Transcription of Active Life #183
Dr. L Belisle: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio show number one eighty-three airing for the first time on Sunday March 15, 2015. Today’s theme is Active Life. How do we balance professional and private responsibilities with the enjoyment of physical pursuits? For each person, the answer is different, but most of us find a great deal of satisfaction in taking the time to run, bike, walk, or otherwise get our bodies moving on a regular basis. Today, we speak with attorney Meg LePage and Ted Darling founding partner at Ethos Marketing about their athletic pursuits and why these have become an important part of their lives. Thank you for joining us.
One of my great loves is running and it’s always wonderful to spend time with people who share the love that I do. Meg LePage is a partner at Pierce Atwood in Portland. She has worked on a wide range of workplace disputes and her clients have included healthcare and educational institutions, financial service companies, insurance companies, manufacturers, social service agencies, summer youth camps and hospitality and recreation facilities. Meg is the mother of four grown children. She lives with her husband Mike in Cumberland. We have Megan today to talk about her work but also about her life outside of work as a dedicated runner. I’m really glad to have you here today.
Meg: Good morning. It’s good to be here.
Dr. L Belisle: Meg it’s funny to see you out running where I live because I live in Yarmouth, the islands out there. You live in Cumberland. That’s a long distance. You’re doing a lot of running these days.
Meg: I’m doing a fair amount. I’m actually training for the Boston Marathon on April 20th, so I’ve had to ramp up my mileage, but I do run Saturday mornings with a group.
Dr. L Belisle: This is probably where I’m seeing you.
Meg: That’s probably where you’re seeing me. We often go out to Cousins Island or Little John and we cover anywhere from maybe five or six miles to twelve or thirteen in the morning.
Dr. L Belisle: Tell me about your running schedule. I know that many runners will do, they’ll put together a plan if they’re going to run say Boston, if they’re going to run the Boston Marathon. What does that plan look like for you?
Meg: Well it’s supposed to be five days a week. I try to take Mondays and Fridays but I’ve had to adjust things with snow and subzero temperatures [sometimes 00:03:58]. I won’t go below zero. I try to run at least one long run and one medium length run and then the rest of them are four, five, six miles.
Dr. L Belisle: A long run for you can be up to?
Meg: Well the longest run in the training will be twenty, but right now I’m running about fourteen, fifteen is the longest run.
Dr. L Belisle: Running for you is something that has come about relatively recently or at least with the intensity that you’re approaching it now.
Meg: Yeah, it didn’t start until I was about fifty-three. I’m fifty-six now so it’s been three years. All four of my kids ran through high school and college, but I stood on the sidelines watching them. It never occurred to me to run other than maybe a mile or two here and there. I had a neighbor who was an avid runner. She kept encouraging me to go out. She ran at 5:00 in the morning which wasn’t appealing. One day I came back from visiting my daughter in South Africa and my time was all messed up. She asked me why don’t you come out and run with me tomorrow morning? I did. I had just finished chemotherapy about six months before that and was trying to get my strength back and so I said on a lark, “Sure I’ll run with you.”
She was training for the Boston Marathon. From that day, I kept going out with her at 5:00 in the morning four or five days a week and I got hooked by accident but I realized there was this whole social world out there of people that like to run together, like to go to races together and so forth. That was a world I had no idea existed.
Dr. L Belisle: You and I have known each other for a while and your life looked very different maybe we’ll say ten, fifteen years ago. I mean your kids are all grown now. Three of them are in [Denver 00:06:00]. They’ve all graduated from college, but you at one time you were really in the thick of things.
Meg: Yeah for quite a few years. It was working full time and having four kids, juggling their schedules was a challenge and I found it very difficult during that period of time to incorporate exercise. It almost felt self indulgent to do that, to take time off to do that, so it was tricky. I played some tennis and at times played squash but not on a regular basis. Now it’s much easier. I can get up in the morning and leave if I can force myself out the door. I can work out at night if I want to so I don’t have those same kind of limits. I also don’t have limits on work too. I can work until 10:00 at night, sometimes I do.
Dr. L Belisle: Why did it feel self indulgent?
Meg: I don’t know. I always felt like I should be doing something else when I was exercising, I should be working or I should be doing something with the kids or getting some chore done. I just felt a low priority for a while.
Dr. L Belisle: Tell me about how you came to be an attorney?
Meg: That was accidental. I was in college. I was an English major. I had thought of going to medical school and decided I liked the arts and humanities more than the sciences and so decided that wasn’t a route I wanted to take. I spent a summer in D.C. working on Capitol Hill and thought that was really interesting, was with a bunch of people that were taking the LSATs. Decided to do that that summer and then I just followed that path. When I got out of law school, I never thought I’d be doing private practice for more than a couple of years, but it’s been about thirty-two years. I’m still doing the same thing I did when I got out of law school to which in retrospect is really surprising to me.
Dr. L Belisle: What did you think that you would be doing when you got out of law school? What did you think your focus was going to be?
Meg: Well I thought I would start out in a firm and then do something different whether it was in house or in business. I wasn’t really sure, but I just figured I’d start out in a firm and I’d probably branch out and do something different but so far doing the same thing and I’m still enjoying it.
Dr. L Belisle: Well I’m fascinated by the wide range of things that you do. It’s having known many attorneys there tends to be quite a narrow focus and you’re dealing with healthcare, education, financial companies, social services, recreation, I mean you’re almost the equivalent of a legal family doctor. It’s an interesting thing because it doesn’t seem to be the way that many attorneys go these days.
Meg: Yeah, well I’m not focused in terms of industry too much. I do a lot of different things but I’m focused on the human resources primarily and so it’s a narrow area of law even though it’s everybody has people in their organizations. Then the school, the education area I’m doing employment work but also work involving students and again it’s people oriented. It is focused in terms of the legal discipline, but it’s a variety and I like that. I like to be talking to a hospital one day about issues involving nurses and then the next day you’re talking about manufacturing welders or some other kind of completely different occupation.
Dr. L Belisle: You and Mike, because Mike has been on the show before and I think people in the community, if anybody doesn’t know Mike LePage already then I’m sure you’ll run across him at some point. You both have a very strong sense of connection to people and in very different ways. It’s interesting to me that you both are in occupations that allow you to connect, not only personally but professionally, but yours is a more quiet way.
Meg: Mine is. Yeah, I’m definitely more quite when you compare me to Mike. Yeah, certainly I have to have relationships with people in order to have business come my way. Those relationships, I’ve had some that have been going on for twenty, twenty-five years and those are really important to me. You get to know somebody pretty well if you talk to them once a week, twice a week for decades at a time. I like that. I like to be able to answer the phone and help somebody, give somebody the answer or tell them there’s no good answer here but what you’re thinking of doing is probably the most appropriate. I like having those conversations.
Dr. L Belisle: How have things changed over the thirty-two years that you’ve been doing this? How have things changed I mean from a work standpoint personally but also professionally?
Meg: They’ve changed pretty dramatically in some ways. Certainly the technology has changed things dramatically. I still remember when we had secretaries who typed briefs and if you wanted to add a sentence in the middle of the brief it had to be typed over the whole thing pretty much, very laborious that way. I was in the early ’80s one of a test case to see if lawyers could use computers. They had four of us and they gave us a computer. I had been using a typewriter just because I compose better on the typewriter. That immediately changed things dramatically for me. I knew nobody was taking away that computer, but all of our research now is electronic. We rarely pick up a book anymore. We can do things so much faster.
I think one of the downfalls is that you’re expected to do so much so much faster that you don’t always have time to think through something. You’re expected to give instantaneous answers and sometimes you really need to sit back and think through something before you can really feel confident that it’s the right answer.
Dr. L Belisle: I’m sure you work with lawyers who are newer to the field. Are you sensing that there’s any difference in the way that they approach the law or approach life in general than maybe you once did, before the age of computers when we were still doing things typewritten?
Meg: Yeah, there are certainly positive and negatives there. I do like the fact that the young people today expect to have a personal life and practice law. I remember a time when I really for probably years didn’t plan things on the weekends for the most part because I knew I’d most likely have to work at some point. I think that turned over. People have their personal time and they try to work the work in. I think that newer attorneys coming in are so comfortable with technology that it’s a real advantage.
Sometimes they can be overly dependent on it and expect to just be able to plug in a couple of words and find the answer when it’s a little more complex. They have to think, go to the tertiary sources and really get the background before they try to find the magic answer by doing a word search. I think that’s a change. I didn’t have the luxury of doing the word searches when I started, so I had to get the background first and then refine it a little bit.
Dr. L Belisle: That’s a really good point. I know that a lot of patients who come in to see me they have access to Google so they’ll go online and they’ll Google their diagnosis and they’ll come and it generates some higher level of discussion which I really appreciate but it actually also opens up this whole notion of ambiguity and that you’re still only really making your best guess at any given situation, I mean based on obviously facts and knowledge and intuition and good judgment, but Google does not give you the answer.
Meg: It may look like the answer but it’s not necessarily the right answer, overly simplified sometimes.
Dr. L Belisle: I have two brothers who are attorneys. I come from a large family. We have doctors and lawyers and such and two brothers who are pretty recently in the legal field. They’re very existed to be doing it but I think it’s a different, it seems like a different profession than it once was. Somehow you’ve maintained your passion for it. You’ve stayed in it all this time. What is it about being a lawyer that has kept you interested in doing it?
Meg: Well I think it’s the area of law that I really like and every day I’m brought into some new human drama and that can be sometimes mind boggling what people do at work and problems employers have to deal with but it’s also interesting and it keeps me on my toes. I always get a, every day I get a question where I don’t know the answer and that’s challenging. I have to think it through and learn something new. That’s kept me interested. Certainly there are days where I’m just slogging through documents and it’s no fun and I get frustrated, but most of the time there’s something new happening and some new challenge keeps me interested.
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Dr. L Belisle: Meg you and Mike have been married for how long?
Meg: Thirty-two years in May.
Dr. L Belisle: You have been a lawyer roughly?
Meg: About the same time. I got married and two weeks later we flew out to Seattle where I was starting my first job and I took the bar exam and then started a new job so there were a lot of new changes all at once.
Dr. L Belisle: Mike I know has a background in the financial field and he’s currently he owns his real estate business. How has that worked for the two of you to be experiencing this professional life and evolving as professionals even as you’ve evolved personally over the years?
Meg: Well I think we both enjoy hearing about things that we’re each working on. We’re both very busy and in some ways that’s good because no one is resentful of the other, like, “Why aren’t you home?” His job has been sometimes more flexible than mine, but at the same time he’s almost on every weekend so there’s that and I used to be on every weekend. I’m not so much anymore. I think the fact that we’re both very interested in what we do for work is a good thing. There’s not one of us that’s frustrated and not enjoying it.
Dr. L Belisle: Somehow you’ve found time to raise four children in there being a set of twins.
Meg: Yes, my youngest two are twins.
Dr. L Belisle: What has that been like for you? Both of you working full time, raising four kids who are all now successfully graduated and out in the world and contribution to the greater good. What was that like?
Meg: When I look back on it I realize it was more of a challenge than I thought going through it. There were times when it was difficult, but we always had good childcare. We had the ability to have somebody come into the house and with four that’s a necessity. Even when they got older, I had somebody come in at 3:00 in the afternoon and she would be in charge of getting them from place A to place B, cooking dinner, doing laundry and that kind of thing. That was just a huge help, but it was wonderful in so many ways, but it was very little time at the end of the day to do anything but the basics.
I did have a rule eventually with the kids that they couldn’t do more than two sports per child per season. You would think that would be enough, but I actually had the twins were each doing three sports at the same time. There was a conflict with each of them almost every day, so that was too much. They are very well-adjusted and self-reliant kids and I think it’s in part because they didn’t have somebody doing things for them every minute. They had to figure things out for themselves. On the other hand, Mike and I were at their athletic events and their music events almost all the time. We didn’t miss a whole lot. We both had jobs although we worked a lot we could also flex and go out and go to a game and go back to the office if we had to. I think the kids felt that we were very much present in their lives even though we were very busy.
Dr. L Belisle: They were all successful as far as being athletes. If I remember correctly, it was when your children were in the local high school at Greely, it was all LePage this and LePage that and I was reading the local sports news I mean they did a great job both in high school and in college.
Meg: Yes, they all participated in three sports a season in high school. I mean three sports a year. They all competed in college. One of my daughters found a new sport in college. She did crew which she hadn’t done before. My oldest played field hockey for Bowdoin which has the best program in the country. That was a lot of fun. She also ran track. My son ran twelve seasons of track at Bates and his twin sister ran for Bowdoin.
The nice thing about having twins at schools that are close together is there would be meets where they were both competing at the same time. That was really fun. We got to travel. We went to a lot of their college games and their college meets. My son competed at nationals a couple of times in Iowa and Indiana and Illinois and we made those trips. My daughter went to the final four a couple of times and we made those trips as well. Those are special memories being there with family.
Dr. L Belisle: Mike also went to Bowdoin and he’s been a lifelong swimmer.
Meg: Yes.
Dr. L Belisle: This running piece for you has become really important recently. How does that feel to be the one in the game as opposed to be the one that’s watching?
Meg: Yeah, it’s very different and I think the kids were surprised that I actually entered a race and ran the first time, but it’s a lot of fun. I never really experienced that to the same degree. Mike is now running. He started this past summer and he ran the Back Bay Challenge where you run every week on Wednesdays and he’s signed up for a half marathon in May so we’ll see how that goes. We’re both going to run it together.
Dr. L Belisle: I’m impressed with the two of you and your longevity because not only have you made it through high pressure professions, four kids together, thirty-two years of marriage, but both of you had cancer and you had it within two or three years of each other about seven or eight years ago.
Meg: Yeah, yeah, that was yeah Mike was first and that was a shock to both of us. It was a difficult time, but he went through the chemotherapy with flying colors and in fact right before his last treatment he got his doctor to agree to postpone the last chemo so he could swim Peaks to Portland, so he had the treatment on Monday instead of Friday. We thought we were in the clear and then all of the sudden my diagnosis. I had ovarian cancer and uterine cancer and was the first person in my family to have cancer. That wasn’t something I had ever thought about very seriously. My diagnosis was scary in terms of the survival rates but fortunately they caught it early enough and my oncologist is one of the people that encouraged me to run.
I don’t know if he did on purpose, but I went to a checkup about maybe almost a year after my last treatment and I told him that I had had a stomach flu. I told him about it because I thought it might be related and I mentioned that I wasn’t able to run a half marathon that day because it was the night before. He looked at me and he said, “What are you doing running a half marathon?” I thought he was going to be critical [by 00:25:39] telling me I wasn’t ready and I shouldn’t be doing this and I was about to explain why I was doing it. He said, “You should be doing a full marathon.” I said, “Well I’m not ready for that.” He picked up my chart and he looked at my age and he said, “You’re fifty-four years old when are you going to be ready.” I thought that’s a good point.
The next visit I went. He came in and I said, “I’ve signed up for the Maine Marathon,” and he was very excited and said, “What’s your time goal?” I hadn’t thought about yet and I said, “I don’t know. I don’t have one.” He said, “You’ve got to have one. What is it?” Off the top of my head I said, “Five hours.” He said, “Oh yeah you’ll do that. Good.” The next visit he walks in and I said, “Four forty-seven.” He said, “What?” I said, “Four forty-seven, that was my time in the marathon.” That’s been a good connection to have. He’s also a runner. He encouraged me.
Dr. L Belisle: Well talking to you is so interesting to me because having recently gone through cancer myself and also being young and also having no risk factors that I knew about, no family history, such a shock to the system. I think it used to be that cancer was thought of as a disease of old people or a disease of people who were going to die. It is a very serious thing and people do die and people do get it when they’re older, but then there are a lot of us who are out there who are younger and are going to live hopefully years after having had cancer, so being active is so important from a health standpoint.
Meg: Oh, I think so. In fact I had some other kind of virus which was never diagnosed before they diagnosed me with cancer where I had pain in all of my joints and muscles for a couple of years. I just assumed that when I started running that the pain might get worse and I might not be able to do it. About a month after I started running, I got up one morning at 4:30, walked to the bathroom and all of the sudden I stopped short and I realized it didn’t hurt to get out of bed. It was first time in a couple of years that I had realized that and I haven’t had that pain since. Part of me is a little afraid to stop. I did ask my doctor could there be cause and effect or was that just coincidence. He said, “Oh, absolutely could be related.”
Dr. L Belisle: There’s also just the pure joy of it. I mean it’s good for your body, but it’s also good for your soul. It’s good for your soul to get out there and be outside and be running with friends. Tell me just describe to me how you incorporate the running just on a regular day.
Meg: Typically I’m doing it in the morning before I go to work. This time of year it’s hard because it’s dark, but I have a number of groups of people that I run with. There’s a group of women in Cumberland that we call ourselves [Run and Done 00:28:55]. There can be as many as forty women showing up at the high school parking lot at 5:30 in the morning to run, so I run with that group. I have a few other smaller groups of friends that I run with. Typically, I’m running somewhere between 5:30 and 7:30 in the morning, then I go to work.
I have run in the evening before but I do prefer the morning. Occasionally I’ll run from the office. We have showers in our office so that makes it possible to do that and run down to East End Beach and then around Back Bay sometimes and that’s nice but it’s hard once I get in the office it’s really hard to get out and exercise. If I get it done in the morning, then I know I’ve gotten it done and it’s out of the way.
Dr. L Belisle: We know that you’re going to run Boston.
Meg: Yes.
Dr. L Belisle: That’s coming up in April. What other running events and goals do you have for 2015?
Meg: Well Sunday I ran the Mid Winter Classic, just a ten miler in Cape Elizabeth. It seemed a little crazy as we were driving over and it was three degrees. There was snow banks and why am I doing this, but I knew that I needed to get a long run in anyway so we did it and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. I have a twenty mile run in late March that’s a tune up for Boston. I’m going to be doing it’s a two day relay race with a group of people in September and that starts up in the White Mountains and goes up to Hampton Beach so you run two hundred miles in about a day and a half.
Now I don’t run two hundred miles but I run a leg of the two hundred miles or three or four legs during the course of the two days and those are fun. I’ll probably, I may run Beach to Beacon and a few other races. I’ll just play it by ear. Last summer I ran with my daughters, the San Francisco Marathon and that was really a fun experience. Two of my daughters ran the full marathon with me and the twins ran the half marathon. Mike ran the 5K the same day. My daughters and I decided we’d all run together for twenty miles and then whoever felt like they could take off would take off. At about sixteen miles, I thought I’m going to definitely take off at mile twenty, but something happened between mile eighteen and mile twenty. The wheels fell off and my daughters went ahead, but it was really a lot of fun. It was a beautiful area, scenery to run a marathon.
Dr. L Belisle: Meg I am so thrilled that you came in and talked to me. You’re speaking my language here. Everything that’s coming out your mouth I feel like could come out of my mouth too, so obviously I’m going to enjoy speaking to somebody who feels as good about running, but also I really appreciate your talking to me about raising your kids, about being a person who’s working along with another working spouse and going through cancer. I think there are a lot of things that you and I have talked about that other people can really relate to. I appreciate your taking the time to come in here and talk.
Meg: It’s been fun and I hope I see you again on the road. I think I saw you a couple of months ago running through Yarmouth.
Dr. L Belisle: That’s right. You’re running in my neighborhood so you and I are definitely going to be running across each other at some point. We’ve been speaking with Meg LePage who is a partner at Pierce Atwood in Portland. Meg is the mother of four. She lives with her husband, Mike, in Cumberland and she is a dedicated runner. She’s going to run Boston. You’re going to be successful and I can fell the joy and happiness that you bring to your life, so I appreciate you sharing that with all of us.
Meg: Thank you.
Dr. L Belisle: As a physician and small business owner I rely on Marci Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marci.
Marci: When was the last time you took a break from what you were doing, from the work that was piled up on your desk and just looked up. I know that during the course of my days I often forget to take a moment or two to just breathe, look up at the sky and dream. Terrible that I have to remind myself to breath but when I do I feel energized because in those moments I’m able to let go of the daily grind and think more about what I want to accomplish, how I want my business to grow, sometimes those are the aha moments.
If we all took a few moments out each day to stop what we were doing and dream a little about our business future, not only would we feel a great sense of calm, but we may come to realize that these dreams can in fact come true. I’m Marci Booth. Let’s talk about the changes you need, boothmaine.com.
Speaker 1: This segment of Love Maine Radio is brought to you by the following generous sponsors: Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage in Yarmouth, Maine honesty and integrity can take you home. With RE/MAX Heritage it’s your move. Learn more at ourheritage.com.
Dr. L Belisle: Here on Love Maine Radio we really enjoy speaking with people who are passionate about their lives. Today I have such an individual with me. This is Ted Darling who is a Marketing Strategist and Agency Principal at Ethos. Outside of work he is an avid cyclist and he is so much more which we’re going to talk about, but we really appreciate your being on Love Maine Radio and also being a part of Old Port Magazine.
Ted: Well thank you for having me.
Dr. L Belisle: Ted you’ve actually done quite a lot in your life, but I know people are going to be interested in this thing that we call Ethos. What is Ethos? Tell me about that.
Ted: Ethos is a multi-platform branding agency. We help clients identify their core truths and then we leverage those in messaging across multiple platforms from traditional media like radio for example, but also through digital media. We basically help clients navigate brand communications and effective communications across various platforms.
Dr. L Belisle: Why is it called Ethos? What’s the story behind that?
Ted: That’s a great question. When we were struggling with our name, our corporate name is actually Results Marketing and Design. We thought that that was what we’d do for clients, but it wasn’t the way that we should describe ourselves. As we started debating really what we are about as a branding agency it was really understanding the core truths, the essence or the name that kept coming up that we were using in discussions about our name was Ethos. What is your ethos? At a certain point in time, we just said, “That’s it. Ethos is our Ethos and so we adopted that name and got behind that in the Spring of 2000.
Dr. L Belisle: When I think of Ethos I also think of ethics and I don’t something that seems more authentic and core. Did that …
Ted: As I had three business partners at the time and presently I have three business partners but a different one. One of the things that brought us together was this core orientation of accountability and integrity and being true not only to ourselves but true to our clients. There was I wouldn’t call it ethics per se, but there’s this desire to be true, to be true to our clients and true to our principles. One of the things that we say at Ethos is that we don’t apply for awards. The reason that we don’t apply for awards is because we don’t want to compromise our clients integrity. It’s about our client’s result, about putting our clients first, not about us.
Dr. L Belisle: You do many things outside of working at the agency. You’ve worked for the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust. You live in Cape Elizabeth.
Ted: I do.
Dr. L Belisle: Why is that important to you?
Ted: Well like many people who become involved in the Land Trust in Cape Elizabeth it was a function of something happening in my backyard. At the time, there was a development involved and I was invited to participate and help in the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust with their marketing efforts. I explored the Land Trust. I really liked what they were doing. They were trying to get younger. I was a younger man at the time, that was probably ten years ago. I got really involved and I got involved at a higher level and really liked what they were doing, what the message was, what they stood for which is interesting because the Land Trust brings together people who are you might say more interested in sustainability and might be more politically liberal.
It also brings together people who are conservative meaning they like things the way that they are or they appreciate the natural environment that we live in. When you talk to people who come to Cape Elizabeth they point to a couple of things, one is schools but also the rural environment and the natural environment around Cape Elizabeth. That’s important to people. It’s really core to people who live in Cape Elizabeth. I connected with that. I spent nine years with the Land Trust on their board. I was five years as president. I couldn’t extricate myself as president during a five year period of time and have subsequently just recently termed off the board, but I remain an advisor on their land conservation committee. It’s just a great organization. One that has a lot of broad appeal.
Dr. L Belisle: I’ve been to the art auction several times.
Ted: Yeah, great event.
Dr. L Belisle: It is. It’s a great event. It’s usually held in a nice venue. I think that all of the art is done within a day or so before it’s offered for sale. They’re all [crosstalk 00:39:33].
Ted: It’s a wet paint auction so actually the art is done that day. We choose venues around Cape Elizabeth. I believe there were twenty venues last year and a total of thirty artists who painted in wet paint in [plein air 00:39:49] as they say. Then they come together for an auction at the end of the day. It’s just amazing what the artists do during that period time and really capture some great light during the July time frame is typically when it’s done.
Dr. L Belisle: You are a bicyclist, actually in the bio that I have for you, it says, “Ted fancies himself a bicyclist and endurance athlete. He trains and races year round as a cyclist, swimmer, and triathlete. He hates open water, ocean swimming, but does it anyway. He loves his wife of twenty plus years and two kids who are grown up. He can’t believe it.”
Ted: True.
Dr. L Belisle: This is interesting. It’s interesting to read this. You seem to have quite a sense of humor about yourself and your life and the desire to live in a fun way.
Ted: I would say it’s fun, but I’m really goal oriented, so everything has an intention. For me, I’m serious about being a cyclist. I’m serious about being a triathlete, so there’s fun about it, but it’s in a work man type way. I tend to be more serious than fun but I do have fun doing what I do.
Dr. L Belisle: You have a sense of humor about it and your definition of fun may be different than other people’s.
Ted: There’s the humor.
Dr. L Belisle: Got it. Got it. Tell me about that. If you not only do you work at Ethos and you have spent quite a lot of time with the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust, you’re also a former member of the Board of Directors for the Gulf of Maine Research Institute [day one 00:41:18] and the Riverview Foundation. You’re a member of the Lambda class of the Institute for Civic Leadership. You really you’re doing a lot of things so how do you find time to cycle. Where does this fit into your day?
Ted: For me cycling is primarily a morning activity in that I find with workouts that with a busy day and a busy life I start early so I start at 4:30 every day and I’m usually out and on the bike by 5:15 and that’s pretty much year round until times of year like winter, but nine months out of the year it starts early. It involves lights oftentimes and just get out and start early in the day. That’s the way that putting the things in that are important first that’s how things get done because if I wait until the end of the day it’s variable. I do have one ride that I try to do every week which is the Portland Velo Club Wednesday night ride. It leaves out of South Portland and that’s a small group ride that I typically do on a Wednesday night during the proper season.
Dr. L Belisle: In the winter time, do you use a wind trainer, do you use some sort of stationary bike. How do you continue to get that? It seems like you have a lot of extra energy so how do you take care of that?
Ted: I do have a trainer that I use in my basement. It’s not my favorite activity. I do tend to emphasize running and swimming in the winter, but I do keep active on the bike. I try to ride two or three times a week inside. I’m opportunistic with outside riding so if the weekend looks promising meaning anything clear roads and anything above twenty-five degrees I do try to get outside and take advantage of being outdoors.
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Dr. L Belisle: I’m interested in this idea of being an endurance athlete and also a triathlete because it’s not as simple as I’m going to go do a few miles on the bike. I mean you actually have to have a training schedule in place. If you’re an endurance athlete, it means you actually have to put some miles in whether you’re running, biking or swimming. I mean that is something that you do need to be very intentional about.
Ted: Right. I have a training program that I’ve developed over time and it’s seasonal meaning it tends to be lighter activity or a shorter duration in the winter, more intense activity in the winter to keep general fitness up, but then adding longer duration during the longer days of summer. I tend to emphasize medium distance triathlons and shorter distance bike races, rather than focusing on iron man competitions. I’ve done several half iron man competitions, but that’s about as long as I want to go from an endurance point of view, mostly because the running is so difficult. The biking is good. The running is difficult.
Dr. L Belisle: You’re the opposite of me. I can envision myself running and possibly biking, actually for me the swimming because even though I know how to swim it’s not quite as natural an activity. How do you balance all of those three things. I mean they’re very different from a physical standpoint.
Ted: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s interesting because during the heavy training seasons, swimming is almost a recovery activity because as we age we need to have more recovery time, but as an endurance athlete you need to be consistent so one of the things is just being consistent and having a daily schedule. I don’t take much time off. I rarely have a day off of training so I’m very consistent. Swimming tends to be lighter day activity in the summer. Then it’s interesting between the running and the biking because I’ll bike in the morning and run at night.
There are different muscle groups so oftentimes my best run comes after a hard bike ride. I do a lot of bricks in the summer. I’ll ride fifty miles and then I’ll run ten minutes or I’ll run ten miles. It depends on the training protocol at the time.
Dr. L Belisle: Describe for me a swimming regimen.
Ted: I swim masters so I try to be deliberate about that. In the summer, I swim at the Kiwanis Pool which is an outdoor twenty-five meter pool, great coach [Jeanette Hagen 00:47:18] does that class. I try to go three times a week and she meters all the activity. She’s great because she focuses on longer distance so you’re doing three hundred to five hundred yard sets. It’s not particularly intense meaning you’re not working super hard. It’s more focusing on endurance.
In the winter and fall I swim at the Cape Elizabeth Pool with Eric French who’s the master’s coach there and that tends to be shorter more intense, some would call it a sprinter’s workout, but again it’s that intensity. Then as you move into closer to goal events it’s focusing on more specificity meaning swimming at the types of distances and running at the types of distances and biking at the types of distances that you need in order to be ready for race day.
Dr. L Belisle: Ted you grew up in Brewer.
Ted: I did.
Dr. L Belisle: Were you doing any of this when you were going to high school or any of your younger years?
Ted: No. I’m a latent athlete. I really didn’t start doing any of this until I started bike riding in 1999, actually took a spin class at the Bay Club and then I started working with a couple of people, did the trek across Maine and just about perished on the ride because it was just relatively hard at the time. Then, I got into long distance events, so I did the trek across Maine a number of times. Then, I did cycle Oregon which is a weeklong even in Oregon, different locations throughout Oregon for five years. Then I gravitated to the climbing. I really started to enjoy mountain climbing and did the bicycle tour of Colorado for four years which it’s not a bike race, it’s more touring. The biking really started the interest in endurance sport.
Then, I started swimming mostly as a way of spreading out the activity during the year. I started to do swim and bike events which are called aquabikes because I was never a runner. In fact, I had had a back injury a number of years ago. I was a heavier person. I had a back injury and my orthopedist said, “Don’t do it. Just hang up the running shoes. You don’t really need to do it.” I wasn’t a serious runner at the time anyway, but I started to develop envy at events because these were all at triathlon events and so I would swim and bike and then be done and everybody else would go out on their runs.
At a certain point in time, I decided it’s time to start learning how to run. I took that up about four years ago.
Dr. L Belisle: This Wednesday ride that you do with a group of other people it sounds like that having other people who are like minded is very important and having good coaches is very important. The community that you’ve been doing this with is critical.
Ted: Yeah, absolutely, so from a cycling point of view I’ve been involved with the Portland Velo Club which is Maine’s largest cycling club. I became president of what we call PVC about four years ago now. That has about a hundred and fifty active members, male and female and we have a series of rides, most notably is the Saturday morning ride that takes place throughout Portland, Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth, and South Portland. It can be as big as a hundred people which can be intimidating during the summertime, which I tend to avoid because of the size of the group but we’ve set up a Wednesday night ride. There’s probably ten to fifteen of us that do a short hard ride in Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough.
Dr. L Belisle: Is there any specific type of equipment that people who are considering becoming a cyclist or a triathlete anything that people who are starting from the ground up that they need to be thinking about?
Ted: Well it’s important from a cycling point of view to have a good bike and a bike that fits so I recommend talking with the people at Cycle Mania and having them basically fit you for a bike. I mean you can spend a thousand dollars or you can spend ten thousand dollars on a bike, so really understanding where you are and what you’re trying to accomplish with a bike. There are also different bikes. There are road bikes and triathlon or time trial bikes. A lot of people that compete have both road bikes and triathlon bikes. Many also in the off season do [cyclocross 00:52:14] which is a growing and emerging sport, so really understanding bike, bike fit and then making sure you have adequate equipment from shoes to gear, clothing, et cetera. I think that’s one of the things that’s important to be aware and sensitive of how to fit into the community.
It takes a little while to understand the cycling culture and what that’s all about and what people wear, so there’s a fashion thing about it which it’s just more exposure and understanding what the culture is like.
Dr. L Belisle: Do you have any specific goals for 2015 either in your endurance sports or in Ethos or personally or with any of the many things that you do in your life?
Ted: Several as it relates to endurance goals I’m actually this is the time of year where I really start to think about what I want to do. I tend to become unfit at this time of year so it’s important to start thinking about what’s next. What’s next probably this year will include several medium distance triathlon events. I tend to like, I’ve gravitated towards Olympic distance events which are about a mile swim, twenty-five mile bike and a 10K race off the bike. That’s a good event for me. I’ll probably do three or four of those. My goal has been to qualify for nationals so I did qualify this past year for nationals which takes place out in Milwaukee I believe.
I am probably going to forego that because one of my other goals is to get back to [France 00:54:06] this year and do a week in the mountains with a friend of mine. That’s on the cycling calendar. Don’t tell my wife.
Dr. L Belisle: Too bad you’re on the radio. Hope she’s not listening.
Ted: Everybody listens to this show so I’m sure she’ll hear it. Personally, my wife and I have just bought a house in Cape Elizabeth that we’re rehabbing so we hope to be able to move in sometime in the March time frame and start a new life there. Our children are now grown and our youngest is graduating college, so that’s a different journey that we’re embarked on and so enjoying one another’s company and having fun, putting some travel on the calendar will also be important as part of the goals this year.
Dr. L Belisle: Ted you’re Phi Beta Kappa Magna Cum Laude graduate of Boston College with a BA in History and Philosophy. How have you made those things work for you?
Ted: What Boston College taught me was how to think. It taught me how to approach activity and how to approach intellectual pursuits and how to learn. When I graduated Boston College, I elected to go law school which wasn’t really a great fit for me because I was more I didn’t know it at the time but I had more entrepreneurial leanings. My family has been in business a long time so there’s always business talk at the dinner table and it’s just a natural thing for me to gravitate towards. I met a friend one of my business partners in another venture. We met in law school and we embarked on that activity together and built a business. It’s always been in that way it was the road less traveled. It was like this seems interesting. I was twenty-three, twenty-two. It was just let’s do this.
We were risk takers at the time. As you get older, you tend to take fewer risks because there seems to be more to lose, but yeah so I think what BC did was really provided the ability to learn and think for yourself. I mean it’s interesting because liberal arts education is I think tougher to recommend now just because everything seems so highly specialized. With my own kids, they were both business focused in their education. I think it really was an awesome choice for me.
Dr. L Belisle: Ted people can read about your story and your cycling and more about you in Old Port Magazine. How can they find out more about the work you do at the Portland Velo Club and with Ethos?
Ted: Oh, great question. With Portland Velo Club, people can find out more at our website which is portlandveloclub.com. We welcome all members. It’s a great organization. Good way to get started in cycling. As far as Ethos is concerned, can certainly look us up on our website at ethos-marketing.com.
Dr. L Belisle: We’ve been speaking with Ted Darling, Marketing Strategist and Agency Principal at Ethos, also avid cyclist, endurance athlete, triathlete, man about town. You’re very busy and you’ve done a lot of good work for the community so we’re fortunate to have you in and take the time to talk to us here on Love Maine Radio. Thanks for being part of our community.
Ted: Thank you very much for having me.
Dr. L Belisle: You have been listening to Love Maine Radio show number one eighty-three, Active Life. Our guests have included Meg LePage and Ted Darling. For more information on our guests and extended interviews visit lovemaineradio.com. Read about our guests in Old Port Magazine. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page, follow me on Twitter and see my running travel, food, and wellness photos as bountiful1 on Instagram. We’d love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows.
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