Getting up at 3:45am to travel ruins my morning routine that includes jamming through email, web, and blogs. I’ve had some time to catch up this afternoon (while Amy naps to recover from the early morning silliness) and I’ve got some good stuff for you. I’m Training To Ruin A Marathon: A gem from The Onion. On Saturday I’m going to run a marathon; this dude has a plan to ruin a marathon.

As my quest to run a marathon in every state by the time I’m 50 continues on Saturday with Marathon #11 (Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, MN) – I’m excited to announce that Return Path has agreed to sponsor my effort. Matt Blumberg – the CEO of Return Path wrote about it on his blog at Run, Brad, Run! We’ve been investors in Return Path since 2000 and I’ve gotten to know Matt well over the years. He was at my side for Marathon #5 – New York, 2005 and he’s going to hang out with me for Marathon #12 in Ashton, Idaho in August.

I’m sitting in the quiet zone in the airport lounge at MPLS so I’m not allowed to talk on my cell phone or listen to stuff on my laptop. But you can! ReadWriteWeb posted an interview with me that Alex Iskold did – it’s titled People in Tech: Brad Feld, Foundry Group (nice SEO btw – I’m very surprised it’s not #2 on The Google for “Brad Feld”). I love working with Alex (I’m a small investor in Adaptive Blue) and think he has an enormous and fun brain. I’ve already gotten a few nice comments, emails, and tweets on my answer to the question “What is the meaning of life.”

Hey – if the Boulder Daily Camera (our local paper) can put this up on their web site, so can I. Gotta love this place.

When I was at MIT, I loved the idea of office hours. I didn’t use them often, but when I did they were incredibly helpful to me. When I had focused one on one time with a professor, it took some of the intimidation out of the learning experience and gave me a tight window to be open about the ideas and concepts that I was struggling with, while not worrying about being graded on that stuff.

If you’ve been following my running efforts, you know that I have a goal of running a marathon in every state by the time I turn 50 years old. I’ve completed ten to date and am 42 so it’s time to get moving! My next one is Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, MN next Sunday (6/21). My times have been steadily increasing the past few marathons with my personal worst (5:47) coming at Sedona in February after I completely blew up at mile 19. So – I’ve been training harder and more consistently with a goal of breaking 5:00 at Grandma’s followed by 4:45 in August at Ashton, ID and 4:30 in October at Bar Harbor, ME. Having run a 4:05 in Chicago several years ago, there is no doubt that I can do a majority of these marathons under 4:00 – I just have to get serious about it.

And then there were 19. Symplified has joined the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. Symplified was founded last year by Eric Olden, Jonti McLaren, and Darren Platt. Eric and Jonti were previously the co-founders of Securant which was acquired in 2001 by RSA Security for $140m (if you remember 2001, then you’ll realize that this was quite an accomplishment.) I met Eric last fall as we were still raising our new fund. He was on the verge of closing a financing and we just weren’t in a position to engage seriously since he had the financing effectively lined up. As we got to know each other, I mentioned the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado and he got it immediately.

If you do business with or compete with Microsoft, Mary Jo Foley’s new book Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era is an absolute must read. Mary Jo writes the popular All About Microsoft blog and has been a long time Microsoft watcher. She’s often complimentary of Microsoft but can be brutally critical when she wants to be. Overall, I’ve found her to be balanced, thoughtful, and usually enlightening.

Larry Nelson from w3w3.com has an interview up with my partner Seth Levine. The interview is called Is an Advisory Board or Advisors Really Necessary? but the first half of the interview is about Seth’s view of Foundry Group and his partners (e.g. me, Jason, Ryan, and Chris.) Listen and find out some magic secrets – or just hear what Seth thinks. As a special bonus Seth has some good ideas about advisors and advisory boards.