Annapolis Sailboat Show, marathon training & more podcast interviews

Anna Vinnars, our podcast guest next week, petting the
Giraffes during her cycling trip in Africa.

It's boat show time in Annapolis! I think most people, especially those working the show (and the townies) kind of dislike this crazy, crowded weekend of selling and buying. But I love it. I've been coming to the show since I was a kid, and just the atmosphere around everything is still very exciting for me. I feel like a six year old. By the way, come say hi in booth O-18 between 10-4!

My dad was reflecting the other night that he's been to all 41 boat shows here in Annapolis, since the very first one. I had known this, but it never occurred to me that there were actually 41 of them. He and my mom were married for 37 years, and didn't start sailing until their honeymoon, which means he came down several years before he even started sailing. They had a Sunfish back then, so I suppose that counts.


The sad thing is that this year is the first year he's here without my mom. She died on April 30. He (and my sister and I for that matter), have been bracing ourselves for this series of 'firsts' - Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays, etc - but he did not account for boat show. He almost didn't make it down, but decided she'd be disappointed if he gave up on the things he loves, so here he is, and I'm proud of him. She is too I'm sure.

It's ironic kind of that this month's Spinsheet article I wrote is about my mom in a way About spirituality and finding inspiration from those passed away. I've had a lot of feedback from different people that it's touched, and that makes me proud.

So the podcast is off to a fast start. Ryan got upset with me for publishing that first episode with Wild Spirit Bushcraft so quickly, but I got inspired, learned all about how to submit it to iTunes and was on a roll. I think I worked on that one for over 9 hours in one day. In the end it accidentally got published - I was just trying to see what it would look like when it went up, but instead of hitting 'preview' I hit 'publish' and that was that. On the good side of things, it puts the pressure on for us to keep talking to people and get an episode up each week, which is the goal.

Matt Rutherford's is up now, with the two bonus episodes, so for those interested in his adventures, there is some three and a half hours of content for your listening pleasure. We talked to Ben Eriksen and Teresa Carey, the sailing couple who are in the process of making the One Simple Question movie about their sailing adventures north to Newfoundland and Labrador in search of an iceberg (go to their website and donate to support the production of the movie - they are doing it all voluntarily, so it won't happen unless we make it happen!). And of course Anna Vinnars, a Swedish girl who cycled from South Africa all the way to Sweden, over 10,000 miles. I fell in love with Vinnars' voice during our chat with her last week, and asked her if she'd do the intro and outro for the podcast. So that nice Swedish accent you hear at the beginning and end of Two Inspired Guys is actually Anna Vinnars. I'm so excited about these episodes that I want to put them up now, but we've got to wait for the schedule. But stick around, it just gets better from here.

Speaking of that, I'm heading out to Pittsburgh next weekend to have two days in person with Ryan to really bang out some interviews and get the structure of the podcast set and the website going strong. This is a sort of passion project for us, something we've talked about starting for over a year, and now that it's going, it's going with a full head of steam. It's a serious endeavor that we hope to make legitimately successful. So subscribe on iTunes and support it! It's absolutely worth listening to, and we've got loads of exciting guests coming up.

The other thing Mia and I are busy with is training for the Baltimore marathon. That's coming up a week from tomorrow (Saturday the 13th), and our friend Micah from Annapolis is running it with us. Mia and I started training in earnest way back in Inverness, in Scotland almost two months ago, so I feel fairly confident. It was kind of a natural progression of our sailing trips over the summer. Mia and I love to explore new places we visit on foot, and there is no better way to get the feel for a place than by running 10k around it's streets and countryside. I'm planning a more in-depth article on that topic, so stay tuned for that.

Anyway, we basically ran all the way across the Atlantic during ARC Europe this year, exploring Bermuda and three different islands in the Azores on foot, then again in Lagos, Portugal. Not training for anything, just for exercise and exploration. And then we ran ten miles along the Caledonian Canal in Scotland and said to each other 'wow, we feel pretty strong, let's try and find a marathon to sign up for.' Two days later we entered Baltimore and that was that. We rested our bodies for five days across the North Sea and then hit the roads hard again in Sweden, running five more times over 15 miles each, including a long exploration of the islands of Gotland and Örno outside Stockholm, and a 17-mile jaunt around the city of Stockholm itself, easily the best running city in the world.

So after about 8 weeks of training, I'm feeling fairly confident for next Saturday. I've got one more long run planned for Sunday in Annapolis (anyway want to hit the roads for 15 miles with me around 7am?), and then will take it easy next week in anticipation of next Saturday. My goal is sub-3:50:00, which would be a personal best. We plan to run another one in the springtime, in which my goal will be sub-3:25:00, which is 'Andy Schell's' personal best, in this years Stockholm Marathon, except that 'Andy Schell' was actually our friend Emil Fast who had used my number (because I was out sailing). His last name is appropriate.