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Transcript

Get on the Trail · The Daily Writer

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, thanks for joining me on today's episode.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let me share a quick story with you.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to tell you that my legs are still really sore from what happened this past Sunday.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you might say, well, Kent, were you kickboxing?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Did you get into a fight or did you get into a car crash?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: What happened?
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer to all those questions is actually no.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: My legs are sore because I've been training for a marathon.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: So back in February, I signed up for the Mo Calbell Marathon, which is a really popular race that takes place in St.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Charles, Missouri, on November the 8th.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually live in a town called St.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Peter's, which is next to St.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Charles, and I have an office at a co-working space in St.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Charles.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it's super convenient because this race is right here in my area.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now I've completed a few smaller races in the past, like 10Ks and 5K's, and I even did a half marathon a number of years ago, but I basically walked the whole thing.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I still completed it though, so that's not nothing.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: All that being said, though, I've never really done a full marathon.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And my brother encouraged me to sign up for races starting a few years ago.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So he's the one that got me into a races to begin with.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when he mentioned that they were going to be opening up registration for the Mo Cowbell again, I thought, well, what the heck?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why not go for a full marathon this time?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like it might be fun.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, there's all kinds of books and resources about how to train for a marathon, but basically, like I normally do, I ignore all the conventional wisdom about something and I come up with my own plan because I think it's more interesting and I just don't automatically want to do what other people tell me to do.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's sort of that's honestly my approach in life, is I take other people's advice and wisdom into account.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then I come up with something that actually works for me.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's worked out pretty well for me so far.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I will probably continue to take that approach for the rest of my life.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And in this particular case, how I applied that way of looking at things is that I looked at traditional marathon training plans, and those all seem to focus on, you know, speed and distance and kind of working up to something, which I think there's a lot of wisdom in that.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I knew that what would really work for me is that I wanted to train as much as possible on the actual marathon training route.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm doing is I'm training on the actual route where the race takes place as much as possible.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: So here's how this goes with this particular race.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: The first half of the race starts in the middle of historic St.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Charles.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a big historical area in St.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Charles, Missouri, right on the riverfront of the Missouri River.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the race goes down part of historic St.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Charles, then it goes into a large park area, then it goes on this super busy highway, then it snakes through this crowded subdivision for a mile or two, and then it works its way back to the starting point via several other really, really busy roads.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: However, that's just the first half of the full marathon training route.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if you just do this as a half marathon, you're gonna do all the stuff that I just described and you're gonna go back to the starting point.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the back half of the full marathon is completely different than the first part because it takes place almost all, almost all of the second half of the full marathon takes place on the Katie Trail, which is a rails-to-trails, as they call it, conversion.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it used to be basically railroad tracks.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And decades ago, they changed the railroad tracks to this really cool gravel walking and bicycle trail that runs almost all the entire way across the state of Missouri.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, really cool.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm on the KD Trail all the time.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's really fun.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's very picturesque, a lot of nature type of stuff.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And part of the trail goes by the Missouri River.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really, really a beautiful, uh, a beautiful thing.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And again, my training goal was to get on the actual route as much as possible.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that I wanted to do that is because it helps me to visualize every twist and turn along the trail.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it really bakes the route into my brain so that, you know, I'm seeing here's where it turns, here's what the asphalt feels like to walk or run on it, here's what the greenery looks like, here are these buildings in this particular place.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I I've really found that doing it that way helps me to bake the um to bake the sight and the sounds and the smells and all of the emotions of what it feels like to be in a particular place into my psychology, into my brain, so that when I actually do the race on race day, it almost feels inevitable that I'm gonna finish because I've been on those routes so many times.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And basically my approach has been to take it in little chunks and do training on those little chunks.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then gradually I'm increasing my time and you know, my distance and my speed until basically come race day, it's gonna feel inevitable that I will complete the marathon.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're probably asking, Kent, why have you taken like four minutes of my life to tell me this story?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's a really important reason for this because it has a direct correlation to writing.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I know is writers love to talk about writing.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: We love to talk about our projects and our book outlines, and we love to talk about marketing and book structure, and we love to go to conferences, and we love to make all our plans for all the books we're going to write and all those kinds of things.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: But what a lot of writers don't actually do is sit down and actually do the writing every single day.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really important because all the other stuff has zero importance or meaning unless you actually are doing the writing, you know, because the writing is the activity that actually produces the results.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: It produces the books or the podcast or the email newsletters or whatever it is that you're writing.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And my point with all this is that there's no substitute for getting on the real course, whether it's a marathon or whether it's writing.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to your writing, what it means to get on the real course is to open that file, open that document, and type the words or take a walk and dictate those words.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: However, you get the words out isn't important.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: The important thing is getting on the actual race route, which in writing terms means you're actually writing.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's no substitute for it.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as a runner, you can talk about running, you can subscribe to magazines about running, you can drive the trail and see what it looks like.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: But there's no substitute for actually getting on the trail and putting in the miles, putting on your running shoes and just going for that walk or going for that run.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So my challenge to you is before you go to bed tonight, get some work done on that riding project that maybe you've been avoiding.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I promise that your future self will thank you.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hey, as always, I'd love to hear from you.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can always email me at Kent at KentSanders.net.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you listen to this episode and it was helpful, just shoot me an email and say, hey, Kent, I really like this.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: That really helps me.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I'd always love to know what you're working on as well.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, hey, my friend, that's it for today.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you next time.