I have an on-again, off-again relationship with running podcasts. Sometimes I really enjoy listening to them on runs, other times I prefer music, and sometimes I just prefer to just run sans-headphones and enjoy the sounds of my surroundings. Lately, one podcast has been a weekly must-listen for me – it’s a show called Geeks in Running Shoes. Hosted by Raymond King and Jason Kehl, the show tells the story of two self-proclaimed geeks as they navigate their way through the process of becoming hard-core runners. They’ve had some ups and downs in their first few months as runners, but both are committed to the sport and have big plans for the future. Ray and Jason are great at keeping things light and interesting, and their sense of humor makes the show a must listen.
This week, Geeks in Running Shoes co-host Ray King was kind enough to agree to answer a few questions for us here on our first Friday Feature on the dailymile blog. If you’d like to check out Geeks in Running Shoes for yourself, you can download episodes on Itunes.
1. What made you decide to start running?
My story about becoming a runner did not begin with the need to become physically fit, nor was it related to health. It pretty much stemmed from my competitive nature. I like to think that I fell into running. This past summer, some co-workers were mentioning the Chicago Half marathon and how much of a challenge it would be to them. At the time, I thought of myself as a physically fit individual. So I decided to take on the challenge of running the Chicago Half Marathon. Mind you, I had never run more than a couple miles in my life so I certainly did not have enough of an appreciation for long distance/endurance running but the thrill and challenge of running for at least two hours intrigued me. Therefore, I picked up some running shoes, googled a beginner’s half marathon training schedule, and starting running. I treated running like most of my other hobbies I get into, I geeked out on it. As I learned more about running, it gradually turned from being a challenge to something that I actually enjoyed and looked forward to.
2. You’ve hit a few bumps in the road on the way to becoming a runner. Tell us a little bit about your stress fracture – how did it happen, how did you get it diagnosed, and how did you overcome it?
About five weeks into my training, I fell victim to a tibial stress fracture. This was explained to me as an overuse injury, which made sense because in my excitement to train for the Chicago Half Marathon (and my ignorance towards proper running form and training), I began training too much, too fast.
I still remember the day I noticed the pain. I was out for a four-mile training run. At this time, I knew nothing about training runs. I just ran as fast as I could towards my mileage goal. Well towards the end of this run, I started feeling a tingling pain towards my lower shin. The pain got progressively worse as I continued to run, eventually getting so bad that I couldn’t push through it any longer. It was now painful to even put pressure on my leg – even while walking.
Like any other self-diagnosing individual, I quickly chalked up this pain as a shin splint. I figured that icing and a couple of days rest would get me all healed up. Well after two weeks of pain, I decided to go see my general practitioner who also recommended that I lay off running for a couple of weeks, and if that didn’t stop the pain then go see an orthopedic doctor. Two weeks later I was at my orthopedic doctor because the pain was still there. This doctor pretty much recommended the same thing – resting. At this point my frustration towards running and doctors was heating up. I was losing considerable training time, and it felt like I was not getting any sort of help from medical professionals. It was not until I called the orthopedic doctor’s office again complaining about the month-and-a-half long injury that an MRI was prescribed. Finally! I had an answer – my injury was diagnosed as a stress fracture. This was good news (kinda). I finally had an answer to what my injury was. However, the bad news was that I was certainly not going to run the Chicago Half.
The thing I learned about a stress fracture is that the only way to overcome it is to stop doing the activity that caused it. Therefore, the prescription that I had to follow was exactly the same as before. That is, I had to stop running. So about one month after my diagnosis (almost two and a half months after the initial injury), I was able to run again – this time without noticeable pain and discomfort.
3. Where did the idea to start the Geeks in Running Shoes podcast come from?
My brother-in-law (Jason) spent the first half of 2010 on a weight loss endeavor. So naturally, I asked him to run the Chicago Half Marathon with me. Maybe it was my way of validating that it was a good idea to run in the first place, but in any case he agreed to run. Jason is as much of a geek as I am. We totally got into running and started listening to other running podcasts to catch up on the running culture. It got to the point where we were sometimes having hour long phone conversations about running. Eventually Jason had the idea of recording our phone conversations and releasing them as weekly podcasts. The geek in me was all over it. How cool would it be to figure out how to launch a weekly show and have it on iTunes? So in literally a week, we came up with a show concept similar to that of our favorite tech podcast – Diggnation and decided on the name Geeks in Running Shoes. The show title pretty much captured our true geekiness and sense of humor. Luckily the domain was available and now 5 months later we are approaching our 20th episode.
4. What’s been the most enjoyable part about doing the podcast?
The nerdy side of me truly enjoys the fact that we were able to technically figure out how to produce an audio podcast. However, the biggest thrill of having a weekly running podcast thus far has been the response of the online running community. Getting feedback email, congratulatory tweets, or dailymile messages on completing training runs is something that has been truly awesome. It is by far the most enjoyable part of this whole experience. Jason and I always say the unexpected effect of having this weekly show has been the accountability that our listeners have created for us. We now have a collection of people who somewhat hold us accountable to our training. The motivation to run that has resulted from this is just awesome. I literally cannot wait to record a show and share my training experience with the listeners because I truly believe that they care about my progress and are rooting for me.
5. You have yet to run a race, so tell us a bit about your plans for breaking the drought. What races are on your horizon?
I struggle with not having run a race every week. At this point, I want to run at least one race to not only earn my title as a “geek in running shoes” but I feel like I owe it to the listeners of our show. I have this goal of participating in at least one race this calendar year. So the first race that I will be participating in will be a turkey-trot around the St. Louis area this thanksgiving.
However, I am hoping that 2011 becomes a big year for me as a runner. I plan on running the 2011 St. Louis Frostbite Half Marathon in January; the Bank of America Shamrock Shuffle 8k in March; the Chicago 13.1 Marathon in June; and the Chicago Marathon in October. These seem like reasonable racing goals and I am going to train and prepare for them as well as I can. However, thanks to the injury that kept me out of the Chicago Half Marathon, I am going to take it easy and enjoy the journey to becoming a runner.
To learn more about Ray or to add him as a friend, visit his dailymile profile at: http://www.dailymile.com/people/adeyemiking
You can also follow Ray on Twitter at @adeyemiking.
