The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-322 – Geoff Smith -1984 & 85 Boston Marathon Champ(Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4322.mp3]Link epi4322.mp3MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - http://www.marathonbq.com/qualify-for-the-boston-marathon-in-14-weeks/Hello there my strange running friends. How are you? I’m great. Fantastic. Nothing to complain about. Full of joy and abundance. Which, if I’m honest with you, takes a lot of work. It’s officially the end of summer in New England. The nights are clear and cold. The mornings are crisp like a fresh, clean blanket. The sun sets later and comes up later, noticeably each day. When I was a youth in school I would hate this time of year. School starting meant the end of a summers’ long and languid lethargy. The weather would turn but not enough to be interesting. There wouldn’t be any snow to sled on or build with for weeks. The days would be short, dim, cold, windy, rainy and filled with work. Now, Buddy and I, in, perhaps the autumn of our own times feel somehow reborn into the crispness of fall. He roams the house wild eyed and vocal beseeching me to get up, get out and seize the leaf covered forest trails - for that is where we live if only for another year, another day, another fine afternoon or another run. We pad through the fall forests with the leaves crunching underfoot on the dry trail. The underbrush and weeds spent and brown hanging with their last offering of seeds to be blown on the wind to settle another generation. Only the wild asters weighed down by their purple froth brighten the trail. The bees harry them with suicidal intensity and a lack of humor that is to be avoided by the cautious runner. We run, man and dog, weaving through the trees with the sharp afternoon sun lancing through at us from an acute angle like a photgrapher’s darkroom light. The motes of dust swirling in our mists and settling in our wake. The tang of wild grapes bites at the air and brings a smile to my heart. The apple trees in the orchard hang thick with fruit. Man and dog. Brothers on the road and trail. Buddy still gets along fairly well for an 80 year old. Like all of us he thinks he can do more than he can. He talks me into it and then he regrets it the next day. With the cool weather he feels a need to get out and play and move. What I often hear when I check in from on the road is “Your dog is crazy!” It’s been a long autumn. I’ve traveled every week that I can remember. I’m doing ok. I’m getting my runs in for the most part and feel fairly strong. I’ve started to play with speed work and I’ll talk about that a bit today. You can’t just throw the switch. You have to build into the speed work when you’ve been away for a while. I’ve got a long chat with Geoff Smith today. Geoff won the 1984 and the 1985 Boston Marathon. If you know about the history of the race you may know that these were hard times for the Boston Marathon. It was founded by the BAA in 1896 as an amateur race. The prize was always a simple olive wreath. It was serious race, for serious runners and serious runners were thought to be the amateurs who ran for the love of the race. Geoff was the last person to win the Boston Marathon before there was prize money. He did it for love. The pressure of other big-city races offering prize money threatened to relegate Boston to a quaint artifact of the 19th century. A local financial institution stepped in and kept the race alive as they transitioned to a prize money structure. I didn’t know Geoff was living locally until I got a tweet from him asking me to retweet one of his races. This chat gave me a chance to talk about what is for me, the golden age of US marathoning. I’ll also chat a bit about the power of self-awareness. I’ve been feeling a bit pressed these last few weeks with the level of travel and the amount of stuff I’m trying to do. I also am thinking of mortality as I see my running partner struggle with ag