The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-464 – Coach Chris Twiggs  (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4464.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Chris’ other show à Zero Prostate Cancer 2021 Boston - Intro: Hello my friends and welcome to episode 4-464 of the RunRunLive Podcast.  Let’s see if I can get this one out on time! Today we have the legendary coach Chris Twiggs on for a chat.  I met Coach Twiggs down at the Bird in Hand Half Marathon.  He is the head coach for Jeff Galloway’s running program.  Chris is a high-level marathoner and ultramarathoner in his own right, and it was interesting to me to compare and contrast the Galloway athletes that he coaches to the traditional training modalities.  The net-net of it is that runners, whether they are the elites, the age groupers, the 100-mile-a-weekers, the casual athletes, the back of the packers – we are all as passionate about our sport and as curious about our training.  And in section one, since we have a lot of new runners in the world these days, with basic questions, … I’m going to give you piece on how to get started from scratch.  But – what you’re going to be really excited about is that I’ll start you out with a garden update and an Ollie update.  Here’s why.  When I meet folks who have listened to my podcast, this podcast, do you know what they ask me?  What they want to know?  Is it about training tips?  Is it about race adventures?  No.  They want to know how my garden is doing.  And they want to know about Ollie my crazy border collie.  So, I’m going to lean in! First the garden.  It was an interesting year.  We had some successes and some not-so-successes.  My tomatoes struggled because there was an epidemic of some sort of tomato disease this year in my area that caused all the leaves to turn brown and wither – they call it “Tomato Blight”.  It’s because the weather has been so wet and gloomy this summer.  I feel like I’m living in Seattle. Basically, you have to plan any outdoor activity around the next rains storm.  It’s not a 100% bad thing.  Lawns are nice and green.  I never had to water.  As a matter of fact, I mixed up a bucket of fertilizer-water in June and have not had to refill it.  The rain just keeps topping it off as I use it.  I did get some splendid heirloom tomatoes.   These nice golden tomatoes with red veins that were incredibly scrumptious with a little goat cheese.  Yummy.  It wasn’t a total loss. Yvonne made me plant onions, even though I told her onions don’t grow in my garden, and they didn’t.  I also had a fun experiment where I planted a bunch of old, sprouted potatoes in my compost bin.  They grew like gangbusters, until something discovered how yummy they were and ate them all up.  The composting process is amazing with all this rain.  It turned 4 feet of leaves and waste into a foot of soil that I’ll get to spread next year.  I had a very robust crop of peas.  So much so that I just gave up on harvesting them after a couple weeks.  They are a pain to shell.  Same with the Beans.  I harvested a couple times but ran out of energy. Same with the red raspberries that are now in their second fruiting, and I can’t keep up.    I had a great crop of lettuces early again because of all the rain, which was great, except for having to share them with slugs.  I had a good crop oof kale until the worms got them.  I had an outstanding crop of green squash and zucchini.  Barely kept up for all of June and July.  My herbs were all very stout.  I especially enjoyed the invasive mint plants this year for making tea in my home office.  I got a fair amount of cucumbers.  And a reasonable amount of these yellow semi-hot peppers.  But, my real successes were zinnias and sunflowers.  I had never before been able to grow a single sunflower.  The chipmunks love the seeds and dig them out.  I tried putting chicken wire down and they got through that.  I tried sprouting them first but the