Run to Win

Do you use Twitter? Or Facebook?

Did you know that you can find me on both of them?

Here are my pages:
http://twitter.com/RunToWin
http://www.facebook.com/RunToWin

For about a year and a half now, I’ve been putting up a quote of the day that is related to running, or motivating yourself to run, or giving you another reason to laugh about running.

If you have been following me for any length of time, then almost every weekday that isn’t a holiday you’ll have seen the quotes.

If you think back to last March (2009), you may recall a coaching session that I did with Mike Brooks.

It is not yet available for sale, but I am going to be giving away copies of the coaching session in conjunction with the 1 More Mile for Sunshine Challenge! Thanks to Mike, I am raising money for Camp Sunshine, so it seemed fitting to give away our coaching session.

In order to win one of the 5 digital copies, all you need to do is go to this article and leave a comment:

http://www.1moremileforsunshine.com/79/you-can-win-a-free-coaching-cd

If you want an extra chance to win the physical CD (I’ll even pay for the shipping costs) then in your comment you just need to leave a guess as to how many quotes you think I’ve offered up in 2008 and 2009. (My cut off date for counting them was on January 1st!)

Even if you don’t want to make a guess in order to win the physical CD, any comment is eligible for the digital versions. I’m closing the comments on this page since you need to leave your comments over at the 1 More Mile for Sunshine Challenge website in order to be eligible to win.

And while you are over there, take a look around and check on my progress. I’m now 6 days into the challenge…only 25 left to go!

It’s that time of year again! The Visa Championship Series starts tonight with the Millrose Games and continues next week with the Boston Indoor Games. I can’t get to New York today, but will be in Boston next week.

The Millrose games will be televised live on ESPN2 tonight from 7-8:30 p.m. It will also be televised tomorrow on NBC, January 31 from 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. ET. If you’d like to play along with Fantasy Track, then you have until 5:40 p.m. tonight to make your picks.

Here are the details on how that works:

How it works

Fans create their ultimate track and field team each week by going to www.visachampionshipseries.com and selecting the athletes they believe will compete well at that week’s meet.

Each Visa Championship Series meet is “virtually” scored, with 10 points going to the first-place athlete in each event, 8 points to the second-place athlete, 6 points to the third-place athlete and so on down to sixth place. The selected athletes score points for your team.

During the 2008 indoor season, after the conclusion of the AT&T USA Indoor Track & Field Championships, Jim Dunaway’s team from Austin, Texas, had scored the most points during the Indoor Visa Championship Series. He won a grand prize trip for two to the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Track & Field, courtesy of Visa. David Donley won the overall second-place prize, a $250 Visa Gift Card and Nike gift bag, including but not limited to a Nike/USATF spike bag, jacket, t-shirt and cap. Anthony DeSain won the third-place prize, a $100 Visa gift card and Nike gift bag.

2009 Indoor Pick-N-Win Fantasy Game

Grand Prize: One Grand Prize winner will be awarded a $2,000 Visa Gift Card and a Nike gift bag, including but not limited to, a Nike/USATF bag, jacket, t-shirt and cap. Approximate Retail Value: $2,100.

Second Place Prize: One Second Place Prize winner will be awarded a $250.00 Visa Gift Card and a Nike gift bag, including but not limited to, a Nike/USATF spike bag, jacket, t-shirt and cap. Approximate Retail Value: $350.

Third Place Prize: One Third Place Prize winner will be awarded a $100.00 Visa Gift Card and a Nike gift bag, including but not limited to, a Nike/USATF spike bag, jacket, t-shirt and cap. Approximate Retail Value: $200.

Three Weekly Prizes: Each game week, a Nike gift bag containing a Nike/USATF spike bag, jacket, t-shirt and cap, valued at $100, will be awarded. Weekly Prize winners will be determined by the top score achieved during the appropriate week from among all eligible entries (excluding the Grand Prize winners) received by the online deadline.

Pick-N-Win Fantasy Game New Features

• Invite a Friend: From the Pick-N-Win website, players have the ability to email a friend the Fantasy Game link and invite them to participate.
• News Page: Athlete scratches and additions to start lists will be updated on the news page.
• Facebook: From the Pick-N-Win site, players can click on the Facebook link and go to the USATF Facebook page to discuss strategies with other players and interact with their competition.

You can find all these items at
http://www.usatf.org/events/2009/VisaChampionshipSeries/play/

Fantasy Game timeline:

• The game kicks off with the historic 102nd Millrose Games (Jan. 30) and continues through the Reebok Boston Indoor Games (Feb. 7), Tyson Invitational (Feb. 13), and the USA Indoor Track & Field Championships (Feb. 28-Mar. 1).
• The first deadline for players to make their final 102nd Millrose Games picks is Friday, Jan. 30th at 5:40 p.m. ET. The game will conclude on Feb. 28 at 11:55 a.m. ET.

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:
(Click here to continue reading…)

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:
(Click here to continue reading…)

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.