Run to Win

In 2006, Dean Karnazes was the second person to run 50 marathons in all 50 states on consecutive days. You can now watch a documentary of his exploits on the big screen, which is titled after his book, Ultramarathon Man:
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It’s been a few years since I have tested myself, but at that point I managed 46 pushups nonstop. I doubt that I could do that right now, although I could probably get into the low 30s.

There’s a craze going around right now about doing 100 non-stop pushups. The craze was started by one of the readers of this site, Steve Speirs.

He started the Hundred Pushups, which provides a 6 week program designed to get anybody into shape fast so that they can complete 100 pushups. It may take some people a little longer than 6 weeks if they have to repeat any of the weeks, but it is a proven system that will build up strength and endurance in record time.

Steve told me about his new site when he first launched it, and it was right after I started my own program for the Summer. I am looking forward to this Autumn, though, when I plan on following Steve’s program to see how many pushups I can work up to.

The site allows you to follow each week separately or download the complete program all at once. You can also choose to be listed with others taking the challenge so that you can provide mutual support and encouragement while getting public accountability.

If you are in the market for a new weight training program, then this is a good solution to throw into the mix and can give you something to be proud of once you have completed it. Pushups are one of the best exercises that you can do and having a strong base can really improve your running.

Have you joined the challenge?

I received an email this afternoon from Guy Kawasaki letting me know about Alltop, a new aggregator of all sorts of news and topics. Run to Win has been featured on their Running Page, and there are a lot of other quality running websites also listed. If you have a few moments, you may want to take a glance through and see if there are any gems that you are not yet subscribed to. I’ve found that I’ve actually been subscribed to or am currently subscribed to a vast majority of the sites on that list.

You may also want to take a look at the Complete Running Family, who has been providing the same service for the past few years.

I met Ryan Lee in August of 2007. He was a speaker at a conference that I attended, and the first night there he came into a small party we were having in a back room at the Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Austin. We chatted a little, and the next thing that you know him and a couple of other guys are doing pushups in the middle of the restaurant. Not just regular pushups, but ones that involved flipping over, and crawling around the room, doing handstands, and other various acrobatic feats that you don’t normally see in between tables of diners. Thankfully, he’d already finished eating before he started.

I’ve been in Ryan’s private coaching club for the better part of the last year, and he has a lot to offer. His prescribes Tabata workouts, which are high intensity 4 minute workouts that fast, efficient, and that leave you gasping for breath. You spend 20 seconds doing work and 10 seconds resting repeated 8 times. Normally I keep a piece of paper in front of me that have the exercises listed in order, and then program my watch to beep at the appropriate intervals.

Ryan has simplified the process, though, and has created the BodyBot, a web program that will let you set up a program, will lead you through it, and will show you on the screen what you should be doing at any given time.

I bought a membership to the program on Friday evening, and have been using it ever since. I’ve even gotten my wife doing the workouts with me, and trying to get her to lift weights or do body weight types of exercises can be like pulling teeth sometimes. The program isn’t perfect, but it does have a lot to recommend it. I’ll get into some specifics about what areas need improvement, but first let me demonstrate how it works so that you have an idea of what I mean:
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There were 6 official entries in my first Twitter Running Story Contest. The rules were simple: Post a link to a Twitter page that told a story about running or walking in exactly 140 characters.

Here are the official entries in the order in which they were received:
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The contest to win a free copy of my book ends on Friday at 6:00 EDT. That is also the deadline for the parent contest over at Copyblogger. The prizes over there have expanded quite a bit, so be sure to submit your story to both places. First prize has been bumped up to an 8GB iPod, with the 4GB iPod moving to second place and 50 custom postcards appearing in 3^rd place (amongst other prizes.)

So get creative, write a story in exactly 140 characters, and then click here to link to your story so that you can be entered into the contest! There are 6 submissions so far, so you have a good chance of winning a copy of my book. If you don’t enter, though, you will not have any chance to win.

If you were allotted 140 characters, including punctuation and spaces, could you tell an interesting story?

That’s the challenge that was thrown down by Brian Clark at CopyBlogger, a website devoted to improving your writing.

Can you tell a story in exactly 140 characters?

That’s the idea behind the first ever @copyblogger Twitter writing contest.

It should be a great exercise and a lot of fun. Being constrained to exactly 140 characters will spark your creative juices and force you to focus stringently on word choice, sentence structure, and even punctuation.

The rules for his contest are simple. You need to use Twitter to write your story, it must be exactly 140 characters long, and it must be interesting. The best story wins a 4 GB iPod Nano. Not only that, but I’m going to sweeten the deal by offering a digital copy of my book to the best running related story!

In order to be eligible for a copy of my book about Marathon Preparation and Recovery, your story must have something to do with running or walking. It can be related to a race, to training, to walking on a nature trail, or even to watching somebody else run or walk. You must also leave a link to your Twitter story in the comments below. If you want to be eligible for the iPod, you should also leave a link in the comments over at CopyBlogger, of course. There is only 1 entry per person allowed, so make it a good one. That being said, you don’t need to enter the same story into his contest and into mine, since mine has a content restraint.

Here is an example (and my entry into Brian’s contest):
http://twitter.com/BlaineMoore/statuses/815241805

I passed 1st place at mile 19. I mustn’t let anyone catch me. I am getting so tired. There’s the finish line! The course record is now mine.

By the way, if you sign up to Twitter and want to follow me, you can do so at http://twitter.com/BlaineMoore.

(New to Twitter and not sure what to do or how to use it? Click here for some simple, step by step directions.)

So start getting creative, writing your 140 character stories, and leaving a link here so that I can read them all! The deadline is this Friday, May 23^rd, 2008 at 6:00 EDT.

Last year, the IAAF put on a fantasy track & field league for the Osaka world championships. This past Winter, the USATF put on an event for the Visa Championship Series of races. I really enjoyed taking part in both leagues last year.

Well, this Summer the fun begins again. Both the USATF and the IAAF are providing an outdoor Fantasy Track series.

The USATF is going to center around it’s popular Visa Championship Series of races again, with the first meet happening this weekend at the Adidas Track Classic. There are two deadlines for making your picks. The 800m and the 5000m events are tomorrow night (Saturday) so those picks need to be made by 10:55 PM Eastern Time tomorrow. All other picks need to be made by 1:55 PM EDT on Sunday. A cool new twist on this season is that you can see who the favorites are based on who has already picked which athletes to win in each event. The entrant list sorts each athlete by their fantasy popularity.

The IAAF Fantasy Track game will begin with the June 1^st meet at the Golden League meet in Germany. The rules are a little different than they were for the Osaka games or for the USATF games. Rather than picking the athletes in individual events, or choosing a full complement of athletes with a maximum of 1 athlete from each country, you choose 4 captains that follow you from meet to meet and then you choose 5 additional athletes for each meet. If you choose athletes who score in the top 8 of their events, you score points.

Both leagues are free to join, although you are of course welcome to wager locally with your friends. Speaking of which - is anybody interested in a little friendly competition? Time is short for the start of the first USATF meet, but we could certainly get something together for the additional meets in the season and for the entire IAAF season. Let me know if you have any interest.