I deliver, please consider becoming a supporter of my podcast by donating via my patreon page. This helps me provide quality content. https://www.patreon.com/ARunnersLife --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/marcus-brown9/support

In this episode, Candace talks with guest Tony about the medical news that he and his partner received, himself requiring an open heart surgery, and his partner getting diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's. He talks about making a counter-intuitive decision that went against what some research would suggest for patients with Early Onset Alzhemizers; instead, they retired, sold their home and became nomads running marathons and half marathons all around the world. Tony talks about what it was like to travel around the world running race after race in places like Madagascar, Bhutan and the Great Wall of China with nothing but a suitcase. The pandemic did not put a stop to their plan and they are still running around the world over 7 years later.Anthony L. Copeland-Parker was a professional pilot/manager for thirty-seven years, the last twenty-seven with United Parcel Service. His last job had him managing pilots and flying B757/767-type air-craft all over the world. When he retired, he began writing his blog, PlayHard-HaveFun.com. Since then, he and his partner Catherine have traveled to eighty-two different countries. They have run at least a half-marathon in thirty-five countries and on all seven continents.His book Running All over the World, adapted from a blog he wrote during their travels, is a nonfiction account of our five-plus years of flying, running, walking, sailing, and sightseeing from Atlanta to Antarctica and back again. Part travelogue and part medical memoir, it transports listeners to exotic places like Madagascar, Bhutan, and the Great Wall of China while at the same time offering a day-to-day look at what it means to have nothing but what's in your suitcase. It's also an offbeat love story, recounting the trials and tribulations of an ex-pilot with a passion for vistas and logistics and a woman so tough she walks a half-marathon in the Australian Outback mere weeks after breaking her ankle. During their years as nomads, they pushed their physical and mental limitations as often as they could - and finished every race  hand in hand.Get a copy of Tony's book hereFollow Tony on FacebookFollow Tony on IGFollow Tony on TwitterFind Tony on Linkedin

And to challenge Kipchoge, Bekele will need to be at his absolute best, because Kipchoge’s consistency is just as impressive as any of his individual performances. Everyone has a bad marathon from time to time. But not Kipchoge. Never Kipchoge. Counting his sub-2 attempts, Eliud Kipchoge has run 14 marathons in his life and every single one of them has been a strong performance as he’s won 13 of them (his only loss came when Wilson Kipsang ran a WR to beat him, Kipsang is now suspended for doping violations) and run 2:05:00 or faster in all of them save for his debut (2:05:30) and his Olympic win (2:08:44). Here’s the set-up: Last fall in Berlin, Bekele — who has won 21 world titles and broken 6 track world records — ran the marathon we’ve been expecting from him, cruising to a 2:01:41. Bekele’s mark was just two seconds shy of the world record 2:01:39, set a year earlier on the same course by Kipchoge — the Olympic Marathon champion who has won 10 consecutive major marathons. Two weeks later, Kipchoge wowed the world with his exhibition-only, yet still barrier-breaking 1:59:40 run in Vienna. Endurance Noise & Random Musings Please Subscribe to my YouTube Channel! Stay Healthy. Be Boring. Not Epic. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/andy-noise/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/andy-noise/support

Wilson Kipsang wurde nun endgültig gesperrt, es gibt einen neuen Weltrekord im Bergaufmarathon auf dem Laufband und Philipp bekommt live ein Carepaket aus dem Osten. Die Tonspuren sollten auch wieder passen, die Hardware ist ausgetauscht und die Qualität zurück. Viel Spaß beim Hören

Ralf ist diesmal nicht zuhause in Köln sondern macht derzeit die Alpen unsicher, eine neue Folge #Bestzeit gibt es aber natürlich trotzdem von uns. Wir werfen wie immer einen Blick zurück auf die aktuellen Ereignisse in der Laufsportwelt, die News um die 4-Jahres-Sperre von Wilson Kipsang und natürlich auch was bei uns gerade so los ist. Wir haben auch mal wieder die Gelegenheit genutzt auf eine Hörermail einzugehen die sich einem schwierigen Thema widmet nämlich Untergewicht und Essstörungen im (Profi)Laufsport, inwiefern das präsent ist und ob darüber hinweg geschaut oder darauf geachtet wird. Last but not least: Die Urlaubszeit steht an und auch wenn diese für die Meisten dieses Jahr wahrscheinlich anders aussehen wird haben wir uns dem Zwiespalt von "Urlaub vs. Training" gewidmet und wie diese bei uns sonst so aussehen.

On this week’s show, Martin is joined by Anji. We talk injury recovery and acceptance. Wilson Kipsang is hit with a four year ban, there’s a record smashed on the John Muir Way and parkrun is back in New Zealand (whoop!). Holly interviews runner Pete Simpson about his heart stopping race and recovery. Plus you guys rate your run and share your kit around the World.  

In this episode Lauren and Abby recap the fast facts from the week, including Wilson Kipsang's 4 year ban + recap the MULTIPLE race results from the past week! Track is back you guys! Things We Talked About: - Wilson Kipsang Banned for 4 Years - Saucony Endorphin Collection - see the shoes here - Paris Marathon postponed - USATF reopens Olympic Trials Qualifying window - read more from Runner's World here - Jake Riley signed with On Running - see his announcement here - Watch the Bowerman Intersquad Races on their YouTube channel here - Watch The Big Friendly Replay on FloTrack here - Jared Ward's throwback pics of him and Jake Riley - see on IG here Hand Off: I'll Have Another Episode 257 with Diane Nukuri --- Thanks to Momentous for supporting the Up + Running Podcast. Save 25% off your first order at livemomentous.com when you sign up for a subscription and use code "UPRUNNING25". Follow Up + Running on IG @uprunning.co Follow Lauren on IG @laurenfloris77 Follow Abby on IG @abbycstanley

Gordon and Lincoln discuss former marathon WR holder Wilson Kipsang's four year ban due to whereabouts failures and tampering, and how it complicates his legacy in the sport. Plus, the guys talk about Gwen Berry's claims that she did not receive a USATF Foundation grant due to her 2019 protest at the Pan Am Games.

Australian steeplechase star Gen Gregson is on the show this week, laying it all out about her time trial at the Tan, her 10km and marathon aspirations and her special athlete–coach relationship. We also get an insight into how her and Ryan Gregson are managing training in this iso period.Riley also takes a lighthearted look at Wilson Kipsang’s start to 2020 and previews some guests on upcoming episodes.LinksShare this episodeGen Gregson InstagramGen Gregson owns the TanRiley Wolff on InstagramTempo Journal on Instagramtempojournal.com

127: Australian Distance Running All-Time Performances Competition Round 2 Brad gets pulled along with Josh Johnson and finds another gear in training.Julian paces Bri along to a 10K PB for the Run Strong Virtual Race.Brady replaces his Rotterdam Marathon with a 10K hitout in the Alphaflys. Summer of the 2022 set for a stacked schedule with Worlds, Commonwealth Games and European Championships in the span of 6 weeks.The Guardian article Former marathon world record holder Wilson Kipsang arrested after breaking coronavirus curfew while drinking in a club.CBS Sports article Two listener questions, one on the process of Olympic qualifications on National Championships and whether 5K PBs count on a freedom parkrun, then followed by some Moose on Merber.https://twitter.com/TheRealMerb/status/1232065777588723712 Scott Nicholas returns to declare the winners of the previous round and sets the next round of 8 match-ups.https://www.runnerstribe.com/len-johnson-articles/history-its-all-in-the-game-a-column-by-len-johnson/ Week 2Ron Clarke’s 5000m WR of 13:16 in Stockholm, 1966 VsSarah Jamieson’s 1500m National Record in Stockholm, 2006 - Shaun Creighton sets the Australian National Record in the Steeplechase  VsDave Fitzsimmons’ 5000m 13:17 in the 1977 Dusseldorf World Cup - Dixie Willis setting the World Records in the 800m & 880y in Perth, 1962 VsTamsin Lewis-Manou winning the 800m Gold Medal at World Indoors Championships in Valencia 2008 - Charlene Rendina wins the 800m Commonwealth Games Gold Medal in Christchurch 1974  VsJudy Peckham wins the 800m Commonwealth Games Gold Medal in Edmonton 1978 - Brenda Jones takes the 800m Olympic Silver Medal in Rome 1960 VsDave Stevens beats Emil Zatopek’s 6 Mile Record World Record in Melbourne 1956  - Krishna Stanton’s 8th place Warsaw World Cross 1987 VsJenny Orr runs 4:08 for the Australian Record in the 1972 Munich Olympics - Bill Scott runs 28:18 for 10 000m in Box Hill 1974 VsDarren Wilson sets the Half Marathon Worlds Best of 60:22 in Tokyo 1977  - Rob De Castella wins the Commonwealth Games Marathon Gold Medal in Brisbane 1982 VsMichael Shelley wins the Commonwealth Games Marathon Gold Medal in Glasgow 2014   Patreon Link: https://www.patreon.com/insiderunningpodcast Opening and Closing Music is Undercover of my Skin by Benny Walker. www.bennywalkermusic.com For shoes or running apparel contact Julian at: https://www.facebook.com/therunningcompanyballarat/ Join the conversation at: https://www.facebook.com/insiderunningpodcast/ To donate and show your support for the show: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=9K9WQCZNA2KAN

Griselda Gonzalez fue 3 veces olímpica; Barcelona 92, Atlanta 96 y Sidney 2000. Dos veces para Argentina, una vez para España. Hoy ya retirada, es auxilair de enfermeria y trabaja en Madrid atendiendo a paicentes infectados con Covid 19. La entrevistamos desde Buenos Aires.Psicología para corredores. Charla con el Licenciado Pablo Pillet, analizando cómo podemos enfrentar las angustias de la cuarentena y qué debemos hacer para volver a correr fortalecidos fisica y mentalmente.Por qué correr en espacios reducidos puede ser perjudicial?. Entrevista al Doctor Federico Torrengo, Traumatólogo Deportólogo.Recuerdo de gloria. Repasamos la entrevista que le hicimos a Eulalio "Coco" Muñoz, minutos después de haber logrado la marca olímpica en Valencia, en el mes de diciembre.Repaso de noticias:Serie de detenciones por romper la cuarentena por salir a correr.En Kenia, Wilson Kipsang fue preso.Calendario de suspensiones de carreras.Y mucho más!El podcast De los Juegos Olímpicos a combatir al Coronavirus ha sido publicado en Maratón Radio

Chris Chavez and Matt Meyer recap all the news and top stories from the running world in January 2020. It's an Olympic year and we're already getting hit with doping violations involving major stars like Wilson Kipsang. Coronavirus has led to the cancellation of the World Indoor Championships, which were slated to be held in Nanjing, China. World records fell. We touch on the best performances from the Houston Half Marathon, Dubai Marathon, Rock 'N' Roll Phoenix. We hit the best track performances from the Dr. Norbert Sander Invitational in New York City and the New Balance Boston Grand Prix. We touch on Edward Cheserek's decision to run for Kenya. We were treated to the news of the Eliud Kipchoge and Kenenisa Bekele showdown in April. Yes, we talk about the major Nike VaporFly shoe debate that continues to be a topic of controversy. This podcast was recorded before World Athletics has released its findings and recommendations for new regulations. RIP Chonky Bois (aka the AlphaFlys). We barely knew you. All that and more.... ❤️ Have your team join The Feed's Club Discount Program. Members of clubs or schools who sign up for the program will get 15% off all their orders on The Feed and they will provide each school with a custom landing page + a unique discount code to their school or club. If your team joins, they will also have priority access to their nutrition coaches. If you are interested, email Riley Masters - riley@thefeed.com - and get your team working with the best resource for athletes. ❤️ Protect your legs, nipples and arms with SQUIRREL'S NUT BUTTER. They use all-natural ingredients in everything they make. If it’s not natural, it’s not good enough for your skin. The products are made to prevent skin damage as well as restore and repair damaged skin. You can use promo code CITIUS20 for 20% off on all their anti-chafing products on their website. squirrelsnutbutter.com/ today. ▶ Follow us: twitter.com/CitiusMag instagram.com/citiusmag facebook.com/citiusmag ✩ Connect with Chris twitter.com/ChrisChavez instagram.com/chris_j_chavez

FAST FACTS - Kipchoge and Bekele to go head-to-head at the London Marathon in April - Will Nike's Vaporfly's be banned? [link] - Lauren Paquette joins HOKA NazElite [see announcement here] - Shalane Flanagan and Elyse Kopecky announce 3rd Cookbook coming later this year -> Rise and Run: Recipes, Rituals, and Runs to Jumpstart Your Day. - Former World Record Holder in the marathon, Wilson Kipsang, was “provisionally suspended for whereabouts failures and tampering” [read article here] RESULTS USATF Cross Country Championships - results here - Congratulations to previous podcast guest, Paige Stoner, on her second place finish and making her first US Team! You can listen to Paige's episode here Houston Marathon + Half Marathon - results here - See Malindi Elmore's post-race interview here Rock N Roll Phoenix - results here Congrats to another previous podcast guest, Kaitlin Gregg-Goodman on her first place finish and 1:13:51 PR at the Naples Daily News Half Marathon in Florida! You can listen to Kaitlin's episode here. This week's hand-off -- CTolle Run, Episode 107 from January 2019 with Malindi Elmore. Find the episode here ----- Follow the Up + Running Podcast on Instagram here Follow Lauren on Instagram here Follow Abby on Instagram here ----- This episode is sponsored by Rapid Reboot. You can get 5% off of your Rapid Reboot Recovery System using code "UPANDRUNNING". Check out all their options at www.rapidreboot.com

Catching up on a rather extraordinary couple of weeks with new world records and new world stars in the 10k, discuss Sam's 10k race on the 19th and Sam French's achievement in finishing his first 5k. Also News from Kenya surrounding doping and legend of the sport Wilson Kipsang. The main bulk of this episode is made up of an interview with Mark Hookway. Mark has an enormous wealth of experience coaching juniors and organising events to name a few of his many accolades. 

The wait is over. 2018 Boston Marathon Champ Des Linden is revealed as the $50 tipper to the the show (100% of the tips are still going to Jonathan Gault. Give your one time or monthly subscription tip here) Des surprised Jon on Rojo as a guest on the show and stayed to talk her incredible career for 57 minutes: Olympic Trials, winning Boston, advice for LetsRun.com and more. Then we talked Mike Smith being Galen Rupp's new coach, Evan Jager being super motivated, Clayton Murphy returning to his roots, Mary Cain returning to the track, the Wilson Kipsang suspension, the Jama Aden raid, Rhonex Kipruto's world record in the 10k on the roads, debate whether the world marathon records may be taken off the books, and end with London Marathon talk. Notes:Start: Special guest Des Linden57:50 Galen Rupp has a new coach74:30 Evan Jager MOTIVATED78:16 Clayton Murphy and Lee Labadie81:02 Mary Cain back on the track91:20 Wilson Kipsang suspended96:34 Jama Aden update101:33 Rhonex Kipruto world 10k record104:43 Could marathon world records be taken off books?107:17 London Marathon pro fields 2020 Have you submitted your shoe review? 100s of shoes reviews have poured in this month. We've got you covered here: https://www.letsrun.com/shoes Got an audio question / opinion for the podcast? Call 844-LETSRUN (538-7786) and hit option 7. Support LetsRun.com's Track Talk by contributing to their Tip Jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/letsrun We'd love your feedback on this episode or the show in general. https://pinecast.com/feedback/letsrun/d6808b0f-ab87-4bfa-a2d5-7f02d6d958ba

This week's show is sponsored by Let's Do This, there's two new world 10km records in Valencia plus plenty of GB PBs, Wilson Kipsang is busted, Mo speaks out about Salazar, and Bournemouth Uni have a running-related terror scare! Plus Holly speaks to Fergus Crawley in part two of this great interview.

If you're seeing this version of the podcast please email wejo@letsrun.com. Please update to this feed: https://pinecast.com/feed/letsrun . Or you can find all of our podcasts hereThe new google podcast feed is here https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9waW5lY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC9sZXRzcnVuLWNvbS1zLXRyYWNrLXRhbGs%3D and also email wejo@letsrun.com as we want to figure out why are you getting this one. https://pinecast.com/feed/letsrun

115: PJ Bosch   Oofos Recovery Footwear is this week’s episode sponsor and the boys got to review their range of recovery thongs and slides which you can find at oofos.com.au/   Brad does his 90-minute long run in 80 minutes in the Cadbury Half Marathon in Hobart.Julian has a hard week in Ballarat, dealing with sleep loss, shoe thieves and movie production.Brady takes home the chocolates winning the Cadbury Half Marathon   Former marathon world record holder and 2012 Olympic bronze medalist Wilson Kipsang provisionally suspended for whereabouts failures and tampering violations. Athletics Weekly   Cadbury Marathon had both its course records broken as Nick Earl wins in 2:18, while Katie Conlon ran 2:42 to qualify for the US Olympic Trials Marathon in Atlanta. Brady Threlfall edged Dave Ridley in the half marathon while Milly Clark won the women’s half in a course record of 1:13Cadbury Marathon Resultshttps://www.instagram.com/p/B7M9QVFnf5H/   Rhonex Kipruto breaks Joshua Cheptegei’s short-lived 10K WR in Valenciahttps://www.runnerstribe.com/latest-news/kipruto-and-chepkirui-break-world-10km-records/?fbclid=IwAR0w__hshOQaMAmBFatK2hy5r7aqcrMxrc_KOFIb_6yr0QFhR4CxW7cKcIE   Listener question asks about the challenges of coaching via online correspondence when group training isn’t available.Moose on the Loose asks where the Nike critics are in the wake of Rhonex Kipruto’s 10K world record run in non-carbon plated Adidas race flats. This week’s guest PJ Bosch in a wide-ranging and colourful conversation that covers anything and everything from his career on the track from the 1500m to the 10K to his current capacity as coach and partner to Tara Palm alongside Adelaide Harriers. PJ doesn’t hold back on his thoughts about the current state of athletics globally and domestically, how he started the Adelaide Invitational and how his plans for Richard Everest to take down Ryan Gregson’s U20 3000m record ultimately both succeeded and backfired. PJ has heaps of tales from training in Kenya and being mates with 2008 Olympic 800m Gold Medalist Wilfred Bungei, watching Kenenisa Bekele set world records on the European track circuit and what the Australian track scene needs more of. Patreon Link: https://www.patreon.com/insiderunningpodcast Opening and Closing Music is Undercover of my Skin by Benny Walker. www.bennywalkermusic.com For shoes or running apparel contact Julian at: https://www.facebook.com/therunningcompanyballarat/ Join the conversation at: https://www.facebook.com/insiderunningpodcast/ To donate and show your support for the show: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=9K9WQCZNA2KAN

Am vergangenen Wochenende wäre die Triathlonsaison 2020 normalerweise beim Ironman 70.3 Pucon ins neue Jahr gestartet. Simon Müller (der das eine oder andere sportliche Luxusproblem hat) und Frank Wechsel (der immer noch Anfängerfehler macht) diskutieren über die frühzeitige Absage des Rennens aufgrund der Unruhen und Proteste in Chile. Außerdem Thema im heutigen Podcast: die Validierungsrennen für die Hawaii-Quali von Anne Haug beim Ironman Südafrika, von Jan Frodeno in Nordamerika und welche Überlegungen dahinter stehen, sich als Agegrouper mit Kona-Ziel für ein bestimmtes Rennen zu entscheiden. Dazu ein Exkurs in den Laufsport, der auch Bezug zum Triathlon hat: Es geht um den neuen 10-km-Weltrekord auf der Straße und die Dopingsperre von Ex-Marathon-Weltrekordler Wilson Kipsang. Wir haben zum Start ins Olympiajahr außerdem einige spannende Statistiken von 1896 bis 2016 mitgebracht: die Entwicklung der Anzahl der Entscheidungen und die Gesamtanzahl der teilnehmenden Athleten bei den Olympischen Spielen – unterteilt nach Männern und Frauen.

Wilson Kipsang provisionally suspended + Dan Evans marches towards Melbourne just outside the ATP top 30

Knox Robinson is the Founder of First Run. Knox has spent time training alongside Mo Farah in Ethiopia, Eliud Kipchoge in Kenya and attended the Breaking2 Nike Project in May 2017. We dive into all of these topics with Knox in this podcast espisode. Don’t forget to check out our new book: Eliud Kipchoge – History’s fastest marathoner: An insight into the Kenyan life that shapes legends — — — — — — Podast Transcription (Matt) Thanks very much, Knox Robinson, for joining me today no this Sweat Elite podcast. Knox has a fascinating story, he’s spent some time training with Mo Farah and the Mudane – I think it’s pronounced – group in Ethiopia. (Knox) Mudane, Mudane. (Matt) Mudane? (Knox) Yeah, the president Mudane, yeah. (Matt) Mudane, yeah, got to get that right… Before the London marathon last year, and he spent some time with  Eliud Kipchoge in Kenya, as well, as attended the Monza sub-2 Nike event last year in Italy. So, thanks very much for joining me today, Knox. (Knox) I’m excited to be rapping with you, for sure. (Matt) Cool. I guess we can get started by talking a little bit more about yourself and your background. You were a runner in high school and in college, you attended Wake Forest University and got yourself to, I guess, a decent standard before taking some time away from the sport, but then, you were drawn back, I guess, some ten years later, or thereabouts. I guess it would be good to talk a little bit more about, I guess, what took you away, and then what drew you back, and where you’re at now. (Knox) You know, I think, you know, really, what happened was… It’s tough. I mean, like, legions of runners will tell you how hard it is to make that leap from a, you know, passionate high school runner to walking on a top level program. I mean, Wake Forest University, in the mid to late 90s, when I walked on, was – for a very small school – had an incredibly credential distance program for this moment in time. I mean, when I walked into the locker room my first year, half of the United States junior cross country team was there, in the locker room. So, you know… Like, we had guys in there, you know, beyond all Americans – we had, just, a bunch of dudes who loved getting it cracking, and on the women’s side, there was also great athletes as well. So, it was amazing, and it was a tight knit group. I kind of, on a good day, I was scratching at that 10th man position, but it was also really challenging to kind of keep going and stay inspired when, you know, you’re… You’re just, kind of, like, 18, 19 years old, figuring it out, you’re not there on an athletic scholarship, and, you know, there’s a bunch of other interests exploding around you, and so… It got to the point where it was kind of make or break, and I kind of had a… A couple of, sort of, like, disappointing, kind of, moments on my own accord. And so, I just, you know, stopped running. Now, I’m so deep in it, all this time later, that it’s weird to think that I just made the decision to stop. But that’s what I love about what I’m doing now, is, like, I want to kind of share back with, like, young people, that your own passion for running and your own pursuit – whether the competitive or non-competitive, or performance-based, or just, you know, feeling good about yourself and your body… It doesn’t really have to be dependant on university scholarship and being part of a team. You can do it on a team, you can do it on your own, you can form your own team, you can form your own crew, and I hope to share with the folks that you can, kind of, do it for the course of your life. It’s not just something you’re going to do in your school age years. (Matt) Absolutely. And I think… I don’t want to… I guess, before I go into the quote that I read from you, I did, I guess, discover your content, for the most part I’ve heard the name before, but… On the Rich Roll podcast. And on the Rich Roll podcast, you had a great quote that said ‘Running is act of religion…’ – sorry – ‘…of rebellion.’ And you go on to, sort of, talk about how, you know, nobody wants you to run, you’re supposed to just be a digit, a one of… A one or a zero in the code, and you’re not supposed to get out and think for yourself. And I think that that’s… It’s very, very true. And you can, sort of, go and do this on your own. And, as you just sort of pointed it out, you don’t have to have university scholarship to, sort of, prove that. (Knox) Yeah. I mean, to put it in a… To put it in a better way, less, like, strident way, like a friend of mine once told me: ‘You’re only one… You’re only young once, but you can be immature for the rest of your life.’ So… Definitely… You’re definitely only young once, but you can definitely run wild for a really long time. (Matt) Absolutely. And you, yourself, have ran quite a fast half marathon yourself. (Knox) I just ran 70 minutes. I just ran 70 minutes in a half, and… (Matt) That’s quick. (Knox) At Valencia, earlier this year. (Matt) Alright! Oh, I was there. (Knox) Oh. It was incredible. (Matt) It was very windy that day. (Knox) It was windy! That’s what I’m saying. Everybody can talk junk, you know, talk trash, like, ‘Oh, it was windy…’ It rained tw… It’s only a half, rained twice… (Matt) And… Yes. (Knox) And it was windy cross and in your face, and, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever raced in Europe, but, like, European dudes don’t play. They’re mean. (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) They’re out for blood. (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) You know, it’s not like cross country jabbing you in the ribs – these guys are, like… These guys have, like, triangle formations, they’re talking in front of you as they’re running, like, 70 minutes for the half… They’re surgning… It’s definitely very, very competitive in the way that, like, that sort of sports culture in Europe is. And so it’s awesome to just, kind of, like, catch a plane from New York and pop into the race, and, yeah, I popped a big one. I was… That was wild. (Matt) Yeah, and I think… (Knox) So… That was a high watermark for me, for sure. (Matt) Oh, yeah. That’s awesome. And you ran 70 minutes, but I actually didn’t realize it was Valencia, and being there that day, I think most people ran at least 30 seconds to a minute slower than their potential, or their personal best, most people. So… (Knox) I was 70 low, I was 70 low. I would have… (Matt) You’ve got a… Yeah, you’ve got… People want to go here. (Knox) I was thinking… I would have leaned in for 69, but I was finishing up with two younger guys, and they were really struggling, so, like, I didn’t want them to ruin my finish line photo, I didn’t want them to, like, head to the side, so I was, like, ‘You go on ahead, let me just… I’ll give you a little room so I look cute on the finish line.’ (Matt) I’m impressed you were thinking this credibly at the end of a half marathon, well done. (Knox) Look, times are going to come and go, but, like, a good photo… You need to, like, make sure it’s crispy. (Matt) Yeah. It was super windy between, I think, what – 10 and 16 kilometer mark, but… Yeah. That’s awesome. (Knox) Yeah. (Matt) So, I guess, I think what most people listening to this podcast would be super interested in would be about your time spent in Ethiopia, with Mo Farah’s training group, before the London marathon last yeah. And, although I sort of know the backstory about how that came about, and how you were asked to go, and, sort of, what happened there, I think it would be really cool to talk about all of this over the next, sort of, 10 to 15 minutes, because it is quite fascinating how you ended up there. And, sort of, some of the stories, kind of, about that. For example, you know, the story about the… About the coffee, how they went to get some coffee one day and the coffee machine wasn’t working, and just the general culture around there and how… I guess what you went in expecting it would be like, and then what it was actually like. So, it would be really cool for us to chat a little bit about that. (Knox) Yeah. I mean, it was… It was… I don’t want to call it a fluke, but it was just kind of like a hilarious chain of events before the New York City marathon, I was kind of lucky to kind of be one of the last guys accepted into the Sub-Elite field, so I rode out on the Sub-Elite bus to the start line of the New York City marathon, and was in the holding area with the Elite guys, so everybody is in this sort of indoor track area on Staten Island before the race, a couple of hours before the race. Super chill environment, everybody’s running around on the track, men and women, elites and sub-elites, and I was… I had kind of been on a several months’ meditation wave, so I go off to the side, I meditate, I come back, and then, when I come back to the track, I’m not really friends with any, like, the elite runners on the New York City scene, you know? They’re in, like, the rich guy clubs, and they work on Wall Street and all that kind of stuff, and I’m sort of, like… You know, an older black dude with, like, a chipped tooth and, you know, kind hangs out in Brooklyn, so… I was, like, ‘I’m just going to go hang out with, like, the African dudes. (Matt) Which is a good move, which is a great move… (Knox) Like, I’m black, so, I’ll just hang out, and the black guy is, like, ‘Hey, is this, like…This is the black section, let me hang out with the brothers.’ So, I go over there, and I knew Abdi, so at least go over and sit by Abdi, I’m stretching… Meb’s over there, Meb, kind of, like, says ‘What’s up?’ And then, Kamworor’s there, I think Stanley Biwott was there, I knew Wilson Kipsang… (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) From meeting him in Berlin a few weeks… A few months before, when he dropped out. So… I knew some of the guys. I just, like, dropped myself down and hung out, and then Abdi sort of – to, like, make conversation – was, like, ‘Hey, man…’ And I’m thinking about New York, I’m thinking about, like, what I’m going to execute on First Avenue, I’m, like, in my zone, I’m trying to be cool. Not trying to, like, fan out, and, like, take selfies with these guys. And Abdi’s like, ‘Hey, man, why don’t you come out to Ethiopia? I’m going to be there training with Mo again, Mo ready for London.’ And I was, like, ‘Yeah. Cool.’ And I just left it at that. I was, like, ‘Yeah. Cool. I will.’ I said ‘Yeah. Cool.’ So… So, then, I mean, fast forward, I just booked a flight and, like, went out to the camp, which is probably north of  Addis Ababa, in this small little hamlet, this little town called Sululta, where Haile Gebrselassie’s complex is, and then, across the street, of course, is Kenenisa Bekele’s complex, or his old place that some Chinese guys bought. So, yeah, showed up in the middle of the night, they didn’t have a room for me as planned. I went across the street and stayed at Kenny B’s place… Kenny’s old place. That was one of the worst places I’ve ever slept at in my life, and I’ve slept at a lot of tough places… (Matt) This is Kenny Bekele’s accommodation? (Knox) Yeah, but it hadn’t been, like, kept up in a couple of years, because he sold it to, like, some chinese investors, and didn’t maintain it. And now he’s building a new place across the street, and that’s where Mo trains. (Matt) OK. (Knox) So, Mo trains at Kenenisa’s track, which is next door to Haile Gebrselassie’s hotel and track. (Matt) Right. OK. (Knox) So, Mo is staying at Haile’s pace, and training at Kenenisa’s place. (Matt) Big names there. (Knox) It was crazy, no, it was crazy. And then, like, you know… Met… Guys were just driving up… It was just… It was just… It’s a wild town, it’s a wild town, to think that much elite, sort of, talent is, like, in and out as much as… Goat herders are there, and, like, a church is, like, doing ceremonies in the middle of the night, all  night… It was just really a wild scene. Very, very different from the peaceful, sort of, environment that Eliud Kipchoge trains in. But I think Mo Farah really thrives on energy and excitement, for sure. (Matt) Yeah. OK. So that’s how it came about, and I guess you’ve introduced us to, like, how… What it was like coming in to Sululta… (Knox) Yeah. It’s Abdi’s fault. (Matt) Which I’d like to talk a little bit more about… (Knox) We can blame it on Abdi. Abdi’s fault. (Matt) Yeah, OK, so you were staying in this little shack. (Knox) Yeah. (Matt) Across the road from Bekele’s track. (Knox) Yeah. (Matt) I guess, what was the deal then, like…? (Knox) And then I couldn’t do that, so… (Matt) Alright, you changed… (Knox) The next day, then, I moved in… The next day I moved into Haile Gebrselassie’s, sort of, hotel spot. And that was cool. So, I stayed next door to Mo, Abdi, Bashir Abdi, who just got second in the 10,000 for Belgium at the European championships, and then, like, a bunch of young Somali guys, as well, in the camp. (Matt) Awesome. OK, and, I guess, what was it… Yeah, what was it like next to these guys and being able to… I’m assuming, you’ve mentioned in podcasts and to me before we started recording this that you attended some training runs and some training sessions, so it would be really cool to learn a little bit more about what that experience was like. (Knox) Yeah, I mean, I lived… I mean, I lived… Yeah, I don’t want to say I lived with them, because we were in the same room, but I lived next door, you know? Like… And I ran with these guys two or three times a day. I will say that I was in pretty good shape, obviously. A month after that I ran 70 minutes and a half, but… And I had spent some time at altitude… The same altitude, what, 8,000 feet or something like that, 8,000 – 9,000 feet in Mexico the month before, so the altitude wasn’t a big shock, but I will say that these guys, on the easy runs, definitely… It was definitely a bit rough. (Matt) You said it was also dead silent, too, in the… (Knox) Pardon? (Matt) You also said that it was very quiet in the easy runs, in the Rich Roll podcast? (Knox) That’s the thing, yeah, like… You know, you’d expect… And again, when you’re in school, or your hanging out in your little running crew, or even… Honestly, you know, when you go on on your long run, on the weekends, and you’re running, whatever, 20, 22, 23 miles… You’re catching up on the night before, you’re talking about this and that, you’re unloading on the week, all that kind of stuff… Then, on the easy runs, with these guys? They didn’t talk at all. Like, these runs, at a casual pace for these guys, the runs were in complete silence. And that was, like, really unnerving, that the easy runs are quiet. On other hand, the most intense track workouts that I witnessed – and It’s not like I was stepping on the track and running with these guys – but they had such a good vibe… Like, you would have thought these guys were just, like, messing around and, like, in the off season, the way the vibe was, and then, they’re stepping on the track and they’re running, like, 4 minute miles at altitude, like, on the track… And, like, dudes are falling down, you know, Mo is just, like, chewing through his pacers and, you know, the coach is on the bicycle trying to keep up, and… Meanwhile, while this is happening, they’re playing, like, Drake on their Beats Pill, or, you know, Mo is asking people to take pictures of, like, his abs and video on the iPhones, so he can post it later on his Instagram… (Matt) Yeah, he got you his phone and just said… (Knox) And he’s still ripping through reps, like, wildly. Honestly, it’s just crazy. (Matt) That’s awesome. There’s so many things I wanted to dive into there… (Knox) Yeah, yeah… (Matt) I guess, firstly, I’d like to know – before we talk about the track styles – when you were talking about the easy runs and there were, sort of, quiet. They were quiet, but you also said before that they were rough. I mean, what sort of pace are they guys punching up there? And, mind you, before we get into that, I guess the altitude is… What, it’s 2,700 meters, which… Or thereabouts, which is some… What’s that in feet? (Knox) Close to 8,000. So, yeah. Addis Ababa is, you said, 2,700 meters. (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) Yeah, so, I mean, that’s… That’s just casual running for them, at, like, 2,700 – 2,800 meters. And then, you know, sometimes on the long runs, they might do, like, an uphill long run, or you know, there’s a hill or a mountain right next to the training camp that these guys didn’t do, but a lot of athletes would run right up, and that’s, you know, close to 10,000 feet, so 3,200 meters or something like that. (Matt) Oh. (Knox) That’s… That’s pretty intense. I mean, if you look at… I don’t know what a lot of other places around the world are, but as far as in the United States, even a lot of these training locales in Colorado are much more casual altitude than that. Like, closer… (Matt) Oh, yeah. They’re closer to 2,000 maybe… (Knox) Closer to 64… 6,400 feet or something like that, not to diss any of my friends in Colorado, but… This was not that. This was, like, getting up and eating oatmeal at 8,000 feet, and then, you know, going out and… You know, like I said, I was in shape. I mean, I even went out and ran, like, my little 20-mile Boston marathon training run on my little Boston course before I went. And I was, like, ripping off pace, I was fit. And I went out to Ethiopia, and man… These guys were running, I don’t know… These guys were running quick on their easy runs, you know? Even their jog was just kind of, like… I was having to work. It was embarrassing, because I was in good shape, and they’re looking at me, like, ‘Ehh…’ You know? The only thing that saved me was, like, going out on a, you know, on a long run, and… Because I looked like I was dragging. I was tired, I didn’t look real, obviously I’m not stepping in their workout, so they didn’t know what it was. And when we went out on long runs, 20 milers, or 22 milers, the fact that I was able to do a 20 mile run in two hours, two hours and, you know, one minute with, like, no support, like, minimal fueling and hydration, at 8,000 feet or 9,000 feet, they’re like, ‘Ohh? OK, OK. Oh, OK. OK.’ Because, when it came to just the easy miles, the 7, 8, 9, 10 miles, man that… It was rough. (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) But that’s the level… That’s the shape he’s in. I mean, Mo… Mo… Mo… Mo Farah is in shape this year, for sure, as you’ve seen by him… His run at London and then his run at the Great North Run, and then… I mean, I’m excited to see what he’s going to do in Chicago this weekend. (Matt) Yeah, yeah. It will be interesting to see how he goes there and whether or not he takes some more time off his… Off his personal best. But… (Knox) For sure. (Matt) Yeah, now thanks for, sort of, painting that picture about how it… How… What it was like to do the, the… The more aerobic running with them, and I guess it would be cool to touch a little bit more on what the track sessions were like and what it felt like to be there, and… I love the story that you told on the Rich Roll podcast, about how Mo was just, like, ‘Hey, man, can you… Can you get my phone from my bag, and here’s my password, and… Just open it up, take photos…’ (Knox) Right! This is, you know, like… This is not even in the beginning of the workout, this is, like, halfway through the workout, during, like, a… During the recovery. He’s, like, ‘Hey, mate – can you go in my bag and get my phone, the red phone.’ He had, like… He had two iPhone Xs, like… I… I… I’m from New York, I’ve got cool luggage, you know, I work with Nike. I’ve got, like… I’ve got the prototype of the Peg Turbos, I’ve got a couple of pairs of 4%s in the bag… You know. I’m cool. But I didn’t get the iPhone X before it went out. I didn’t want to, like, drop it, I didn’t want to get robbed… Whatever. So, I go out to Ethiopia, Mo’s got two iPhone Xs! I was, like, ‘Oh, man. This guy is embarrassing me, like… ‘ He’s asking me to go in his bag, gives me the passcode, and then, like, wants me to take, like, photos and videos of him as he’s doing his workout, so he can post something to IG later. And then, after I did it, he didn’t even use them. Like, he didn’t even think the photos and the videos are that good. Like, he didn’t, like… I failed. That’s the worst part. (Matt) Oh, no. (Knox) I haven’t… I haven’t told anybody that, but he didn’t any use any of the stuff I took. I was, like… He’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, oh… OK. Yeah, cool. Not bad, yeah.’ I was, like, ‘Oh, come on!’ The angle, I’m laying down on the track trying to do artistic shots as he goes by, yeah… He didn’t really respect my… My… My social media. My social media… My social media technique. He didn’t really respect it, so… It’s OK. (Matt) Awesome. (Knox) But that was incredible, man. Like, just… It just made me think, like, you know, usually I think that an elite has got, like, to approach the most serious sessions with the most seriousness of purpose, or the most serious demeanor. But, you know, you’ve got to choose the demeanor that works for you. And I realised it’s about creating a good environment and creating a good vibe, and having good energy. And then, that’s going to push you to better performances, rather than some real intense situation where, you know, you’re kind of on the wrong side of pressure and… And… And… And, and, and… And Intensity. You know what I mean? (Matt) Absolutely. (Knox) It’s better to create a vibe and then just to, like, have Mo get stoked, and then tear up the track. (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) Rather than just kind of, like, ‘Can I do it? Oh, I’m going to run and get this impossible workout and then fail!’ Like… The other thing is this guy loves… And this is what I wanted to bring back and also share with people in my group, Black Roses, but also with other folks in the running world at large – like, this guy loves the challenge. Like, you know, you’re used to it. People dread the long run, like, ‘Oh, I’m worried about my long run this weekend. Oh, I can’t believe I have to do this long run this weekend.’ And we always speak about our biggest challenges, I mean, as regular people, like, in negative terms. You know? But Mo would be sitting around at lunch on Tuesday, already excited and chatting about the long run on Sunday. (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) Like, at one point, he was pitching the coach, he was, like, ‘Oh, Sunday we might go to this other place and run with the Ethiopian group.’ And the coach says, like, ‘No. No, no, no, no, no. No.’ Because, right? Mo’s excited to go to, like, another location for the long run, and do the long run with, like, the Ethiopian national team, and Ethiopian elites. (Matt) Right. That’s really interesting. (Knox) Rather than my ‘hiding at a camp’, or my ‘training is secret’, or whatever. He wanted to go and have the Sunday long run with other guys and the best in the world, like, away from cameras, away from whatever – just for the battle. Like, the light in his eyes that went up, when he was, like, trying to get his coach to let him go run with these guys, and the coach is, like, ‘No. You’re not going to do that. Because, as soon as you guys get out there, you’re going to start going, and then you’re going to start going crazy…’ And Mo’s like, ‘No, no! It’s going to be chill!’ He was actually asking the coach, he was telling him, like, ‘No, it’s going to be fine. It’s just friendly, we’re just going to go and have a good time.’ And the coach is, like, ‘No way.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, this dude not only is, like, it’s Tuesday, and he’s already chomping at the bit for the long run…’ (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) ‘… but also he wants to go and race these other dudes that he’ll outrun, with these other dudes that he races at the olympics and championships, and the marathon.’ (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) He was, like, wanting to do that. For fun. (Matt) Just for fun. That’s awesome. (Knox) Just for the battle. Just for the war. (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) Like, that was inspiring. So, I’m trying to, like, really come back and, like, change the own culture around my own group that everyone, like, gets excited for the long run on the weekends, and people get excited, you hit them with a workout and then they’re, like, ‘Yeah, let’s do… Yeah! Alright! Yeah!’ You know? I want that excitement. (Matt) It’s… (Knox) Because that’s going to change the vibe and that’s going to change the results. (Matt) Absolutely. It’s a really interesting topic, this, actually. Because  I just spent, I guess, the better part of the decade living in Europe. And, other than Finland, for the most part, and in that country – I know it’s quite similar in other countries in Europe – it was very common for the… For it, sort of, essentially, to be the exact opposite of you just said, in a way that people would train on their own, they wouldn’t want to train with other people because they had a set, programmed, that they wanted to follow, from their coach. And it was almost, like… I was in Helsinki, it was almost like there was quite a lot of good runners around the town, but they were also training on their own. And the idea of getting together and doing something like you’ve just described, like, a whole bunch of guys that are all competing against each other just to, like, punch at a hard tempo around… That was, like, no way would anyone ever come up with that or do that. And it’s just… It’s not even a thought. Like… So it was really quite interesting that that’s how Mo was, sort of… That’s how Mo is. And that’s how he sees it, that’s what he wants to do. And it’s… Yeah. It’s really quite interesting. It’s… And I guess more people could do that. (Knox) I mean, it’s understandable. I mean, I come out of that, and, like, keeping workouts a secret, and training on your own… But it’s, like… And it…(audio skips, 37:29) Plan, and it doesn’t mean that, like, Mo doesn’t follow a schedule. But as, you know, as an elite, there’s only a certain number of workouts left to do. There’s only… I mean, there’s only a certain kind of workout to do. There’s only a certain handful of approaches, you know? (Matt) Absolutely. (Knox) So, what are you really going to do to get that little edge? Especially when we know that edge is .5 seconds or .2 seconds… You know? (Matt) Yeah. Exactly. Right. (Knox) What is that edge? It’s mentality and experience, and, like… I don’t know. Of course, we love that cliche of, like, the loneliness of the long distance runner. We love that. But I love seeing Mo, you know, having a whole training group of friends, and when they weren’t training, they sat around and listened to music, and laughed about a bunch of stuff, and talked about soccer and… you know? Or football, rather. Or whatever. And just, like, had a good time. And then, when it came to really go to that… To the highest heights, it was… (Matt) Game on. (Knox) It was game on. (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) It was, you know… It was fascinating. (Matt) Yeah. I really found it interesting, too, that on the Rich Roll podcast, that you spoke about how they didn’t ever know what the training session was ahead of them until they were, like, warmed up in track. (Knox) Right. (Matt) Yeah. And how, you sort of said yourself, all these, you know… Nothing against all the people that have these, sort of, training programs scheduled out for months on end, and so on. But these guys, like, I think you said it well, like, Mo is thinking in his head, it could be one of many things before the training session, and that’s… You were talking about how that could be used as an advantage. (Knox) Yeah, had to step back and think about it, because it’s, like… Like I said, I wasn’t stepping on the track and, like, jumping in his workouts, you know? A couple of times, the guys are like, ‘Are you jumping in on this?’ When I was, like, ‘Come on, man.’ So, guys were cool. Wasn’t like I just, like, you know… But I was on the sidelines, and I was just watching, because it was better to… It was an education. When are you going to get to see one of the best guys in the world at the office, you know? (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) Day in and day out. So, it was just fascinating to watch that… That… That particular approach, you know what I mean? (Matt) Absolutely. You also said that you had a lot of people after the trip not so much ask about the workouts, but they were asking about, like, the diet. And the… I think you said it was, like, a peanut butter, like a recipe or something… Something like that. (Knox) Yeah, I mean, it was cool because… Well, yeah. I just think that, like, in these days, we love… I mean, Eliud Kipchoge is so inspiring. His words are so inspiring, his life, his… His… His, just, entire aura is… Is super inspirational and aspirational. And then, Mo’s personality is infectious and what he’s done for the culture, you know… What Abdi’s done, like, all these guys are great personalities, and I like… I like… I like learning about that. I like studying… Studying that. And so, you know, a lot of times, Mo’s coach was really afraid that I was going to, like, leak this or that workout… You know, I Was taking notes or whatever, writing down the workouts… Was worried that I was going to, like, leak a certain kind of workout, and I understand that. It’s intellectual property, and Mo is heading up for London marathon, and Bekele and Kipchoge were entered in the race. So, I understand. It was in… The pressure was on. But, on the other hand, you don’t… No one ever asked me about a workout. People wanted to know what the diet was, people wanted to know about Mo drinking coffee, Ethiopian coffee, which is, of course, like, an incredible coffee experience… People wanted to know about the strength that they have in the camps out there, peanut butter tea and the recipe for peanut butter tea… So, you know, it’s really an interesting moment right now that we’re in, that people want to know not, like, what it is, but how it is. (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) You know? (Matt) Yeah. Absolutely. Well, thanks, thanks so much for sharing a good 20 minutes there of, you know, your experiences i Ethiopia. I think it’s a perfect time to sort of transition to your time spent with Eliud Kipchoge in Kenya. (Knox) Yeah. (Matt) So, I’m actually not that… So much familiar with this experience that you had, but you did go to Kenya once, so… (Knox) Mhm. (Matt) And then, you did spend some time in Kaptagat, as did we, around  a year ago now, training alongside him before Berlin. I mean, it was really cool to learn a bit more about how you… About your experience in Kaptagat and training alongside that global NN Running Team. (Knox) Well, yeah. And I, you know… Much respect to the global NN Running Team, and  I definitely wasn’t’, like, training alongside of them, and did… It was much different from the Mo Farah experience. I was there, sort of, independently, and then with… In Kaptagat, I was there as part of a Nike team, you know, working on a project just to, kind of, like, connect with Eliud around that Flyprint innovation, 3D printed shoe that came out earlier in the year for a few elites to race in… So, it was more of just a chance to kind of connect with Eliud off the radar, Geoffrey, Abel… And then, also, like, I had connected with Patrick Sang, who’s a master coach, and just a master human being. And so, having spent time with coach Patrick Sang the year before in Berlin, and then being able to connect with him back in Kaptagat was an experience that brought all his training and coaching philosophies and arguments to life. So, it was more just a sort of an overall, cohesive experience, and a chance to witness that rarified element, and environment of Kenyan distance training, like, first person. (Matt) Yeah. For sure. I guess you’re such a… You’re very good at describing and, I guess, painting a picture, and I think it would be really cool to spend maybe a minute now describing what it’s like in Kaptagat. And coming Eldoret and then what… I guess what the little village is like. (Knox) Yeah, I mean, you’ve seen the visuals, you know it’s just, like, one highway coming into a town, it’s like that through much of East Africa, as so much Chinese investment is helping build roads and like, just, to really kind of ease with the export of natural resources… So there’s, like, a… You know, a main two-lane highway, blacked up highway, but Eliud’s camp, the NN Running camp, or the Global Sports… global Sports Communication, right? GSC camp, where Eliud’s lived for… Since his late teens, or for the past 14 or 15 years, if not more… Was really incredible. People know it’s super simple and austere, cinder block construction. But, at the same time, they also do have solar panels and solar energy that was installed last year, so really kind of looking at a well thought out training environment for the express purpose of, like, pursuing excellence in long distance running. Athletes would go out and, of course, you’ve seen the photos of them tearing up these tracks and these amazing chain groups, star-studded training groups on the track, and then you’ve seen, you know, or heard stories of the long runs where 200 people, 250 people show up for the long run. But back in the camp, it’s really amazing, it’s just the best athletes in the world sitting around on plastic lawn chairs, kind of checking their phones, playing, like, the latest music from, you know, their scene, like, on their phones, doing some dances, and then, you know, sipping tea and just kind of joking and giving each other a tough time. A lot of jokes and revelry, and then, obviously, because it’s a self-sustaining operation, all the athletes in the camp are assigned different duties and… And details. So, on one day, Eliud Kipchoge and Geoffrey Kamworor might be tasked to clean all the trains. (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) Even if they’re, you know, the best runners in the world, world champions in the half-marathon and, you know, world record holders in the marathon and all that, so… Dudes still have to clean the toilets. It’s super humbling experience. And the other thing is, even though Eliud’s the… An elder in the camp, he doesn’t always, like, set the schedule or set the responsabilites. Sometimes it’s the younger athletes who do the assignment. That’s how, you know, horisontal the structure is. That, like, everybody has a part in everything. So, even the younger athletes have to have not just labour, but also the responsibility when it comes to assigning duties and stuff in the camp. (Matt) That’s really interesting. So, how long did you spend at… There? (Knox) I was there a week. A little over a week. (Matt) And did you manage to get to Iten? (Knox) No, I was just in Eldoret. I was supposed to go and have dinner with Allie Kieffer. Do you know about Allie Kieffer? She is a super exciting runner on the US scene who surprised a bunch of people with a big finish at New York City marathon last year, after kind of working her way into elite status later on, and now she’s really been tearing up the roads over the past year. So, she shoutout Allie Kieffer, and she’s poised for, like, a big New York City marathon coming up in a few weeks. But, anyways, Allie was over there, training at Iten, and I don’t know if she was living with Betsy Saina, but yeah, she was, like, ‘Ah come over for dinner…’ But I really underestimated how hard it is to get from Eldoret to Iten. They’re not that far apart as the crow flies on Google, but… Or even in an Uber. But, the reality of transport between the two places is a little tough, so… I didn’t make it out there. (Matt) OK. Good, well, yeah. Thank you once again for sharing that, stories about that experience. And, I guess, a couple more things would be good to talk about. First one is, you attended the Monza Nike Sub 2… I guess, what was the official name of the race? So, I’m mind blanking, but it was the… (Knox) Well, officially, it wasn’t a race. (Matt) Yeah, the challenge, I guess. Event. (Knox) What was it? It was an experience. (Matt) Experience, yeah. (Knox) It was more, like… (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) Woodstock wasn’t a concert, you know what I mean? Jimi Hendrix said ‘Have you ever been experienced?’ Monza was an experience. (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) So, Monza was an attempt to see if… An attempt to break two hours in over 26,2 miles, I suppose. That’s how you would put it cleanly. (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) But yeah, it was incredible. I mean, obviously, you know, it was on a Formula 1, a very famous Formula 1 track in Monza, Italy, and along with Eliud Kipchoge, who else did we have there? It was… (Matt) Tadese? (Knox) Zersenay Tadese and… (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) The young Ethiopian guy… (Matt) I don’t remember his name, but he was the one that… Did he drop out or did he run? He was a little bit far back… (Knox) No, everybody finished. (Matt) They all finished. (Knox) Those 3 guys finished, and then they had a team of all star pacers, so even though the pacers were incredible – Bernard Lagat, Chris Derrick, Lopez Lomong… So it was really… Again, to use the word, the phrase ‘star-studded’, it was a super kind of crazy experience to watch this level of execution, just in the pursuit of an ideal. (Matt) Absolutely. And you mentioned how, I guess, how motivating and inspiring the event was, especially towards the end, and you mentioned that you shed a tear towards the end of that race, and I guess I would have been absolutely fascinated… (Knox) Yeah; I mean, at this point, I have to admit, I did get misty eyed. .. (Matt) It was raining, so, you could have caught a hardest… (Knox) Perhaps it was the high dew point, it may have been the dew point from the morning… But there was noticeable fogging in my sunglasses, and there was no reason for me to be wearing sunglasses, because it was cloudy and raining. No, but just to watch Eliud Kipchoge really commit – and I mean that in, like, a bunch of senses of the word, to commit his spirit and his body, and his mind, to this unprecedented task was beautiful to watch for most of it. But then, in the end, it was so excruciating as he was, like, straining, you know? And it’s tough to related this to other people who don’t have kids, but, you know, when you’re watching your kids figure out life, when you’re watching your kids, you know… You and I, we have success and failure perhaps an equal measure. And we’re figuring out for our own, and we don’t ask anybody to feel sorry for us. But to watch your kids try and fail, whether that’s try to ride a bicycle and fall, or, you know, make a team, or, you know, run for student government president, or in the spelling bee, or even just, you know, falling down at the playground and skinning their knee – it’s tough to watch another human being attempt something that they’ve never done before, and to be fearless, and doing that pursued. And that’s what it was like watching Eliud Kipchoge come so close to breaking two hours for 26,2 miles. It was in the heart. And to watch him finish, I… I cried. And then, immediately after he finished, I thought ‘Man, this guy did it because he thought he could do it. (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) And he didn’t believe in any barriers. I mean, Nike marketing aside and, you know, the shoe and the preparation, the science behind it, and then the empirical conditions and the marginal gains… Man, I just missed… I’m finished, and I thought ‘This guy doesn’t believe in limits. This guy doesn’t believe… This guy thought he could do it. And then, in the next instance, I was, like, ‘What’s holding me back from my potential? What’s holding me back from my goals? (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) And yeah, I don’t even mean, like, my running goals. Sure, my running goals are, you know, I could train that much harder, you know… I can go on the wagon that much sooner… You know what I mean? (Matt) Yeah. (Knox) I could kind of, like, scuttle various aspects of my life and commit to something in running. But also, on a life level, what’s keeping me from being a better father and a better partner? And a better friend? And a better son? And a better brother? You know? Like, what’s keeping me from being a better citizen of the United States of America? Like, what’s keeping me from being, like, a writer that I’ve always dreamed of being, you know? Watching Eliud Kipchoge at Monza made me reflect on all the other aspects of my life outside of running. I think that’s part of the power that this man holds for us at this time in our culture. (Matt) That’s perfectly said. Yeah, awesome. Thank you, yeah. I’ll let you go soon. Thank you very much for everything today… (Knox) No, thank you. (Matt) I guess, very quickly, I’d like to just… Maybe we could talk about, just quickly, where people can learn a bit more about Black Roses first run? You have a very… A very cool Instagram account, and the handle is @firstrun. (Knox) @firstrun yeah. @firstrun – that’s, for better or for worse, the only place to find me, unless you want to, like, come to New York and, like, hang out. And then, you know, I’m spinning records with friends at a reggae club, or hanging out in the park. So, come to New York and hang out, but if you can’t do that yet, check me out on Instagram at @firstrun. I’ve never been on Facebook, I don’t have a Facebook account. (Matt) OK. (Knox) And Twitter didn’t work for me, as you can tell from the wordiness and the verbosity of this conversation. Twitter… I never figured out Twitter. So, Instagram is where I’m at. (Matt) Awesome. Thank you very much, once again, Knox. (Knox) Thank you, Matthew and Sweat Elite. I’m super excited to participate in the conversation. I love what you’re doing, shoutout to everybody who’s a part of Sweat Elite, and is a fan of your stuff, because I’m a fan, too, man. For sure. (Matt) Awesome. Thanks so much. (Knox) Thank you.

In this fortnights show we discuss injury prevention- keeping our bodies on the thin line between niggle and injury. We speak to top physio Jorin Kamps, in Iten, Kenya. He treats some of the top runners in the world- including Wilson Kipsang, Dennis Kimetto and Zane Robertson.  We also discuss the National Cross Country Championships with Left Spike Fanzines Hannah Viner and discuss all the usual guff- including frying pan spats, throwing shopping trolleys off bridges and burning glutes. Magic If you like this episode please SUBSCRIBE to get every episode delivered to you before everyone else.  Join the conversation! If you want to join in, request a guest or chat about this episode then head over to the Strava Group (https://www.strava.com/clubs/144083) Follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/letsgetrunning) | Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/letsgetrunning/) | Email us | Buy merch at the shop. (https://www.letsgetrunning.co.uk/shop?category=Running+Clothing) Lastly, don't forget to rate and review on iTunes! (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/lets-get-running-podcast/id1392963885?mt=2&app=podcast)  

点击每期节目可以看到具体文稿内容INSIDE NIKE'S QUEST FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE: A TWO-HOUR MARATHONBy Ed CaesarTHE WORLD RECORD for a marathon, set by Dennis Kimetto of Kenya in Berlin in September 2014, stands at two hours, two minutes, and 57 seconds. If that number means nothing to you, understand this: running 26.2 miles in 2:02:57 is absurdly fast. The speed required, a little under 13 mph for a little over two hours, is unimaginable for all but a few of the world's very best marathoners, and it causes even those East African supermen to glimpse the abyss. I remember watching Kimetto's mouth pursed with agony as he approached the Brandenburg Gate on the cool, sunny day he broke the record, and thinking he might split in two from the effort.He won, of course, beating by 26 seconds the record Wilson Kipsang had set the previous year. But even Kimetto, with his giant heart and ostrich legs, still fell well short of a barrier long thought impregnable, at least for this generation of athletes: to run a marathon in under two hours. Today, after two years of preparation and research, Nike is announcing a project called Breaking2 that has a single goal: to break the two-hour mark in a special marathon planned for the spring of 2017. If the attempt is successful, it will be the most significant moment for running since Roger Bannister's first sub-four-minute mile in 1954. Nike calls the project its “Mission to Mars,” and its team of designers, scientists, coaches, and statisticians believes that on a specially designated course in an as-yet undetermined location, it can propel at least one world-class athlete, and possibly three, to shave three percent from Kimetto's world 968重庆之声每周一至周五8点56分每天三分钟养成良好英语听说习惯

Tom’s a poorly boy so I’m joined by his wonderful wife Helen. Alberto Salazar comes under fire again. Wilson Kipsang rules in Tokyo but misses a WR, it was National XC weekend, and just what inspires you to be active? For Facebook Friday you gave us your long run tips. In Training Talk Prof Andy Lane talk about the benefits of raising your awareness of discomfort (part 1 of 2). We’ve got some cracking Rate Your Runs, you stand on the Podium and Steve Smythe tells us how to run a sub 3hour marathon every year for 40 years!

On this week’s show we speak to the senior sports reporter at the Guardian, Sean Ingle about the ongoing Salazar scandal. Mary Keitany is back on top. Wilson Kipsang isn’t. Bro probably was. We remember Australian distance legend Ron Clarke and speak to Emmerdale actress Michelle Hardwick who is doing her first ever 10k in Leeds.

It starts with a cat attack and ends with a bonnet de douche. Nicola went to Clumber Park parkrun where she was quizzed whilst Danny went to Colwick parkrun and was engrossed. They celebrate the Lord Chairman's 250, empathise with fellow admins and chat Wilson Kipsang and Dennis Kimetto.

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  

We review the London Marathon and preview Boston. Steve Way, Amy Whitehead, Run Fast, Geoffrey Mutai, Emmanuel Mutai and Wilson Kipsang all pop into the studio. British Athletics announce their team for the European Marathon Championships... but where are the women? Tony's here with his Trials, there's Rate Your Run, Winner of the Week and one of the fastest podiums of all time!    

Nesta edição, falamos sobre como foi a Maratona de Santa Catarina. O antes, o durante e o depois. Além de comentar o recorde mundial da maratona estabelecido por Wilson Kipsang na Maratona de Berlim. Assista à edição 44 no YouTube: --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/porfalaremcorrer/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/porfalaremcorrer/support

TalkFEED — What an amazing performance on Sunday from Kenya’s Wilson Kipsang, breaking the marathon world record by 15 seconds in Berlin, Germany. In Episode 19 of Run Talk SA we chat extensively about that record breaking run amongst other things. This week: We caught up with Grant Schuleman, who ran his first Berlin Marathon on Sunday. […]

Wilson Kipsang is gunning for a World Record in Berlin, Scott Overall and Jocelyn Payne are representing the Brits, New York announce a stellar elite field, Boy on the Run is back and Training Talk is all about pacing your racing.

Pentru editia cu numarul 14 ne-am decis sa discutam despre Cross Traning. De ce este el important, ce benefici ne aduce si ce presupune. Wikipedia. Antrenamente pentru Crosul Padurii. :) Antrenamente in alte sporturi decat cel de baza, cu scopul de a lucra si alte grupe musculare (sau de a le lucra diferit) si de imbunatati performantele in sportul de baza. Beneficii 1. Prevenirea accidentarilor 2. Refacerea dupa accidentari sau in timpul perioadelor de inactivitate prelungita (sarcina) 3. Cresterea performantelor de alergare 4. Refacere activa. Lucreaza alti muschi decat cei din alergare 5. Mentinerea motivatiei (varietate => evitarea plictiselii) 6. Regenerarea organismului 7. Placerea de a incerca alte sporturi => anduranta este transferabila 8. Lucreaza intreg corpul => simetrie, o mai buna circulatie a sangelui si a limfei => mai putine boli 9. Flexibilitate =>Daca nu vei mai putea alerga vreodata, iti va fi mai usor sa te adaptezi noului context (te apuci instant de inot de performanta...) 10. Imbunatatirea inteligentei kinetice (corporale), agilitatii, echilibrului. 11. BONUS: scaderea mai rapida in greutate (faci mai mult sport...) Ce presupune, in ce consta? Cardiovascular Exercise - Mers - Inot (craul) - Ciclism - Vaslitul - Uprunning (scari) - Sarituri cu coarda - Skating (role sau gheta) - Ski - Baschet, handbal etc - Strength Training Gimnastica (flotari, genuflexiuni, fandari, tractiuni, abdomene) - Gantere - Aparate - Extensor si benzi elastice Mobilitate (stretching, yoga, pilates => core strenght) Exercitii de echilibru, de viteza si de agilitate (fotbalistii printre jaloane) Sprinturi, exercitii plyometrice (in regim de explozie / sarituri) Joaca cu copiii… Revista presei Maratonistul Marius Ionescu a reușit să se claseze pe locul 12 la Manchester Bupa 10k, una dintre cele mai prestigioase serii de alergări pe distanța de 10 km. Piciu a realizat un timp de 29min:59sec, în timp ce primii trei au fost cu toții alergători cunoscuți: Moses Kipsiro (27min:52sec), Wilson Kipsang (27min:53sec) și Haile Gebresellasie (28min:00sec). http://alerg.ro/stiri-pe-scurt-7.html Evenimente trecute Fugi cu Donath – Cluj, 25 mai Băile Felix Trail Race – Băile Felix, 26 mai Semimaratonul Sibiu – Sibiu, 25 mai La semimaratonul de la Sibiu au participat 100 de alergători, concursul fiind câștigat de Daniel Scrob (1h:17min:57sec) și Angela Teodorescu (1h:48min:02sec). Rezultatele complete, inclusiv din proba de cros sunt disponibile aici.   Maraton Tabere cu Suflet – Pădurea Comana, 25 mai A doua ediție a Maratonului Tabere cu Suflet, desfășurat în pădurea Comana, din apropiere de București, a reunit la start circa 60 de alergători, dintre care 11 în proba de maraton și 34 în cea de semi-maraton. Alergarea pe distanța de aproximativ 42 km a fost câștigată de Ovidiu Petre (3h:33min:42sec) și Marinela Apopei (6h:13min:25sec). Lista completă aici. Hit the top – Bran – Vf. Scara – Vf. Omu, 25 mai Cursa de skyrunning Hit the Top, desfășurată pe un traseu de circa 19 km lungime, cu o diferență de nivel cumulată de 3100 m (ascensiune 1594m) a fost câștigată de Paul Pepene, cu un timp total de 2h:01min:23sec. Rezultatele complete sunt aici. Crosul Tenaris – Călărași, 25 mai Evenimente viitoare Crosul Padurii Eveniment de alergare de seara. Detalii si inscriere pe: http://crosulpadurii.ro/ Sfatul Saptamanii Transformati cross-training-ul intr-un obicei zilnic, inainte de culcare sau imediat dupa trezire, si veti vedea in scurt timp beneficiile. Muschii puternici potejeaza articulatiile si coloana. Si acestea vor dura o viata, veti putea alerga, fara accidentari si fara dureri, pana la 100 de ani...

Wilson Kipsang, Patrick Mackau and Geoffrey Mutai have all broken 2:04 for the marathon distance and the combined times of their PBs would be enough to beat over 5% of London Marathon finishers in a normal year! Need we say more.

Wilson Kipsang dominates in Honolulu. No British runner leaves the European XC championship without a medal. Tom goes statto. Ryan Hall gets a new coach. We speak to Ethiopean Joseph Kibur about his projest the Ya Ya Girls running programme near Addis baba. You rate your run, tell us where you've been running in the podium, Tony brings his Trials and Christmas is only 2 weeks away!