Interview on The Logic of Long Distance

I meant to write this post two months ago... after I knocked off one or two items on my blogging to-do list.  But since my recent thoughts have been making their way onto the web 2.0, I realized it's time to post this.

I met Jeff Edmonds when I showed up for the first cross country practice as a 7th grader at Baylor (high school).  At the time he was the captain and lead runner of our Jr High squad, and I was the newbie.  Over the next four years, we were teammates, friends, and at times rivals.  Jeff was the guy I chased in practice as I was getting faster and learning how to be a runner.  When I was fast enough to actually train with him our workouts, and even our normal runs could get intense, because neither of us liked to ever back down!

Jeff graduated two years ahead of me, but we both experienced high school success, followed by the ups and downs of college running.  After college we found ourselves focusing on our career, and in his case, educational goals (Jeff earned PhD in philosophy two years ago).  Right around the time we each turned 30, we started lacing our shoes up more often, and both found ourselves cranking out the miles and racing again.  I don't get to see Jeff very often - living on opposite sides of the country - but we've really enjoyed sharing our experiences and refound passion for distance running over the past few years.

Jeff has a very cool blog - The Logic of Long Distance.  He combines two of his passions - running and philosophy - into a single forum.  Often he'll discribe the triumphs and frustrations of his own running through the thoughts & writings of other philosophers. 

Another feature of his blog is to interview runners non-professional runners who are still out there training hard trying to run fast.  Jeff acted like I was doing him a favor by answering his questions, but he was the one doing me a favor.  I had a lot of fun thinking back over my high school, college, and current careers, and putting my thoughts in worlds.  I think in times when I get stuck in a rut with my training or racing, it's good to go back and see what I was doing and what mindset helped me run fast in the past. 

I'm not posting the intereview here, because I'd encourage you to check out The Logic of Long Distance if you've never done so before.

http://thelogicoflongdistance.blogspot.com/2011/01/interview-jamey-gifford.html