Thinking is a lost art.  Especially in my generation.  It’s not our fault.  From an early age, there has always been a screen flashing some kind of entertainment at us that we were allowed to use whenever we were finished producing our school work.  Producing or consuming… I’m not sure if I ever knew there was a third option.

Even in college, there was a time when I would feel like if I wasn’t either producing something or consuming something, that I was wasting time.  Time spent in production at school or work was time well spent.  Any time outside of that should be spent planning for future production, or learning by consuming media.  Even after I gave up television a couple of years ago, I still felt that I should constantly be reading books or blogs, listening to podcasts, or doing some activity from which I would learn.

It wasn’t until I started running that I realized the value of doing neither, but instead of processing the things I consumed.  In 2007, after the shooting at Virginia Tech, I started training for a marathon with a group to raise money for a memorial scholarship fund.  I would run for a little under an hour a few times a week, and longer on weekends.  I didn’t have an iPod or anything at the time, so I would just run without one.  People would ask, “What do you think about?  Don’t you get bored?”  I was anything but.  I would think about the relationships in my life.  I would think about upcoming public speaking events opportunities (I was active in a lot of clubs).  I would think about assignments or papers I had to do.

Then I started noticing that all of the time I was spending on each of these things became time more efficiently spent.  My speaking points at group meetings would be more clear and concise because I had said them over and over in my head while running.  I would write an outline for a paper, then after running, it would simply flow out of me.  I would see connections between people and events that I hadn’t seen before.  In my mind, I would have a conversation with someone, and go down a hundred winding paths, all in my head.  When the conversation eventually took place, I would know exactly what I wanted to say and have responses to everything.

A few days ago, I saw Seth Godin interviewed on Mixergy.  Andrew asked him where good ideas come from, and he immediately answered, “Good ideas always come from the same place.  They come from bad ideas.”  I knew exactly what he was talking about.  A hundred businesses have started and failed in my head during my runs.  Co-founders, funding, the pivots the company will make as it grows and evolves, I see hundreds of possibilities. Two of my imaginative companies have survived and thrived.  Those two are currently getting started.

Next time you read a blog, stop afterwards and think about it, and how it applies to you.  When you are on a road trip and listen to a podcast, turn the radio completely off afterwards and think about it.  When you finish reading this, take your hands off the keyboard and mouse, turn off your iTunes, and sit back in your chair and think about it.  Go for a walk, alone, and mull it over in your head.  See where it takes you.

Image courtesy Michael Karshis, licensed under Creative Commons.

Next, with Rungame, I have done 11 runs in the first 12 days of 2010, putting me one run behind. (Last Saturday, I was at Wisp in western Maryland, and it snowed for two days straight before we got there, so I skied for 8 hours that day and didn’t get a run in.) One day this week will have to be a double. So far though, I have run for 8 hours 35 minutes in the last 12 days. I haven’t kept track of distance, but if I had to guess, somewhere between 55 and 60 miles total. Not huge, but I’m quite happy with that for this time of the year and these conditions.

Now, a few Cold Weather Running Tips I have picked up over the last few days:

1. Good socks are key. You can always put more layers on your top, or a pair of sweatpants on over your running tights, but because most running shoes are designed to be “ventilated,” socks are incredibly important. Bonus tip: if it is above freezing and raining or wet out, put sandwich bags over your socks before you put your shoes on. Once your toes get wet, your run goes downhill quick. Bonus tip two: if you don’t have good gloves, just pull your sleeves over your hands. All the pros do it.

2. Hold yourself accountable by telling others. I am a huge believer in publicly stating goals. I told all my readers that I was going to do these runs, so if I don’t, I’m accountable to you. If I hadn’t done that, it would have been very difficult to get out the door. Tell someone whose opinion you value that you are going to run X number of times this week, and ask them to check back with you.

3. Short and consistent trumps less longer runs. The boost to your metabolism that you will get from doing something on a regular basis outweighs the fitness you may gain from pushing yourself to run longer. Also, with shorter runs, you obviously won’t have as much time to get cold.

4. Take it easy. Remember that there is a huge range of heart rates between resting (sitting at a desk) and huffing and puffing. Especially this time of the year, the fitness to be gained by going hard is likely not worth the risk of injury. You have more to gain by staying in your lower-intensity fat burning zone. Bring your body to a pace where you are just about to start breathing hard, then back off a tiny bit. Bonus tip: running on busy streets or trails creates pressure to push harder because of the perception that people are watching and judging you. Find less crowded areas. (But stay safe.)

5. Enjoy yourself. Leave the iPod at home, and take in the crisp, cold, fresh air. There are too few times in the modern American lifestyle that a person will allow them self to be alone in their own head. Embrace it. I’ll write a whole post about this sometime soon.

Now get out there.

In November, after finishing Ironman Florida I started focusing on finishing my thesis, and went from about 10 or so workouts per week to about 3-4. However, because of some simple diet strategies, this reduction in workouts hasn’t caused me to gain more than a pound or two. Here’s how:

Learn to say no. It is absolutely impossible to be in control of your diet if you eat everything that is put in front of you. Visiting friends, at the office, wherever, there is always food available, and until you start saying no to certain foods, your diet will be controlled by your circumstances.

Plan your meals. I’m not saying to schedule on your calendar what you are going to eat each day, or even that you have to cook for yourself. If you leave the house to go to the office in the morning and haven’t thought through where your next meal is coming from, you are much more likely to get fast food or eat whatever is convenient, which is much more likely to be an unhealthy option. Even if you don’t bring something, make some kind of plan for finding a healthy meal.

Consistency counts. Going to a friend’s house to watch football and eating chips and dip and having a couple of beers isn’t what is going to make you fat. What you eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner those other five days of the week is. You don’t have to order a salad every time you go out to lunch with friends, but when you’re by yourself, make sure healthier options are available.

Make your diet a priority in your life. You don’t have to obsess over it, just keep it in mind. You know you are going to be hungry every few hours. Make sure that there are healthy options available, or you are a slave to food that is convenient.

To get back into training shape and to kick off the new year, I will be taking part in a game devised by some folks at Endurance Corner (Gordo’s group). One of their guys, Dr. Jeff Shilt, describes the game here.

Basically, starting today, Jan. 1, participants run 30 times in the next 30 days. Not long runs or hard runs, though I am setting myself a minimum of 40 minutes. I can “bank” a day by doing two runs, though they have to be in two different sessions. Gordo set up a Google Documents page to record the runs.

If you want to participate, feel free to check out the link, or just keep track of it yourself. If you’re new to running, set yourself a lower minimum, like 15 or 20 minutes. Two miles a day for 30 days is a pretty good month for someone who isn’t working out a lot. If anyone reads this and decides to do it, send me an email or comment, I’d love to hear about it.

Happy New Year!

For the last two weeks, I have worked harder than I have the last two years on this document, and every time I open the file, I find something that I’m not happy with, and spend a couple of days finding more references or doing an extra experiment to make something a little stronger.

At the same time, I’ve been reading a lot of Eric Ries and Steve Blank, and even got the Virginia Tech library to order a copy of The Four Steps to the Epiphany so I could stop having to return it and reorder it from inter-library loan. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check these guys out now.)

Today, it occurred to me: for the last two weeks, I have just been adding “features” to my thesis, without having any idea what the minimum viable thesis really is! My customers are the three faculty members on my committee, and there is some level for each of them for which they will say, “ok, this is good enough, you’ve earned it!” But I have no idea what that is.

Today, I’m going to stop adding features, and put the thing out there. It is likely that it will get torn apart by a couple members of my committee, and it is more than likely that I will “fail” and have a ton of revisions to make. Until that happens, I’m in the dark, trying to please a group of people for whom I only have assumptions about what they want and what they are willing to accept.

I’ll publish a couple of papers on my work later on in the year, and refine everything for those, but for now, the minimum viable thesis is the only thing standing between me and starting a business.

Hopefully this kind of activity is a new trend here. This kind of partnership would not have been possible five years ago, but with VT KnowledgeWorks and the Virignia Tech Corporate Research Center very actively promoting entrepreneurship, there are plenty of resources for start-ups here in town.

My long-term hope is to see the establishment of some kind of center for entrepreneurship at Virginia Tech which will actively bind the start-up and student communities. (Here is an Entrepreneur Magazine article on some schools and towns that have done a great job of this.) This would not have been possible five years ago, but everything we would need is here today.

It is an exciting time to be in the start-up community in Blacksburg. Lets keep this momentum going.

In my opinion, the beauty of Twitter is that it is gives us the option to pay attention to neat musings such as the coffee article, or not to. When she emailed me the coffee link, the option of whether to pay attention and spend time or not to on this article was taken away from me. With Twitter, if I have time to look at cool articles or blogs that pertain to my interests (mostly triathlon and entrepreneurship), I go on Twitter and see what interesting things people have posted. If I don’t want to be bothered, I’m not.

Most people say they have no use for Twitter because it is mostly useless crap about what people are doing on a daily basis, and for the most part, most of what we do is not worth reading about. However, if my friends travel to interesting places or see interesting things and take pictures of them, or meet interesting people, or read interesting blogs or articles, I like to hear about it. If people post mundane things that aren’t interesting to me, I don’t ‘follow’ them. Either way, it is my choice on who I follow, and whether I even spend time looking at what they’ve posted or not. (This also differentiates it from Facebook, where if I don’t want someone’s “status” to show up in my “feed” the easiest way is to de-friend them, which is a pretty serious social faux pas.)

The other reason I use Twitter is that it gives you a glimpse at what people in a certain industry, or especially leaders in a specific industry are spending their time doing and reading. If I want to learn, say, about Kickboxing, within a few minutes of searching I can find out who the highest regarded people in the industry are, what they spend their time doing, and what information sources they value enough to spend their time reading (blogs or articles).

So stop knocking Twitter as a waste of time, or another social networking phenomenon that will die out. Stop using email for links to things you think are humorous or interesting, because chances are, if it is something that I’m really interested in, I’ve already seen it on Twitter. If not, put it on Twitter yourself, and I’ll look at it when I have time.

Overall Goal: Be conservative, race my own race (don’t chase others who pass me), run a strong marathon.

Time Goal: 10 hours, conditions willing.

Result:

BIB	AGE	STATE/COUNTRY	PROFESSION
150	24	BLACKSBURG VA USA

SWIM	BIKE	RUN	OVERALL	RANK	DIV.POS.
59:15	5:19:28	3:44:37	10:14:32	214	4

LEG	DISTANCE	PACE	RANK	DIV.POS.
FIRST SWIM HALF	1.2 mi. (28:26)	1:29/100m
SECOND SWIM HALF	1.2 mi. (30:49)	1:37/100m
TOTAL SWIM	2.4 mi. (59:15)	1:33/100m	54	2
FIRST BIKE SEGMENT	73 mi. (3:34:02)	20.46 mph
FINAL BIKE SEGMENT	39 mi. (1:45:26)	22.19 mph
TOTAL BIKE	112 mi. (5:19:28)	21.04 mph	257	5
FIRST RUN SEGMENT	6 mi. (49:53)	8:18/mile
SECOND RUN SEGMENT	7.4 mi. (1:03:46)	8:37/mile
THIRD RUN SEGMENT	5.6 mi. (46:29)	8:18/mile
FINAL RUN SEGMENT	7.2 mi. (1:04:29)	8:57/mile
TOTAL RUN	26.2 mi. (3:44:37)	8:34/mile	214	4
TRANSITION				TIME
T1: SWIM-TO-BIKE				4:35
T2: BIKE-TO-RUN				6:37

The swim had some pretty serious waves, swam 3 minutes slower than last year, but 10 spots better with the 54th fastest swim on the day. I stayed pretty close to the front of the amateur group, and tried to avoid the jellyfish.

The bike was windy, so a bit slower going out, but kept the HR right where I wanted it, between 140 and 148, and let the groups go by. Drafting was definitely an issue. This video pretty much sums up the whole day on the bike, with echelons coming around you all the time. The rule for amateurs is seven meters, but if I slowed down every time somebody pulled directly in front of me, I’d have coasted half the race and been speeding up and slowing down the whole time. Instead, I just kept a steady speed and let the groups pass, for which I ended up with a drafting penalty (4 minutes, served in T2) for not dropping back quickly enough when one came by.

In the penalty tent in T2, I had a few minutes to calm down, stretch out, make an assessment of how my muscles were feeling, and generally collect myself before the marathon. I ran the first two miles at about a 7:30 pace, which felt very easy, though I knew I wasn’t running a 3:15 marathon, and that if I kept that up, I’d be walking at the end. Even though it felt ridiculously easy, I slowed considerably to about an 8:30-8:45 pace, which I held quite comfortably through the half-way and up until about mile 19 or so. At that point, still feeling awesome, I decided to pick it up a bit. Immediately I felt my hamstrings cramp a bit, and dealt with this all the way to the end, having to walk a couple times for 30 seconds or so and take in some electrolyte, but still staying under a 9 minute mile until the end.

I’ve never run a race more conservatively, and the result was a 25 minutes PR and a strong, mostly even-split marathon. I missed the 10 hour mark, but not by much, and conditions were definitely a factor. Very happy on the day, and came home with some sweet m-dot hardware for 4th in the age group.

Below is some more specific thoughts on the race, for anyone interested:

Bike execution:
Only about 250 cal/hour, much less than I had the last two races, resulted in no gut issues. I ended up having two 500-calorie bottles of Cytocarb, 4 100-calorie Clif shots, and one 100-calorie sample-size Clif bar. Also, about 8 electrolyte pills.

This goes back to a bunch of research I did after doing so poorly in Louisville execution-wise, that resulted in this less-is-more take on nutrition. My plan there came from articles and blogs about how professionals take in up to 400 calories per hour on the bike and 300 per hour on the run. This is way too much for the average age-grouper. It also came from a discussion with my coach, Jim McGehee, on nutrition, where we talked about when trying to get in as much food as possible, you end up in a cycle where you have to keep eating to keep moving, but your gut is constantly full and uncomfortable. This happened to me in Louisville, where I couldn’t stomach anything, and stopped eating completely, which worked fine for a while until I found myself walking the last couple miles at a 20 minute pace. We talked about how it is probably better to err on the side of too little food, which can always be fixed by just eating a tiny bit more, without the gut issues.

Effort-wise, I went by heart-rate, which I kept between about 142 and 148, spiking up to 152 a couple times on slight uphills, and letting it fall into the mid 130s as a group would pass and I’d feel the draft effect. For me, about 150 is my aerobic threshold on the bike, where I start breathing hard, which I stayed about at or below the whole day.

Run execution:
Brought no food with me (except electrolyte pills), and just took coke, Gatorade, water, a couple of bananas from the aid stations. If I started feeling the gut, I skipped a couple aid stations and just kept going. This worked great, and I never felt like I was close to ‘bonking’ or the digestive issues I had had in other races. The only thing I would change would be to have slightly more electrolyte (which I was wary of over-doing after my Louisville experience) to stay ahead of cramping. Also, I chugged a few ounces of beer some spectators who were really enthusiastic about Virginia Tech all day handed me with about a half mile to go, which after the immediate stomach discomfort, may have helped me run that last half mile at like 7 minute pace. (Not saying I’m going to start training with beer, just saying…)

HR-wise, it took a couple miles to come down from about the 165 I had right out of T2, but by about miles 2-3 had settled to a comfortable 155 at 8:30 pace. Running, my aerobic threshold is about 158, so again, could pretty much carry on a conversation at that pace. For the third quarter, I picked it up a tiny bit to about 157-158, and on the last 10k, allowed it to go 160-164 as I pushed it to the finish, though this did coincide with some hamstring cramping, where I had to walk a couple times.

Random tips that worked for me:
• Throw-away socks in the morning to wear out of transition and on the beach
• Cue sheet on the bike to tell you when to eat (see photos). This kept me from trying to do math in my head about what time it was and how much I had eaten, and trying to rationalize eating more or less. It takes the guess-work out what to eat when. It was actually my buddy Doran’s idea, to give credit where credit is due.
• Bandage on neck during swim didn’t cover enough, so next time I’ll probably go with a bunch of athletic tape to cover the whole back of the neck
• Aero-drink on the bike only had water, and I had no plan on how much water to drink, and just drank with thirst. This worked fine, and decoupled calorie intake and fluid intake, which should be separate issues.


From cold, rainy Blacksburg, thanks.

In racing, you put yourself out there. Especially with an Ironman, which are usually only done once or twice a year, there is a lot of build-up. People know I’m doing it, and that I’m excited and serious about it. For Ironman Louisville, this built up in my own mind significant expectation. I really wanted to do well, be at the top of my age group, and if not qualify for Kona (world champs, have to be top 3 in age group), then at least be pretty close behind the kids that did. I told myself this, and told other people this.

It didn’t happen. In fact, I was way, way off. It wasn’t from lack of training or preparation, it was an error in execution. As Christopher McDougall put it in Born to Run, long distance racing is “a series of binary decisions.” To eat or not to eat, drink water or gatorade, push a little harder or back off a bit, try to keep up with someone passing me, or hold back. They are influenced by feedback you can get from yourself by asking questions like “is my stomach full?”, “am i thirsty?”, “how are my muscles, any cramping?”. You end up with a decision matrix, where a feeling (or lack thereof) results in an action.

For me, I had a serious error in my decision matrix. I have experienced during racing before hyponatremia, where there is not enough sodium in my bloodstream, reducing the body’s ability to bring liquids from the stomach to the rest of the body. The simple solution is salt pills. Replenish your salt supply, and your body starts functioning better pretty quickly.

In Louisville, probably about 5 miles or so into the marathon, I my stomach was feeling pretty full, so I took salt pills. Over the next hour or so, it wasn’t feeling a whole lot better, so I took more salt pills. I had read about professional athletes taking as many as 10 pills (400 mg sodium) per hour, so didn’t think I could over-do it, and figured that I would just sweat out any excess. By the half-way point in the run, I had taken probably 30 pills, and was feeling pretty awful. Eating or drinking anything, including water, only made me feel worse, so I stopped, hoping I had enough energy left to get me to the finish line. This worked fine until about mile 20 or so, though I was slowing down a bit, I was still running and on track for a decent overall time.

Now as I learned later (from a doctor in the medical tent while she was putting an IV in me), as the sodium balance between inside your stomach wall and outside your stomach wall builds, water tends to go to where the salt is. Tons of salt in my stomach drew the water from the rest of my body into my stomach, causing dehydration and, well, digestive issues.

I was managing this until probably mile 22 or so, when I completely ran out of energy and was force to walk, slowly. You can see in the run splits how this played out:

The last couple miles were terrible. I was taken away from the finish line in a wheel chair, given two IV bags at the medical tent, then curled into a ball in the hotel and passed out for a few hours.

Probably the most disappointing thing about the day was that I had worked quite hard to build a lot of fitness, but didn’t really get to use it. This brings us to the new goal for Ironman Florida, tomorrow. I want to have a strong, even split race, where I run the whole way and finish strong at the end. I’m not trying to qualify, win the age group, or anything. I just want to have a well executed race. I will be eating a lot less throughout, and taking it a bit easier the whole way, with the goal of feeling good 8 hours in at the start of the second half of the marathon, and running strong the whole way. While my fitness was probably higher in August, hopefully it will be my execution (and refined decision matrix) tomorrow that makes the difference.

From Panama City, Florida, thanks for reading.