Last week I discovered Phedippidations over at SteveRunner.com. I have been working my way through the archives and have gotten through almost 20 of the episodes already. Steve is a middle of the pack marathoner who records the majority of his show on his Sunday long runs, and then edits it together into (something of) a cohesive whole. He has episodes recorded during races, including the Lowell, Cape Cod, and Boston marathons.
You can clearly hear his footsteps and oncoming traffic as he runs. For the most part, it is fairly easy to hear what he is saying as he goes out for his running. He splices music into his show that is usually themed about running or about his topic for the week. Some of his topics have included the races he is running, why owners are at fault when you are chased by a dog, and ponderings about why Massachussetts drivers are such idiots. That last seems to be touched upon at least a few times. He also talks about running legends such as Bill Rogers, John Kelly, and Emil Zapotek.
In one episode, he is discussing the difference between a runner and a jogger. He eventually concludes that the baseball rulebook contains the best definition, which seemed pretty close to the distinction that I always used by George Sheehan:
The difference between a runner and a jogger is an entry blank.
Of course, before I could email him my thoughts on that matter, he then quoted Dr. Sheehan and mentioned how what had taken him 15 minutes to explain only took Dr. Sheehan 12 words. I did email him that (now pointless) tidbit and to let him know that I enjoyed listening to his show, and got a response back from him within about 3 minutes. Not too bad for a random unsolicited email.
His show is definately worth checking out. The first few episodes are a little rough, but once he got onto a weekly schedule things seem to have gotten to a fairly consistent quality. One thing I could stand to hear less of (and since I am only halfway through his archives perhaps he has stopped already) is how much he degrades the quality of his own work. It is quite plain that he puts a lot of work into producing the show every week.
Not bad at all (surprising since I’m anything but a runner). The name puzzled me at first, until I remembered my high school Greek history : Phedippides was the original marathon runner.
Good find.
Yeah, he goes into why he named it that in an early episode. He has not done a lot of worrying about search engine optimization or anything like that; if he has to tell somebody how to get to the page he just sends them to SteveRunner.com.