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1 Year Running Anniversary
May 26th
On May 25, 2010, I ran my first mile. The pace was 9:36 and I remember feeling like I wanted to die.
I started running as a part of my company’s Wellness Program. An incentivized program that rewards employees for exercise and consistent updates to the programs website. I joined a team of coworkers and we all started together. We’re a mostly remote group of people, so when I say “together”, I mean “virtually together”. Only one of the 5 people lived within driving distance to me. He and I ran our first 5K together in June 2010 at the Milwaukee County Zoo. My pace at the 5K was 9:10. I remember feeling like death for about 20 minutes after the 5K.
I ran a total of 5 races in 2010 (from June to November), each of them unique in their own way. I’ve linked each run to my DailyMile profile where I talked about each run. If you want to read my race report for the race, feel free to follow the link. It will open a new window/tab when you click it, so you can easily come back to this page just by closing the other page.
Lombardi 5K Run/Walk for Cancer: Dedicated to my mother-in-law who passed away from cancer a few years back. (I ran, wife/family walked). Ran with a friend.
Kishwauketoe Trail 5K: Local, small town nature conservatory. Entry fees went to a great, local cause. This was the race where I figured out how slow I was compared to others and how much more I needed to train. Solo run.
Storm the Bastille: Night fun run that zigzags through downtown Milwaukee. Solo run and PR’d my 5K time.
Chicago Half Marathon: Longest run ever. Felt like I was going to die afterwards. Ran with DailyMile friend, Eric (Runs4Brains). After the half marathon, I ran sporadically for about a month, recovering from the beating my body took.
Lake Geneva Turkey Trot: Trail 10K race in Lake Geneva. I PR’d my 10K time and had an awesome run. Solo run.
The turkey trot was the final race of 2010. Up next was the indoor marathon relay, in Milwaukee, in January.
InStep Indoor Marathon Relay: Team of 4 people, 1 of whom I actually knew. The other 2 were strangers, but we had fun none-the-less.
From January to May 2011, is the winter season and training for my first marathon. I signed up for the Lake Geneva marathon in early 2011 and trained through-out the blustering winter for it.
Lake Geneva Marathon: If you read my race report, it looks a bit scatter-brained. I was going to go back and reorganize my thoughts, but I decided that, that’s how my brain worked afterwards, may as well keep it that way, so I remember. This was HARD. The Lake Geneva course is known for its grueling hills and solitary running. No crowds, no fan-faire, just 26.2 miles around the awesome lake, mostly solo. Jen, my mom/dad and the kids met me at a few spots, which was nice. Hearing them cheer me on helped. Started with 2 friends, ran 99% of it solo.
Up next is the 2011 Lombardi 5K Run for Cancer on June 11. I plan on PR’ing my 5K time from last year by a lot.
After that, the Rock-n-Roll Seattle marathon, on June 25, 2011. I’m running with my cousin, Katie, who wanted to run her first marathon this year as well. She and I will hopefully start and finish together. At least, that’s the plan. Training for a 5K and a marathon at the same time is proving to be challenging. I want to run the 5K hard and the marathon easy, so finding the mix during my training runs is confusing sometimes. It’ll all work out fine, no need to stress over it.
In July, I have the Kishwauketoe Trail 5K race. After July, I don’t have any races scheduled. There are a few other 5K/10K’s in the area that I’m eyeballing, but nothing concrete just yet. Going to get through marathon #2 and the others before committing to anything else.
Also in July, I’m traveling to Alaska. I hope to get in some remote Alaska runs and get them logged on my Garmin GPS watch.
My longer term goals are:
- Improve my 5K and 10K times
- Setup/coordinate a 5K in Lake Geneva
- Keep running; regardless of if I’m training for something or not.
- Run for fun!
Thanks for reading my year in running. Here’s to another great summer and year!
Logic of a 4 year old
Dec 26th
Sam said to Jen tonight, as she was tucking him into bed…
“You and daddy put the presents in my stocking, didn’t you?”. Jen
said “No, Santa puts the presents in the stockings.”. Sam says
“Then why do you look guilty?”. Come on! Really? You’re 4 years
old, how the hell do you know what a guilty face looks like and how
the hell did you think to say that tonight. Goodnight.
Sam & Me
Oct 25th
Sam and I went to Target the other day. I took his picture standing in the big circle thing and he wanted to take my picture, so he did. Pretty cool that he can operate the iPhone camera now.
Social Networking with Security and Stability
Oct 6th
The quest:
Exploration of the topics below to come up with a good mixture of social networking while maintaining personal safety and professional stability.
Personal Safety
- When is posting status updates to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, personal blogs, too much information?
- Do would-be criminals see this as their chance to take advantage of the situation?
- Are your loved ones safe if you announce that you’re out of town or the country?
- Services like GoWalla and FourSquare are fun, but is it too much information?
Professional Stability
- Furthermore, what does it mean to your business partners if they read social network updates from you while you are visiting them?
- Will the fact that you went out for beers and posted a picture of some crazy beer to Facebook, Twitter or your blog, harm your business relationship?
- Do you exercise the same business etiquette when thinking of posting things online that you would while personally meeting with business partners?
- Does it matter if you do or don’t know them personally?
- What about the people you’re traveling with? Do they know or care if you use their name or activities online?
Exploration:
Personal Safety
Personal safety is of utmost importance, both for yourself and the loved ones you leave at home while traveling. While thinking about these topics I find myself torn between them. I would love to share fun things to my social networks, as they happen, but doing so only cements the knowledge that you are indeed away from your home. Depending on what you say, would-be criminals might know exactly where you are and at what time. They could use that information against you (for example, calling a loved one and faking a kidnapping to extort money). They could use that information to plan a robbery at your house if they know you’re not there (they could possibly know exactly when you’re going to be home as well, depending on how much information you share). Side note: Ever wonder what punishment you’d face if you committed a crime? Now you can find out, using my iPhone app, iCrime.
Services like GoWalla and FourSquare are really fun to use and I enjoy using them, however, they provide a ton of detail about where specifically you are at the given ‘check in’ moment. Do you choose to not share anything in real time, except for private e-mails, phone calls, Skype, with loved ones? Do you wait until you arrive back home to share your experiences of the trip with social networks?
To me, it comes down to a few things…
- If someone Google’s your name, or does a whitepages search for you, is your address listed? Do you have your personal details publicly viewable in Facebook? You might and not even know it. Check Facebook settings and ensure only exactly what you want to show, is shown. Do you have a website listed in your Twitter profile? Is your Twitter profile public or private? Mine is public and I have this website listed when you look at it. A simple WHOIS lookup on your website can display your full address, e-mail and phone number. Most domain registrars charge extra for a “private” listing and most people don’t select it when they purchase their website. Any one of these scenarios can provide anybody with your full address and contact information. Most whitepages sites even give you a handy map to show specifically where your house is.
- How secure is your house/apartment/condo? Do you have a monitored alarm system? If yes, do you arm it regularly? Have you tested it? Do you lock your doors? May sound funny, but a lot of people leave the inside garage door unlocked. Garage doors can be pretty easily opened, so if you leave the inside door unlocked, consider locking it.
- Is there someone that can check on your loved ones regularly and ensure nothing looks suspicious around your house?
- Do you have surveillance cameras around the perimeter of your residence? A surveillance camera package is relatively cheap these days, consider getting one. Be sure to hardware the cameras too. Hacking into the wifi version of cameras is also pretty simple. Google it and you’ll see loads of video tutorials and footage of people who do it. Consider looking for a system that can send you real time updates as things happen, so you’re always in the know.
Given the details above, you may choose to do what you will, however, keep in mind the possible ramifications. If you’re not sure about it, look at your Facebook and/or Twitter pages. Based on what people you’re friends with are posting, can you determine when they aren’t home? Do you see any patterns? I bet you do, it’s common.
Professional Stability
Professional stability is also extremely important, especially for those who travel for and represent their company abroad. Do you want your company or business partners seeing the details of your personal life on the Internet, while traveling on their dime?
- To address the first topic written above, it really depends on your company and/or business partners. If you work for a company that promotes a certain lifestyle, perhaps they’d be a little more leaniant to online postings of nightlife or other social activities. If you don’t, however, work for a company that promote that lifestyle, heed warning that your boss/manager/supervisor/VP/CEO/CIO/CTO, probably doesn’t want the personal details of your nightlife posted to the Internet for all to see. Some could talk about freedom of speech and freedom of this and that, however, if you wouldn’t personally walk up to your boss or business partner and have a conversation about the same topics, it’d be safer to not post it to your social networks, or your blog. If you do indeed have that line of communication open with your management and business partners, still be cautious, a verbal conversation is less incriminating than photos or drunken tweets.
- Respect those that you are traveling with also. If you do choose to share information about the days/nights events online or even verbally, it might be a good idea to ask your colleagues if they are OK with you doing so. Just because you might have a great line of communication open with management or business partners, doesn’t mean your colleagues do. It’s about respect and privacy.
Bottom line
Be careful with what you share and how you share it.
Photos from my 13.1 mile run
Aug 24th
Cows at a nice little farm.
Farm Land
Going from mile 3 into mile 4
The halfway point...
Sam after he finished running a lap by himself.
DailyMile (and overall) Personal Security? Say what?
Jul 11th
Being the proud owner of a Garmin 305, I obviously went for a test run to see how it works and to see all the bells and whistles that it records about me whilst running.
I uploaded my run to dailymile and shared what I normally share about a run. One thing it did for me, was create a route map and make it public and automatically associated it with my running post. Awesome, right? Well, maybe.
The purpose of this writing is to help answer this question:
Do I really want routes with the starting and ending locations being the end of my driveway? Maybe I do, maybe I don’t, it depends on lots of things.
This was the list of questions I asked myself:
Q: Do I actually know my ‘friends’ on dailymile?
A: No, I’d like that to change sometime, but for now, I’m connecting with others like me in my general ~50 mile radius. I’m sure I’ll meet a few of my DM friends in real-life sometime, but as of right now, you’re all strangers, nice strangers it seems, but strangers none the less. I was reminded of this while reading a book about stranger danger to my toddler this evening. I had to explain what a stranger was, then go through a list of people and associate the stranger label on them or not. That nice lady at the park with that cute puppy? Stranger. That nice lady at the park that we’ve talked to 5 times over a month, with the cute puppy? Still a stranger. That nice lady at the park, that, during conversation, you let slip the location of your home, with the cute puppy? Still a stranger, but now a stranger that knows where you live.
Q: Are my friends on dailymile trustworthy?
A: I hope they are. Being in a similar mindset as myself, I have high hopes on this one. No offense, I just don’t know you well enough, yet.
Q: Are my friends on dailymile the only people viewing my profile?
A: No. I’ve set my profile to public, so anyone on the interwebs can view it, regardless of if they have a dailymile.com account. This was my choice, mind you. It’s my stance that, what’s the point of a social network, if you lock it down so nobody can read anything about what you have to say. And, yes, I view dailymile.com as another social network. One that just happens to track miles for you.
Q: Is the general public trustworthy? More specifically, are those who visit my blog, dailymile/twitter/facebook/linked-in profiles, trustworthy?
A: I hope they are, but since you have no idea (website analytics aside) who the person is, or their intentions, it’s best to plan for the worst case scenario in my opinion. So, I say they are not trustworthy, at least not enough to tell them where specifically I live and when I’m normally away from my home for an hour on end.
Q: Given the fact that Garmin creates a PUBLIC route, do I really want to share that with the world?
A: Not always. I want the control to share some routes with the public, keep some restricted to friends only and not display others at all.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any way to default your Garmin imported routes to ‘friends only’ privacy settings. Sure, you can edit it later and set each route individually, it’s just not very intuitive to a person that they should or even care to do it. I also noted that Garmin’s import functionality is still in beta right now. So, perhaps once it’s officially released, some of these things will be changed for the better.
I leave you with one thought to ponder. Or don’t, your call.
Do you put anything online (twitter, facebook, dailymile, blog, etc…) that can pinpoint your daily routine and/or physical location to the extent that a wrong doer could rob you (either your house or your person) or otherwise stalk you?
Notable link:
There was a forum post in the dailymile forums about this similar topic. Some good points made by some of the users. Worth a look…
Tylenol & Motrin Recall
May 3rd
In 2009, children’s Tylenol and Motrin were recalled for various reasons. In 2010, children’s Tylenol and Motrin were recalled for various reasons. Each year, we seem to have to cleanse our cabinets of medications for the kids.
Children’s Motrin and Tylenol isn’t cheap, at around $6 to $7 each, this cleansing of products sets us back around $20 per recall.
During the 2009 recall, we didn’t pursue reimbursement. During this latest recall, we have three products being recalled, each of them a different product, each of them at varying levels of usage and have submitted for reimbursement of each.
- Children’s Motrin, new in the box, just bought it.
- Children’s Tylenol, half gone, been using it for a while
- Concentrated Motrin Infant Drops, just about gone, had it for the longest out of the three.
Since we’ve administered two of these products to our kids, we’re obviously concerned about what’s really wrong with them. The McNeil Product Recall website and the Tylenol.com website both say this is a voluntary and not on the basis of adverse medical events, which I take to mean that there haven’t been enough sick kids reported.
Here’s the quote from the websites:
McNeil Consumer Healthcare is initiating this voluntary recall because some of these products may not meet required quality standards. This recall is not being undertaken on the basis of adverse medical events.
However, as a precautionary measure, parents and caregivers should not administer these products to their children.
I really hope that whatever is wrong with these medications, isn’t serious enough to harm any child.
On a side (and more geeky) note, I find it funny that Tylenol.com and McNeilProductRecall.com both have the Netscape icon as their ‘favicon’.
Bottom line: Please check your medicines and get rid of anything included in the recall.
funny keyword ad
Mar 28th
I use the Internet to diagnose pretty much anything that comes to mind these days. Recently, I was searching for something related to my toddler’s hands and saw this gem of an ad on Google.
Cheap Toddler Hands
Thanks Google / NexTag, I was indeed looking to purchase cheap toddler hands. 
2010 New Year’s Resolutions
Jan 1st
In no particular order…
- Drink less coffee
- Drink more water
- Build an iPhone app and get it published in the iTunes App Store
- Write a childrens book
- Take more family photos (specifically, focus on the family unit photos)
- Take more “Nick & Jen” couple photos
- Continue to not drink soda (been a few months already)
- Learn to speak Chinese
- Have more patience
- Eat healthier
- Continue to love and cherish Jen, Sam, Lizzy and the rest of the family