Introduction! A Couple of Crummy Marathoners

Hi, I'm Mo Crum.

And I'm Harrison Crum.

And we're the Crummy Marathoners. 

This podcast is for beginners, by beginners. 

If you're thinking of running your first marathon, or half marathon, or are in the process, this is for you. 

We realized as we were training that many resources out there expect people to know what they're doing when marathon training. Well, think of this as a marathon training guide for dummies. We'll go through many of the questions we have as we make our way through the beginning of our running journey and what we have learned. 

If we can inspire others to run a marathon, then we consider this a success. 

Okay everybody, welcome to episode 1 of the Crummy Marathoners podcast. 

Woohoo!

We are so new to this, so please bear with us, you know, we listen to a lot of podcasts, but we've never actually done one ourselves. So, you get to join this journey. You get to come along for the ride. But, the first question I have--I know a lot of our friends and family have this question is for Mo, how does it feel? You've just signed up for your first half marathon. What's going through your mind?

I'm equally excited as I am nervous.

Yeah, I had a lot of those same feelings. I just did a full marathon, my very first one.

Go Harrison! 

It was the Rock N Roll Phoenix Marathon in January. We can talk about that later because right now I want to talk about Mo and your training plan and expectations, and, why did you do it? Let's start there. 

I don't know, I think I was incredibly inspired by your journey from everything that you decided or talked about with your mom up until you crossed the finish line. Just all the commitment and the time and the energy that you put into it, and the feeling that I saw that you had once you crossed the finish line, and also the feeling that I had as your wife and our kids had seeing their daddy accomplish something so great. So really, you inspired me Honey.

Wow, I'm honored. Well, I can't wait to see you do it, and I want to talk about the training plan, what we're going to do, how we're actually going to make this a reality because we have two little ones at home. We've got an almost three-year old and an almost 9-month old, so we've got to figure out a way to both train for our marathons. So, just to give everyone a little bit of a sneak peak, I'll be running the San Diego full marathon May 31st, and Mo's going to be running the half marathon.

Yes, can we?

Can we what?

Something that I feel I was not aware of even before is what is a full marathon and what is a half marathon?

Oh yeah, we should probably--there's probably some people listening who have no idea what that even means. 

Yeah, I think we should probably like break that down, because I didn't realize I would be running 13.1? miles?

Yeah, 13.1. You didn't know that when you said you wanted to do the half?

I mean, I knew honestly when you said you were running a marathon, I thought that was 13 miles. 

Okay, and I think a lot of people have that misconception, is that the word? Misconception? Yeah I think it is.

Yeah

That a marathon is like 10 miles, 15 miles. I don't think most people realize that a full marathon is actually 26 miles. I never did until I met a couple people and I was like, there's just no way. But a half marathon, that's still a really huge thing. Like, most people can't just go out and run a half marathon. 

No, and I think right now I'm qualified into that most people. So this is going to be really interesting to see if I can actually do it.

So what can you--right now just to set the baseline for everybody, because what, our goal here is we want to inspire people to run because we know how healthy it is, and if everyone could do some type of physical activity, I think it would solve a lot of our problems today, but um, so... man I just lost my train of thought. I'm so bad at this.

No you're not, you're doing great! I can answer that question though.

What was my question?

What's your baseline? 

Oh yeah! That was it! Ok so your baseline, what can you run right now? It's late by the way, sorry guys. It's like midnight, so. 

What can I run right now? Like, running in itself there are so many complex layers, like, you just asked me that question, I have like, wait, do you mean on the treadmill? Or do you mean how long I've run?

Like, what can you, anything. All of it. If you put on a pair of running shoes how far do you think you could run right now?

I think I could definitely do a mile. At least. 

Okay, that's a good start. 

I think pushing it would be 2.5-3 miles. And that's, yeah that's...

K. And you just had a baby, so everybody, Mo just had a baby in May.

Well, almost 9 months ago.

Yeah, but still, a lot of people, it takes a long long time to lose the baby weight. Do you feel like you're back to pre-baby weight status?

No. And that's another reason why I want to run a marathon, not even so much of the physical aspect, but like mentally, getting abck into that stage of like being physically active. And, I think it does a lot for my mindset, and so that's what I'm really excited about. And I'm also nervous because I remember you talking to me a lot about the mental aspect of it and how it plays a crucial role.

Yeah it's mostly mental. Well, you have to have the physical stamina, because you have to be able to build up your muscles and your breathing and your cardio and all of that, but a lot of it's mental, and I can tell you that from my first marathon experience. Even my first half marathon experience. Do you, if someone asked you, are you a runner, how would you answer that?

I would say I like running--I wouldn't say I'm a runner.

Okay, so you heard it directly from Mo Crum everybody. She is not a runner. Now my hope is like 6 months from now--not even--4 months from now when we do our first marathon, you're going to be like, I'm all in, I'm a total runner. And maybe you won't. and maybe you're like, I'm done. And that's totally okay too. But, we're going to go through this journey together, so, I don't know, maybe we'll do this every week, or just kind of however this flows. But maybe we can get listeners, if there's even any listeners out there, to ome on Instagram and DM us some questions, because maybe they're considering doing this. 

Yeah, I mean honestly, you've truly opened my eyes to the world of marathons... marathoning (chuckles).

Marathoning. I think that's how you say it.

That's so funny! But you really have, and I am excited to see how far I go and if I can even go that far, and I think it would be good for us to have those questions from people, and even if we can pull in some seasoned runners. That would be really cool too. 

Yeah. So, when we weret thinking abut doing this podcast, I think one of the differentiators we wanted to have this podcast be was, I don't know if that made sense, we want it to not be like the... because there are a lot of running podcasts out there. A lot of marathon training-type podcasts, but they're all like super experts. Either olympic runners, or they've run 50 of them, you know, like big timers. Bit I haven't found one that's just following someone from the very start of their journey. And hopefully we'll catch you on your good days, on your bad days.

All of it.

And then I'll be part of this too because I'm still brand new to this...