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If you follow me on twitter (@smcavinney), you know that week 4 had its ups and downs. It was a pretty crazy week both in fitness and workwise. I made some good connections networking, and passed a very important exam.

Running life was the other side of the coin. Day 1 we ran in a cemetary near my house. I didn’t expect to finish the third running segment, and I lived up to my expectations. About 30 seconds into the last run, my brain decided my body had taken enough. The second day I faired better, but was still puttering tgowards the end.

I had joked with my runing buddy day 3 was the day we would attempt to increase our speed. We ran at a state park, through the woods, and on muddy hilly trails. Dissapointing myself, I did not complete the run. We talked about possibly repeating week 4, so I could catch up.

Against what my brain was telling me, we decided to push on to week 5 day 1. We arrived at Wissinoming Park at about 8:15 PM. The air was a little chilly for shorts, about 50 degrees with a breeze. Not my preferred running weather.

I have to take a sidebar for a sec and explain how we track our runs. I have an app on my Android phone that has a distinct beep when we need to change from running to walking.

I don’t know how we did it, but somehow we started running early the first run, and ended on time. And the second and third runs, we didn’t even take a break between.

Apparently, the weather we were running in is perfect. My lungs we still a little tired, but not so much that I was ghasping for air. Also my legs weren’t cramping, and still felt “fresh”.

Looking over the map really blew my mind. Especially when you look at all the crazy lines in the middle of the field. After the run a few guys invited us to play soccer, and we did just that. If you want to see the spreadsheet, just take a look over at the Running Log page.
View C25k-5-1 in a larger map

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End of week two. Sweet. Usually that would be the end of exercise for me for about year. We’ll see next week if that is the case.
So today I wasn’t able to run with my regular partner, so I replaced him with some one I thought would be a good replacement.
When I met her a few years ago, she was energetic, and the person that introduced us mentioned something to the effect that her only problem was that she wanted to exercise all the time. And at the time I always though “you know, we really should go running sometime.”
It just happened today that both our schedules were free today, and she was ecstatic when I asked her if she’d like to head out with me. Cool right?
Well, it seems like the years haven’t been so kind to her. And even though I’m no paragon of physique myself, it seems like she has oversold myself.
I guess that I should have known something was up early on when she didn’t stretch. While I was stretching she was doing extremely short sprints, then stopping short after a few feet. I figured she had some sort of advanced warm-up technique, and pushed the thought aside.
But I really started to doubt her exercise expertise when we were doing a warm-up walk (about 5 minutes). She meandered around and kept doing those short sprints.
Finally when we started running I could tell she was having issues. She actually begged off twice for a little bit to “go to the bathroom.” In a public park! The rest of the runs or walks were spent in almost complete silence, aside from some pointedly forced encouragements on my part.
Regardless of the company, I had a pretty good run. I am proud of my running partner for at least making the effort, not complaining and pushing through till the end. I’ve included a picture of her after the jump, and the map and here is a link to the stats.

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This update is going to be pretty short because I have a lot of work to do. But suffice to say, we ran last night in the pouring rain, in shorts. The map below may or may not be accurate because of a GPS glitch, but the excel file is up to date, with adjustments to the length of the run.

We were looking for a track to run on during the rainy days, instead of running on the muddy grass. We headed over to NorthEast High, because there is a pretty good track there, so I’ve heard. Unfortunately the whole place is locked down like Alcatraz, and try as we might, there is no good opening to get to the track. So we ran around the school a few times.

I found out pretty quick why people recommend that you run on a track, treadmill, or at least grass. At the end of the run my whole body felt like someone had used it like a jack hammer. Especially my feet. But we prevailed, and are better for it.

Before we ran, I hopped on twitter to encourage others starting out on Couch to 5k. Offhandedly I mentioned to one guy that I wasn’t looking forward to running in the rain, and he sent me the video I will watch every time I feel like quitting. Aside from just the sheer number of excuses in this video I’ve used variations of, the ending is knock out. Check it out below.

And as always here is the Spreadsheet, and map:

View C25k-2-1 in a larger map

I saw an interesting tweet this morning from my favorite gameshow host and yours, Corey Anatado. It said (if you didn’t click to read it) that his twitter feed was being sponsored. I was like, whaaaa? And my jaw did that thing in the cartoons where it hits the floor. I mean I know Corey is a cool dude, and he has a bunch of followers more than me, but he’s getting sponsors? Really? I had heard a while ago that some celebrities were getting paid to put ads in their twitter feed, but a regular guy like Corey?

At first I had the knee jerk reaction that some of you are probably having right now. I thought he sold out. That maybe I should unfollow him before my feed gets hijacked with ads for viagra, and various Japanese handwarmers. And he had the gall to follow up that tweet with this one. I was shocked and a little intrigued.

His ad was specific, and targeted. He let me know what I was getting into before I clicked the link. It wasn’t just a “hey guys check this link out, PLZ RT”. I’m not in college any more, so I didn’t even check it out. That’s when it hit me. Twitter is the perfect place to do referral ads. Think about it. How many people do you follow? And how often do you just skim through the tweets to find one that is funny, or relevant to you. If I was still in college, I would’ve checked out Chegg for sure. I follow a bunch of celebrities and weblebrities (I just coined the term), and they are always shooting off links to things they are in, or random crap that I don’t care about. But I follow them because I’ve determined that the good tweets outweigh the bad. And every once in a while, when the link seems relevant to me, I’ll open it up.

This also got me thinking, in a roundabout way, this is helping out small businesses. I meet a lot of small business owners and many of them cannot afford to market effectively. General ads cost way too much, and the more detailed a list, generally the more expensive it is. 20 cents per tweet is pretty low right, for a targeted, specific referral. Take Chegg for an example. They are a small company that rents textbooks to college students. They opened in 2005, but their first business model was broken, and losing money. They relaunched in 2007, and are building a base of students. The problem with having a base of students, is that you only have 4 (or 8 if they are docs) years to educate people about your service, and convert them to customers. Twitter makes super sense for a company like them. The viral nature of twitter, especially on college campuses is a great way to spread out information regarding your brand.

So I signed up. I took the plunge. I sold out. But before I did, I checked out what it all entailed. First of all, they are really really good about making sure everything is disclosed. You will never see a sponsored tweet by me with out disclosing it. Also, the service doesn’t have canned tweets that you have to post. They give you choice of advertisers, and also, choice of how you want to spread the link. I’m pretty impressed also that they have a readily available violation report system in place.

I’m going to give Sponsored Tweets a trial run. I’m not worried so much about if I can make a ton of money from it. Rather, I hope that I can come across some cool opportunities for my followers, and not let the system get out of control. Also, I’ve got some interesting ideas of how to get retweets, and clean out my basement at the same time. Either way, follow me @smcavinney, and let me know if you think this is crazy, or crazy awesome.

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Today my wife and I travelled over to the ok state of New Jersey to visit my in-laws. Ever prepaired I packed my running shorts knowing I wouldn’t have time to run with my buddy later.
There isn’t any good grassy parks close to their house, but they do have a treadmill in the basement, so I thought, why not give it a go?
Big mistake for a few reasons. First off, there is no fan down there. There was more water pouring out of me than one of those wildfire hydro helocopters. And running while super sweating is not fun.
Also, for some reason the treadmill kept slipping when in running mode. As soon as my foot would hit the track, the spining mechanism would pause for a second before it caught again and moved backwards. I almost fell more than once. I thought that if I removed my shoes this might alleviate the problem. But now I have blisters.
The only thing I found that helped was to hold on to the front or side bars. This means, of course, that it was that much easier to lean on the bars for temporary releaf. I can’t be trusted. I’m the guy that would hitch his bike to the back of the pace car.
All in all, I felt like it was a pretty god workout, but not a fun one. My legs felt like jelly, but the readout said I only went 2 miles. I took pictures of the readout, and they’ll be up later.

Edit: Pictures added

My running buddy and I completed the second day of the Couch to 5 kilometers (C25k) program. I thought I’d go a little deeper into what this program is. Basically from the looks of it, it takes the idea that can build up endurance by alternating jogging and walking, and throughout the program lengthening the amount of jogging you are doing.

So right now, we are starting out walking for 5 minutes to warm up, and then running for 60 seconds. After the running we go back to walking for 90 seconds, and so one for about 20 minutes. I have an app on my phone that beeps (pretty loudly) to let us know when to alternate. Totally doable. Next week (a week is three runs) we’ll be running for 90 seconds and walking for 2 minutes. The goal is that by week 9 we’ll be walking the 5 min warmup, then running for 30 minutes, which is approximately 5k, depending on how fast we push ourselves.

Yesterday, I had a pretty hard defeat in my work life. And usually I would just want to crash and eat a bag of chips, or ice creme (binge eating isn’t just for the ladies). But luckily I had already scheduled the run with my buddy come pass or fail, plus he was my ride home. I never realized how therapeutic running is. I mentioned in the previous post that I always saw running a boring. But you can’t be bored if you are with God. Even though I was running with a partner, I took the time to be with God and communicate with Him.

Yesterday was a lot colder than Wednesday was. We both wore shorts, and I had a hooded track jacket on. I don’t know if my legs are already stronger, or if the cold helped, but they definitely aren’t as sore or cramped up today. Also, question for any runners reading: I took a warm bath after my first run, and I think it helped with the soreness, but I’ve read about cold (even ice!) baths helping. Which is better, and why?

We traveled 2.49 miles around Wissinoming Park. Below is a map of where we ran thanks to MyTracks on Android, and here is a link to the spreadsheet that will be updated regularly.
View C25k-1-2 in a larger map

Started walking/jogging yesterday with my buddy. We are going off the Couch to 5k program. It was pretty intense for the first run, and it just goes to show how out of shape I am. I never liked doing laps in soccer, or just flat out running. It just seemed boring. The only time I actually enjoyed it was when I ran on a treadmill, and watched TV while doing it.

I also started using the MyTracks android app from Google. It makes tracking the runs and analyzing the data painless. Below is the link to the google docs that it generates, and a link to the map that I ran. We did laps on a field of grass, so the track is just a loose square, but you get the idea. I hope that we can go to different locations around the area so we don’t get too bored of the one location. Also, maybe I can try my hand at GPS Art

Spread Sheet

Map:

View C25k 1 in a larger map