Update - 10.21.2022

RunRunLive 5.0 - Running Podcast

Update: Hello my friends, perhaps even my running friends. Welcome to another episode of the comically directionless RunRunLive Podcast. I think we’re about 14 years into this podcast journey. It’s funny how time flies… There really weren’t that many of us back in 2007. It was a small family of runners talking about running with other runners. It was me, Steve, Nigel, Nic and Dan, Kevin with the extra-milers and Chopper. And a few others. I bet, if you asked any of us we’d say we never expected to make money or become famous from it. But secretly, we all probably did. Steve probably came the closest. I think runners were early adopters of the technology as a community because we all spent so much time alone out on the roads. This meant we not only thought too much, but also needed something to listen to. The perfect storm for running creators. When I recorded my first show in June of 2007, I had just run down Mount Washington, after running the race up Mount Washington. I pulled out my little Sony audio recorder and talked about it. That Episode One would go up over the July 4th weekend that year. I interviewed my running buddy Frank, who I still hang out with. I met Frank on a training run with a bunch of marathoners from Boston in the 90’s. His story, like mine, and like so many others was coming to running later in life, discovering the marathon, then discovering Boston, then getting hooked. And here we are 20+ years later. I started an interview show because some of the business podcasts that I was listening to at the time had that format. From the start I diodn’t want the podcast to be about me. I wanted it to be about the listener. I wanted to add value. I wanted to share everything I’d learned, at that point almost a decade into my journey. I wanted to share the joy of the adventure. It wasn’t about me, but ironically, I was the target audience. I gave myself tips and tricks, I gave myself inspirational speeches, I practiced my writing and presentation skills on myself. Some of you just happened to be along for the ride as well! I didn’t even know there were other running podcasts when I started. Really, it wasn’t until later that I met everyone. I remember going on the Runner’s Roundtable and being so nervous. It was like standing up in front of a big audience. It’s still a bit strange to me that I have talked into the ears of probably 2-3 million people at this point in time. By the way, all that content, 400+ shows, we could feed that into an AI now and have a very good representation of me. You probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. It’s a tremendous training data set. Anyhow, enough reminiscing. I’ve got an few things for you this episode. First I’ll give you an update on what’s going on in my athletic life. Then I have a book review I wrote for my other podcast – After the Apocalyspe. Finally I’ll share an inspirational piece from a series of articles I’m working on for those of us who get stuck in low points and want to grow out of those. … First for the update. I think last time I told you that I had thrown my back out lifting weights. Well, that is still hurting me. I think because I do a fair amount of chair sitting in my line of work. I decided to not push it by trying to get back to the gym. Let it heal. Instead, I’m doing a daily lower back stretching routine – which seems to help. I’m willing to share it with you if you like. Very simple. I believe I also mentioned that I went back for my follow up with the knee doctor. I’m 18+ months into this knee injury. It was first diagnosed as a bruise on the knobby part of my bone. The knee itself was in reasonable shape, but there was this stress bruise on the bone that showed up on the MRI. I went back to the doctor a couple weeks ago and he did his poking around and sent me for another MRI. He made sure I didn’t go to the cheap MRI place that my insurance company recommended, because it has a larger diameter machine designed to accommodate the more portly among us and because it is larger it doesn’t get as good a resolution on the images. Another reason not to let your girth get away with you. (By the way I just typed Girth incorrectly and discovered the “Grith” is an old English word for temporary security.) I went and got the ‘good’ MRI. Then played phone tag with the assistant lady who is like a doctor, but not the doctor, but the doctor looked at the MRI and told her what to tell me? The medical profession in the US sounds like a great Ponzi scheme based entirely around my sore knee. I played phone-tag with the lady proxy doctor. Because you have to call the office and leave a message then they call you back. But, they have a special AI-based algorithm that guarantees them to call back while you’re on an important call with a customer. Then they leave a message that says, ‘tag you’re it’ and the cycle starts anew. This back and forth went on for a week until my messages started to get salty, like “Hey how about we set a time when I’m available? I’ll show up, you show up and we’ll call it…I don’t know an ‘Appointment’. Wouldn’t that me the adult and professional thing to do here?” She finally managed to get me and it turns out the news is good. The bruise is smaller. It is healing (despite me being an idiot and trying to run on it) There is some swelling or irritation of the meniscus around that bruise and this is what they think is causing the pain. Which makes sense. I’m going in next week to get a cortisone shot. That should knock down the irritation. They will probably want me to go to rehab, God help me. Waste a few more thousands of dollars and a few more hours of my life doing clamshells with stretchy bands under the guidance of a Sports Sciences drop out. Which is long way of saying, I think I’m about to start running again. It’s about time! I’m overweight and out of shape. Maybe the RunRunLive 5.0 podcast will be me struggling through the couch to 5K? I also found out that there is a new Non-Binary category at Boston that uses the women’s qualifying time, so all I have to do is become gender neutral and I’m in! Just kidding folks. Don’t send hate mail. Let’s get started shall we? On with the Show! …

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