The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-386 – Pat Runs Boston (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4386.mp3] Link epi4386.mp3 MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - http://www.marathonbq.com/qualify-for-the-boston-marathon-in-14-weeks/ Hello and welcome to the RunRunLive Podcast episode 4-386.  This is Chris, your host.  How are we doing on the fine spring day?  I love May.  Don’t’ you?  Up here in New England it’s a time of rebirth.  The trees and bushes go from brown to green in the span of a few days like one of those slow motion nature videos.  We are close by the summer solstice.  We get back all those long dark winter days.  The sunrise today is 5:19 AM and the sunset is 8:02.  Plenty of time to get stuff done!  It’s still cool in the mornings and hasn’t gotten hot yet during the days.  This is the week after Mother’s Day when those of us who have read the farmer’s almanac start planting our gardens, and those of us who are over enthusiastic have to replant what they killed by planting it two weeks ago! Today I have an interview with Pat who is from Calgary and ran his first Boston this year in the epic weather.  In section one I’ll give you a write up of the trail race I ran last weekend.  And in section two a quick book report on the second book in the Takeshi Kovacs series.  A real grab-bag of topics.  You might ask, Chris it seems like you’re just stuffing random topics into a show to make a deadline.  And I would answer no, I’m embracing a random universe, I’m satisfying the souls of the renaissance woman and men who are endurance athletes and well… a deadline is a deadline! My training for my first hundred miler is going as well as can be expected.  I topped out a couple 50+ mile trail weeks and now I’m in a recovery week to get the benefit.  With the long days I can go out in the morning in the forest behind my house.  I can be back before most people are even up!  It’s beautiful out there.  The trails are drying up nicely.  I take Buddy the elderly wonder dog with me for the first 2-mile loop and he loves it.  He’s a trooper.  In the morning it’s cool and the bugs aren’t out yet.  Let me tell you the story about Buddy’s soccer ball. Many moons ago when I was a soccer coach for my kids I ended up with a kid’s soccer ball in my bag of balls from the local field.  It was one of the little ones for little kids.  It eventually ended up in my front yard and became the dog’s soccer ball.  Buddy never popped it, he just played with it.  For a decade it was a fixture in the yard.  This spring, unknown to me, it disappeared.  A couple weeks ago I was out in the trails and there was Buddy’s soccer ball a ¼ mile from the house on the trail.  Then yesterday I was out and I saw it again, now maybe ¾ of a mile out on the trail.  It seems some friendly interloping dog came into our yard and took Buddy’s soccer ball for a carry in the woods.  The problem is that I don’t come back the same trail I got out.  But, yesterday it didn’t seem right to abandon it so I grabbed it and carried it with me as I was running through the woods. I was like some grade schooler goalie given a coach’s penalty.  “Take that ball with you and give me 20 laps!”  A muddy, half-deflated kid’s soccer ball isn’t as easy to carry as you would think.  I didn’t want to put it under my arm, like an American football, because it was quite muddy.  I had to sort of clench it in one hand.  It was a bit unwieldy. But, now it is back where it belongs.  Lying in the grass beside an elderly border collie… until a thieving rover roves by once more.  On with the show! … I’ll remind you that the RunRunLive podcast is ad free and listener supported.  What does that mean? It means you don’t have to listen to me trying to sound sincere about Stamps.com or Audible.. (although, fyi, my MarathonBQ book is on audible) We do have a membership option where you can become a member and as a special thank you, you will get access to