Phedippidations

You have to have respect and be considerate when you’re in a relationship with a significant other….but most of all, you have to be sympathetic to their needs, and mindful of the way they’ll feel when you’re out on the road.

Thanks to new media and portable technology and the technological advances made in the last decade, you can take to the roads and listen to whatever YOU want to listen to, and if you learn something new along the way, you can tell your friends that you heard it on a podcast.

Runners have a gift.  To enhance our performance with anabolic steroids and muscle-building drugs is to deny that gift.  If you pollute your body with steroids you are cheating, and become a fraud.  Steroid abusers can never enjoy the pride of personal, natural achievement in athletics.

A race director is part event organizer, part manager, part orchestra leader and part head chef.  In this episode I talk about some of the things a race director will need to think about to conduct a successful race, and I take a run through the Las Vegas Strip, where nothing is real, but at least everything is pretentious!

Over the past 80 episodes you and I have been running together every week, often in my town of Oxford, Massachusetts, yet I’ve never really described the places that I run through every day.  In this episode of Intervals, my friend Joe goes for a run with us and tries to describe my neighborhood.

Dr. George Sheehan returned to the road at the age of 45 to become “fully functional‿ as a good animal. His book, “Running and Being‿ became a philosophical bible for runners around the world.  In it, he taught us that this is our moment to live, and that we should not let life pass us by: we must run and be in order to know the total experience.

If you can incorporate hill training into your training program, you will gain a competitive edge with those whom you race against on the road.  You will gain strength and be more comfortable and confident as you meet the challenge and reach the top of the hill.

Charity is one way to give back to the world around you.  By finding a noble purpose to your running, you will have lived a good and honorable life that will inspire others to behave as you, and that, in the end may be your most charitable gift of all.

In this episode we look back on some of the possibly more amusing moments of this PodCast. In a year of sad and bad news, war and disasters: it’s important to remember that it was a year worth living, and hoping that the next one is an improvement over the last. Happy New Year!

I’m following a new marathon training plan for my Spring race.  It’s no longer about just getting the miles in.  It’s about learning what marathon pace feels like, and teaching my body to achieve that speed through moderate distances on a consistent basis.

It happens to the best of us, the Burnt Out Syndrome is a very real thing, and it’s important to listen to your body as well as your spirit to detect the symptoms…because if you push too hard or run a mile too far, you’re going to snap.

The tradition of gift giving during the holidays has become part of our culture, so in advent of the day we present an independent review of a few items that your fellow runners might hope to receive should some fat man in a gaudy suit shimmy down your chimney bearing even more gadgets and gizmos.

There are those who believe that middle of the pack runners should never be allowed to run a marathon.  Twice a year, so called journalists and essayists embark on a controversial attempt to discredit our fellow runners, and ridicule our efforts on the road.  In this episode, we dissect one such attempt from a writer “wanna-be‿ and give him a piece of his own medicine.

Jim Fixx was the guru of running, he was the one who told the world about the benefits of our sport, and even in his death: he taught us to remember the heart: both for it’s biomechanical wonder and frailty, and the romantic property we bestow upon it with our love for life.

Increased longevity, a better quality of life, a more profound sense of self satisfaction and personal fulfillment are all yours for the cost of a pair of running shoes, some time to train and the energy to move your self across the planet. This is the cost of running, and the benefits are endless.

There is a popular misconception that runners are afflicted with a compulsive physiological and psychological disorder.  It is said that some runners are addicted to exercise. In this episode we look into some of the research surrounding this, and search for the truth about exercise addiction.

In this short format show we go back to Virginia, to meet up with my friend Joe after our successful running of the 31st Marine Corps Marathon, I also introduce you to a few other PodCasts which you’ll want to check out, and I read some race reports and emails from fellow runners.

In this episode I have the honor of running a 26.2 mile marathon with the assistance and protection of the United States Marine Corps through the streets of Virginia and Washington DC.  It’s an amazing thing when you meet the people who guarantee your freedom to run across your country.  These are the soldiers who risk their lives so that my family and I can sleep peacefully at night, safe from harm.  God Bless the US Marines.

It takes true courage to take that first step and become a runner, it takes a promise to oneself that you will abandon the comfort of a stationary life and accept the long hours and miles, sweat, pain and sinusoidal discouragement and joy that your new life, as a runner will bring you.  It takes dedication, perseverance, and above all: bravery.

578 runners registered for the 1st World Wide Half, and 49% recorded a finishing time.  Of all the things you earn in running a road race, your finishing time is the most important evidence of your performance. Aside from the satisfaction of having taken part in something special like a World Wide Half Marathon you have an official time to call your own.