Dan York

Second Time Running The Covered Bridges Half-Marathon This Sunday

I'm going to do it again... only this time my goal is to run the entire race!

Tomorrow, Sunday, September 2, 2012, is the Swanzey Covered Bridges Half-Marathon, also known as "Elijah's Race".

Last September this was my first - and so far still my only - half-marathon, as I chronicled first in a post about the upcoming race and then in a post about the results which photos and charts.

It was a great race and I really enjoyed running it.  It was fun to put the "13.1" sticker on the back of my car when it was all over.

However, I had a severe problem with my running pace that I hope to change this time around.

If you look at the image to the left with the map produced by my Nike+ iPhone app, you can see the problem. It's showing the pace of my run and you can see from the color legend at the top the speed at which I was traveling going from fastest (green) to slowest (red).

I started out at the very fast (for me!) pace of about 7 minutes a mile... and then...

... I nearly collapsed at mile 12.

Oops.

In fact, I walked through the water station at mile 12 as I had been walking through all the aid stations... but then I just kept on walking!

After what I remember was close to a half-mile, I said to myself that I "just" had a half-mile or so left and that I really should run that final bit. So I picked up my feet and struggled to the end.

My issue was that at the very beginning I had positioned myself in the middle of the pack of runners and so when they all took off... I took off with them all! Running very fast! My "normal" pace is about 10 minutes/mile and so dropping it to a 7 minute mile was a definite - and unsustainable - speed increase.

Added to the situation was that for a short bit near the beginning you run over a trail by some power lines that is quite narrow with little room to pass. So once you enter that section it is really a "channel" through which everyone must go and it's hard not to run fast with people right behind you.

This year my goal is to do the "tortoise approach" and run slower and steadier for the whole race. If I can run it all at around 10 minutes / mile that would be an excellent outcome. If I could even do it a bit faster in between 9 and 10 mins/mile that would be even better. Last year the official results had my overall time as 11:13/mile and I would like to do better than that.

My strategy, such that it is, will be to start out at the back of the pack so that I don't get sucked into the adrenaline-fueled initial surge. I also have a friend of mine who is running with me... and said he'll make sure I run the whole thing! ;-)

I've also had an entire year more of running, along with a set of other races (although none this long).

We'll see.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to the race!

P.S. If you are in the area (or want to travel here), information about the race is online. Online registration is closed but I believe you can register on the morning of the race.

My 3 Words for 2011 - How Did I Do?

So as 2011 enters its final hours, it's time to take a look back and see how I did with my "3 Words For 2011". As a reminder, they were:

• CONTENT
• PORTFOLIO
• LIFESTYLE

Well, to start with, they - and most all my plans for 2011 - were rather subsumed by an extremely unwelcome fourth word that dominated my year:

CANCER

Yes, indeed, the defining thread of 2011 has definitely been my wife's diagnosis and subsequent battle with breast cancer. It truly did consume the entire year - she had what was otherwise a routine doctor visit in January that started raising questions... and then her last chemo treatment was in early December.

In between, of course, were horrific months dealing with tests leading to the diagnosis in May, then the operation in July with the long recovery, and then the pathology reports of invasive breast cancer and then the start of chemotherapy in September and all the nastiness that followed.

She's not "done" now... next month she begins five years of a daily hormone therapy called Tamoxifen as well as one year of an every-three-week infusion of a drug called Herceptin.

But in theory we're through the worst of it. We hope.

So looking at 2011 through the cancer-colored lens, just surviving was a beautiful thing... but how did I do with the words that were to guide my activities? Let's see...

CONTENT

My big goal was to increase the amount of actual writing I was doing across my blogs and other sites. Unfortunately I don't have a count for 2010 to know how my writing exactly compares, but I know that I did write more this year. My total was:

• 632 blog posts:
  • 438 across my various personal blogs (primarily Disruptive Telephony and Disruptive Conversations)
    
    
  • 194 posts on Voxeo's blogs

Given that I was manually tracking all those entries across several different blogging platforms, it could certainly be off to a certain degree... but it's probably in the general area. Through the first half of the year I was writing more and averaging out about 2 to 3 posts each day. I had aimed to get at least one post out every day of 2011, but that goal feel by the wayside in March and then with all the cancer happenings it never really became a goal again.

Still, I'm pleased with a good body of work out there for 2011. Some of it shorter content... some of it the longer, deeper pieces I love to write. There's still a ton of stories left untold that are sitting in my queue... but I did get a good bit out.

Add to that, I believe, 51 podcast contributions to For Immediate Release. I seem to recall Shel & Neville taking one show off... and I don't think I missed any of the weeks. (And if they didn't take a week off this year, then it was 52 contributions.)

Plus, I published another book, this time with O'Reilly, "Migrating Applications to IPv6". The idea was that this was to be primarily an "ebook" that could then be frequently updated... which, given everything else going on, didn't happen (updates), despite my best of intentions. I'm looking forward to making some updates in 2012.

Where I had hoped to do more in 2011 was with photography and videos. My camera traveled with me a good bit... and I shot lots of photos... I just didn't have a whole lot of the curation/post-production time to then get photos online. 2012! Ditto video.

PORTFOLIO

I made some progress on this... I haven't really publicized it yet, but I've been aggregating my content from across various blogs into a new site at:

danyork.me

It's my attempt to bring together all my content into one central site. There's still much I would like to do with that and it's still not working the way I want, but it's a start.

I never did move my main blogs off of TypePad... perhaps 2012 will be the year I finally make that happen. And I still would like to improve how this site (DanYork.com) presents me...

LIFESTYLE

This is one where I did make serious progress. I had wondered a year ago if running would be something I really continued.

I did!

In fact, I ran 5 miles yesterday morning and will probably go for a similar run tomorrow. (Today's a resting day.) Over the course of 2011 I probably ran 400 or 500 miles... hard to know exactly as I'm not tracking all my running (such as on the treadmill).

I also ran in 6 actual races, including my first-ever half-marathon in September.

2011 also marked the time when I brought my running gear with me on every business trip and speaking engagement - and actually RAN!

Wellllll... except for the trip to Orlando where I left my shorts back in New Hampshire! On every other trip (including multiple trips to Orlando), I managed to get out and run at least once if not more. New York... Miami Beach... Toronto... San Francisco... Orlando... Virginia... Austin... I was quite pleased with this, actually, because it's so easy NOT to run while traveling.

So yes, running has become part and parcel of who I am.

Outside of running, there were some other lifestyle changes, too. Some tweaking of what we eat. Trying to do some more of the offline things I enjoy. Adding curling back into my life. Continuing to try to find that balance between the work I love and the family I love... The sudden job change from Voxeo to the Internet Society also brought some lifestyle changes, too.

Outside of the cancer chaos, or perhaps because of the chaos making me think more about priorities, 2011 was definitely one of thinking about - and acting on - lifestyle changes.

More changes to come, I hope, but this was a big part of 2011.

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What's on tap for my 3 Words for 2012? Well... I'll write about that soon... ;-)

Awesome Video of NY Marathon - See What 47,000 Runners Looks Like!

Amazing video from the NY MTA showing the different waves of runners starting the 2011 New York City Marathon this past Sunday on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Truly incredible to see what 47,000 runners looks like...

Running The 2011 Harpoon Brewery Octoberfest 5K...

It was, quite honestly, the hardest 5K race I've yet run.

Even with the promise of beer and bratwurst at the end, the Harpoon Brewery Octoberfest Race on October 9, 2011, was still a very tough race.

Why? One simple reason....

The first mile was pretty much entirely UPHILL!

Not "up and down hills".... not "uphill with breaks now and then"... no, it was just solidly a hill that went on and on at a pretty good angle the whole way. This picture doesn't really show it, but that's part of the big hill:

The hill was really the worst part. You ran up the hill for about a mile, then went off into a development where you went down and then back up ... and then you followed the same road back.

So the good news was that you went back down that same hill you climbed! The other good news is that at least you started climbing the hill!

Two other points you might gather from that photo:

• There were a LOT of runners! A record-breaking 1,124 runners, in fact! The biggest race I've yet run in, personally.
  
  
• It was in the middle of the day with the sun beating down on us. I usually run in the early morning, and even most of the races I've run have started at no later than 9am, so this was a switch. Thankfully it was Vermont in October so it didn't get too hot.

As I mentioned in my previous note, registration for the race did, in fact, get you two beers and a bratwurst... right on your race bib!

The race results are now posted on CoolRunning.com and a "find" on my name would show you that I finished #574 out of 1124. I was 66th out of the 95 runners among men ages 40-49 with a net time of 33:18 and a pace of 9:15/mile.

Not my fastest 5K ever, but given the course I'll take it!

Naturally I had to indulge in the bratwurst and at least one of the two free beers:

As you can tell, I did NOT go the extra bit to run in any kind of Germanic costume... but there were certainly lots of others running in costume, including the group of men that were in the image I used in my last post:

I was actually amazed by some of the costumes... which can't have been much fun to run in!

And yes, as you might expect for an Octoberfest gathering (or at least an American version of one) there was indeed the requisite "oompah" band:

All in all it was a great race on a great day for a great cause ... and followed up by great food and great beer!

Now I'm looking forward to next year - at least then I'll know the course!

P.S. For my runner friends, here was the course as measured/shown by the Nike+ app on my iPhone... the race was actually a bit over a 5K... really more like 3.5 miles:

1 Day Left To Register for the Harpoon Brewery Octoberfest 5K on Oct 9th

How can you go wrong with a 5K race where your entry fee gets you 2 beers, a bratwurst and a beer stein?

Plus, apparently, a lot of people running with you wearing "German" costumes?

Our local Harpoon Brewery in Windsor, VT, is holding their 9th annual Octoberfest 5K Race this Sunday, October 9, 2011, at 11:00am. Followed, of course, by the Vermont edition of Harpoon's Octoberfest celebration (there was also one last weekend in Boston).

I haven't finalized yet if I'll be running in it, but a neighbor of mine is, and it's tempting not only for all the fun and festivities but also because it is raising funds for the Friends of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth (where I've recently had some personal experience).

If you are interested, one thing to note is that there is NO on-site registration. You must register online to run the race, and...

REGISTRATION ENDS TOMORROW, October 5th, at 12noon

From the pictures, it definitely looks like a fun time...

Want to Run UP a Ski Area? The 5K Mountain Goat Scramble is Oct 8th

So this sounds like a pretty wacky local race... the "5K Mountain Goat Scramble" takes place this Saturday, October 8, 2011, at our local Granite Gorge Ski Area in Roxbury, NH (just outside of Keene).

It's a 5K race where you run up to the halfway point of the ski trails and then back down ... and DO THAT FOUR TIMES!

I have skied all the trails where the race is running and know the exact route they are doing... it's going to be tough to run that loop four times!

I'm not sure exactly what our plans are for the weekend and so I don't know whether I'll be running it myself, but it does benefit an excellent cause, the creation of a new Children's Museum here in Keene, so I do hope they get a good turnout.

Registration is open and you save $5 if you register by Tuesday, Oct 4th.

Here's the trail map for those who are curious:

Running A Half-Marathon - One Year After Starting Running!

I did it!

On September 4, 2011, I ran the 13.1 miles of the Swanzey Covered Bridges Half-Marathon!

I came in at about 2 hours, 27 minutes for an average of 11:16 per mile.

More on that in a moment, but I thought I'd mention that one driver for me to do this particular race was because the first time I recorded a run on my iPhone was September 7th, 2010. Here it was...

1.6 miles! And a year later here I am at 13.1. I'm admittedly pleased with how that has worked out!

In truth, though, I had been doing some running earlier in August 2010 using my Garmin GPS "watch", which I actually still use as a double-check with the iPhone. I was amused to see courtesy of Facebook's new "On This Day in 2010" feature this juxtaposition:

It's been quite a journey... and amazing to see what happens when you just keep on doing something day after day after day.

Now, as to this past weekend's half-marathon, it turned out to be quite a humid morning. We've had spectacular weather in recent weeks, with beautiful sunny days, temperatures in the mid-70s Fahrenheit and with almost no humidity.

Sunday was not one of those days.

I made the classic mistake of starting out WAY too fast! Caught up in the pack of people, I was running up about 8 minutes/mile, which is faster than even the fastest 5K I'd run! Not sustainable... and I dropped it back a bit... but not far enough... and the pace graphic below shows how that hit me in the last few miles:

Indeed, that red part in the upper right of the image is where I walked from the 12 mile aid station until about 12.25 miles or so when I willed myself to get back underway to finish the final mile.

The race itself was quite beautiful to run. It started off going through a covered bridge and then onto about 2 miles of trail running along an old railroad bed that's now a trail. When the course returned to the road it took us through parts of Swanzey I'd never known about and through three more covered bridges. It was admittedly fun to run through those purely because I'd never done so before.

After laughing at someone pulling out their phone and taking a picture of the first bridge, I did have to do the same for the next three:

The race had a good bit of roads through wooded areas and all in all was quite beautiful to run. There were "aid stations" set up every 2 miles or so with water and/or Gatorade and while I ran with a belt with water bottles, I also drank from all of the aid stations. They were much appreciated and some of the folks staffing the stations had fun costumes, music, etc., which was enjoyable to see.

When the race was over, I was definitely tired... and I didn't do a whole lot of walking the remainder of the day. But the next day I was back out walking a 5K with the family and have felt pretty decent since that time.

Would I do it again? Definitely. Do I have any interest in going further and running a full marathon? Not right now... although I won't rule that out. That just seems like a huge time commitment... and hard to practice for with small kids in one's life.

But I'll do another half... ;-)

P.S. Thanks go to my wife for taking these photos of me coming in to the finish area.

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UPDATE: The race results are up on CoolRunning.com and it turns out that I was 171st out of the the 203 runners - and 24th of the 26 runners in my age range (male 40s).

Running The Swanzey Covered Bridges Half-Marathon On Sunday...

I went and did it... continuing my running adventure, I went ahead and signed up for the Swanzey Covered Bridges Half-Marathon, a.k.a. "Elijah's Race", this Sunday, September 4th, 2011. (UPDATE: The website hosting provider experienced a server crash and is still trying to get the site back up - meanwhile a cached version of the site is available.)

I've never run 13.1 miles.

In fact, if I'm honest about it, I'd never even thought about running 13.1 miles until recently.

But here I go! Farthest I've run is 11.28 miles and when I was done I still had "gas in the tank" and could have run farther... so I'm going to assume that the adrenaline of the race will pull me through those last two miles.

I thought I'd try this race because it's local... and hey, what can be more "New England" than running a race through not one, but four covered bridges!

If you want to participate, you CAN register on race-day. The race starts at 9:00am on Sunday morning at the Monadnock Regional High School on Old Homestead Highway / Route 32 (see the Google map) and registration opens up an hour or so before.

For those curious, you can see the course mapped out on Google Maps (although people who have run it tell me that it starts and ends at the same place - the high school):

We'll see how I do!

Running Over 400 Miles And Counting...

Last week I passed a milestone in this little running adventure of mine. Per the "Nike+ GPS" app I've been using on my iPhone I crossed over 400 miles total that I've run outdoors and tracked with this app.

Not bad considering that my first full run was about a year ago, September 7, 2010, for a whopping total of 1.6 miles. Prior to that I'd mixed running and walking.

And I'm still incredibly amused by it all given that as I've mentioned before, I NEVER expected to be a "runner"!

Not in a million years.

Yet here I am. Not only enjoying running... but actually craving running and starting to get twitchy if I don't get a run in at least every other day.

Strange world.

I'd note, too, that this app didn't track all the running I did indoors on a treadmill over the winter. And there have been a couple of runs where the app malfunctioned... or where my iPhone ran out of battery power.

So my actual mileage is substantially higher.

But, hey, this is a good measure of my outdoor runs... and given that I'm running 15-20 miles a week now, I should be cruising through 500 miles fairly soon.

Fun stuff to track!

P.S. And if you don't believe that I wasn't a runner, read this post about how 40-year-old fat men can get up and run. :-)

Care to Donate? I'm Running the NH/VT Komen Race for the Cure on Saturday, July 23rd

Looking for new charitable donations that you can make in 2011? (that are tax-deductible if you are in the USA?) Looking to help support efforts to fund research to find ways to end the scourge of breast cancer that will impact 1 in 8 women in their lives?

If so, I'm running in the New Hampshire / Vermont Susan G. Komen 5K Race for the Cure in 3 days on this Saturday, July 23, 2011, and I'd love your support. Courtesy of the Komen organization I've got a great donation page all ready to go:

http://www.info-komen.org/goto/danyork

My friend Chip Griffin has very nicely kicked off my fundraising with a $100 donation (Thanks, Chip!), but I'd love any donations... $5, $10, $25, $100... or even more ;-)

Last year we walked the race as a family, even our then 1-yr-old who was in a backpack I carried. But last year we didn't have a strong connection to breast cancer other than knowing some people who'd had it.

This year it has definitely hit home with my wife's breast cancer.

This year I'm running the race... and my wife and 9-yr-old daughter are both walking. (We'll be taking turns watching the 2-yr-old.) Lori's fresh off of surgery on July 1, but she's walking 4 miles every day now and ready to do the walk on Saturday.

Through the experience of Lori's cancer, we've met so many other women who have been affected by breast cancer... we've got to figure out what's going on here and find ways to make breast cancer more like just a treatable disease that can be easily cured.

If you are open to making a donation, I'd sure appreciate it. Thanks for the consideration!

P.S. If you're wondering why I'm only now talking about the race... we weren't 100% sure we were going to do the race until last week... it all came down to how well Lori's recovery was doing.