"RUN WITH A CELEBRITY" Day

Today I had the privilege of meeting in person and running with none other than Chris Russell, creator of the Run, Run, Live podcast (and, if you listen to it, I'm the dude who sings & plays the opening jingle, the one at the end, and the parody songs heard on his show. Okay, enough shameless self promotion. But buy my songs. And Chris's e-book.)

He's in town vacationing with his wife while celebrating his...hopefully he won't mind me saying...50th birthday. After fighting horrendous road construction coming into downtown Seattle, I found a parking spot and ran to meet him at Myrtle Edwards Park, near Elliott Bay. After a few minutes of formalities, we began running north along the waterfront on the paved trail. As is often the case when running with others, the pace gradually (i.e. immediately) sped up to sub-8 minute miles. Once we got a handle on that and agreed to slow down, we worked our way down to sub 7:30's. Well. So much for an easy run. Still, the pace allowed for a steady flow of chatting, but for a guy battling plantar fasciitis problems, Chris can still handily hold his own during a run.

We finished with about 3.8 miles of quality running and walked to a Starbucks, just across from the Space Needle and continued to shoot the breeze for another 45 minutes or so, talking mostly about (are you sitting down?) running.

Chris Russell and yours truly getting caffeinated after our run.

It was great to finally meet him in person. He's a heck of a nice guy. I hope to make it out to the Boston area some day to run in the woods with him and his dog Buddy. Hopefully I can keep up and not get lost...