Trained By Tawm

Tom shares a personal story from the 2012 Boston Marathon.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of My Heart Radio.
I am Tom Holland and this is Fitness Disrupted. Now.
I have truly made my passion my vocation. I love
what I do and I have had just so many

(00:22):
incredible experiences over the years that are connected to fitness
because I made my passion my vocation and I'm all
about collecting experiences. It's all about experiences for me, not things,
not material possessions. It's just amazing experiences and fun uh,
different types of experiences all over the world connected to fitness.

(00:44):
For the most part. I'm gonna share one story with
you today. I've told this story numerous times and I'm
going to share it with you today. And what I'm
calling it is the Trained by Tom, a Boston Marathon
short story. So regardless of whether you're a runner or not,
I think you get a kid get of this one.
So let me preface it by saying I spent many
years in Boston because I attended Boston College and I

(01:06):
stayed for numerous summers as well to work. So I
have connections to Boston in unique ways and this all
ties into one year many not many years ago, would
be two thousand twelve, two thousand twelve. One thing I
did over the years that I've talked about is I've
paced clients through marathons all over the world. So you know,

(01:30):
back when I was training and coaching clients in person
as well, oftentimes I would run with clients and then
for certain clients, they would hire me too past them
through races, and I did so Rome Marathon, Boston Marathon,
Paris Marathon, just incredible experiences. So this one is the
Boston Marathon story. And in two thousand twelve it was

(01:55):
one of those crazy hot days. That's one of the
most amazing things about the Boston Marathon is it happens
in April. It happens on Patriots Day, which is a
holiday in Boston, you know, just in Massachusetts. Uh, there's
a movie that came out called Patriots Day based on
the bombing. We're not talking about that. This is a

(02:15):
happy story, funny story, but it's an incredible day in Boston.
So it's a Monday in April, and historically speaking, you
never know what you're gonna get weatherwise, So we can
either be thirty degrees and you know, raining sideways, freezing cold,
or it can be as it was this year. Uh,
high eighties, low nineties. Incredible. And what's challenging is because

(02:40):
it's April and many people are training through the winter. Okay,
so it can be super challenging. If you're in the East,
you're training primarily inside for many people, I mean you're
getting outside when you can. But then all of a
sudden you have this Indian summer day where boom, it
is super hot. That's what happened this year. So I

(03:02):
was pacing a client. Now, this is actually one of
the clients that I talked about in my book The
Micro Workout Plan. Okay, so he came to me many
years prior. His goal was to lose weight, to to
get healthy. He was an entrepreneur working his butt off.
Was not a runner, couldn't run more than a couple
of minutes. And one of my greatest success stories. We

(03:25):
spent years fixing everything, getting him strong. He followed the
excessive moderation plan and he became and is in his
sixties now a top marathoner. Okay was running three forties
in his late fifties, after having not been able to
run at all. We would run a minute and we'd
walk four minutes. Then we'd run a minute and we'd walk,

(03:47):
and progressively he got stronger, he got faster, and we realized,
oh my gosh, like he's truly a runner who knew
And that is just one of the kind of fun
stories that I have in that book, and it just
shows you what you can do. All right. But he
he did a couple of marathons and he qualified for Boston.
I mean insane, right, you know, the non runner becomes

(04:10):
a runner later in life, qualifies for Boston. Amazing. So
we're in Boston, you know, Sunday night. We look at
the weather report and we see that, oh my goodness,
it could potentially be this brutally hot day. And we
had goals, as I always did with clients. We set
probably two or three goals. Here's our primary goal, like

(04:31):
you know, uh, really reaching for it. There's a secondary
third goal. So when I saw the weather report, I said, listen,
our first goal, you know, our you know, perfect day
goal is out the window. It's not happening because you
can't beat the weather. All right. So he agreed and
we started the race, you know, morning of amazing. If
any of you have done the Boston Marathon, it's just

(04:53):
one of the greatest races out there. You know, you
go to hopkins In. It is a point to point race.
You run from hopkins In all the way into the city.
Amazing And because and this goes to the story, because
it's a holiday, you know, people have the day off
and it's a party atmosphere, and especially on a day
like it was in two thousand twelve, beautiful day, hot day,

(05:16):
so that party atmosphere was even more pronounced. Now I've
done the Boston I think I don't know ten eleven
times maybe, and I've done it a couple of the
years that were hot, and this one again huge party atmosphere.
So we are running the race and it's challenging, and
I have him doing all the tips and tricks for
running in the heat. Uh, he's got a bandana around

(05:39):
his neck. We're cooling him down. We're doing all these
different things and it's challenging and we're just paying you know,
we're Our goal is ultimately to finish. That is the
first goal, right and it should be for every race,
just to finish. Yes, you can have your time goals,
but especially on a day like that when you can't
beat this brutal environmental conditions, the goals defend. So for

(06:01):
those of you who know Boston, you might have heard
about the Heartbreak Hills. So one of the challenging aspects
of the Race of Many is that at the later
stages of the race, Uh, they're the big hills. You know,
we're talking, you know, almost at mile twenty while starting
at sixteen seventeen eighteen, you start to get these hills.

(06:21):
And they are right before Boston College as well, which
is kind of fun. So we get to these hills.
We're doing fine, we're going slowly, and my clients says
to me, Tom, I need to walk some of these hills. Now,
most people are, many people are at that stage. It
is really really hot. It's the later stages to be
running for a couple of hours. So I said, of course,

(06:43):
of course we're gonna walk. We'll walk when we can
and we'll run when we can. So we start walking
up a hill. Now for this race, I had new
gear made up for myself. It was a shirt that
said trained by Tom and big letters on it, kind
of like bodied by Jake, Trained by Tom. So big
letters is across my chest. Trained by Tom. So he
and I start walking up this hill again. Other people

(07:05):
walking around us, some people jogging slowly. It is a
challenging day to say the least. Now packed crowd, you know,
four or five deep, people are partying. You know they're out.
It's now. The Boston Marathon starts later. It doesn't matter.
In Boston, people are drinking and having fun. So we're walking,
and we're walking up this hill, and out of the

(07:25):
corner of my eye, I can see a guy just
keyed in on us. He's got sunglasses on, he's got
a beer in his hand, he's kind of swaying back
and forth a little bit. He's been having fun, you
can tell. But he is totally keyed in on us.
And I'll go here we go, Here we go. I
spent years in Boston where I'm ready. So as we
walked past him slowly, he looks at me, looks at

(07:47):
my shirt and says, trained by Torn, Trained by Torn.
You call Torn and you tell him you want your
money back. That is Boston at its finest to me.
So didn't know that I was pacing this client, didn't
know that I was walking because I was his coach

(08:12):
and he needed to walk. Oh, he just saw relatively
fit guy walking with a big you know, Trained by
Tom across his shirt and he felt the need to
make a comment. Awesome, awesome, laughed, eventually picked it up,
started running again, but we threw the run walk in
and we finished. But that's one of my favorite stories

(08:33):
about Boston, typical Boston guy, funny, and I have never
forgotten that moment. Trained by Tom. You call Tom and
you tell him. So there you have it. Just a
quick fun story. Every now and again, I'm gonna throw
these in just to mix it up. But I also

(08:53):
want to say that within this funny experience was this
amazing experience with a client who went from not running
it all in his fifties to becoming a Boston Marathon
qualifier sub four hour marathon or well into his sixties
and is still running today. So there you have Trained
by Tom, a Boston Marathon short story. Hope you enjoyed

(09:15):
it all right, Thank you for listening. If you could
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And if you have any ideas or comments you want
to reach out and tell me you know a show,
idea or anything. Train tom h Fit, I should say
tom h Fit is my Instagram and my Twitter. You

(09:37):
can go to my website Fitness Disrupted dot com reach
out to me through that as well. Thank you so
much for listening. I have the greatest job in the world,
and this show is all about helping you live your
best life, to bust through all the myths and misconceptions
and bad advice out there, because we have one life
to live and we are in control of three amazing things.

(09:59):
How much we move while we put into our mouths
and our attitudes, and that's amazing. And I want you
to live your best life and to do that you
need the best information, which is Fitness Disrupted. I am
Tom Holland Thank you for listening and believe in yourself.

(10:21):
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