With this episode I’m off and running on my 9th year of podcasting. 
Did I think that I’d still be at it after all this time?  To be honest I didn’t really think about it...I just kept on producing the shows.  Clearly, this isn’t the same Phedippidations that it was back in 2005...alot has changed with the writing, recording, production, sound quality, processing, sound effects, music sounders and beds...not to mention the changes in the life of the host. 
We homo sapiens are funny when it comes to change, and I’m not talking about “Funny Ha Ha”.  I think to a certain extent, many of us go through the course of our lives in blissful or less denial on the topic of change...I know I’m guilty of that...so I’ll speak for myself.
Intellectually I understand that change is constant, but in my heart I try to ignore that truth.  I have always preferred to belive that I live in a secure, understandable, familiar and unchanging life and lifestyle...but that’s a fantasy...the truth is that every day and every hour brings change.
The way to become happy in life, is to be mindful of this change.
Parents with young children experience such change to the extreme.  
Those of you with new born and young kids must cherish these moments...for when I warn you that they will pass by much faster than you can possibly imagine, you have to belive me.  I don’t mean to bum you out...but almost literally tomorrow your babies will be full fledged adults, and you’ll have the nest to yourselves...it’s a little freaky at first, but it gets better...it really does.
It’s these transitions in our lives that shock and awe us...but they shouldn’t.  I’m talking about our “fear of change” here, something that the buddist nun Pema Chodron writes about in her book “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”
She writes:
“We’re always trying to deny that it’s a natural occurrence that things change, that the sand is slipping through our fingers. Time is passing. It’s as natural as the seasons changing and day turning into night. 
But getting old, getting sick, losing what we love—we don’t see those events as natural occurrences. We want to ward off that sense of death, no matter what. 
When we have reminders of death, we panic. It isn’t just that we cut our finger, blood begins to flow, and we put on a Band-Aid. We add something extra—our style. 
Some of us just sit there stoically and bleed all over our clothes. Some of us get hysterical; we don’t just get a Band-Aid, we call the ambulance and go to the hospital. Some of us put on designer Band-Aids. But whatever our style is, it’s not simple. It’s not bare bones. 
Can’t we just return to the bare bones? Can’t we just come back? That’s the beginning of the beginning. 
Bare bones, good old self. 
Bare bones, good old bloody finger. 
Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones. 
Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance,that everything is changing all the time...”
She’s right of course...I’m hardly an enlightened soul, but I do understand that everything is changing all the time...and that includes Phedippidations.
I’ve recieved thousands of comments about this show over the years, and one of the common subject lines mentions a listeners unhappiness with the many changes that I’ve made with the show.  I cannot, and will not apologize for that, because it’s not something that I have control over...part of the reason I have no control over this is because we’re going through a journey here, together.
Like it or not, you’ve been listening not only to my rambling diatribes and presentation of road races and running related topics...but you’ve been listening to the story of my life, and the lives of my friends and family.  I could have made a better effort to sheild you from all that...having worked in commercial radio broadcasting, I know first hand how the private