{"id":1701,"date":"2015-07-18T15:29:07","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T19:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/?p=1701"},"modified":"2015-07-18T15:32:15","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T19:32:15","slug":"guest-blog-the-other-half-of-the-average-runner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/?p=1701","title":{"rendered":"Guest Blog – The Other Half of the Average Runner"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m writing this guest blog for reasons that some of you may already know, and for the others it will become clear.\u00a0 Something Kristi will completely agree with is that I’m not the most sociable of people.\u00a0 I can be, but, it might not be too far from the truth to say that my second choice of lifestyle (in comparison to my current, and by far, first choice) would be to live in a cave in the woods and ride into town once a month (on my ATV – I’m not a Luddite) to get supplies and then disappear again.\u00a0 SO, perhaps I\u2019m not the most objective person on this topic but I will propose the argument that running should not be a social sport.\u00a0 Sure you can meet a few people before or after a run or race, have a beer or two (and let\u2019s not forget the great brownies at the end of each Mad Trapper event), but during the actual run you should be focussing on what you are doing. \u00a0Running should not be a social event!<\/p>\n

Here are a few examples of why running should not be a social occasion:<\/p>\n

If you go out for a training run with others, someone will get hurt, either emotionally or training wise.\u00a0 Someone in the group will need to either hold the group up or run too fast for their own training plan.\u00a0 Someone else will need to slow down and lose out on all the planned training benefit.\u00a0 Either way, you are messing up your own training plan or another person\u2019s plan.\u00a0 Second example: \u00a0Assuming you are training to race, races are not sociable events and, besides, \u00a0they always say \u201ctrain as you race\u201d.\u00a0 You are not going to spend a bunch of time during the race chatting away with other runners (unless you are our younger son \u2013 Luke).\u00a0 If you can chat away then you are not running hard enough anyway.\u00a0 Consider how you make someone feel if you run with them for a bit, talking about whatever you talk about, and then they pull away and beat you across the line.\u00a0 I have lots of practical experience racing with Luke and the only time he stops talking is the last 100m when he suddenly sprints ahead and beats me.\u00a0 If you\u2019re the person pulling away, think about how cruel that is to the poor person who just spent 10 minutes telling you about their bunion problems. \u00a0The last example of why running should not be a social event \u00a0(a practical example) I’ll get to shortly.<\/p>\n

A short detour then it will all come together.\u00a0 Bravery!\u00a0 I have told my boys many times that being brave is not the same as \u2018not being afraid\u2019.\u00a0 In my time (especially considering what I did for a large portion of my career), I have had many opportunities to be afraid, and, generally I was also able to be brave.\u00a0 On the other hand, I have often told the boys about that grey area between bravery and foolishness. \u00a0This line I’m sure I have crossed on way too many occasions.\u00a0 Why do I bring up bravery?\u00a0 One of the many reasons I was attracted to Kristi when we met and became \u201cHorse Friends\u201d was that she bravely stretched her riding experiences well out of her comfort zone, often with me being at least partly the perpetrator of whatever the new challenge was.\u00a0 \u00a0I’m not sure I have ever told her this so don’t say anything to her (keep in mind that we were only friends through this period as she was foolishly dating someone else \u2013 but that\u2019s another story).\u00a0 I’ve always considered her far braver than she gave herself credit.\u00a0 I would certainly say that is changing now (the credit part, not getting less brave).\u00a0 You just need to read her recent post about being in her 40\u2019s \u00a0Life in my Forties<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now to bring these two threads together.\u00a0 Kristi is slowly going over to the dark side of running; trails, off-trail races, snowshoeing, orienteering etc (and Rod, I meant what I said a while back that if she starts talking about Ultras, I’m coming after you).\u00a0 Yesterday, she called me at my office and started with the question \u201cdid you get my text and picture I sent?\u201d\u00a0 I had not and the disappointment in her voice was clear.\u00a0 She then went on to casually add \u00a0\u201cOh, by the way, I\u2019m in the hospital with a dislocated finger, broken hand, glued up chin and the odd scrape or two \u2013 the picture is great\u201d.\u00a0 What happened you ask?\u00a0 While trail running with some friends (who I thank very much for taking care of her and getting her to the hospital) she turned around to talk and tripped over something.\u00a0 What did I say earlier on?\u00a0 \u201cRunning should not be a social event\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 What about the \u2018Bravery\u2019 aspect?\u00a0 Kristi is planning to still do the MEC trail race she and the boys are signed up for tomorrow (I’m resting a knee currently).\u00a0 Her main concern is that she wanted to do the 15km one, but ended up registered for the 6km only.\u00a0 Her other concerns all revolve around things like \u201ccan I still do my water running with a cast on\u201d or \u201cif I only do 6km on Sunday, can you wait while I do an extra 4 km just to keep my mileage up\u201d.\u00a0 Actually now that I write this part (and having a lot of experience spending a disproportionate number of months in my life in various casts), perhaps the message here fits more into the \u2018grey area between bravery and foolishness\u2019 than \u2018bravery vs being afraid\u2019!\u00a0 Whichever \u2013 I love you!<\/p>\n

-Michael<\/p>\n

Couple of photos \u2013 sorry about the ohhhh ughhh factor.<\/p>\n

\"Finger\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"XRay\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m writing this guest blog for reasons that some of you may already know, and for the others it will become clear.\u00a0 Something Kristi will completely agree with is that I’m not the most sociable of people.\u00a0 I can be, but, it might not be too far from the truth to say that my second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Guest Blog - The Other Half of the Average Runner","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-running"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3amQ2-rr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1701"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1711,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions\/1711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raz-family.ca\/RunKristi\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}