Finding Passion in Running with Denny Krahe

I'm your host , brian Patterson , and today we've got an awesome guest on the show Denny Cray . Ipad Sunday . Today we've got an awesome guest on the show , denny Cray . Now , if you've been around the running community online , you may have come across his work .

Denny is the creator of Dizrunscom and the voice behind Dizruns Radio , a podcast that's all about running and the people who love it . His journey started back in 2012 , when he got serious about his own running and decided to share his experiences with the world .

Spoiler alert the world wasn't all that interested in the split times , but Denny didn't let that slow him down . After trying his hand at blogging , he found his groove with podcasting , and the rest is history .

Today , we're going to dive deep into how Denny turned his passion for running into a thriving podcast and some of his best advice for runners and what keeps him motivated to keep those logging those miles , so stick around and it's going to be a fun one . And welcome Denny .

I was , on a good day , a bogey golfer , which I guess is all right for most novices . But to play competitively , even at the high school level , you needed to be six or eight strokes per nine better , so you know , 10 or 12 strokes per 18 better . I just wasn't . Wasn't there , but I enjoyed knocking the ball around the around the golf course a little bit .

But yeah , ice hockey was my thing and running was definitely not yeah . I mean , I mean , I've I've played golf only with my dad , you know , sort of on a casual basis , and I've begun to realize that golf is 90% mind and 10% technique , absolutely , absolutely .

You just sort of focused on your studies and being within the college environment ?

You know I wasn't too crazy of a partier but there was a few few light nights of pizza and beers and things like that . And so you know , running was just kind of something that I do a little bit for exercise to try to keep keep the weight , keep the waistline in check , things like that .

But I would never say that I would have enjoyed running in college . It was . It was a necessary evil , it was a means to an end to just try to maintain a decent physique , and that was it .

You know , the best , the best part of every run in college was the , the , the last step , cause it was over , you know , and the first step was the worst because it was just beginning . So , it was a little bit late . It was in grad school more when I kind of started to catch the bug a little bit Okay .

As much as I liked playing ice hockey growing up , I didn't care for the shoveling , the snow and the ice and the cold and all that kind of stuff . So went to college in Florida . Like I said , didn't much love the running , but but my , my studies . I was studying athletic training , so kind of sports , physio , sports medicine .

Oh right , I was around athletes a lot . I enjoyed sport , still enjoy sport .

But we've moved just a little farther North now , but still still in the Southeastern part of the United States still in the southeastern part of the United States .

So a few years after college I went to middle Tennessee state university and as I was the athletic trainer with the track and cross-country team , so I was sitting out at the track every day watching practice , stretching athletes and taping them up as needed , just trying to take care of the medical sides of whatever the college athletes needed .

And ultimately long story somewhat short I kind of started to run just because I was surrounded by runners pretty much all day , every day .

And then when we'd be sitting at the track at the end of practice they'd be stretching or they'd be doing whatever , and I couldn't leave until all the athletes were pretty much done with their workouts and their stretching and make sure they didn't need anything . And there were enough days of just sitting there

. I mean kind of literally twiddling my thumbs , just wishing this was over with , just bored , like I've been been here all day , been here , you know , waiting for for practice to be over , and probably in an effort to try to stay awake a couple , a couple of times , I just go out and run a couple of laps around the track .

Nothing , nothing fancy , but just um , just moving , just trying to get some movement in . And you know , like I said earlier , when I was in in undergrad , kind of every run , like the first step was always the worst , like I really didn't like it .

And I don't know that I liked it when I was running around the track in Tennessee , but like I didn't hate it and so it's kind of like Hmm , all right , this is something that you know , it gets some , gets some movement in .

Of course , the exposure of being around I mean college track athletes are are a higher level than I ever was in terms of their , their running capabilities and talents and whatnot . But just being around it every day and it's like , oh , like maybe there's something to this . And then I didn't hate it .

So it was it started , I was at least where the seed got planted and it took a few years before I really enjoyed it , but at least I I more than tolerated , I liked it enough that I kept going at it , even when I wasn't just bored . Yeah , Even if I wasn't fully , fully on board with the sport of running yet .

Did you ever feel there was that pressure and expectation on you because you had taken a degree you know or you know in that particular field ?

And we definitely had some really , really top caliber athletes on our team a couple of field athletes that were competing at the at the national level and the in the U S , a couple of them even the representative of their countries .

The job was to make sure that , you know , their niggles were taken care of and that they were healthy to compete on the weekend and they were healthy to be able to train you know , during the week , and so so it was . You know , I just I , I guess I I don't know that I consciously thought of it , but I certainly , you know , would consider that I was .

I mean , obviously I wasn't as much a part of the team as the athletes were from the competitive sense , but I was part of the team . I mean , I was , I was , I was in the mix , you know every day .

So it wasn't always super consistent , but I'd try to run on my lunch break and , depending on how the track schedule went with meets and things like that , maybe I could sneak away for an hour at a track meet when we didn't have any of our athletes were competing and nobody needed anything . I could go for a little bit of a run , um .

But then after I finished up a couple of months later I was , I , you know , was done with school , we had moved back to Florida and I decided to look for a half marathon , cause I kind of felt like that was that , like that , that I had raced much .

I think it may be done a , maybe a couple of five Ks , maybe a 10 K before that , but I can't even remember if I've done a 10k before that , uh , but it's like I'll . Just I could see if I could find a half marathon and I honestly didn't really realize what I was getting myself into .

But I just figured yeah , you know , that sounds like 13.1 miles , sounds like a doable , doable distance . I think I could handle that .

And we were living relatively close to walt disney world and my my wife and I were disney fans still are dis Disney fans a little bit and so I looked up the Disney marathon or I was looking for the Disney half marathon and at the time the half marathon was sold out , but the marathon still had openings and it was , I don't know , maybe five months away ,

something like that . So I just said , well , I'll probably just wait till next year to sign up to the half marathon and it'll probably be sold out again by the time I get around to signing up for it . So , which was not how I would recommend people doing it I didn't know what I was getting into for a half marathon .

I certainly didn't know what I was getting into for a full marathon , but I signed up and that was for January of 2010 , was the first marathon and it was I don't know how much you want to get into the story it was a disaster . It did not go well , but I swore I'd never do it again . All those rookie made all the rookie mistakes .

I'd never do it again . You know kind of , all those rookie made all the rookie mistakes . I'll never do this again . This is stupid . Why did I do this ? And then , of course , next year I did it again and didn't go well there .

The distance team , the cross country team , would go off campus A lot of times . I'd go to the trails , I'd go other places to run , so I kind of didn't see their workouts very often . Not that that gives me , I don't know if that was an excuse or not , but I just I just didn't know how to train for a longer distance type of event , I guess .

And so I was doing . I mean , I was literally doing one run a week . I was doing a long run every weekend . I would try to get a little bit longer every weekend . And if the way I tell the story I think it's accurate , I don't know I'd have to go back to my Garmin deep , deep in my Garmin archives to find out .

But I believe that the week , the weekend before the marathon , I did a 14 mile long run and that was my longest run ever . It was 14 miles the week before the marathon , and I mean I honestly I thought that I've done more than half . Now , like I can do this , like like , if I've done 14 , I can do 26, .

You know , because apparently that's how math works is 14 and 12 is less than that , so it'd be easy peasy . Um and so , and , and , and , look , and again .

Looking back , I see all the , the , the , the mistakes , because in that buildup process every week I would try to do like one mile farther and I would always get to what I had done the week previous , feeling good , and then that last mile I was really struggling .

So when I did 10 miles , I got to nine , I felt really good , but the ninth to the 10th was a struggle . And the next week , of course , I got to 10 , feeling pretty good , and 10th to 11th was a struggle .

So I don't know how I convinced myself that if I got to 14 , that the to get to 26 wouldn't be too bad , but it you know , spoiler alert it was . It was really difficult . I think I ended up walking most of the last nine or 10 miles and there you go .

It , walked it in and you know , like I said , I told myself how dumb this was and how , how this was the most foolish thing I've ever done and I'll never do this again . And I was . I was telling myself for for 10 miles of walking that this was the , this was it that I was done .

Thankfully I wasn't , but yeah , that was probably the biggest mistake because I just I was so naive or so just I mean , I just didn't know . You know , you don't know what you don't know .

Obviously , social media wasn't what it is now and blogs and Information was out there , but you really had to go looking for it as opposed to you know , you just kind of stumbling upon it a little bit easier . Um , I wasn't involved in any type of running community . There were runners in town , but I didn't really know them . I wasn't connected to them .

Um , so maybe there's a little bit of excuse there , but I just , I just didn't know and so I just thought what I was doing would work ,

and I I found out the hard way on race day , with you know eight , nine , ten miles to go , that I did not train well for this thing . Yeah , I've got a . Yeah , I could , I could quit or I could get .

But see , I convinced myself so much that I would never do this again that I was like , well , if I'm never going to do this again , I have to finish this one . Like , yeah , I'd really kick myself if I just , if I just quit at mile 18 , like so I just get through it , be done with it and never do it again .

Which is probably the only reason that I made it through that , that 26.2 that day .

And so you know , sometimes there there is an element of you know I'm trying to to make sure that they're doing things maybe a better way than I did . But sometimes , you know , folks really do .

You know , oh , you know , whatever , like cause , one thing I sometimes do , and maybe as a as a negative , or at least can be a negative , of my coaching styles I'm pretty relaxed about most things , so if you miss a run here , you miss a run there , like , hey , that that happens to everybody .

Um , but I , I you know some sometimes that can go too far , where you know , a missed run turns into a missed week , turns into a missed two weeks , turns into I haven't run much in the last month , and then it's harder to get back on track .

And so you know , and there are , you know , there are probably some folks that I've coached over the years that that maybe a little bit firmer guidance would have been , would have been helpful to try to get them back on track earlier . But but I'm I guess that's just kind of my .

My style is more of like hey , you know , come on , let's , let's go and and and I'll try to help you , but ultimately , you know . I mean , I'm working with adults and and you gotta , you've got to bring a little bit of that motivation , you gotta . You gotta bring a little bit to the table too .

I can't do it all for you yeah , exactly , exactly , that's right .

There's more and more races here in the United States are selling out quicker . Some of the lottery races that we have the New Yorks and the Chicago , some of the world majors that have a lottery that five , six years ago it was .

I don't want to say you never heard of anybody not getting picked in the Chicago Marathon lottery , but it felt like almost everybody you knew that signed up for the lottery got in and the last couple of years .

It's like there's more and more people Like I don't know if it's half , I don't know , I don't know what the percentage is , but there's just there's a lot more people that don't get into that marathon than what used to and so like clearly more people are signing up because they're not going . You know , we're not taking half the field .

That means more people are signing up for it .

Well , yeah , I mean I , um , I mean , I did apply for that here that I'm trying to do the six stars and it's like like again . I mean not that it was ever an easy lottery to get into , but it's just like feels like almost no one from the united states is getting in anymore , or having a lot harder time . So I don't know .

I mean , I guess , I guess it feels like there's more runners , but but as a as a runner , I mean not even from the coach side of things , but just as as a runner , like I think that's a good thing , you know there's room because they were saying that I'll probably give a link to the podcast .

I wasn't aware of that , I didn't know that , but apparently that got , and the fact that women could run a first marathon in the Olympics was 84 , which is one by an American . So and that kind of that was another resurgence , another boom , as it were .

You know blows . You know there's some type of boom here , some type of boom there and , like I said , I'm all for it , even though , even though sometimes it makes you know , it makes getting into certain races a little more difficult . Yeah , I think more runners is a good thing so .

Runner's world is going to be Diz Runs and that's going to be . I can just talk about running and get all the sponsorships and all you know , just naive and not knowing what the heck I was doing . But that was the year I kind of like I set my first mileage goal and kind of got serious about being consistent with my running .

Even I was more consistent when I had a race to train for . But even when I didn't have a race , like I was trying to run two or three times a week and try to maintain things , and so I guess I was probably trying to keep myself a little bit more accountable with with blogging about it as well .

But it turns out you know blogging about your , your fart , like runs , or your you know tempo runs or whatever laps around the track , I don't know . I guess it wasn't interesting Cause my first lap was in . You know , whatever it was in was in 90 seconds and my second lap was 92 seconds , like it .

Just I ran out of things to write about that were interesting , about my workouts after about the second workout . But I had a website . I guess it started something that I didn't know where it was going , but I had started something at that point .

So I was either you know going at five or six in the morning to workouts , or you know , five , six , seven , eight o'clock in the evening , and I was working from home throughout the day and just kind of you know , kind of biding my time , almost like how I got started with running .

I was just kind of bored time , almost like how I got started with running . I was just kind of bored , Um , and I'd heard about podcasting a little bit earlier in the year , maybe late 2013 or early part of 2014 .

And I I dabbled into creating like a , like a general fitness podcast as well , and I was just like man , I've got all this time in the middle of the day , Like you know , I've got this running blog that I'm not really doing anything with .

I could , I could maybe try to interview runners and , and you know , put them up on the on the website and that'll give me something to do during the day when .

and kept the running thing going , with no real plan of of of any , a new real plan . Just just , I'm enjoying talking to people and it gives me something to do a couple of couple of days a week , um , and so I'll just keep going with it . And I don't know , I guess maybe it was after about a year or so .

I you know , enough people had started asking if I , if I coached or or kind of you know what , what could come of it ? Um , but I kind of looked into it and started to do that , but but yeah , I mean it was .

It was just , you know , you'd ask , you'd ask a runner to come on to , you know , to , to , to join you as a guest , and like , well , I don't , I mean , what is the , what is the podcast ?

And you at the very beginning of it , but it kind of in the early days of it and kind of see some things evolve and you know it's , it's been a lot of fun to connect with so many so many people over the years .

So in terms of making it more accessible , you know , in terms of you know the production values and whatever it's become , like you said , it's like you can be an equal with someone who is quite professional , who may have like a team behind them of 10 , 10 you know , an editor and a producer , and whatever you know , you can still do it on yourself at a

reasonable level . I think I that's the thing I love about it sort of thing .

You can get in and if you , if you enjoy it and put in a little bit of work and a little bit of effort , you know , have something that not only is it like , sounds good but like you enjoy it and put in a little bit of work and a little bit of effort , you know , have something that not only is like sounds good but , like you know , it's also kind of

a cool thing . It can be a time capsule of of of your life , of other people's . You know people you're talking to , kind of their stories , I think it's . I think it's just I don't know .

I mean , was that , let's say , from day one you said , well , I'm , I have a very , you know , relaxed , so-called laid back maybe style , or is it something you've kind of organically developed throughout the years ?

I don't get too worked up about too many things , and so I think that that that it was just natural for me to to kind of head into coaching that way , without without getting too , you know , bogged down on on all the super fine

details . You know , did you , did you run nine minute pace or did you run nine 10 ?

So I would say that there's been some evolution in terms of , certainly , how I work and you know a little bit more of I don't know whether you want to call it like the bedside manner , if you will like how I interact with my athletes and certainly , and maybe even this is something I haven't really thought about but interacting differently with different athletes .

Does this person need a little bit more of a hard nudge even though I'm still not going to be the yeller and screamer and I'm not going to take it to the extreme but some people do need a little bit more firm guidance or telling the hard truths a little bit more bluntly than maybe beating around the bush sometimes , and some people need a little bit more pat

on the back and come on , we can get back around the shoulder , as it were .

I try to bring my , my real personality and , like I said , pretty laid back , pretty , pretty relaxed about most things I mean and again , not that I , not that I don't have things that are important and goals and things like that and try to , you know , make sure I'm holding myself to a good , high standard as a coach , but also recognizing that you know

everybody I work with like none of them put food on their table based on their running performance .

But at the end of the day , whether they hit the mark or not , do their kids still love them ? Do their partners still love them ? Are they doing a good job at all ?