Mere Mortal Marathon Podcast

Duane: Welcome to episode six of the Mere Mortal Marathon Podcast, where you'll hear what it's like to train for and run your first marathon. I'm Duane France, and each week I'll be joined by Coach Morgon Latimore. And together we're gonna share the week by week training journey, that’ll take me just a regular guy and a mere mortal to the finish line of my first marathon. And if I can do it, you can.

Thanks for joining us for the Mere Mortal Marathon Podcast. I'm excited to be going on this journey and pleased to invite you to join me along the way. There's a couple of ways that we can be connected. Follow the podcast wherever you listen to 'em, and you'll be notified when a new episode comes out.

You can also see where the journey takes me by connecting on Strava by going to strava.com/athletes/m3podcast. The link will be in the show notes as well. There, you’ll see if I'm following the training plan like I'm supposed to be or going off script a little bit.

And finally, you can find all the episodes on the fundraising page for my charity partner, The Second Wind Fund @coloradogives.org/m3podcast.. The mission of The Second Wind Fund is to decrease the incidence of suicide and children and youth by removing barriers to treatment. They match children and youth at risk for suicide with licensed therapists in their communities and pay for up to 12 sessions of therapy when there's a barrier to treatment.

If you appreciate the show and what Coach Morgon and I are doing, Show us a bit of love, and donate to the cause by going to http://Www.Coloradogives.org/m3podcast.

This week I'll be reviewing week three of training, still maintaining steady pace, and we added a bit of a longer run on Saturday, which you'll hear us talk about in the episode, as well as maintaining one day of lower body strength training.
Ran 3 miles on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 4 miles on Tuesday with a goal of keeping my heart rate under 140 and a 5 mile run on Saturday. And you'll hear Coach Morgon referred to it in the episode, but he had to race himself this past weekend.

The Mountain Mist 50K in Huntsville, Alabama. So 50K is just slightly over 31 miles and the terrain for that race is extremely challenging. He said there were places on the course that he literally had to climb up or down. His goal was to complete it in 7 and a half hours, and he finished in just over 6 hours and 52 minutes. A great accomplishment, but I'm gonna stick with training for a marathon at this point. So check out this week's coaching call, reviewing the week, and we'll come back afterwards to wrap things up.

Duane: Here we go. So that was week three.

Coach Morgon: Week three.

Duane: Yeah,

Coach Morgon: Oh my goodness. It's going fast, man. Feel like we just had week one.

Duane: we had week one a couple weeks ago. Relatively, but yeah, relative speed. It does seem like it's, it is proceeding. yeah.

Coach Morgon: What is going through your mind right now? Like as, each week you learn something about yourself. Like what is going through your brain about your training?

Duane: It’s interesting because I know I have someone watching me. Like we're doing this as a podcast, like I know that, but it's interesting where I know that I have somebody, you looking at my. my everything, not just my races. Here's a funny thing. I had a dream the other day that I ran longer than you had scheduled me for and after and in the dream and I'm like, oh man, coach is gonna get on me because I did more than he, he assigned me to do.

Duane: So whatever it is, it's in there.

Coach Morgon: Accountability. And it's funny, cause I had an athlete the other day and she was saying, she was telling her friend about me. And she said, I gotta make sure I do it right because I know if I do it wrong, soon as it posts he gonna text me or something's gonna go on. But that's the great thing about training peaks.
Is that, when you finish a workout, I get a notification on my cell phone. It says that you did your workout and when it loads and then, or when you put in comments, I get those, and it helps me stay on top and have a better response time.

Coach Morgon: And just, and sometimes it just prompts me just to look at it, because for me, I get a text message and I get an email. That's how I have it set up. And so if I'm doing nothing, I'll go through my emails. I'll click the on the analyze button, and I can see your training from my phone and I can look through it and say, okay.

Because sometimes when we have a conversation, I'm literally on my phone somewhere and just like I had a question about what you're doing. This week we didn't talk as much one because I was, traveling. Because me as a Coach, I still also partake in running and swimming and cycling.

And I had a 50 K this weekend. I had to practice what I preached to try to stay focused and things of that. And because of the terrain that I had to deal with, it was on my mind, . I think it was the other day when I looked at your training. I looked at it today, but I also looked at about Wednesday and seeing what you were doing and how you made some different, terrain choices when running.
And we talked about having that, that, that diversity in the training itself. But like this week, you went to a new, a new course.

Duane: So midweek, I went to a regular course that I had a little bit of hills, but yes, on Saturday, I ran in a local park that I hadn't run to in a very long time. And apparently we forget things over time and I forgot what the back half of that particular course looked like. So yeah.

Coach Morgon: Yeah. and, what's great about that right? Is what's great and some other points about it is, we do forget. We forget how it's going, and what that brings to me is I would ask you, why did you look it up or go drive over there before you went to go do the run?

Duane: Yeah. No, I think that's a good.. I was even thinking about that, too. And I recall how you talk earlier about, you know, people say that they're bored just going slow we're maintaining the same pace. But I thought, it's a Saturday run.

Duane: I don't have anything else to do. And so I'd like to switch it up a little bit and go on a different course. And it had been a while since I'd been to this park, as I've mentioned. and so I thought, you know, I'm gonna go. Maybe it was as the experience of it, knowing again, that wasn't the goal for me to go have the experience of the run.

The goal was for me to have an easy run, but me deciding, and just wanting to have a different experience. It's a nice park, it was, I run early, so it was dawn in the park. And so that was really, I think what in my mind that caused me to choose that. I knew that there was some terrain.
I knew that it was hilly, but that, like I said, I forgot how actually hilly it was and I didn't look at it ahead of time, which is another perhaps rookie mistake.

Coach Morgon: It is. But like for me, and I do switch it up and if I know I'm going somewhere, especially in my own hometown. I'm gonna go drive by it. I'm gonna go check it out. Do something, you pull it up on a map. Like maybe if somebody else has ran this route on, map my run or Strava, go see what it looks like.

What we do less of, we get caught up in just going to do the miles and say, oh, I'm gonna do something different. But does that different lend to the purpose of the training that day? And so, if I want you to go do sprints, okay? And if I'm looking for just raw speed and I'm just, I just want you to get the effort in, then if you go pick a hilly course, It's gonna be more variables to that. And if you're not a season runner, you're not gonna know how to strategically handle the course. But if I'm looking for you to get speed, I'm like, okay, find somewhere flat to go run, 800 meter repeats or, 1500 meter repeats, whatever it may be.

Coach Morgon: You gotta pick the terrain accordingly, because like you said, you had a 5 mile easy run. I, we've been together three weeks and what I know is you ain't ran no run for 5 miles. That's the first thing. We ain't did any 5 mile runs. And the second thing is, none of your runs have had 530 feet of elevation gain. And so if we're looking at it, we're being honest with ourselves. Is that a easy run?

Duane: No, right. And probably, and you know, maybe I'll post this for folks but the first probably mile of it is uphill. Something like that.

Coach Morgon: I can look, gimme, let me, lemme, I'll pull it up. Yes,
so it was about, is approximately 0.75 going up here and holy mackerel.

Duane: So probably at about a point, right about that point, as I was getting close
to the top, I was like, oh man, coach is gonna tell me that this was supposed to be an easy run or more specifically, it was supposed to be at an easy pace. But easy pace doesn't mean easy terrain. And I knew then that it wasn't gonna be an easy run.

Coach Morgon: and that, and you pushed. you literally pushed that, compared to the rest of your pacing throughout the run. That first, three fourths of a mile. You pushed it like you literally pushed it because on the, there's another, the heel on the back end.
That bigger one, Longer. It is way longer. Let's see what this thing is. It's it is about a, it's almost a. 4.8% grade. The first one was, 3.7. And so seeing that and you pushing it, it explains why the back of your run fell apart.
You went from like a 10 minute pace to like a 12 minute pace.

Duane: Mm-hmm.

Coach Morgon: And so this brings up a good point, right? And this is the point I think that we were talking about prior is selection of races is important not only for, your physical ability. Okay? Now if I had a strong runner, strongest relative to everybody, and not the comparison, we looking at this and they may have been able to hold and maintain a certain effort going up these hills cause their bodies have been trained to do so.

Coach Morgon: They know how to strategically run this route. But when you do this, you set yourself up for failure because now you have that psychological piece, it’s like man, I can't hold this pace. And you was going fast and everything. As you can see, the, your pace got worse and worse. Your heart rate lowered a little bit because you weren't even able to keep up that pace cuz you, what you told me, me in the comments is you had to walk a couple times too.

Duane: Yeah. and this goes back to a couple weeks ago where, this was a trail too. And as we've talked about, I'm typically a road runner, right? So not only was this terrain up and down, but this was also technical terrain. There's steps and rocks and things like that, right?
We learn as much by doing as we do by listening. Tut that I think the backside of that was a technical trail climb as much as it was a run.
Coach Morgon: Yeah. And I want people to understand that are listening, understand that I said I wanted you to do that. Because trail running works a different set of muscles, stability muscles, the ankles move. And with him, like instead of me sending them to the gym, say if we sh we not doing a whole bunch of plyo type stuff.

So how can we do both? And so we can. We don't want it too technical of a trail. Cause I, one, I don't want to hurt him right now, but I want him to, we get on the trail so we can strengthen that ankle, strengthen the legs, and work those muscles before we get into the real like speed work or tempo work or really long distances.
So if now that we can focus on this, making the muscles and attendance more resilient, it will benefit us in on the back end. Also, as you are a big dude, so the people know this like you're a big dude. When people of our size are running off the road, off the concrete, off the pavement, there's less damage done to the muscles and at tendon, right?

Because when you pounding that pavement, that negative energy in itself sometimes causes large tears in muscles and tendons, and it puts a working on your body. And so we can minimize that impact by kind of making it more the run schedule a little bit more dynamic. And the course is dynamic in how we pick them and what we looking at, we can make running more enjoyable.
The biggest part is we can minimize the amount of fatigue that you feel over in a week. cuz some people feel that they need to go do hard stuff. And that's how they decide if they put in the work that they've put in. But that don't make it better, harder, doesn't make it better, right?

Coach Morgon: We want you do a smarter, not harder like we wanna lend to that. Let's do a smarter not harder. And so if I can train you, weekly and we don't have to end up taking weeks off or days off because of fatigue. And that will lend to the consistency needed for the adaptation to take place where the muscles are used to turning it over.

And you go out there and run, you like, man, this feels great. But if we're working you so hard that we gotta take time off or be looking for the right shoes or you start walking too much. Now we're not getting the training, that we need. We not created that positive stressors on the body to make sure that it grows and that it adapts and it doesn't lend to an exciting training, schedule.
But to that point, as we look at terrain and different running scenarios, this lends also to how you pick a race. And so most of the people, they hire me just to be honest, people hire me after they've signed up. And that's fine. It is fine. But I say, and I'm gonna say it from a coaching point of view, it's not fine for everyone, right?

Because sometimes we need to discuss, you know, what's going on with you. I'm gonna ask you questions like, how long have you been running? Have you ever ran this terrain? Have you ever, did a, B, or C? And then let's pick something where, especially if it's like a first timer, like a pr. Like a speed or a distance or just a different environment and you want to go, say you live in a cold and you want to go to a somewhere hot.

Have you thought about the hydration and nutrition and pacing and what the sun is gonna do to you, sun burn, all these other different things. And let's make the experiences positive by actually preparing. And that's the key. You when you looking at a course, don't just look at it, it's like, oh, I would love to go here.
And that's what we do as age groupers. It's like I just, I'm going to, I wanna go to Cali and I wanna run this race, and you from Florida. The coast of Florida and it's flat, right? And you go to California and you say, I wanna run a half and you going to do La Jolla half marathon or something like that, or Carlsbad half and you running up and down hills.You like, I wasn’t ready for this.

Duane: No, that really makes sense. and you're right. I did decide that I wanted to do this race for my first half marathon. But my goal was not to run the Denver Colfax Marathon for the first time. My goal was run my first marathon, and so I signed up for it and then reached out and then we started working together. Whereas, had we been working together, then decided I'm gonna run my first marathon ,we would've decided on a different course together.

Coach Morgon: To your point, it could have been the same. It just, it's like, what do you wanna. I would, I first okay, what are you doing this for? I wanna do it a marathon. That opens up a plethora of choices. Then, if you just said I wanna Boston qualify, I want a pr, do we need to look for certain races to do that at?
So then, I ask you like, okay, where do you live? Then I'm gonna say, okay, if you live here, So, and this is something that I learned, probably a couple years ago, being from North Carolina and I live on the coast. Like you could run for 80 miles and probably get 50 feet of climbing, maybe, it's flatlander over here.
Coach Morgon: But if that person came to me, they live in where I'm at now, and they said, yeah, I want to go run at altitude. I'm like, okay, so how do we plan on practicing that? What are the resources that we have? Are you able to take time off to go to running the mountains or are you able to do other races in that area prior to get acclimatized?

How soon can you go out? There's so many questions and we can say what ifs and what will we would ask till we blue in the face. But there's more to enjoying and having a good time than just saying, I want that venue. Because I always tell people, especially when they hire me, they, most people don't know what a coach would do for 'em.

And they think that you have to be fast or performance based to hire somebody to help you. No, my job is to make sure you have a great experience. We could do that. We could and still make you faster and still give you a pr, but if you PR and you didn't have fun, what was the point? That's, and that's my personal opinion.
And other coaches might not agree. Like they might think that, the performance based of it and some people just want the performance. But I've met many people that did well at a race, but the venue itself, or the race itself or something about it just didn't go the way that they foresaw right at all.

Duane: No. And it goes back to right when we first connected and people hear about this in the first episode. But my old man, you gotta run a marathon twice. Once to realize you hate it, and second to make sure. But he DNF'd his first marathon. Looking back, knowing what I know now, probably didn't train, probably didn't do a lot of really long work. And like, he only went back into the second marathon and finished it because he dnf’d the first, then he was like, never again.

Like it was a huge suffer fest for him. and, and I honestly didn't wanna go through that. I wanted to say, how do we do it right the first time so that I don't drop out at mile 18? And so that I don't sit there and say that this is a horrible thing that I'm never doing again.

Coach Morgon: Exactly. . Exactly. Selecting anything, the right training venue, the right race, the right conditions. It all comes down to research. Doing the research, reading, like I told you, like the first, when you said, oh, I ran over here. I said, did you just go, just, did you go drive by that? Did you just go look at it?
Sometimes it's that simple. When you looked at it, sign up for the race, did you look at the map? Right? Did you go… And today we have information. People are writing blogs about certain races, people, hence this one, people are doing podcasts about certain, races. There's so much information out there for you to go into something blind is self-inflicted.

The whole point of this is to feel good, enjoy it, mind, body, and soul. And so to do that before you do anything, you go on a vacation, you're just not gonna say, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go to Thailand. I'm gonna go to a,

Duane: just see what happens.

Coach Morgon: and just see what happens. And people are like that, but those people understand they want that specific experience.
But if you're looking for something, if you're like, you're in search of a certain venue, a certain, experience, then you have to research it. And there are a lot of people that hire coaches that sometimes don't even have the mental fortitude to overcome some of these events. Cuz I'm gonna tell you yesterday, like when.
I raced yesterday. You talking about 31 miles, 4,000 feet of climate and everything is up, bro. Like up or down. And so there are people out there, cuz you talk to so many people when you, even on the marathon, you talk to so many people on the course and everybody's having a different experience.

And for me, I looked at Strava, I looked at the map they put out, I looked at the cutoffs. I said, okay, where are the aide stations? I tracked the weather all week, and guess what? It was raining and freezing the whole week. And then on race day when I thought I was gonna put a bundle up and be ready, I woke up.

Coach Morgon: And, and this is relative to you all because what the number I'm about to say is still be freezing to some of y'all. I woke up and it was 34 degrees outside. I was. that was nice. To me too. I was like, that's pretty warm when you running for six, seven hours. That's, you gonna want to take stuff off.
Prior to that day, it was 20, 19. And so that, that determines what clothing I'm bringing with me. So now I know this anyway, that I'm taking stuff for warm, moderate, right? Or really cold conditions and rain. I was prepared for all of them because I had done the research to make sure that the experiences that I wanted to have was a positive one.

Coach Morgon: And you gotta do that with the terrain and the venue of the race. And the same thing when you go out to do an easy run and it turns into a horror

Duane: Well, and I think, and that's the other thing I was, because I was obviously thinking about this, as I was running, was like, you, I'm a planner. maybe it's the military, who knows, right? but I do like to do the research and run the plan and things like that. But on that day I was like, I'm just gonna go out and see what happens.

But I was running an unfamiliar route. And I was on unfamiliar terrain as far as the type of trail and unfamiliar terrain is type of elevation, gain and loss. And I was realizing my mistake as I was running, which was probably good because I realized that this is not an easy run, but a little bit as of that is self conflicted.
But also, and I remember one of our earlier conversations, there's a possibility of over planning like too much. I think one of my first questions was, should I run the marathon course before I run the marathon course? And that takes it to another level.

Coach Morgon: Paralysis by analysis. You can't have fun doing that either, right? Because at some point you just gotta do it, right? Yeah. And people always ask me, should I run the course? What are you doing it for? Are we trying to go to bq, we gonna Boston qualify. If you can run the course, yeah let’s do that.

Coach Morgon: If you're trying to do your first marathon, why are we about to run a marathon before the marathon? Like the whole point is to have is to have the, that key point, the pinnacle of all, feelings on that day when you cross the finish line and everybody's cheering. If you've already been there, you're gonna remove some of that pizzazz from that day, and that's not what you're trying to do.
But some people are also, when it comes to the preparation of things, when they're overanalyzing it, they're trying to prevent failure. And what I'll tell everybody is you can't, you can pick the terrain, you can pick the race, you can pick the venue, you can study all, there's no guarantee until it, happens.
You can, you do your best to prepare to get to the first to start line. Then while you are on the race, you do your best to stay in the race. That's the whole goal. Then on the back end, it's I want to finish, None of those is, I'm gonna tell people this, like none of those are guaranteed.

Coach Morgon: So you need to have that conversation with yourself. All the planning in the world can't, like you, you don't control your fate. You can maximize the ability to complete your task by doing the study and the things of that nature, but you can't prevent failure. I hope that makes sense to people.
You can't prevent if it's going to happen, it's going to happen, because if we could predict the future, I would have a different job.

Duane: Right, right. You know, we'd have lots of monies and the economy would be in the tank cuz everybody had lots of money.

Coach Morgon: because you would just know, man, and that's not what you gotta do. And so I had a coach tell me, I always have athletes coming to me and tell me about how hard this is or how this is this. And then he said he reminds him, do you do this because it’s easy?

So why are you continuously trying to make it easy in your mind? Except the whole thing is that it's going to be hard and that's okay. And so you can't overanalyze every aspect of a course or anything expecting you to have that, that one thing you can prepare better.

But, allow yourself to just enjoy the, your runs, just to learn something while you're running and to experience something that you have never done before or something, always have a purpose. Like just go out there with that purpose and try to meet that as, as closely as possible.

Duane: Well, apparently my purpose on Saturday, not just the easy pace that you had assigned me, but it was also to learn lessons. Was apparently, for my Saturday run, in that I know that for those particular runs, I'm going to be much more judicious on my training route.

Coach Morgon: Yeah. And so we, let's go over next week before we get done. And so next week is not too different. Tell me about this, this challenge that you signed up for.

Duane: Yeah, so it's a pretty neat, virtual race. It's called the TAJI 100, and, it started off, by a group of soldiers in Taji, Iraq. In which, one of their officers had challenged the group of soldiers. Obviously though, you having been there, but you can get to a place of really challenging, both physically, but also mentally while you're on deployment.

So it was, let's run a hundred miles, run walk a hundred miles in February. And so it started off in Taji, Iraq. And now every year in February, there's this outstanding nonprofit called, Taji 100 that, does a virtual challenge. Started off run, walk or hike.

Now you can do rowing, biking, or swimming certain different miles within the month of February. They, a lot of virtual races popped up during covid, virtual challenges and distance challenges, but this has been going around for a couple of years. So it's a decent challenge, to run a hundred miles in the shortest month of the year. And it's not impossible, right? It's that it pushes you a little bit, but it's not something that's not outside the realm of possibility for folks.

Coach Morgon: Yeah, so.Okay, so you telling me we need to get in a hundred miles in February? So these are the, these are those things when people sign up for stuff, . And we, in our fourth week of training, luckily right? We're going from 18 miles to, and we can move up, right? And , we just have to be cautious. And for you, I will, even though it's a challenge, at the end of the day, it's not the a goal for me.

And so if it becomes a hindrance, I don't think it will. Personally, this is something we, that we can totally do. It's not gonna, it shouldn't challenge anything, and it's probably the perfect timing for us to build up through it. And have fun. But this is one of those things, you get a, a person that likes to sign up for races, for whatever reason it is, and then they have this a race, and then they got 50 other races prior to that one race. I'm like, when you going to rest?

Duane: when? When are you gonna rest? Yeah. No, and this is the thing, as last year I was doing a race a month. I'd have a 5K and then three weeks later I'd do a 10 K and so on. And that wasn't the consistency of training, it wasn't good because I was either getting ready for another shorter race or something like that.
But again, that's one of the things very specifically during this training period, I'm not training for any races. Which is a little different cuz, I see folks running races in my community that I wanna run, that I ran last year that I wanna do this year. But nope, that's not, like you said, that's not the primary goal.

Coach Morgon: We can do 'em. We, I just, we just need to talk through 'em and say, it might be five you want to do, we might only be able to do three. It depends, but it depends on where they are and what the intent is going in. Are we going just to participate and make it a supportive training run? Or will you have, will you not be disciplined enough to be able to stay the course and say, I wanna go fast?
So that's the conversation that we can have. So, I would tell you is if there's races that you wanna do before your marathon, send me a email and I need the race link, the distance you want to do right. And the location. So I can see that boom. and the race will tell me the date that it is.

And so that will, when I'll look at that, I'll say, okay, can we do this and still keep the fluid training schedule that we've had? Or will this come into play, it's too close or just, should we be doing a 5k? What are we doing on a day? He said, oh, I got a 5k. You got a 5k, can we make that speed work that day?

Is that okay? And so we can get really creative if we know ahead of time what we can do. And there might be races. You might be able to do all of 'em. You might not be able to do none of 'em out. So send 'em to me if you.

Duane: so a Super Bowl day, half marathon in two weeks is probably out of the picture though?

Coach Morgon: Let's go with, let's go with a yes. Go with a yes. So
Yeah, and look at that. But if we're talking now, I wouldn't find anything in February if we can help it and anything beyond that and maybe two months out from the race day. We may be able to do something, or even the race month if it depends on where it lands, like a half or something like that.
But everything at the closer we get to race day will need to be in preparation for that. yeah, that's it, man. That's all I got for you today.

Duane: Yeah. No, it's, so yeah, looking forward to this week, coming up, again, really, really excited about supporting the folks with the Taji 100. It's something I did last year, something I plan on doing every year. so it's, looks like it'll be some good stuff.

Coach Morgon: Yeah, it'll be good. We'll get you there. I'll put some notes on here to make sure I'm giving you the right amount of mileage so you can hit that goal. and then we'll go from there.

Duane: Sounds great. All right, we'll catch up next week.

Coach Morgon: Easy day, man. Thank you.

Duane: Week three. As you can hear, there's still a lot of learning going on and an old dog like me can learn new tricks, but this experience of working with the coach has already been beneficial to me. Every week I'm picking up something new or learning something different that I probably wouldn't have learned if it was just me in my head.

There is something to be said about having someone on your side, and I appreciated what he said about his goal as a coach.

Coach Morgon: I always tell people, especially when they hire me, , most people don't know what a coach would do for 'em.
And they think that you have to be fast or performance based to hire somebody to help you. No, my job is to make sure you have a great experience. We could do that. and still make you faster and still give you a pr, but if you PR and you didn't have fun, what was the point?

Duane: And that's the key. When I'm done with the marathon, I want it to be as enjoyable an experience as it can be. It's not gonna be easy, but like Coach Morgon said in the episode, we're not doing this because it's easy, but it doesn't have to be devastating either.
So thanks again for joining us for the Mere Mortal Marathon Podcast where you can hear mere mortals like you and me reach our goals as I trained for the 2023 Denver Colfax Marathon. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love to hear from you.
Duane: You can reach out to me at duane@veteranmentalhealth.com. If you wanna support a great cause. I'm a charity partner with The Second Wind Fund, a Colorado organization that focuses on improving access and delivery of suicide prevention care for children and youth at risk for suicide. You could donate to the cause by going to coloradogives.org/m3podcast.

If you wanna reach out to Coach Morgon and show appreciation or for the excellent work that he does, or sign up for the People's Coach Newsletter, you can find him at Morgonlatimore.com. The links to these are gonna be in the show notes. So thanks for joining us for another episode of The Mere Mortal Marathon podcast, and just remember, mere mortals can do extraordinary things.