Category: Things I Like
Marathon #15 is in the bag – I finished the New Orleans Rock ‘n’ Roll Mardi Gras Marathon in a time of 05:15:05 yesterday. Here’s a video of me crossing the finishing line.
It was a beautiful day for a marathon – the temperature was 50 degrees and the sky was clear. There were about 18,000 runners (most for the half marathon) and like most Rock ‘n’ Roll races it was extremely well organized.
This was the inaugural Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon in New Orleans. The course was great – it was flat, covered a lot of the city, and had some nice long stretches around City Park. The only downer was there were very few spectators on the course. Even with all the well known New Orleans spirit they haven’t figured out how to show up in force for an early Sunday morning marathon.
I was happy with my performance, especially given the symmetry of my finishing time (#15: 05:15:05). I was a little undertrained and, since this was my first marathon in a year, I didn’t expect to break five hours. I used an 8:2 run:walk pattern (eight minutes running; two minutes walking) as I’ve been training that way to build up strength in the second half of the marathon. It definitely paid off as I felt fine through 22 miles. I never really hit the wall, but I did run out of gas at about 22 and shifted into “one foot in front of the other” mode.
My only scary moment was a fall at about mile 16. I was stuck with a group of noisy people including a guy wearing headphones that would shouted random things every few minutes. He graciously thanked every policeman on the course and would follow it up with things like “wake up New Orleans” or “hey hey runners”. At some point a woman wearing a see through shirt fell in with him and he was screaming and pointing at her, which was a rallying cry for the few male spectators on the side of the course. I was thinking "all types show up for these things” when I tripped over something and hit the deck. Quick system check – burning hands and a little blood but no issues on my legs or back. I got up and put in a quick ten minute mile to put some distance between me and the chaos. I fortunately never saw them again on the run.
I had three fun company moments (for companies I’m an investor in) during the weekend: Impinj, Zynga, and Lijit. The race system used Impinj RFID chips, I saw Mark Pincus, the CEO of Zynga interviewed on Bloomberg yesterday, and this morning I noticed that Lijit is the search engine for the marathon site.
Megan Sweeney, the awesome person who put together the TechStars Founders video series, put up a beautiful video of her golden retriever Owen explaining his Rules of Love.
Owen’s rules of love are (1) Don’t limit your love, (2) Let yourself be loved, and (3) Never give up. Good lessons for all human beings.
Now, while I know it’s Valentine’s Day (and I’ll behave appropriately), I am very much looking forward to Valentine’s Day for Guys which happens in a month. In the mean time, remember that all you need is love.
Well – the 2010 marathon season is upon us. As I prepare to head out for a three hour run, I decided to finalize my 2010 calendar.
2009 sucked for me – I didn’t complete any marathons on my way to doing a marathon in every state by the time I’m 50. Mild injuries, several colds, fatigue from work and travel, and general lack of rhythm are my excuses while a temporary failing of my iron will is the real reason.
Out with the 2009 lameness – it’s a new year and we’ll try again. My best year was 2008 when I did five marathons so let’s up that by one and do six this year. Here are the one’s I’m currently planning to do.
- 02/28/10 – New Orleans, LA: Rock ‘n’ Roll Mardi Gras Marathon
- 04/11/10 – St Louis, MO: GO! St. Louis Marathon
- 06/12/10 – Marathon, IA: Marathon to Marathon
- 08/21/10 – Rachel, NV: E.T. Full Moon Midnight Marathon
- 10/17/10 – Detroit, MI: Detroit Free Press / Flagstar Marathon
- 12/11/10 – Kiawah, SC: Kiawah Island Golf Resort Marathon
I’m always game to have friends tag along and run with me so feel free to reach out if you are so inclined. And – I’m trying to figure out what kind of new special 2010 charity thing to add on to my existing sponsors Return Path and Pixie Mate so I’m open to suggestions. And – as always – a super huge thanks to my amazing coach Gary Ditsch at Endurance Base Camp for putting up with me.
See you in a few weeks New Orleans!
Help me get my photo of Amy’s Burning Mercedes up on Fail Blog. All you have to do is click through on the picture below and vote for it.
moar funny pictures
And yes – that really is Amy’s old Mercedes on fire in our driveway. Oops.
It’s So Hard When Contemplated In Advance And So Easy When You Do It
I heard this phrase at about 75 minutes into my run this morning. It’s from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book I’ve read a half dozen times over the years. I decided to listen to it on my iPhone while training for an upcoming marathon, just to see what different things I’d pick up from listening to it read to me rather than reading it myself.
The actual paragraph is in the middle of Chapter 11 as the narrator is discussing Phaedrus’ lateral drift. He shifts back to the present time and talks with some trepidation about heading up over mountain beyond Red Lodge.
‘We walk past ski shops into a restaurant where we see on the walls huge photographs of the route we will take up. And up and up, over one of the highest paved roads in the world. I feel some anxiety about this, which I realize is irrational and try to get rid of by talking about the road to the others. There’s no way to fall off. No danger to the motorcycle. Just a memory of places where you could throw a stone and it would drop thousands of feet before coming to rest and somehow associating that stone with the cycle and rider.”
They finish their coffee and, after puttering around, get going.
“The asphalt of the road is much wider and safer than it occurred in memory. On a cycle you have all sorts of extra room. John and Sylvia take the hairpin turns up ahead and then come back above us, facing us, and have smiles. Soon we take the turn and see their backs again. Then another turn for them and we meet them again, laughing. It’s so hard when contemplated in advance, and so easy when you do it.”
At 75 minutes into my run, I was in a very happy groove. This was not the case 76 minutes earlier, nor was it the case 24 hours earlier. On Sunday, I had planned to do a 135 minute run. This is a medium long run for me (a really long run is 180 minutes) but nonetheless generated some pre-run anxiety. I’d had a busy week, travelled home on Saturday afternoon from Seattle, and was tired. I had a few beers on Saturday night which was probably a mistake, went to bed at about 11pm, and mentally prepared to go for my long run on Sunday. I woke up at about 5:30am to the sound of my condo vents rattling – I’m on the top floor and when the wind blows it’s noisy. I got up (earlier than I’d planned but I was wide awake). I did some email, had a cup of coffee, and then went outside to see what it was like. Cold, windy, gloomy, and dark. Whatever motivation I had to do my long run immediately vaporized and I convinced myself a better path was to go run on the treadmill at the health club down the block for 135 minutes. I eventually went to the club, grinded through an hour on the treadmill, and then bailed out of complete and total boredom.
I hadn’t done my run on Saturday (too tired) so I rationalized that my Sunday run was going to be my Saturday run and I’d do my long run early on Monday. To make this happen, I had to be out the door by 5:15am given some stuff I had to do Monday morning. I woke up this morning at 4:15am – wide awake – and geared up for my run. I was exactly the same cold, windy, gloomy, and dark that it was the previous morning. But this time I just decided to go do it.
About an hour into my run, as I was the shoulder of Highway 36 heading to Lyons after Broadway dead ends into Highway 36, I was totally blissed out. The wind was probably gusting up to 40 miles per hour, it was pitch black, but there were no people anywhere. A car would fly by every few minutes, but there were long dark stretches of nothing.
I heard the line “It’s So Hard When Contemplated In Advance And So Easy When You Do It” at about 75 minutes. I physically felt the smile break out on my face. I’ve continued to think about this line all morning long – not just with regard to running, but with regard to everything I do.
I’ve really enjoyed my time on this planet so far and look forward to many other years here. If Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, and Robert Heinlein are to be believed, I should be able to travel to other planets by now. Since I can’t, I’m limited to looking at really cool photos.
Guess the planet. No clicking through to the APOD site until after you’ve made a guess. I’m 44 – wouldn’t it be cool if in my lifetime I could go to this planet? Oh – and where’s my jetpack – NASA promised me that when I was a kid.
I hate the telephone. I hate voice mail. I’ve tried hard to simplify how this works in my world. I only have two phone numbers (my cell phone and my work phone, which is an IP phone that rings in all the different houses / offices that I have), schedule all phone calls, and use PhoneTag as my voicemail transcription service (both my cell phone and my desk phone forward to it when I don’t answer.) I never listen to voice mails (everything is an email), rarely get phone calls during the day, and have done a pretty good job of getting rid of phone interruptions in my life given how busy I am.
Even though I’m in a reasonable stable state, I have one thing that bothers me. I still have two phone numbers – one for my cell phone and one for my desk phone. When my assistant Kelly schedules a call, she does a pretty good job of using my cell phone when I’m on the road and my desk phone when I’m in my office or at home (my cell phone doesn’t work in my house in Eldorado Springs at all and barely works in Keystone – thanks AT&T). However, she still has to do the manual translation of my location to phone number (blech) and I occasionally (well – regularly) end up somewhere other than expected.
I thought Google Voice might be the solution. However, I don’t want to have to tell the world a new phone number. Plus, a lot of people call me back via caller ID so when I call on various phones they just call me back on that phone. So I came up with a hack to try. I’d forward my desk phone (call it 4) to my Google Voice number. Then I’d give out my desk phone to everyone going forward. Google Voice would then ring all of my other phone numbers, including my cell number. On no answer, Google Voice would transcribe my message and email it to me.
Problem #1 happened when Amy emailed me from Keystone (when I was in my office in Boulder) and said “your phone is ringing off the hook today – make it stop.”) I have an extension 4 phone in Keystone. Easy fix – I changed my IP phones so Keystone was 1, Eldo was 2, my office was 3, and the 4 just forwarded to Google Voice. I then set up groups in Google voice to easily forward only to the phones where I was (e.g. when I wasn’t in Keystone, 1 didn’t ring). Problem #1 solved.
Problem #2 happened the next day when I got an email from a regular caller saying the phone “just rang and rang” and voice mail never picked up. I heard of this from a few more people – the only thing I could come up with was that Google Voice wasn’t answering every now and then or there was some kind of forwarding black hole that I hadn’t figured out. I’ll give Google Voice the benefit of the doubt on this one, but I still couldn’t figure out the black hole.
Problem #3 was a delay that I was starting to notice when talking on my cell phone. The forwarding from my desk phone (4) to Google Voice to my cell phone was introducing enough of an IP delay to be noticeable. I tried to mentally adjust for it but it was unpredictable. This gave me a headache (a physical one, not a virtual one).
Problem #4 was caller ID wasn’t coming through correctly. Again, I’ll give Google Voice benefit of the doubt – I think I probably could have figured out how to hack our phone system to forward to caller ID to Google Voice which would then forward it on. But I didn’t. And the Google Voice intro that announced the caller often was either blank (presumably the caller didn’t say anything), it was cut off (possibly due to the forwarding), or it was hard to understand. Regardless, I found myself feeling less comfortable that I knew who was calling.
Problem #5 was the Google Voice transcriptions were unreadable. I find the PhoneTag emails to often be entertaining, but they are never incomprehensible. In contrast, I found myself having to listen to three out of four of the Google Voice messages because the transcriptions made no sense.
But Problem #6 sunk me. Suddenly, I was getting a lot more phone calls! My previously silent phone was ringing more often. I hadn’t really thought this through but in hindsight it was obvious since I was generating so many more ring points.
At some level, I could bit the bullet and just try giving out the Google Voice number and see what happens. But, after a week of being back in my old routine, where my phone rarely rings and when I get a PhoneTag email message I can quickly see who called and why, I’m sticking with the old way for now.
In my effort to keep you on your toes, take a look at the “roll cloud” below. It’s totally worth a click through to the APOD site and a moment of contemplation on a large monitor.
I’ve seen small rolls clouds in the past although I didn’t know they were called roll clouds, nor did I have a clue how roll clouds were formed. While 720p videoconferencing with Skype on my Internet connected TV is pretty cool, nature continues to amaze me. Time for a run.
Here’s an easy one: 1+2-(3-4-5)*6*7*8-9
How about 1*(2+(3-4*(5/6-7))*8)*9
Or maybe 1+2345*6/7+8-9
Or (1-(23+4)*5)*(6/(7-8)-9
Maybe .1+23*(45+6*7)+8+.9
Even 1-(.2+(3+.4)*(5+67))*(.8-9)
If you love numbers and are excited about 2010, you’ll get a kick out of the cool 2010 page by Nadav Samet (surprise – he works for Google.) (Thanks SMoody!)