Mere Mortal Marathon Podcast

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

Thanks for joining us for the Mere Mortal Marathon Podcast. I'm excited to be going on this journey, and please do 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 the new episode comes out.

You can also see where the journey takes me by connecting on Strava by going to strava.com/athletes/m3podcast. There you'll see if I'm following the training plan like I'm supposed to and you can find all of 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 incidents of suicide in 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.

So we're off to a bit of a slow start there. I know folks are out there listening, but we haven't gotten any donations yet. So I've decided to do it a little differently, simply by listening to this show right now, you're supporting suicide prevention efforts for youth in Colorado. For every download that each episode gets within the first 30 days of release, The Second Wind Fund will receive $1 up to a thousand dollars.

So that's it. By listening to this and by sharing it with others who may also be interested in it, You are doing your part. If you wanna do more or just get a sense of how many other folks are listening, go to http://Www.Coloradogives.org/m3podcast.

This week we review week 4 of 19, one month down about three months to go to the 2023 Denver Colfax Marathon. We're setting down a solid base of running and maintaining a steady pace. We needed a bit of flexibility this week here in Colorado, there was a bit of a cold snap with temps hitting the single digits and negative digits.
So I headed to the gym for a couple of treadmill days, three miles a day for six days, a total of 18 miles. This week, also started the month of February, so a shout out to a great organization that I support with the Hundred Mile Virtual Run Challenge. The TAJI 100. The first TAJI 100 was held at Camp Taji, Iraq in February of 2010. A captain in the military police battalion created a friendly competition with their fellow soldiers on Camp Taji with the challenge to run 100 miles during the month of February. Since 2011, members of the original Taji 100 Challenge have replicated the challenge annually with thousands of people globally participating. If you wanna find out more about the Taji 100, go to taji100.com. So check out this week's coaching call, reviewing the week, and we'll come back afterwards to wrap things up.

Duane: So another week down, one full month.

Coach Morgan: One full month. It's been that long already.

Duane: you were said that last week I was thinking the same thing. I was like, wow, we are already a month in. which is pretty good. Feeling pretty good.

Coach Morgan: maybe, I think it's the weekly milestone of recording the podcast is like, moving it a little bit quicker. Cuz usually I'm like, oh man, we got a lot of time, but now it's like boom, boom, boom, boom. And we in a place where you're very consistent... I what I keep hearing though, and I know we've talked about this before and we got some other things to talk about today, obviously.
What I'm seeing in your comments is you really talking about the pace. Like is it still a struggle?

Duane: No, it's I don't think it's really still a struggle. I think the neat thing is that now I notice that I'm going faster before I'm looking at my watch. and it used to be it was happening after, right? I'm getting a better sense of, it used to be I look at my watch and I say, oh, I'm going too fast now I feel like I'm going too fast.
And I look at my watch and I verify it. So I think that's one thing that's different about this training for me is I'm paying a lot more attention to the pace, but also knowing that the goal is not to push it too much. And this week there were a couple things with pace this week is a on the treadmill.
I didn't have to worry about pace. you just said it and forget it. It's like cruise control, right? So then those second days that I came off of the treadmill, I found that I was not as cognizant in my pace because on the treadmill you just hit it and go. So, it is just one of those things I think that I'm really dialing in on right now.

Coach Morgan: There’s just a couple things there. And so you are starting to be more in tune with your body, which is phenomenal. Right. It’s a place where you want to be because there you have to learn how to stay within yourself. Especially the longer the distance that you go, because it's not about how fast you can go, it's how long you can maintain that speed at the end of the day, right? You can say, I can go this fast, but how long can you hold it? And so when you are, out there running and you can pay attention to your body and say, man, this doesn't feel like the pace I should be running. And as you think we're four weeks in, we still got some time to go.

Coach Morgan: Your body will learn this, right? And if I tell you to, to go at easy pace, I won't even have to say anything. And I'll see in the data where your body will literally shift. What most people don't understand is I wanna go this fast, or I was doing this, or I was looking at my watch.
Well, the watch may not work on race day right? That you can't guarantee that something is going to be there that's electronic. Like you just can't do it. Like even when, cyclists are on power meters, like you say, oh, I train with power, I train with power. What do you do when the power meter doesn't work?
What do you do when the heart rate meter doesn't work or the watch doesn't work?

You have to understand your body and it's really listening to it. And that's what, because when you say like, now you're listening to it, it's a feeling, And it's not like, when we first started working together, it was. data. It's like I look at my watch, this is what I need to be doing, but you determine what the watch says. The watch doesn't determine what you do. That's where we need to get to, and that's what most people need to understand. As we look at the weeks, right, and we've verified that you will get your 100 virtual miles, for the month of February, so we can really understand that your body can handle the volume.

I don't do it too early because even though I wanna support your social activities and the things that you wanna support, because my job is not to cause stress on you, it’s to eliminate the stress that you have, going into an event or trying to do other things.

Coach Morgan: A lot of people get committed to one race and they get worried about if I do this or if I don't do this, I can't do this, and I gotta be so focused. But again, we are age group athletes and we should be enjoying what we're doing and we should be able to participate.

And that's what my job is here for, is to make sure that I can give you the space to enjoy the small things, the C races, the B races. So when you get to your A race, you didn't feel like you forgot about half your life, like some people do. They just forget about everybody else for this whole race.

And then they're like, oh, they stopped running. Why? Because They over committed to too much and too much training for that one particular event and they stopped living and that became an issue. So, you're doing good, that's the biggest thing. What I'm noticing is that you're starting to settle at your easy pace around 10:30ish, which is what I'll be looking for as we go. And after the month of February, what we're going to do is basically assessment. Set your heart rate zones, your pace zones, your effort zones, and then I can show you.. Cause once we do that, I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna kind of give you a small little taper, a small rest before that event.

And we're gonna do a 5k time trial. I'm gonna tell you to make sure that watch is charged. Everything is updated. Make sure you've already, scouted the course. You know what you're gonna do. We don't want anything to be a guess on that day because we want the best data we can get.

And I'm gonna tell you to go into that day like we're racing. So the, the 48 hours prior, making sure you get rest, making sure your low levels of stress, make sure you're stretched out and loose. And so on that day, you're gonna warm up, you're gonna get ready like on a race day, and then you're going to literally run 3.1 miles as hard as you can because that's what's gonna give us the best data.

Duane: I appreciate that I get the sense, like you said, that I am settling into that pace, which I always, and I've been thinking about this over this past week, but you always hear about runners going out too fast at the beginning of a race. And how you mentioned last week when I did my terrain, like you could tell if you were watching that first three quarters of the mile on that terrain that I would've fallen apart on the back end of the race.

And that reminded me of my last half marathon. I was running the first two and a half miles I think was running about a minute faster than I wanted to. And it really did break down a little bit on the last quarter of that half marathon that I did back in December. And so it's this idea of settling into that pace, I think is really gonna help me.

You know, I, I always intellectually knew runners start out too fast, but I didn't know what that felt like. And I think now I'm getting a sense of what it feels like.

Coach Morgan: And the biggest thing is, starting out too fast as some people that are listening is relative to what your purpose is at that race. And so if you're racing and you're racing other people there, then obviously you can't just let them go. You need to be training to take the first, 800 meters to get a good positioning and settle in and then break it back down and hold it.

Coach Morgan: Like you have to simulate what you're going to be doing on race day. But if your goal is to go out there and either participate or finish right, then you have to like, make sure that you're managing expectations within training and on race day accordingly. And so this goes with any sport. Really anything in life, right?

If you ain't training for what you're going to be doing, then you're wasting your time. What is that perfect practice prevents piss poor performance, right? And so we are going to continue to practice pacing and nutrition and how do you feel and why does it feel that way?

And what could you do better next time? And really listen. And so we've already worked through the one phase, and now it's time to shift into something different as we start to bring the volume and started to really listen. So what I, before we get any further, what I do wanna, talk about is in here. You had some days that you had some mental fatigue.

Duane: And I think in, not really some mental fatigue, but some distraction, right? I mean, I had pretty important things going on at work. and my mind was really on what I was doing at work. But, then also, for folks listening earlier this week as we were recording this, it was like subzero, it was like one degree digits or below.

Coach Morgan: Yeah. Yeah, it was cold.

Duane: I went, and ran on the treadmill and it sort of disrupted my routine a little bit. I forgot my plyometrics on Wednesday because I was thinking about getting out on the cold. So I did 'em on Thursday. I think there was some distraction there. Because I, got put off my routine a little bit because of the weather and then those couple of treadmill indoor days.

Coach Morgan: Yeah. life is gonna throw a whole bunch of things at us, right.

What does that simulate? Race day. Race day you may have a vision of how you want it to happen. But , when you get in that corral and you out there with thousands of other people and you don't know what the weather's gonna be like. You say you understand the terrain, but you, if you, sometimes you're not always able to run that race.

Like you live close enough to go actually train on that when it's possible, but not everybody has that. You might not always have that in every race. And so being able to shift, right, having that racing mindset is understanding the things that could happen or, and what do you do when things go south because they will right.
And so like, you never know what you're gonna be presenting. Where as we talk about, I know one big subject that we've been discussing is, privilege and diversity and things of that nature.

and that has everything to do. You don't know what you're gonna get , And you, when you show up, , you don't know how you're gonna be welcome. You don't know, when you show up, you might not have had the privileges of training a certain way that other people may have. And so I would ask you like, as we talk about this, I mean you, the white guy and the black guy, but when it comes to something not planned happening…

Coach Morgan: You got privileged people. You got the non-privileged, you got the marginalized people. You got the blacks, you got the whites, you got the poor, you got the rich, you got all kinds of things. You got the slow runners and you got the fast runners.

You got the people that are skinny, that the people that are larger. And so as we talk about diversity, it's not about always about color it's has a lot to do about being different.

Duane: No, you're absolutely right. And thinking about this, and I think a lot about this, in my day job, in, in the intersectionality of our identities when it comes to military and veteran work. But even back to almost the first episode, like you said, Hey, you need to get new shoes.

Well, I was socioeconomically secure enough to be able to go get new shoes, that's a privilege. I recognize that as a privilege. I am as we've said, I'm a big guy. I'm in my neighborhood. Like if you're watching close enough, if you're at a particular corner on a particular day and time, you know you're gonna run up against me because I'm gonna be there.

Duane: I don't really stagger my… And if you're there with malicious intent, I'm confident how I'll be able to manage that, right? But I also recognize that's not the case. I've talked to many women runners that say they can't run at four in the morning. They won't run at four in the morning, and they won't run if it's in a location that they've not been to.

And you and I have had those conversations where there's places that I'll run through, I feel safe and secure enough, it may feel different for you going through those locations. So I, I think it's really in the wider, context of our sport.
The diversity conversation. I recognize that I'm very privileged in a number of different ways, even you and I training in having the ability to train that we are, may not be the same for everybody else.

Coach Morgan: You know what I realize, man, as especially, we talk about sport and different things is as I grew up in the ghetto right in the hood and. marginalized community, however you wanna put it. And we didn't have a lot of resources. We didn't have a lot of privilege in general. But what I didn't realize is that I'm no longer that person.

And then, and I say this because as I come from somewhere, and move to something. I didn't realize that some of the privileges that I have earned or been given since then have changed my mindset and it was very important in the beginning of my coaching is that.

Coach Morgan: I had to start to learn that one, as I coached, you said it, being very empathetic and understanding and sympathize with other people's concerns and not try to be this tough coach and say, just figure it out. Just go out there. Don't be scared. Just do this. Just do that and not really pay attention to how they feel.
And I think that's where this is the biggest, like we going to be different, but the key is for the race or for the people, is just understanding that everybody is not going to have the same. courage or same will, or same understanding, or so on and so forth of a certain event. And so as I coach predominantly women, it became, very, inherent to me that I need to not push.

I need to listen. And that's what I think, when I hear differences, I need to listen. I need to be more observant. And that's why I always tell my athletes, tell me what you need and let me be creative. It forced me to be very creative because when someone told me I have a limited amount of time, but I can't run in the morning.

Coach Morgan: Or I can't run by myself and I usually run with my friends or, I don't wanna run on the road because it's cars out at this certain time of day. It's all… and so I had to start thinking of different ways to be more creative. Even with the shoe thing. The shoe thing is huge. I get in pair of shoes, obviously, since I have a sponsorship by Hoka.

But I get a pair of shoes like every three months, and I change them up. Easy every three months like this, like clockwork, cause I'd have to have that. Even I can't imagine what it's gonna be like cuz Hoka's not gonna always be, sponsoring me. Like at some point that's gonna end, what I'm gonna do then?

Coach Morgan: But then you have people that have injuries or have back problems or hip problems or knee problems or shin problems because they've been running in the shoes so long because they can't afford to buy shoes on a regular basis. So coach, how do you handle that? Either I can do one or two things. I can help them.

I even come down to it where it’s, okay you paid me a certain amount of money a month. I'll just take it out of that because to me it's like I'm in a very unique place because I'm a retired Marine, and so I'm able to do things that most people can't do. So I would rather give you the money back to buy the shoes.

Coach Morgan: and us have, a very productive and fun time because that's what I'm willing to invest into it. Or I can do things where I limit the amount of running that we're doing so we can get the the longevity of that shoe, as much as possible. I can, and I can be creative in the gym, on the bike or in the swimming or cross training, whatever it may be. To look at other ways to give you the fitness that you need and minimizing how much you're using that equipment.

We have to think about these things. But the most important thing that we have to do, we have to listen to people. We have to be understanding, we have to be empathetic because I think we all have, different experiences, but we, there are similarities to them all.

I, that's, this is my personal belief, right? But you have to think about it like.. Sometimes, I might have been from the hood, but then I might be dealing with people that have never, grown up in the hood. And so I am accustomed to dealing with violence, just to be honest with you.

Coach Morgan: I'm accustomed to that, not prior to the Marine Corps part. There's things that I would think that on in inherently you should never do. Like I see people running with headphones. I don't run with headphones. You know why? Cuz in the hood you should not, cuz you can't hear nothing you can't hear nobody coming up on you.

You can't hear anything, right? I don't run with hoodies. Why? Because you can't see behind you. You can't see besides you, peripheral vision is out. And so these are things I've grown up with. And then you explain that to some people. You see that aha moment. Like, oh, I ain't never thought about that.

Even with the pacing, you got music on all the time. 90% of the time, if you have music on, you're not listening to your body. But it's all about listening. It don't. All this is about listening. Listening to the person to the left and right of you, and supporting each other for what they bring to the table, not what you think they should be bringing to the table .

Duane: And I think that's a critical piece that like you said, I’ve become aware of the military, like you, put me in a different place, as far as we have healthcare. I had the privilege of being able to, I didn't have to go get a gym membership or have a go get a treadmill. I just went to my local base when I got my little retiree card and was run next to some 19 year old.

Coach Morgan: Bro, that is so .. I live in a military town like that. Think about it, like if we had to pay a gym membership, like we could literally go to any gym in the world that with the US military installation and we have access for the rest of our lives.

Duane: and medical care, healthcare, like when you said, Hey, if you need to go check, and again, it's not always perfect, right? You got doctors and you got army doctors, but they're still doctors . But there's this idea of you're saying, you know, you don't run with hoodies. If I wasn't being aware, I say, well, I run with hoodies all the time, if I can, why can't you? And I think that's where a lot of people get caught up in that they believe that their own experience is the universal experience.
Duane: And that's where a level of hubris and arrogance comes in, especially if we're coming from a privileged position that we're not aware of.

Coach Morgan: Yes. Yes. and I think that's just, we need to listen to each other. This, um, I've gotten some messages regarding a Muslim friend, woman, that I have been talking to in, within sport, and this is in running. I've seen, I've actually seen an article about it for wrestling.
High school and college wrestling type stuff. And then in triathlon, the hajibs, right? They wear those and. . that's a controversial thing right now. and it, and most people don't understand it because they don't have to deal with it. But if you are hearing these stories that I'm hearing, the things that they're going through just to be able to participate, that's it.

Coach Morgan: Like we ain't talking about winning and nothing just to participate. It becomes an issue when people are not listening And some, so what we have to understand in sport is the way we've been doing things have worked until we've learned something different. Like the world is different, so we have to figure out together how to change the regulations, the dialogue, the expectations of so many people, religious, culturally, ethnically, gender wise. Like, there's just so much stuff going on these days and we just have to be open. And I know that's hard for people in the world.

This might be some hard for people that listen to this, to be open-minded and not expect somebody to be what you think they should be. But that's life. And if, because we wouldn't wanna be forced to be something that we're not. And so why should we do that to anyone else? I think we should give people the space to be who they. Give people the space to enjoy the things that everyone else enjoys and just give people the space to be free and happy and enjoy life. That's what it's all about. We, why are we fighting people to conform to what we think they should be? That's just not how I think we were created to live.

Duane: You’re absolutely right. You know, you think about when we're towing
the line of that marathon that we're training for here coming up, There's a thousand people there and everybody's running the same 26.2 miles, but they took a thousand different paths to get there. Yes, we all did the training.

Duane: Hopefully everyone did the training. But a young mother of two toddler children had a different path than I had necessarily getting there as somebody with, grown children that, that, don't need to be, cared for. And somebody that had to juggle all of these different things.

That I need to be aware that my experience is not the only experience and I need to understand, like you said, listen to and understand these other experiences. We think about, as you're talking about change, the woman's marathon of the Olympics wasn't until what, the early eighties, right?

Duane: We hear about, the bandits running in Boston Marathon before they were. And so it wasn't that long ago that the sport of running was very exclusive and becoming more inclusive. And I know that's really a lot of what you do is, talk about the diversity and inclusivity of the sport of running in triathlon and endurance sports.

Coach Morgan: And it's huge and you don't see it. Most people don't see it cause they don't have to deal with it. like when I just, I just ran, ultramarathon, right? And I went to Huntsville, Alabama. And other than my athletes and me, there was one other lady that may have been black or brown, I'm not sure.
At a race where there was over 400 people, right? And so when you think about that, and I had a great time. The people were super welcoming. I literally had a great time. I had no complaints. Nobody treated me bad. Nobody looked down on me. I ran and people talked to me the whole time.

Coach Morgan: Didn't matter, right? But. When I show up, knowing what I've experienced in my life, you never know what you're going to get until you get there. And so I've been to places where they look at you and I've been to places where they, where they say, why are you here? And it sounds crazy, but this is happened in my life multiple times, right?

And so, until we make it comfortable for everybody, people are gonna show up with the being, you know? And I, and I've tried to be optimistic about it, everything. And I even have to tell, Hey, don't worry about it. We, you know and try to meet it where it is. if it doesn't happen, I don't wanna be focusing on manifesting it in my thoughts, right?

But if it does, I wanna be prepared to deal with it in a certain way and for me, having, biracial kids, girls too, like that's a concern for me and teaching them. Especially when I take them with me and I'm not with them, I can't protect them. And so I will, I would dream of one day, right?

I sound like Martin Luther King, that we can do everything together and not have expectations of what we think other people should be. And so I can go somewhere and feel comfortable about my daughters or my friends or my athletes being involved in an environment that is accepting no matter where they go.
Duane: Yeah. I absolutely appreciate that and I appreciate this conversation. This was always…Really, I'm very aware of the fact that my experience, no one person's experience is a unique experience. And listeners maybe listening to this and say, a big bald white guy and a retired Marine black guy, and what does this show have to do with me?

And I think that it's important for us to be able to say that we recognize that while, like you said earlier, there are a lot of common experiences. We absolutely recognize the differences as well.

Coach Morgan: Yeah. But, but that's it. You know? Uh, then we could probably talk about different scenarios all day. But, the key is, when you go to a race, speak to everybody, talk to everybody, like that's the whole, that's what made this last race I just did so exciting. I ain't gonna lie, like, I met so many people.
They asked me, where are you from? What'd you doing here? And what made you do this race? This your first time? It made the race actually, and I don't really usually do this. I thought about man, I might do this race again next year. And I don't usually do stuff twice. I'll do, it's too many races to do the race twice to me in my personal opinion.

But that's how much fun. I had even like we registered, people were telling us about the course and they seen me on the course and the older lady, she had to be in like her late sixties. Early seventies and she had done the race like 12 times. Alright, this 50 k. And it's a hard one too, just for people to know.

And she, I'm running I'm at mile 23 or 24 or something like that. And she's like, Hey there in North Carolina. And I was like, Hey, what's going on? it was so cool and to be accepted like that. And two, they're like, come on back. And it was just a great, it was a great. And I think that's how every race should be.

Because we don't, we can say, and this is again my personal opinion, we can say, oh, I do it cause it's hard. I do it cause.. We do these races because it's social, right? It's people, it's a pride of belonging. You don't, and guess what? That don't mean you gotta talk to everybody. That mean you gotta talk at all.

Coach Morgan: But you can literally run a marathon by yourself right. We do it because we want to be a part of something because that's in history, in life, in humanity. We always been a part of each other's lives, and we enjoy that and it's okay, So

Duane: No, it's, no, I, but it's, but it, you're right there with it. And we, like you were saying, we're talking a lot about pace and mechanic. But this is the other piece of it too. Yeah, and I'm excited. We, like you said, we're gonna pick up the mileage a little bit. Folks can come back next week and I promise to do this next five mile run easier than I did the last five mile run

Coach Morgan: Hey, as we go up in volume, fatigue will slow you down too, so you don't have to worry about that . The best thing about everything that we do is, we gotta stop looking behind us or what used to be and look forward. I don't care if it's your pace. I don't care if it's life, I don't care if it's your relationship. Forward is the pace that we need to be focused on and focus on that moment or put that, that next foot right in front of the other and really focusing on that and being present in the moment like you've learned to become.

And so what I would ask you to do, and anybody else that has heard, his growth and where he starts to listen to his body. Instead of trying to make every run or work out what you think it should be, let it be what it is. Focus on a purpose that day, and really work to hone in on that skill. And when you feel that you've found mastery, then you can move and take the next step.

Duane: You know, they used to call me the barracks philosopher, but I think you are also in that same camp. No, I appreciate it and I look forward to seeing where we go.

Coach Morgan: Easy day man. It was good talking to you today.

Duane: Week four. As I mentioned in the episode, coach Morgan and I specifically wanted to take the time to discuss inclusivity and diversity in endurance sports.

I'm getting back into this after being away from it for a long time, and I simply value engaging in what I had lost. I also recognize that my experience is different from the experience of others, and my situation is not relatable to all listeners or maybe even most listeners.

I really liked what Coach Morgan said about how things have worked until learning has.

Coach Morgan: what we have to understand, In sport is the way we've been doing. Things have worked until we've learned something different. Like the world is different, so we have to figure out together how to change the regulations, the dialogue, the expectations of so many people, religious, culturally, ethnically, gender wise. Like, there's just so much stuff going on these days and we just have to be. Open and that's, I know that's hard for people in the world.

Duane: The key here is that learning has to happen. We have to understand that there are new things to know that we didn't know before. Be willing to incorporate that knowledge and before both happen, we have to be willing to listen and understand the perspective of others.

Coach Morgan is a significant voice in the conversation of diversity, equity, and inclusion, in endurance sports, and I'm glad to have him joining me along the way. . So thanks again for joining us for the Mere Mortal Marathon Podcast where you can hear mere mortals like you andme reach our goals as I trained for the 2023 Denver Colfax Marathon. If you enjoyed this episode, we would love to hear from you. 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 Colorado organization that focuses on improving access and delivery of suicide prevention care for children and youth at risk for suicide.

You can donate to the cause by going to Coloradogives.org/m3podcast. As a reminder simply by listening to this show, a dollar's going into the pot. if you want more dollars to go in the pot, share the show with others who may appreciate it.
If you wanna reach out to Coach Morgan to show appreciation for the excellent work that he does, or sign up for the People's Coach Newsletter, you can find him at morganlatimore.com. All of the links to each of 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.