Category: Things I Like
Our beloved dog Kenai died Wednesday at 10:20 am. He was at our house in Eldorado Springs with Amy and our other dog Brooks. It was sudden and unexpected – he went quickly and painlessly. He was 12.
My last moment with him was the day before when I left the house to go to the office. I had my bags with me as I was heading out for an overnight trip to Oklahoma City. He always followed me to the door whenever I left town (he knew what my Filson bag meant). This time he was lying on his dog bed near the door downstairs. He looked up at me with one eye – in that magical way he sort of doggie-winked at me all the time – and I patted him on the head as I walked by and said “goodbye old man – see you soon.”
Kenai was a magnificent dog. 110 pounds. Beautiful. Extremely well tempered. He loved to be with us and he loved to run wild in both Eldorado Springs and Keystone. We’d let him out and he’d run off for 30 minutes, or an hour, or sometimes a few hours. He’d always come back, sometimes with a deer bone and a big smile, and demand his treat with his signature “rrrr-rrrr-rrrr” bark. It made me laugh every time – he knew what he wanted and damnit he was going to get it.
Until a few years ago we regularly went to the Reservoir. This was one of my standard short runs when I was home and a walk that Amy and I often do together. Kenai has this drill mastered – he’d cover about twice as much distance as us as he’d jog ahead 100 yards, turn around and come back to us, and then jog ahead again. When we got to the Reservoir, he’d always be in it already, going for a swim, chasing the ducks which he never caught, and just enjoying being a dog alive in the wilderness.
Like me, he was an excellent sleeper. I remember waking up late on many Saturday and Sunday mornings with him still asleep, often where Amy used to be in the bed. On weekend days after I’d worn myself out from the week, he’d just hang around close to me, doing nothing but keeping me company.
When we got Brooks, Kenai was six. This was the same age his older brother Denali was when we got him. There was something beautiful about the symmetry of this and, after a short adjustment from being the young dog to the old dog, Kenai played his role as older brother perfectly. He taught Brooks how to run around on our land, chase deer, elk, and squirrels, bark at the occasional bear, sleep through pretty much anything, and give us golden retriever eyes in an effort to get just one more treat. They played rough with each other – just up to the edge of too much – and Kenai would always back off when he knew it was getting out of hand. He loved Brooks, just like he loved Denali, just like we loved him.
Kenai – you were an amazing companion. I didn’t think I could love a dog as much as I loved you. I’ll miss you dearly. Thank you for making my life a better one. Enjoy the giant treat yard in the sky.
Ever since I did the American River 50 Mile Endurance Run I’ve been fascinated with ultramarathons. After struggling through the emotional fallout of the six weeks after the race, I decided that for now I’m sticking to marathons given my work schedule and general life tempo, but I’m still completely intrigued by them and the people who do them.
A few months I watched the movie Unbreakable: The Western States 100 – it gave me chills and was hugely inspiring. A few minutes ago I watched the trailer for Finding Traction.
Wow – this is going to be an amazing movie. Nikki Kimball totally blows me away.
If you are into this stuff, go support the Indiegogo campaign for Finding Traction and help the film become a reality!
Marathon #23 is complete. On Sunday, I finished the Detroit Marathon in 4:41:39. The two smiling faces next to me in the picture are Matt Shobe, who I’ve now done three marathons with, and my running coach Gary Ditsch. They ran with me in Detroit and it was super helpful to have them.
The most exciting thing for me about the Detroit Marathon was that my partner Jason Mendelson completed his first marathon! The whole notion of this is pretty awesome as Jason had major hip surgery eighteen months ago. It was brave of him to take on the training for this and powerful that he got it done.
We had a big party – Becky Cooper, Ryan McIntyre, and Jill Spruiel from Foundry Group also ran Detroit, as did Andrew Tschesnok of Organic Motion, my long time friend Warren Katz (this is his second marathon), and a few other friends.
The day was perfect for a marathon – sunny and cool. I had very low expectations for myself – my goal was simply to finish. I haven’t run much at all since my bike accident in Slovenia in early September and my ribs and left elbow still hurt a little. While I’d done a couple of 10 mile runs, I think I’d run a total of five times since I got back. So my goal was to rely on muscle memory and just get through 26.2 miles.
Matt, Gary, and I went out slow – doing a 2:26 pace for the first half. We were probably on a 2:30 pace through 10 but then picked it up a little after we got through the mile long tunnel that connects Canada and the US. One of the interesting features of the marathon is that miles 4 through 7 are in Windsor Canada – you head from Detroit to Canada over the Ambassador Bridge and then come back to Detroit via the tunnel between the two cities. As a bonus, I learned that South Detroit is actually Windsor, although my guess is that the people of Windsor refer to Detroit as North Windsor.
I turned my left ankle heading into the tunnel and was nervous for about a half a mile but it was fine. I was also claustrophobic in the tunnel – I really hate running in enclosed spaces for any length of time. But we started to cruise once we got back on America soil.
I did the second half in 2:15:13 – another solid negative split.We had been using an 8:2 run:walk pattern up to about 20 and then shifted to 9:1 for the balance. There was a point were I thought we had 4:39 in our sites but we just couldn’t quite make up enough time. But given that my goal was to finish, it was very satisfying to turn in another sub 4:45 marathon.
I had a blast in Detroit from Friday until I left on Tuesday. I spent all day Monday with entrepreneurs and the activity in the core of Detroit around the emerging Detroit Startup Community is really exciting. Look for a longer post on Startup Revolution from me in the next few days about my thoughts on what’s going on there.
If you see Jason this week, give him a high five for his amazing achievement.
When I started Retrofit last fall, I weighed 216. I’ve struggled for a decade to get below 210 – it would happen sometimes but I’d quickly end back up in the 210 – 220 range. I ran marathons so this was frustrating – I am a pescatarian and eat healthy, just too much.
I started Retrofit and within three months was down to 200. I’ve been between 195 and 200 for the past six months and have a clear understanding of how to be at 195 by simply cutting out a few things for a few weeks. My running has improved by a minute a mile, I’ve dropped from a 38 waist to a 36 waist (and could probably pull off a 34), and feel so much better.
If your have been struggling to lose weight for a long time, give Retrofit a try. It’s not a diet, it’s a complete and total reprogramming of the way you think about food. The founder Jeff Hyman is a long time friend (I was a seed investor in his first company in 1996) and is incredibly passionate about Retrofit and what he and his team is doing. I’m not an investor (it’s outside our themes), but I’m a huge supporter of Jeff and Retrofit – it’s been amazing for me as a customer.
Following is a short video that will start appearing on national TV in the next month. I’m honored to be part of it with David Cohen, the CEO of TechStars, who has lost over 30 pounds (and looks awesome) since starting Retrofit at about the same time as me.
While I feel like the guy on late night TV some times, this experience has been transformational. Seriously, take a look. I can’t rave enough about what Retrofit has done for me.
In July I wrote a post where I was Searching For A Collaborative Writing Tool. I got a bunch of suggestions – some people suggested their startups, some suggested Google Docs, and one person (a friend who works for Microsoft) suggested Microsoft SkyDrive . Amy and I were deep in working on Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur. We were trying to use Scrivener but that wasn’t working for two writers so I moved us to Google Docs. But I knew that wouldn’t be great because I’ve struggled with long documents in Google Docs in the past, especially since eventually we had to move to Microsoft Word for our publisher (Wiley) anyway.
Two weeks ago I decided to move everything to Word as we started the final push to getting the publisher draft out (which is due on 10/12/12). As part of this, I decided to give SkyDrive a try and see if we could both work on the document at the same time in Word.
We’ve been using it for two weeks and it is awesome. Stunningly awesome. Perfect. We can work in the browser and that’s fine for short things, but the beauty is we can download the doc into Word and it automagically keeps our edits in sync on the server. We can both work in Word – online or offline – at the same time and when we connect all the changes get updated to the server and then pushed down to our individual copies of Word. In short, it does exactly what you’d expect it to do. And – we are both using Word on the Mac – which is solid and a nice surprise to me that any of this really works on the Mac given my generally miserable Microsoft + Mac software experience.
I’m blown away. I also can’t believe no one knows about it or is talking about Microsoft SkyDrive. I can’t believe Microsoft isn’t promoting it front and center. Or maybe they are and I’m just missing it.
The only annoying thing is that it works better in Safari than in Chrome on the Mac. Somehow that doesn’t surprise me, but everything else about SkyDrive does. What a fun discovery.
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It’s never is ok to have a brain fog slowly lift and realize you are bleeding all over yourself. It’s a calm moment when you are in that state where it takes another five seconds to realize what just happened. No pain, no panic, but no understanding. Just observation. “Something just happened. I’m bleeding. What happened? Where am I?” followed by “Oh shit I just had a nasty bike crash.” A terminator style system check begins to ascertain damage when all hell breaks loose.
In my case it was a very controlled chaos. One of our guides – Marko – was whatever the Czech version of an EMT is. By the time I realized who I was and where I was, he was in my face, telling me not to move, stabilizing my head as he directed someone else to untangle the bikes from me. As the fog lifted, I felt ok, could talk, and he realized my jaw wasn’t broken. He commanded me not to move yet as he emptied his emergency kit. He looked in my eyes and made sure they responded. He asked me a few questions which I presume I answered correctly. He made me move my jaw around more. He did a scan of the rest of my body, especially my legs, and then started taping up my still bleeding chin.
By this point the fog had completely cleared and I knew what had happened. I was on vacation for a week in Slovenia celebrating my partner Seth’s 40th birthday. Seth is a huge cyclist so his wife Greeley gave him a wonderful present of a week bike trip with seven of his cycling buddies and his three partners. We were on day four of an outstanding life experience together.
Until this summer I hadn’t ridden a bike since I was in high school other than a few random times on vacations. I’d never done any serious cycling and had completely missed the cycling craze of the last decade. Six months ago Seth helped me buy a bike – I’ve been mixing it in all summer with my marathon training, discovered Strava, learned how to shift gears properly, had started to learn what gear I should be in, experienced several back to back 30 mile training rides, and started to learn about how doping worked since that seems to be the central theme of many cycling conversations right after detailed descriptions of accidents.
The rides in Slovenia were awesome. The first day was 70 km – mostly flat. I took the second day off and then had another great 70 km day – by this point I was in a groove. On day 4 we had a huge 20km 2500 climb and descent, so I decided to run the hill which ended up being just about a half marathon. I started before the cyclists and finished 15 minutes before they did.
The first crash happened about 1 km from where I was waiting. Seth got a flat tire on a steep downhill and bit it immediately. He was ok beyond bruised hip and severe road rash – he shook it off and at this point I rejoined the group and got on my bike. I started off tentatively and was in the back of the pack as everyone else took off.
In hindsight there was no way I should have gotten on the bike. The next 1.5 km was a steep downhill and as I picked up speed to 40 km / hour I thought to myself something like “wheee this is fun” as I caught up with everyone in front of me. I then noticed a bridge coming up that corresponded with a sharp left turn. At this point, I have very little recollection of what happened. I’m sure I started braking but I knew I was going too fast. My partner Ryan was directly in front of me and I was coming up on him fast – I remember him saying, in a very calm, rational voice, “what are you doing?” The next thing I remember was blood dripping from my chin.
Those that observed what happened tell me that Ryan let out a blood curdling scream, I crashed into him as I was trying to make the turn, my bike got tangled up in his, and I went over the handlebars. The visor on my bike helmet was broken, so I clearly landed on my head – probably first since my chin only needed four stitches and my jaw wasn’t broken, although a molar was.
Thankfully Ryan was fine. He broke my fall and ended up with a few scrapes but other than being shaken up by his partner attempting to mate bicycles, he was ok. I had a daydream the next day about the two of us going over the side of the bridge tangled up together which just reinforced how glad I was that I hadn’t caused him to be injured.
Marko and Ron – the leader of our tour were awesome. Marko got me cleaned up and Ron tossed me in the van and took me to a local clinic in the next town (we were several hours away from a major hospital.) The doctor saw me in 30 minutes and stitched up my face in five, charged me 52 euros, and sent us on our way. We went to our hotel where I found out there was a dentist who had an office behind the hotel. Remember – this is a tiny little town in Slovenia (Kobarid). The dentist was amazing – he had better equipment than I’ve ever seen in the US, used a laser scanner to reconstruct my tooth, printed a new tooth on a milling machine in a back room, and within an hour sent me on my way with a new tooth for a mere 250 euros. From now on, I’m doing all my elective dental work in Kobarid.
All of that was on Thursday. I’m back in NY where Amy and I are planted for the next ten days. Other than stitches, a pair of nasty road rash cuts, and bruised ribs, I’m fine. I’ll be back on the bike again – I was having a lot of fun until suddenly I wasn’t, but the memory of that moment will fade with the scars. I guess I’ll be growing that beard I’ve been avoiding for a while.
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I’m crazy proud of my partners Jason and Ryan – they are rock stars. Actual, real rock stars. Their band, Legitimate Front, is headlining at The Fox on Saturday night (8/25) at 8pm to (at this moment) an almost sell out crowd. Ross is joining them on stage and there might be some other special guests.
I’ve decided to help them sell out. I just bought 50 tickets and am giving them away to the first 50 people who comment on this blog.
If you want one ticket, comment once. If you want two (as in you have a date) comment twice. Please don’t comment three times – there’s a max of 2 free tickets a person.
The cutoff for commenting is 50 comments or 3pm on Saturday, whichever comes first. I’ll have all the tickets at Will Call with names on it – you’ll need to show your id to get them.
I’ll be there waving my arms in the air as Jason and Ryan do their thing. Come join me.
Dark Side of the Moon is my favorite album of all time. When I was a sophomore in college, I had an early NAD CD player. I put Dark Side of the Moon on at the beginning of the fall semester, pressed repeat, then play, and listened. I’d turn the volume down occasionally but not very often; usually I turned it way up. At the end of the semester, I pressed the stop button and turned my CD player off and then flew home to Dallas for winter break.
Today, a friend sent me a link to this amazing rendition of part of Dark Side of the Moon played by the Trinity Orchestra. If you are a Pink Floyd fan, it’s worth eight minutes and 24 seconds of your life.
I still listen to Dark Side of the Moon all the time. I’ve got it in my car (the only CD I have in my six CD changer) on repeat. I have it on my headphones that I swim with – my standard swim has turned into whatever I can do in 42 minutes and 59 seconds. And when I really need to grind something out, it’s what I listen to.
Last night Amy and I watched the movie Unbreakable: The Western States 100. Our friends Pam and Mark Solon gave it to us. It was awesome, powerful, riveting, and inspirational. If you are a long distance runner, or athlete of any kind, you will love it. More after the trailer below.
While my experience with marathons is now extensive (22 to date), my experience with ultras is limited to one – the American River 50. I learned an enormous amount from my ultra – mostly about myself – and wrote about it twice – two weeks after the race in a post titled The Physiological And Emotional Fallout Of My 50 Mile Race and then six weeks later in a post titled I’m Finally Recovered From My 50 Mile Run.
While I’d love to try another 50 and even do a 100 miler, I’ve decided that it’s just not realistic or healthy (emotionally) for me given my current work and travel dynamics. I’m comfortable with that decision and have doubled down on the marathon running while tossing in some road biking (today’s ride will be 35 miles, the longest to date) for variety and mostly to amuse my partner Seth.
It was extremely powerful and motivating to watch this movie. The Western States 100 is the original ultramarathon that was first run by Gordy Ainsleigh in 1974 (he’s in the movie – and he is awesome.) There are four main characters in the race that the movie follows.
- Hal Koerner, two time defending Western States champion, and running store entrepreneur from Ashland, Oregon.
- Geoff Roes, undefeated at the 100-mile distance, an organic chef from Juneau, Alaska.
- Anton Krupicka, undefeated in every ultramarathon he has ever started, a graduate student living in Boulder, Colorado.
- Kilian Jornet, the young mountain runner and two time Ultra-trail du Mont-Blanc champion, from Spain.
Four amazing ultra runners (two undefeated) going after the win and a world record from the very beginning of the race. The movie does a great job of mixing drama with personality with footage of the race. While I don’t know any of the runners, I’ve been passed by Krupicka running in the mountains in Boulder (he’s easy to recognize) and I related to different parts of each of their stories.
As I look out my window in Keystone this morning I see a beautiful blue sky with a layer of fog in the meadow behind my house. The mountains are in the background. While I’ll be on a bike today getting ready for a week long bike trip (my first) the love that these four guys have for running will echo in my mind. When people ask me why I run marathons, it’s easy – I love to run. So do they. Watch the movie and be inspired.