Hi friends. Welcome to the Life with Loverly podcast. I’m Brittany, a wife, mom, and lifestyle entrepreneur here to help you discover your best daily style and encourage you to try new things when getting dressed each day. I took a tiny following on social media and turned it into a community of over one million amazing women, and I am so glad you’re here. I’ll be sharing my heart with you beyond the 15 seconds on Instagram, so we’ll be diving into things like personal growth, friendships, motherhood, marriage, and of course, the business of blogging. Really, this space is here to serve as your go-to resource to building a life you adore while sprinkling some kindness to others along the way. Grab an iced coffee and let’s do life together. I’m Brittany, and this is the Life With Loverly Podcast. Hey, friends. Welcome back to today’s episode of the Life With Loverly Podcast. I have my favorite person in the studio. In the studio today, my husband, Chris. Hey, babe.

Hi.

I am so happy to have you back on the podcast. Since your last episode, I feel like you’ve accomplished several things that we’re going to talk through today. And most recently, you just ran the Boston Marathon.

I did. And I honestly don’t remember the last time I was on the podcast. Was it after Tokyo?

I think so. It’s been since we’ve been in this studio.

Yeah.

So it’s been a while.

Yes.

And I figured we could just kind of talk about the marathon. I know there’s several listeners and followers who are just interested in your journey overall. This was kind of something that you started about six years ago. Really, you got this hobby and you went headfirst into it.

I have an addictive personality. So if I start something, I usually kind of dive in, not feet first.

Right.

So yeah.

Okay. So before we get started, let’s talk a little bit about the six star finisher achievement.

So let’s start earlier. Let’s start with the first marathon.

Okay. Taking it back.

Yeah.

For those of y’all who haven’t heard his original story on –

So you and I, while u were seven months pregnant with Collins, went to the New York City Marathon in 2018.

Yep.

My brother was running for Boston Children’s Hospital. I don’t know how well he trained.

I feel like I remember him having a few long runs, but was just kind of like, “I’m going to figure it out. It’s fine.”

He was much more of a mind over matter. And he was like, “I’ll just figure it out and I’ll get it done.”

Which is absolutely my approach to running a marathon. If I was going to do this, I would be like, “Great. Let’s do that.”

We can talk about your marathon pace cheat sheet that you had. So we went up to support him. And while there, we were seeing all the crowds and all the supporters, and it was awesome. The crowds were great. And you and I kind of looked at each other and I was like, “This is a lot of fun.” I had run a half before and I was like, “I’m done. I’m never doing this again.” And then I was like, “You know what? I think I can beat his time.”

He finished like 4:30.

No, it was higher than that.

It was like almost five hours.

H didn’t feel good. His stomach cramped up. He had some gut issues in the race. Runners will know what I’m talking about there. Not enough practicing with gels. And it didn’t go well, but he finished. He did what he set out to do, but I left saying I could probably beat that. So we left. We didn’t even really get to see him after the race because New York starts so late that we had to get on a flight back to Atlanta because I still had a corporate job and I had to be back on Monday for work. So we get home to Atlanta. We were in Roswell, right?

No. We were in Alpharetta then.

We were in Alpharetta. And I signed up for the Chicago Marathon Lottery that night.

Yeah. He was like, “I definitely think I can beat Mike’s time. And so I’m just going to sign up. I probably won’t get in, but this could just be good motivation.”

It’ll force me to run just in case I do get in. So at least I can start with something.

Yeah.

I get in. Have no idea what I’m doing with training.

No.

Like at all. It was bad. And it was an October race. We were training all summer. I just remember not knowing, everyone’s like, “Oh, you got to eat this food or you got to drink this drink.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t know.” So I tried a lot of different things, never really found anything that worked. I was like, “Yeah, I’ll just figure it out day of the race.” But before we get to the race, we go to the expo to get my bib. And that is where we saw the six star medal.

Yeah, that’s true.

So before I even committed or finished running one marathon, I said, “Well, let’s run all six.”

Yeah. Hasn’t even stepped foot onto the course for yet.

I had no idea if I’m even going to be able to do one. But in that moment, I saw it and I was like, “You know what? That’s going to keep me in shape.” At that point, Collins had been born.

Yeah.

So she was seven months, eight months old at that point?

Yeah. Meanwhile, Chris starts this adventure of running and I have a newborn. Like this is in her first year of life. And we go to the… I remember when we went to Chicago, I had found out a week before that we were pregnant with Hazel. And so I think Collins was like seven months or something like that because they’re 16 months apart. And so we’re at this expo and Chris is just like, “Oh my gosh, this place is amazing. Look at all this stuff.” And I’m like, “Can we hurry this up? We’ve got a child in the stroller.” Like it’s just, you know I am like –

There’s 50,000 people there. It’s so hectic.

I’m focusing on her. And this is our first, well, maybe not our first time, but we’ve taken her away out on a trip.

It’s our first big crowd.

Yeah. And so he’s just like, “Look at this.” And I feel like you were like every little trinket that they had, he was like, “Well, this is cool. Maybe I need a towel for this. Maybe I need this.” And I’m just like, “Oh my gosh, get your bib and let’s go.”

Yeah. Expos are a…

If you want to talk about kid in a candy store, get Chris into a Marathon Expo.That’s where he thrives.

Marathon Expo, Master’s Pro Shop.

Yeah.

Those are my two happy places. So we see the six star medal and I was like, “All right, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to run all six. I want that medal.” Next day, I run Chicago. It goes terrible. Training. Yeah, I did some long runs. Never really figured out how much fuel to take in. Never really figured out how much to drink. And on a pretty good day where I think they set the world record on that race, so weather was perfect and all that. I finished. It was slow and steady, but we got it done. I did beat my brother’s time, so I was happy with that. But that night, we walked around Chicago after the race. We went, I think we got Illuminati’s –

We went with your family to dinner.

We went to Illuminati’s, right?

We didn’t.

I though we had –

We went to True Food Kitchen.

Really?

Not to be specific. Yes. But we did eat Illuminati’s a different time.

Okay. I know we had it at some point. I signed up for the Berlin lottery that night. I was like, “I’m going to be better than this.” Off we went. I kept running. Again, finding training plans online. I think I looked at Hal Higdon as a beginner and an intermediate in advance. And I was like, “I don’t even know if I’m a beginner.”

Okay. So let’s back up to back when we were first starting to train and obviously Collins was a baby. You were still working your corporate job at the time and you’re doing marathon running. Do you remember just kind of your mindset around fatherhood back then?

At that point, she was so young and we were so new to parenting. I was just like, I mean, she was three months old.

Whe=n we were really getting into the heat of it.

When I was getting into training and at that point it was like keep her alive is my mindset.

Well, I remember too, on the weekends, we always had such a good rhythm. You take this block while I go train and I’m going to do something. And then in the afternoon, I’ll take the afternoon block and I’ll go out and run errands or get your nails in or whatever it is that you wanted to do. I remember it felt like we were a good tag team at that point, but we almost had to be just because if not, then it would be like you were just running. It got to the point where it was like a lot of running.

Especially early because I didn’t know what I was doing. It was a lot of like, I think I need to do this long run on this day and I think I need to do this on this day. But with the corporate job, I couldn’t do long workouts because I wasn’t doing it after work because by the time I got home from work, you had been Loverly Grey working all day with the baby. So it was kind of like, here, here’s your daughter.

I think back to some of those, that first year that she was born, I’m like, how did I run a business like this and full-time mom? My mom came a few days a week to help, but then it was like she was there from like nine to three. And I was like, let’s get as much work as we can in between this. And then she started daycare and that was really helpful. But I feel like just in balancing training and parenting, it was just like a lot of planning went into it. And a lot of like communication between us to be like, “Hey, this is what I need.” And we were really respectful. And if there were ever times I felt, “Hey, it feels like you’re getting all this free time and I’m doing all this stuff.” And it kind of goes back to on a previous episode this season, I interviewed Dr. Morgan Cutlip. And she talked about discussing with your partner about the mental load that you carry. And I feel like back then we were even having those conversations just on like –

We didn’t know we were having them.

Right. Exactly.

I’ll say, if you are training for any type of endurance race and you are not married, you’re single, go crazy, do whatever you want. It becomes harder because you have to plan around your spouse, you have to plan around your kids, you have to plan around your job. Doing it younger would have probably been easier. But now I never ran a race when we didn’t have kids.

Totally. It’s kind of like all you know.

Yeah. So you have to plan of like, all right, hey, I have to go run for three hours on this day. I need to do it because I need it for the race. So you better have a good relationship with your spouse if you want to be successful in this because you’re asking a lot of them. Obviously this is six years that I started this and the training’s only gotten harder where I’ve been doing more scheduled and precise. So you know my schedule two weeks out, if not more, where it’s like, “Hey, I’m going to be doing my long run on Friday. I’m going to do it on Saturday. I’m going to do it on Sunday.” Whatever it is. You know it so that way there we can plan around it.

But it takes a lot of like communication and we’ve had to work through some of that just to, I don’t know, figure it out. What would you say. Have you felt like there’s been a marathon that has been a turning point for you?

In terms of?

I guess just like you felt like you’re like, “Okay, I feel good. I kind of know what I’m doing now. I got a rhythm.”

I would say Tokyo. It would have been Berlin. Berlin was the first race I ran with my coach and I hired him.

Really? He’s been with you for that many marathons? Yeah. Okay. Let’s talk about him because I feel like that was sort of a turning point in your training, which really prepared you for future races.

So I ran London and after London is when I said, “I need a coach. I don’t know what I’m doing. I love London the city and I just didn’t enjoy the race because it was just another. It was a tough training block. We had had Hazel. We had moved. There was a lot going on. Still didn’t know what I was doing. And I just ran a bad race and I was disappointed with it. And I said,” You know what? I need help. I’m going to hire a coach. “And that’s when I found. I actually listened to a podcast that Nick was a guest on. I was like,” I want to hire that guy. “And I sent him a DM.

Slid into his DMs.

Slid into his DMs. And five or four years later, we ran Boston together.

Nick does not live close. All of this was virtual coaching.

He’s in Baltimore.

So how did that process work? Because I think so many times when people think of like, oh, you have a running coach or you have a coach for something that is like they are physically with you helping you train. But how did it work with him being remote?

So it’s not like a coach where they need to watch what you’re doing. They’re not checking on my form or anything like that. Well, I do think that’s important. If you ever get a chance to do a gait analysis, you should do it because there’s a good chance you have running inefficiencies. Sidebar. So Nick and I, there’s an app that we use when we first got together. I think it was called VO2, I think was the first one we use. And he’ll go in and he basically has a calendar for me that plugs in all of my workouts for the week. And then they take races that I’ve run, whether it be a 5K, a 10K, a half or a full, and they put all my best times in. And then it correlates back to be like, all right, if you can run a 5K at this pace, you should be able to run a marathon at this pace. So that an algorithm basically spits out what my workout paces need to be. So every couple of weeks he’ll data dump a week or two worth of workouts in there. I’ll comment on them, let him know if it went good, if it didn’t go good, what went great, what went bad. And he will review it and then we would have monthly calls. And I would text him when I need it and things like that. But he’s great just because we have a good relationship where I can just text him or call him and be like, “Hey, I need to talk to you about this workout. Or I got COVID during one of the training blocks.” So I was like, “Hey, I need to take a couple days off.” Or, “Hey, we got a bunch going on with the house. I need to take some time.” Or, “Hey, the business is picking up.” Because running, yes, is a lot of physical stress, but if your body’s emotionally stressed and tired, you can’t run. You just can’t hit the paces you think you should be able to. And if you’re constantly holding yourself to a standard, but not looking at other factors, you’re going to spiral into negativity. And he’s great at bringing me out of negativity. He’s like my hype man.

I know. I’m always like, “Chris, let’s talk about marital counseling.” And he’s always like, “I got Nick.”

Nick’s my therapist.

He’s my therapist. I’m like, “I don’t think that he is a licensed therapist.”

Now mind you, his wife is an actual therapist. So he’s like, “I’m not your therapist.” I’m like, “Well, you are though.”

Whatever you need to tell yourself. In the midst of all this training and everything, did you ever feel like quitting?

I would say if I didn’t find Nick, I probably would have stopped just because I was lost. I didn’t know what I was doing. And it was like, I would run a 5K and be like, “All right, that was an awesome time.” I’d run somewhere in the low 19s and be like, “That’s pretty fast.” And then I’d run a half and I’d run it in like 135. And it’s like, “That’s pretty fast.” And then I just couldn’t get over the hump of the marathon. So I felt like I was beating my head against the wall trying to figure it out. So I started working with Nick and we ran Nashville. Was that before or after Berlin? I don’t remember.

I don’t know either.

I think it was after.

But I had a great training block. I was ready to go and I just hit a wall. But he always was there to pick me back up. So anytime I got negative, he was there.

And I feel like you even started working with a few other people after, really before Tokyo to get honed in on your training and get hydration and figure out –

That was after New York. New York was the worst race because six miles in, it’s funny, it was the worst race and it was my third best time. But I just had bigger goals going into it. And six miles into the race, I was like, “My legs feel heavy. This is going to be a long day.” I was sweating hard and I was like, “Oh, this is going to really stink. I have 20 more miles and I’m not in a good place.” So that was tough. But after that, Nick had recommended a, I guess you’d call it a nutritionist. And Kylie, who I worked with, she works with endurance athletes. And we ran sweat tests to figure out how much fluid I’m losing per hour, how much sodium I’m losing per hour. And we’re able to kind of dial in a strategy of like, all right, I changed my diet going into Tokyo, really dialed that in. And then we figured out, all right, this is how much water I need per hour. This is how much carbs I need per hour. This is how much sodium I need per hour. And that’s what led to Tokyo, which was my best race where even flying halfway across the world, having jet lag, being tired, not eating great. Once we got there, I still ran a really good race.

Well, you were just more prepared. I feel like your body, you put so much more effort into it and you wanted to hit those goals. So you were a little bit more prepared to do that. But another reason why so much effort goes into marathon running at the level that you’re wanting to do it.

Yeah. And knowledge is power. I would go do blood work and figure out, all right, hey, am I low in iron or am I low in. I mean, you go to a physical, you usually get eight biomarkers tested. The company I used was Inside Tracker and I think it’s like a hundred and something biomarkers that you’re checking. I did the sweat test where it’s like normally you’re either, you lose a lot of fluid or you lose a lot of sodium. I lose both. So I am as the Lord made me. I got to get in a lot of sodium and a lot of fluid. Honestly, Tokyo’s not ideal when you hear that because they don’t let you bring water bottles or anything like that because it’s the cleanest city in the world. And it made it a little difficult to get the fluid in, but we did it. It’s just over the last six years I’ve learned, all right, your body can handle it if you learn what it needs. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t know if I needed a hundred mile weeks. I didn’t know if I needed 40 mile weeks. I didn’t know if I needed a bunch of carbs or if I needed a bunch of fluid. And as I progressed and learned more and more and more, I was able to actually really enjoy the Boston race. Even though it is a hard race with hills at the very end in a sunny day, I crossed the finish line feeling okay.

Yeah. How do you think training and racing has shaped our relationship?

I think you have been incredible in letting me train. So thank you. My schedule towards the end, especially as I got better, at least one day a week I was gone for three hours minimum. Another day I was gone for 90 minutes minimum. I work out six days a week between running and weights and other things. You allowing that is incredibly gracious and you need that as part of the balanced relationship. I will say, and I think you will attest to this, I’m a better parent when I work out in the mornings. I’m a better person when I work out in the mornings.

I think we also figured that out as you were really getting into this and feeling really good on the days that you wouldn’t or it would just be like we weren’t communicating. And then it was like, well, I though you were taking the. Then we realized like, okay, there’s some bumps that we need to smooth out. And we really realized that you thrive better and just are a better person, parent, husband when you can work out first thing. And so that’s sort of just been like something we work into our schedule. And I think it’s like, we do so much together. We run a business together. We are a family unit together. We are a very unique situation because not everybody works with their spouse and then has flexibility like we do, but then not flexibility in some areas too. So it’s very unique and interesting, but that’s been something I feel like we’ve had to learn how to work together with.

Yeah. And it’s give and take. I make sure that you have certain things that you want to do in the mornings. I make sure that I work my training around that. I’m never going to put a long run on a day where you want to talk to Jen or when you have a workout. And that was the best part about Nick is I would call him and be like, “Hey, I actually need to move. My long run can’t be on Fridays anymore. I need to move it to Saturdays.” Or, “Hey, I need this workout. I can’t have anything on Tuesdays and Thursdays other than short intervals that I can get done quickly because Brit’s got to be somewhere and I’m not getting up at three.”

I know. Well, and it’s funny because the process of getting ready to start the workout, it’s not like you’re just like, “Oh, wake up at five and go straight to running.” It’s like the routine and all the things.

Got to get a little caffeine. I got to fuel. I got to hydrate. I got to stretch. I got to limber up.

All the things. All the things. And I’m like, “What do you mean you can’t just put your shoes on and go run?” But this is something you have to learn.

Yeah. And I’ll tell the audience, this is where I hope you one day will run a marathon so you learn that you don’t just get to wake up and walk out the door to be successful.

I mean, we’ll see.

We’re going to hold her to this, but she did say she was going to run a half marathon at a seven minute pace just off the cuff. She just said that to a few of us and was like, “Yeah, I can do like a seven minute half marathon.” She cannot.

I think I was mistaken when I said that.

Your eyes were bigger than your stomach is what my grandmother used to say.

And however, I ran cross country and track growing up. And when I was 15, could run like a six minute mile.

Yeah, we can run one six minute mile. We’re going to do it 13 times in a row.

Listen, I-

I love the confidence.

If anybody can do it, I feel like it’s me. I love a goal. I love settings. It’s going to take a lot of training, but that’s not what we’re hearing.

We’re going to get you to run a half marathon and see what happens.

Okay. Was there ever a time during this journey that you feel like tested us as a couple?

I would say, I don’t know if it tested us, but we had to learn to communicate. And we had to learn what I needed and what you needed.

Yeah. I think that was like – And

Being flexible.

I mean, I feel like we had good communication before, but this was an added layer that we really had to discuss, especially around –

We were training a lot. My calendar was like, “All right, I have this on this day, this on this day. This is what I need from you.” And vice versa. You’re like, “All right, well, I can’t do that day, but could you move it to this?” And it forced us to communicate a lot.

And I think the good thing here is we’re both planners. We both like to have a schedule. And that really helped us be able to sit down and figure out like, “Okay, here’s when you can train. Hey, I need this time or I can’t take the kids on this day. So you’ve got to figure that out.” So there’s not one memory that was like, “Oh yeah, that one thing really broke us and then came back from it or whatever.”

I do think you’re ready for me to be done.

I mean, but kind of at this point, I’m just so used to it that like –

I think you’d like to take a vacation somewhere nice where I’m not running a race.

Yeah. I agree. I do think the training. Sometimes I feel like going on vacation where I’m like, “Okay.” I think of when we go down to the beach and you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to go run 18 miles today.” And I’m like, “Okay, well, you just missed the first two hours of our morning that we could have been going to donuts or walking with the kids.” So I do think there’s some things that we’ve had to shift priorities on.

Because it’s tough too, because if you want to do it and you’re trying to get better every time, you need a lot of discipline.

Yeah.

I think that’s the number one. I always had discipline, I feel like, but in order to continue the training and continue. Like I said, I’ve had bad races. And you have to have the discipline to know just because the time on the clock wasn’t what you wanted, you still got fitter.

Yeah.

I think that’s the way to put that. So it’s more about, the race is more about a celebration of the journey rather than a put a ton of pressure on yourself. And I learned that a lot at Boston where it was absolutely a celebration.

But I think we kind of had to have a few conversations.

Yeah. I went in, you calmed me off that one.

Yeah. Where it was just like, “Hey, reminder, this is a huge milestone regardless.” We definitely have had to level set each other, I think, in certain times. And there’s been times you’ve had to do that with me in the business. I feel like where I can give it back to you is in your training and just kind of remind you of like, “Hey-”

Bigger picture.

“This is such a cool thing. Let’s just go have fun.” What do you hope the kids learn from seeing you complete these goals?

That it’s okay to set big goals for yourself. It’s okay to. And you should want success. You should want to push yourself. I think I learned running that your body is capable of things that you don’t believe it is. And if you set a goal, stick to it. Believe in yourself and push yourself. My dad taught me this when I was younger, but he said, “Nothing in this world worth having is free.” So whether that’s working and making money or you can’t just show up to a marathon. Well, some people can, they’re just genetically predisposed, but it feels so much better when you earn it and when you work really hard for something and achieve the outcome you’re looking for. I mean, I think it was like 22 and a half hours for the six races.

Yeah. They’ve like done.

They added up all the hours for every race and it was somewhere in the 22 range. But it’s like I pushed myself for 22 hours on race day. In the six years leading up to it, I’ve run, I don’t know –

Probably like hundreds of hours.

Six, 7,000 miles.

Yeah.

Somewhere in that range, maybe more, probably more actually. And just because you don’t know if you can achieve it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go for it.

Yeah. Do you remember any specific moments where the kids got involved in your training or in races?

They’ve definitely come downstairs and watched me work out.

Yeah.

It’s funny because I don’t think they’re old enough to understand it. I hope when they look back when they’re older, they realize how important it was to me and how maybe they’ll think it’s impressive when I’m older. I guess I got to stay in shape to fight off the boyfriends when they get a little older, go to bulking season instead of running season. But I hope that they realize that dad put a lot of time and effort into this goal and you should, I don’t want to say you should be selfish, but I think that if you want to do something, you should do it. I had this goal and you were Super supportive, but I had to be selfish at times. I had to take that 18 mile run when we were at the beach. I had to do certain things to achieve my goals and that’s okay. I think within reason, it’s okay to be selfish from time to time and wanted to achieve things that you want to achieve. In terms of them being involved, I mean, Collins and I ran a turkey trot and I wore an inflatable turkey costume. She said her knees hurt about 30 yards into the race. So we’re going to try again this year because I think she’ll enjoy it a little bit more.

I think they just love –

They love my medals.

They’ve been to a few of the races and –

Yeah. Collins has been to all the US ones and Hazel’s been to New York and Boston.

And they love the medal at the end, which speaking of medals, you did bring your –

Show and tell.

Six star. Can you show that to the camera for those of us listening or watching on YouTube?

All of them or you want the six star?

No, just the six star.

So that’s this guy.

It’s like a pretty legit medal. It has all of the major cities and kind of what their emblem is.

It’s their skyline.

Or skyline.

So you got Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, New York. And that’s actually the order that they run calendar wise. Tokyo’s March, April, April, September, October, November. And on the back, it’s got all of them, the BAA, Boston Marathon, Tokyo Marathon, TCS London, BMW Berlin, Bank of America, Chicago, and TCS New York. And then Abbott Healthcare is who sponsors it and it’s the Abbott World Marathon Majors.

Yeah. Which is pretty cool.

This is what got me into running six years ago.

Yeah. Wanting to win this medal is what –

I guess I know where the kids get their medal desires from because I saw this and said, “You know what? I need it.”

That’s so funny. Is there from all six of the. Well, I guess you’ve technically done seven marathons. One just wasn’t in the majors. But out of all of the world major marathons that you did, is there any moment that was a special memory that stands out from one of those marathons?

I could probably do one from each, but the one that’s obviously closest is Boston. Having everybody there. Boston’s tough because it’s point to point, which means you start in one location, you finish in another. A lot of the races, you kind of loop around. New York, you run through the five boroughs, but you also, you can see runners at multiple times.

We saw you at multiple spots.

Berlin’s the same. Tokyo was the same. London is the same. Actually all of them, pretty much other than Boston. So I knew I wouldn’t get to see you guys to the finish line, but I also knew I would see you at the finish line. I knew that I was going to finish the race. It was funny. I was a buddy of mine from high school who I hadn’t seen in 15 years. I saw him a couple days before the race in Boston and he was a cross country star. I’ll say that because he ran cross country at Notre Dame. And he was like, “Don’t worry. I’ll come back and get you and drag you.” He’s like, “But I don’t think I’m going to need to do that.” He’s like, “I think you’re pretty set on finishing this yourself.” And I was like, “Yeah, I’ll get to the finish line.” But getting to run that race with my coach was awesome. It was a nice little cherry on top of working together for the last four marathons, five if you include Nashville. But the big thing is you make a right on Harriford and then a left on Boyleston. And it’s kind of a known thing in the running community. You make the right and then the left and they make shirts that says kind of that slogan. And when you make the left on Boyleston, you can see the finish line, but there’s skyscrapers on both sides and the crowds are 10 deep.

Mhm.

I mean, they’re massive. So when you make that left, you can hear the sound vibrating. It’s so loud. And you then see the finish line. So it’s like 22 and a half hours worth of work. It all kind of came out at once. And I actually got a little choked up when I made the left because I was like, wow, it’s like done. I can see the finish line. We’re going to finish. We’re going to make it. Nick was next to me and it was just like a nice culmination of six years of working really hard.

Yeah. I know. I remember you just going by and you looked like you had this piece. You were just like, okay, I made it. I’ve done this. You just had this, I don’t know, just this piece of like you were solid, all the work.

Yeah. I felt good on that race. We’d slowed up earlier in the race just because the sun was killing us. I was so sunburned after that race. But it was fun because I got to help him just as much as he helped me in the last four years.

Yeah. Which is kind of fun. Okay. So do you have any other big dreams in mind or you going to just take your breather for a little bit? What are we thinking?

That’s a great question. Originally –

One I would actually like to know the answer to.

So there’s the six star. They’re going to add seven, eight and nine. They already added seven. They’re going to add eight. They’re going to add nine. It doesn’t fire me up like the six star did. It just, I don’t know, just because I guess it’s not official yet. I haven’t seen the medal yet. I guess I don’t have the desire to want it. Sydney’s number seven. Cape Town will be number eight. Nine is still up in the air, but I’m willing to bet a sizable amount of money that it’s going to be Shanghai. But we don’t know when or anything like that. So nothing’s official. So it’ll probably be five or six years before they add those to make it the nine star. So maybe I’ll come back and do that. I don’t know. We’ll see. I looked at, I ran into a nice lady the Tuesday after the marathon because Marathon Monday is Boston. And we were getting coffees and she was telling me that she’s run a marathon in every continent. So I was like, well, that’s interesting. That kind of.

I mean, you already kind of like have three down.

I got three down. Four to go. Six continents, seven continents.

Seven, right?

Yeah. Antarctica would be the hard one. They do a race. It looks really hard because you run it in like snow gear because it’s like sub zero. So I don’t know, that’s not maybe. I really like halves. It’s just an easier training block. It’s not easier in terms of like physical exertion. It’s just easier in time.

I feel like you thrive on like a half marathon.

I’m very happy running half because I know it’s over in 90 minutes. I can kind of rip through it. Training, the long run in training’s like 75 to 80 minutes. Significantly less.

It was nothing.

So those are fun. I looked at Jesse Itzler’s 29029. That could be fun. We can go glamping. Go up to Jackson Hole and go climb a mountain 17 times or whatever the number is to get up that. I don’t know.

All these goals are still such like aggressive physical.

I’m going to play a lot of golf for the foreseeable future.

Yeah.

Kind of got the bug in that. So I want to get better there. Again, I have an addictive personality, so like –

Whatever it is you’re going to get. Yeah.

If I do something, I want to get good at it. Interview me in like six months and maybe I’ll have a goal in mind.

Yeah. Okay.

I’m still kind of enjoying this one. I still got to get a frame for this.

That’s true.

We’ll see.

Have you thought about how we want to celebrate milestones as a family? I mean, obviously the kids are six and four, but as they kind of start to do things and hopefully hit goals and have you ever thought about like.

I hadn’t. I do think it’s important to celebrate milestones, especially if they put their mind to a goal. It’s okay to not achieve the goal. Say you want to break four hours in the marathon. Very strong goal. You run a 401. You’re not a failure. You still train to do it. You still put in all the hours. Part of the goal setting is the journey.

Yeah.

And I think celebrating the journey is just as important as celebrating whatever race you’re running.

Totally.

So I would just tell them whatever race you’re in, run the race you’re in. So, if it’s Collins is really liking soccer, so be it. We’re going to be in on soccer. Hazel, not as big a fan of soccer. We’ll see what she wants to do.

We’re still trying to figure out what she’s.

She says she likes gymnastics for the breaks. We’ll see about if that sticks as she gets older. But I think finding whatever they enjoy, I want to celebrate the enjoyment and not just the results.

Yeah. I like that. Okay. What’s one way we can challenge ourselves together in the next six years?

I mean, I would go physical fitness just because I’m in shape, but knowing –

Are we about to become a High Rocks team?

I don’t know how many people know what High Rocks is, but a lot of our friends have gotten into it. Your gym has gotten into it. I don’t know. We do a lot together already. That’s true. Parent, spouse, owners of the business. We kind of spend a lot of time together. I don’t know if we want to go down that rabbit hole.

No.

Maybe. I think –

I mean, that would definitely challenge ourselves.

It would. We’re also very competitive, so I think we’d get mad at each other.

Yeah. I don’t know. It’d be interesting. I feel like we do. Yeah. I don’t necessarily know that I want to do that. I just know we’ve been giving our friends a hard time about it.

Knowing you, you’ll probably want to start another business in the next six years.

Oh, yeah. I think like three more by the time six years. If you think about it –

If we want to challeng ourselves…

We eventually started two businesses since the last time, the last six years.

Yeah. And move three times and…

Yeah. We don’t take things lightly. I mean, I have probably like five ideas in my head swirling around right at this moment that I’m like, “How can we make all of these things happen?”

You love a good project.

I do.

Maybe we’ll add some kind of fitness project to that agenda and see.

You could have a fitness app and you could be like a running coach. You and Nick could start your own fitness app.

Could be interesting.

I know. Okay. So what are you most proud of? Not just the races, but about who you’ve become as a person.

I’ve said this before. I don’t know if I said it on here. I look at marathons a lot differently than when I first started. When I first started, I looked at it as very goal time oriented. And I’ve come to change my thinking on that in that just because you run a two hour marathon or a six hour marathon, you still are a marathoner. So some people genetically predispose, they’re really fast. Some people, professional athletes, they can take all the time in the world to recover. They sleep during the day. They have all the advantages they need to be successful. Other people, they are raising money for charity, they’re moms, they’re full-time workers. They have 900 things going on, but they still tow the same line and start the race and they still finish the race. So our body knows effort. It doesn’t know speed. It doesn’t know how. If you’re running 10 miles an hour or six miles an hour, it just knows, “Hey, that feels like a seven out of 10 on the effort scale, bud. Let’s peel this back a little bit.” And I think what I learned is not to, not judge because that’s not the right word, but look at it from the perspective of everyone is made up differently, but if you toe the line and cross the finish line, you’ve done the same amount of effort as somebody else.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like I hope that you’re also just really proud of your accomplishments. I feel like that’s something you and I are both achievers in the sense that it’s just like, “Oh, this is just what we do.” And sometimes it’s hard for us to celebrate the wins, but really sitting back and just being like, “Wow, I did that. I’ve reached that goal. This is a huge deal.”

I set a goal six years ago. I hit the goal.

Yeah.

Our personalities are like, “All right, we set the goal, hit the goal. All right, what’s next?”

Yeah. Instead of living in that. But I think –

I want to make sure the kids know that you and I specifically work better at celebrating their wins and celebrating the small victories and not just letting it pass by of like, “Hey, we had a goal, we hit the goal, what’s next?” We need to take a step back, enjoy, not enjoy life because we absolutely enjoy life, but more celebrate those victories.

Totally. Okay. So I want to switch gears a little bit. I know Father’s Day is coming up. When this episode goes live, we’ll have a few weeks till Father’s Day. Let’s talk about some gift ideas, some of your favorite things that you’ve loved receiving as far as gifts for any type of reason that you’ve gotten a gift in the past. If you had to give somebody five gift ideas that would be great Father’s Day gifts, what would you say?

Five great Father’s Day gifts. I would say I’ve changed this a little bit. I love experiences.

Yeah.

I know you do too. A night away together, an experience is number one on the list. Number two, I would say anything hobby related. So if they’re a runner, get them something for running, whether that’s a Garmin watch, whether it’s something they wouldn’t buy themselves. For golf, maybe a pair of golf shoes. I would stay away from. For runners, I’d stay away from running shoes just because you kind of need to try them on and you need to make sure that it’s what you like and what you don’t like. For golf, I would avoid golf clubs unless you know specifically like, Hey, this is the brand he wants, this is everything he needs. Or you could do experiences for them like a golf fitting or do the running analysis that I talked about. Or if it’s, hey, they’re into running and they don’t really know what they’re doing, maybe you get them a running coach for a couple months or you get them a golf coach, a couple golf lessons. And I think tying the experiences to the gift I think is a great idea. If they aren’t into certain things like that, I would say an event, like a concert or a sporting event. I think those are always great gifts that I enjoy. I also enjoy just like, “Hey, you know what? We’re going to go to dinner tonight and it’s going to be your favorite restaurant.” Little things where I get to pick where we go. And I know we always argue. Well, not argue, but we can’t ever figure out what we want for dinner. It’s kind of our lifelong –

You think that’s every couple’s like…

Lifelong thing. Like hey, you know what? You figure out what their favorite steakhouse is or something like that. And you say, “Hey, this is what we’re doing. It’s planned. We’re going. Reservations are made. Get dressed. We’re heading that way.” I think that might be five.

So basically your first suggestion to everybody would be experiences, something to fit with their hobby, something you could do together. That’s quality time. Also, I think playing on what the person, what their personality is and what their love language is. What about just your all-time favorite gifts that you’ve received that have just been products or things that you feel like are good great gifts too?

I’ll start with one thing to avoid. If your husband wears a suit to work every day, don’t get him a tie. All it’s going to do is remind him of work. So avoid work wear.

Okay.

But if you’re like, “Hey, here’s a nice new pair of Cole Hahn loafers that he can wear all summer long, he can dress them up, he can dress them down.” Just like a comfy pair of shoes. I would say you can kind of tie it together like a nice polo. Just a nice Pita Millar polo that he can wear out, that he can wear to the golf course, that he can wear to a nice dinner. I would say if he’s a golfer, maybe like a range finder or I would avoid clubs, but I would think like a range finder or maybe a hat from his favorite course or something to that effect. Runner, always safe with honestly the stocking stuff for type gifts. I loved when I’d get a bunch of my gels that I like, so

Yeah.

Wouldn’t have to worry about ordering them for that month. Or even like a running watch. Or if somebody’s just starting their fitness journey and they don’t know what they’re doing, I would say a simple Garmin would work great or a Khoros, whichever brand. I lean Garmin just because I like it better, but they’re both great. I think I would try and find something that’s their hobby related more than their work related if you’re going to buy gifts. And then I would also look at like something that they wouldn’t buy themselves. Most guys aren’t going shopping for apparel loafers. They’re not going shopping for a new shirt. They’re not going shopping for a nice. Smathers and Branson does the nice belts. I don’t think they’re going shopping for things like that.

Isn’t the Smathers and Branson the one that you can kind of –

Customize.

Customize and you’ve done like once –

I’ve never done the custom one, no.

I thought you-

I built it and sent it to you and it never made its way to me.

Okay. Maybe we can rebuild that and it’ll make its way to you in June.

But yeah, they’re very popular belts, but you can like –

They’re like the needle point that you could put all of the different. Your school that you graduated from, things that you like.

Sports dealings, your kids’ names. You can do a bunch of different things. You can do their monogram. So I think stuff like that.

I think too, how you said things that they’re not going to go buy. Sometimes I’ll have people send me messages and they’re like, “I want to update my husband’s wardrobe. What are some staples that you would suggest?”

A nice blazer that’s within their color scheme. So for me, it’d be blue. Probably some kind of window paint or some kind of design on it where it’s not just your standard run-of-the-mill blue blazer. Button downs, I really like the Miss & Main. I really like the Pino Mollar summer comfort ones. It’s like the dry fit material, which is never a bad thing in the Georgia heat. Shorts-wise, I think the Johnny O ones that don’t have the buckle, they’re like the pull-on, the stretch fit. Those are big fan of those.

Well, and the good thing, I feel like with Father’s Day being in the summer, it’s always a great time to refresh the bathing suits, get a new pair of sunglasses. You are a huge fan of Gooder sunglasses for running, golfing. They’re affordable if something happens to them.

That’s the best part of them. Especially with the kids. Glasses are going to break.

Right.

Gooders, I think the most expensive pair is like 30 bucks. So it’s like, look, money’s relative, but I feel a lot better about Collins stepping on my Gooders than a pair of like Maui Jims or a pair of Ray-Bans. It’s like this one doesn’t sting as much. Plus they have all these different colors you can get and they’re super light, big fan of Gooders.

Yeah, that’s fun. Well, we will also do a little wrap up of all your favorites. So for those of y’all who are listening and you’re like, “Wait, what did he say?” We will list that out and share it in the show notes and then have that over on our Instagram on Life with Loverly as well. So all great ideas that I just mentally took in some of those for myself as well. Okay. So wrapping up, I feel like one of my favorite things from watching you race was just the dedication that you committed. You’re just like a very committed person. And when you find something and you set your mind to it, you really want to commit to that goal and do everything in your power to hit that goal. And so it’s just been really cool to watch you grow as an adult and as a person. And we’ve had a lot of change just like in where we live, in our jobs. And just to see how you’ve consistently kept those things, that’s been cool to watch. And just to see you get better. You’re getting stronger, you’re getting faster. I truly think you could teach people how to do this. You’re a great coach in. I mean, you were previously a lacrosse coach and I think you just have like an athletic mind. So I feel like running is now part of you.

It’s certainly not the end of my journey.

No. We might switch up the distance a little bit, but I think there’s a lot of opportunity here.

Thanks, Babe.

I’m proud of you. And thanks for coming on the podcast and talking through all of that.

Well, thank you for having me. It’s always fun to get to semi-brag on yourself for a little bit.

I know. All right friends, well, we’ll leave all sorts of fun information for you guys on how you can find Chris’s running coach, his website and Instagram, the nutritionist that Chris worked with, some of the points that he made throughout. We will make sure to link those in the show notes. You can easily access them and we will talk to you next time. Hi friend. If you’re loving the show, will you go find that follow button on your podcast app? This will ensure that you won’t miss a single episode. I love having you in this community. Until next time. This season of Life with Loverly is produced by Elizabeth Evans Media Productions.