The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-329 – Rachel Shuck - Beating the New Year’s Diet (Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4329.mp3]Link epi4329.mp3Team Hoyt Boston 2016 Campaign -> https://www.crowdrise.com/teamhoytbostonmarath/fundraiser/christopherrussellMarathonBQ – 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 New Year. 2016. And also welcome to the RunRunLive Podcast episode 4-329. For you new people who just fired up their holiday-gift-technology and are stumbling around looking for content to listen to, welcome as well. We’ve been cranking out podcasts together here since the summer of 2007, I think. On this… I guess you could call it a ‘show’…we chat about amateur endurance sports from the viewpoint of a participant. I’m not a coach. I’m not an elite. I am a student of long distance running and training and I do have a bit of a passion for it. I also try to be a good story teller, because I think that’s a basic human skill that we all need to cultivate and practice. We also try to summarize some useful life lesson notes that we come across – to give us something to think about while we’re out running and receptive to new ideas. I don’t really get wrapped up in the New Year stuff. You won’t get a ‘best of’ or ‘top 10 things’ type of update from me. That kind of retrospective has really become journalistically cliché. Don’t you think? It’s a bit lazy and disingenuous. It’s like everyone who creates content is thinking to themselves “I just want to go to this party with my friends, thank goodness I don’t have to create any real content this week. I’ll just whip up a post summarizing last year.” Anyhow, I can’t tell your how many miles I ran or rode or swam last year. I don’t really keep a log anymore. I’m just at that point in my endurance sports career where the past isn’t that relevant and I’d rather just focus on this week and next week and today. That being said, you should probably keep a log!This week we are going to chat with Rachel who I have worked with on nutrition over the last couple years. I started getting those stupid New Year’s diet ads and thought we’d try to talk some sense instead. In part one I’m going to finish my ‘preparing for a hard training cycle’ series with a piece on Base Building. In section two I’m going to talk about adventure and the portfolio life. It’s been a busy couple of weeks since we last talked. The Sunday after Christmas myself and some others ran the internationally famous Groton Marathon. Made headlines around the world. Got a nice personal note from the Queen and a congratulatory phone call from Vladmir Putin. I and 3 other guys finished the whole 26.2. It was a bit of a rainy morning, but not uncomfortable for running. We had great support from my club. Probably a dozen people came out to run the first half with us and we had 8 water stops set up. We ran a casual pace and I felt fine, a little tired in the high miles, but that’s normal. We ended up finishing just around 4 hours, even with all the breaks. Then we had a wonderful ice storm that put 3 inches of snow and ice on my driveway. I guess winter finally showed up. In a ‘perfect storm’ situation, the gym at worked was closed for renovation and I dropped my club membership so I had the unusual situation for me of having to skip a workout due to weather! Sheesh! New Year’s morning we went up to Salisbury to run the Hangover Classic. I treated it as a pace run and was able to run fairly comfortable at MP -30 for the 10k nice even splits. And, of course, then we jumped in the Atlantic for our New Year’s plunge. It wasn’t bad this year because the water temperature was about the same as the air temperature, about 37, somehow less shocking. …I do have one good story from that race. When I was getting ready to take my plunge, after finishing the 10k there was a guy on his hands and knees crawling out