Here’s another website I have thought about building for the past ten years, but put off until I became independently wealthy (I could only imagine doing it as a public service–I couldn’t figure out how to monetize it enough to make a living).
Luckily, the folks at BetterLesson.org have implemented it on their own, starting back in 2008. BetterLesson.org allows members to share and organize teaching materials. It’s like MIT’s OpenCourseWare for K-12, with content coming from everywhere rather than a single institution.
Materials are posted under an attribution-only Creative Commons license, with the original providers continuing to own their materials, but agreeing to allow other site users to use them without restriction.
These guys recently got some expansion funding, too.
Check it out! Here’s wishing them well in a really worthwhile endeavor!
If you’re interested in awesome education sites, I can also *highly* recommend Khan Academy. If you don’t know the site, go check it out this instant. Now, gentle reader! I mean it–it’s *awesome*!
Category A Better World If..., Business Ideas, Education, Entrepreneurship |
In April of 2009, I was headed to work and noticed that the vision in my right eye was fuzzy. I have always had good vision (20:15), so my initial thought was “sleepy seeds”, or somesuch. I tested each eye independently, and found that I could still see everything very clearly with my left eye, but not with my right. Then I had a busy day at work, and mostly forgot about it (at computer-screen-distance, I didn’t really notice the blurriness, which I find a little bit disturbing as I think about it now).
When I was leaving the office, I called AC (my wife).
“Hi hon. The vision in my right eye has been blurry all day. I might have a detached retina or something. It’s cool, though—the headlights of the cars coming the other way get all swirly and squirrelly. It’s like being in a Van Gogh painting!”
I was sort of enjoying it.
She freaked out (which is not like her): “Call your doctor!”
Me: “Well, it’s not bad, no pain or anything, and if it’s still there in the morning I’ll give him a call.”
AC, not joking: “Call him NOW.”
Me: “Nah, it’s after hours. I’m not going to reach him, and you’ve got like 3 days to get things fixed if it’s a detached retina.”
After several similar exchanges, she gave up in disgust, though I could tell she was considering calling my doc herself (and I’m a little surprised she didn’t).
OK. Let’s take a little break here to explore this. Why are women (generally) so much more sensible about this stuff than men? Maybe it’s because they have a higher pain tolerance, so they fear doctors less. Maybe it’s because testosterone makes us stupid, especially when it comes to healthcare. Maybe it’s because culturally women are taught it’s OK to get help of any kind (medical or otherwise) when needed. Maybe they’re just smarter. Whatever it is, I’m sort of disappointed in myself that I couldn’t get more worried about it. Guess it’s because I’m not a Type A person, just detail-oriented (those who know me might tell you “borderline OCD”, but I prefer to put a little more positive spin on it).
The next morning, I called my doctor and left a message with his paging service that maybe I had a detached retina. He (finally) called a few hours later: “Didn’t you get my letter?”
Me: “Hunh?”
Doc: “I’ve moved from Boston. Do you still want to be my patient?”
Me: “Well, I might have a detached retina. My right eye is all blurry in the middle of my vision. What do you want me to do?”
Doc: “Go to the emergency room.”
Me: “OK. Where did you move?”
Doc: “South Shore–Brighton.”
Me: “Dear Lord. I live on the North Shore. No, I’ll transfer to somebody else in the network who’s closer to me.”
So I ask AC to take me to the emergency room. Her parents were visiting, so we asked them to watch X and pick up A from the bus stop, I took a day off from work, we ate a good breakfast and packed some food for the emergency room (we had learned to do this after being in the emergency room for 7 hours when daughter A dislocated her elbow the first time [yes, the first time…story for another time]—it was at least 6 hours before she was seen by a doctor and I needed to raise hell to get her some pain killers in the meantime).
I had brought my friend Jo to the MGH emergency room the week before. We were carpooling at the time, and she usually drove. This particular day she got so violently ill that she pulled over. She’s not a complainer, so she clearly wasn’t well. She asked me to drive. Then she said: “I think I’ve got to throw up. Do you mind?”
I knew I’d better think carefully (but quickly) before answering this question.
Handing her a plastic bag: “Um, do what you’ve got to do.”
She was violently ill, repeatedly. She curled up in the passenger seat, white as a sheet.
“OK. So I’m clearly not taking you to work. Am I taking you home, or to the emergency room?”
No response.
“All righty, then. ER it is.”
I basically had to lift her out of the car into a wheelchair that had (conveniently) been left in my parking space at the MGH garage. They loaded her with IV fluids and decided that she just had the virulent flu that had shut down a wing of the hospital the prior week when all of the docs and nurses had caught it.
As a result, I conveniently knew where to go and how it worked.
At the emergency room check-in desk, I explained that I might have a detached retina.
The intake guy asked me: “Do you want to come here, or would you rather go to the Mass Eye and Ear Emergency Room? It’s literally right around the corner.”
“Um, I dunno. Which is better?”
Pause. “You’re putting me in a very difficult position here.”
<snicker> “OK, thanks. I’ll just be walking around the corner now.”
Mass Eye and Ear was wonderful–I can highly recommend them. They were polite, reasonably efficient, and obviously very skilled. I’d been in some labs there in conjunction with classes at MIT (“Auditon and Perception” grad seminar on how the eye and ear work, as I recall), but had never been there as a patient.
I met first with a couple of screeners. One just took my medical history. The next asked where the vision was fuzzy (“draw a circle and divide it into 4 quarters top/bottom and left/right. Where in that area is your vision blurry?”) I then met with a resident who took a look into each eye with a variety of tools, and asked a few questions.
“Are you taking any cortical steroids?”
Not what I was expecting. “Uh, what? No.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I run a software company.”
Clearly confirming his suspicions: “Ah.”
The experienced doc was next. She took a look, and asked a few questions.
“Are you taking any cortical steroids?”
“No.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I run a software company.”
Clearly confirming her suspicions: “Ah. Hey, I’ve got a new resident here. Do you mind if she comes in and takes a look at this?”
Me: “No, bring her in. That’s the point of a teaching hospital, right?”
So she came in and got very excited. “Wow! I see the chimneys, just like the textbook!”
Me: “OK, folks. Care to share with me? What’s the prognosis?”
Them: “You’ve got Central Serous Retinopathy. This is a condition where macular fluid pools under your retina, causing a bulge. Since the back of your eye now has a big bulge in it, the focal length of all of those receptors is off—and your vision is blurry. This is a side-effect we see with cortical steroid use in some patients.
“Anecdotally, we believe it’s stress-related. When you’re stressed, your body makes natural steroids that are very like the cortical steroids that we’ve seen can cause this. We see it a lot in 30- to 50-year-old men who are in management or other high-stress jobs. Especially if they have Type A personalities.”
Me, defensively: “I am NOT Type A!!!
“I really tend to be kind of mellow. I let stuff roll off my back. I’m good at dealing with stress…or maybe I’m not as good as I thought. But I’m not doing anything different than I have for the past 15 years. Why have I never heard of this before?”
Them: “Well, it actually happens quite a lot, but we suspect it’s greatly under-reported. First of all, if it’s in your peripheral vision, you’ll never notice it, so you won’t report it. Your case is right in the middle of your vision, so more noticeable than most.
“Also, for people who wear glasses, they’ll assume they need a new prescription, and make an appointment. By the time they get in to the doctor’s office a month or two later, it has often cleared itself up.”
“That’s encouraging to hear. What do we do to get me better?”
Them: “In most cases, it goes away by itself in 30-90 days. If your vision is critical to your work, like for airline pilots, for instance, we can zap it with a laser and let the fluid out. Unfortunately, that’s destructive, and you’d have a tiny black spot in your vision.”
Me: “I’ll pass, thanks. I’ve got a monitor with a dead pixel, and when I look at it, that’s all I see (and no, I’m NOT Type A! I’m detail-oriented…) Let’s wait and see.”
Now, am I just in denial about being Type A? I’d be curious to know what my friends think. I’m unquestionably borderline OCD—when I’m bored, I’ll count things, rhythmically, until they end on an even beat. If they come out odd, I’ll need to count them again, so they end up even. Why are evens better than odds? Beats me. Balance, maybe? A lifetime of rock’n'roll drumming, perhaps, and counting in either 2 or 4 as a result? I don’t know if I had a similar habit before I learned how to play drums or not…
Even more importantly, why did this only affect me this way at this time, when I’d had roughly the same job and the same level of stress for the past 15+ years (in fact, at some points it had been *much* worse)? It *could* be that I was feeling more responsibility to make things work at the office now that I’ve got 2 kids to care for. Perhaps two kids add a level of stress that I just haven’t figured out how to manage. It *could* be that I just can’t shake things off like I could when I was younger (still not admitting this as a legitimate possibility, which will eventually get me into trouble). It could be that my lack of fitness was having an effect, though I’d been running semi-regularly for about 8 months at this point, and was down 8 or 10 pounds from my heaviest. Perhaps I was burned out, and my body was telling me I just needed a break. Perhaps it was all of those things.
Or, as I strongly suspect, perhaps it has to do with the fact that I was sleeping less than 4 hours/night on average for a couple of months straight, and was averaging an all-nighter about every 10 days or so. I had started sleeping less to get better caught up at the office, and to get some personal projects under control, while continuing to make time for exercising. I found that I got used to the rough start in the a.m., and that my work, while a bit compromised, was good enough to get a lot done. Part of the key was saving the rote and mindless tasks for when my system was at low ebb (I did a lot of dishes, laundry, and organizing between 3am and 5am).
Now, as a bit of an aside, here’s why I think this last was the source of my problem:
Sleep has always been fascinating to me, and I’ve done a fair bit of self-guided research into what’s feasible or not feasible for me.
While in college, I did a sleep study in Dr. Charles Czeizler’s lab at Harvard Medical School…pioneering stuff which got a lot of press (the National Geographic issue about sleep spent a lot of the article focusing on his work). I’ll write a separate blog post about that experience. At MIT, I pulled a lot of all-nighters (mostly for fun), and found that I could bounce back afterwards better than most of my friends. One summer, I experimented with 28-hour days.
This was great—it works out to six days per week, so you can completely drop a day (I eliminated Mondays…who wouldn’t?). I went with 18-to-22-hour days, and 6 to 10 hours of sleep. Aside from finding it hard to schedule things appropriately (the rest of the world doesn’t accommodate your unconventional schedule), it worked fine for me (although I did have to develop a special calendar for myself to indicate which weekday hours I’d be awake and available for crossover with the world). Luckily I was working at a research lab, where my specific hours were less important than hitting deadlines…and I hit my deadlines. I learned later that trying these longer days apparently makes some folks near-suicidal (and/or near homicidal), so it’s not for everyone. I’ll write about that in a separate post, too.
I’ve always been fascinated with people who got by on very limited sleep. A friend’s Dad used to average only a few hours a night. Da Vinci was famous for very little sleep (4 hours/day, spread throughout the day—he must have managed to get to a REM state almost immediately whenever he napped). There’s a movement people talk about as “Uberman” which teaches one how to do this. When my schedule is entirely under my control again, I might try it out. Edison was famous for taking advantage of his transition state between wakefulness and sleep to generate ideas, and to access his subconscious. As I’ve heard his technique described, he’d sit upright in a chair, holding a steel marble from a large ball bearing, with metal pie plates on the floor, and he’s start thinking. When he fell asleep, he’d drop the bearing and it would wake him back up. So he’d be able to pick the bearing up and repeat. With an hour or so of this, he’d often be able to access the ideas from his subconscious enough to come up with a new approach to whatever problem he was struggling with (ironically, while writing this paragraph I was sitting in a chair in the dark in my son’s room while he was falling asleep…and I woke up to find about 100 rows of the letter “d” in my document. If I’d been holding a ball-bearing, I could have awakened myself sooner and continued to be productive. <grin>)
So I knew that sleep schedules (and sunlight schedules, too) were important for mood and for combating things like Seasonal Affective Disorder and for insuring productivity. I knew that one’s circadian rhythm cycle affected performance throughout the day in many spheres, and that these could be shifted by light and sleep patterns (think “jet lag”). I knew that REM sleep was critically important. And I knew that “making up” sleep doesn’t work, but that adequate amounts of sleep after deprivation can serve as a reset button for your circadian rhythm cycle, etc. From raising kids and reading a lot about children’s sleep, I learned that adequate and predictably regular sleep seems to have an impact on brain development, and anecdotally I’ve seen it have a huge impact on mood and behavior (especially whinging, impulse control, sensitivity, and even-temperedness). Too little sleep = cranky kid (ask any parent).
But after my blurry vision, I learned that one important part of “sleep-as-reset-button” is resetting your hormone production cycles.
We all create a variety of natural hormones on a regular cycle. These include things like testosterone, estrogen, etc. These also include internal steroids that we create in response to a variety of factors, like diet, exercise, and STRESS. Ah-HAH!
And, when we get too little sleep, the system doesn’t get reset, doesn’t do a good job monitoring existing capacity, and just keeps flooding your system with chemicals it doesn’t need. Adequate sleep is needed as a reset button for this, too. I contend that months at a time of 4 hours/night or less is insufficient to reset my hormone production clock (who knew?). So when asked if I’d been taking cortical steroids, I guess my answer should really have been: “sort of”.
So what happened with my vision?
Within a week or so, I was compensating—using my peripheral vision more, not distracted by the swirlies when I drove, etc. The brain is amazing at dealing with this sort of thing—I remember reading about perceptual experiments where (crazy) people strapped themselves into special visual apparatus that flipped the world upside down (basically, wearing a flip-over periscope 24/7). After some reasonably short period of time (weeks, not months), the brain figured it out, and just flipped everything right-side-up as part of its perceptual process. When they removed the goggles, everything looked upside-down for a few days, then flipped back to being right-side-up again. My process was less dramatic, but seemed equally adaptive. I could tell, if I closed my right eye, that there was a fuzzy spot in the center of my vision, but with both eyes open, the fuzziness smoothed right out. Honestly, aside from the follow-up eye-doc visits, I kind of forgot about it.
At my second follow-up, about 3 ½ months later, I was back to 20:15 vision, and the blind spot was gone. Two years on, I’m sleeping more—averaging 5-6 hours per night, much as I had done (without incident) for years before my CSR incident. So far so good. I’ve also lost almost 30 pounds since this happened, through a combination of diet and exercise, which is certainly helping with energy and stress reduction. For more on those topics, see my post about the Tough Mudder adventure race at http://keithjmackay.com/im-a-tough-mudder or my CALERIE (2-year reduced-calorie study) posts (http://keithjmackay.com/tags/calerie).
If you want to know more about circadian rhythms, see the Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm
For info on the lab where I did my studies, see the work of Dr. Charles Czeisler (http://sleep.med.harvard.edu/people/faculty/210/Charles+A+Czeisler+PhD+MD). I was a subject for two separate 9-day time-isolation experiments in his lab in the late 80′s.
For information on polyphasic sleep, or a 28-hour day, check this out: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/information-list-of-polyphasic-sleep.html
I don’t think I’m a natural short-sleeper…see this interesting article on same:
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/112502/why-people-can-run-on-little-sleep-wsj
I’ll do some separate posts on sleep stuff and on some of the other studies for which I’ve been a guinea pig. If you’d rather see one or the other let me know, and I’ll bounce that closer to the top of the list.
Category Brain and Cognitive Science, Health/Nutrition, Uncategorized |
Last November I participated in the Tough Mudder (“the toughest one-day event on the planet”) in Englishtown NJ.
It *was* tough–12.3 miles, 19 obstacles. Fewer than 80% of competitors finished, and there were over 150 cases of hypothermia. I’m happy to say I finished the race. They don’t officially time you, but I finished at around 2 hours, 30 minutes. My goals were (first) to finish, (second) to finish in under 3 hours, and (third) to finish without injury and do all obstacles. I achieved the first two, so I was psyched. It was definitely a challenge–you’re immersed and soaking wet within the first mile, and then you’ve got another 11 miles to go–with 17 more obstacles. It was very cold and very muddy (the shirt I’m wearing in the photo below started out as a bright white shirt at the starting line…)
- After the Finish - photo (c) 2010 Kimberli MacKay
The event was well organized–by all accounts the first two Tough Mudder events were not done as well, but I lucked out and picked their third event. The third time was apparently the charm, and the organization had learned how to conduct a good event by then. The focus of the Tough Mudder events is on making sure that nobody gets left behind (you help your fellow Mudders through each obstacle as needed). The support from other Mudders is palpable.
I made it through every obstacle but one–I missed the “underwater tunnels”. After leaping off of the 15-foot platform (“Walk the Plank”), I swam back to the near shore (I really don’t swim…need to work that before the next water-related event), and ran along the shore to pick up and continue the race. The “underwater tunnels” were on the far shore. I was comfortable with the idea of doing the underwater tunnels–they don’t involve swimming, just dunking under floating barrels. If only I hadn’t needed to swim to get there… Next time.
I managed to maintain my three-year streak of near-constant minor injury about two-thirds of the way through the race (I got complacent and a little bit endorphin-high, and twisted my ankle–badly–while stepping through the uneven tires near mile 8). I had twisted my ankle in the 10k “Hoppin’ Mad Mud Run” the prior April (7 mos earlier), and it wasn’t yet 100%. Naturally I did fine in all of the treacherous muddy areas (slippery motocross hills and all), then hurt myself stepping through tires laid out on a smooth asphalt track. Doh! Serves me right for getting punchy and showing off for myself (there was literally nobody in sight at the time). Embarrassing…and I’d taken the Tough Mudder pledge at the beginning of the race that I wouldn’t whine (“…No whining. Kids whine…”), so I had to just laugh about it, shake my head at my idiocy, and keep going.
I ran with a pack that had about 5 pounds worth of stuff: dry clothes (in plastic bags), energy snacks, med kit, etc. After the race I understood why the veterans were laughing at me for carrying the pack–despite having my ankle brace in there, it wasn’t worth it to stop and put it on. I’d already stopped once to get the mud out of my shoes at about mile six (some of the sharp little stones were uncomfortable) and I almost couldn’t get the shoes back on (the knots were wet and muddy, my hands barely worked, and my feet had swollen). With the ankle, I figured all the splashing through the ice-cold water was probably as good as having an ice pack, anyway (yes, I honestly did justify the next 4 miles to myself with that logic). After about a mile, my ankle stopped complaining so I could just get on with it. When I hurt my ankle in the prior mud run (at mile 1 of 6), I had this same experience–and I don’t think running on it did it any favors either time. But that’s part of the mental game, and I *did* finish both races.
All in all there were 19 obstacles across a course laid out over more than 12 miles. What were the obstacles? I’ve included video links at the end of this post that show most of them, along with a PDF of the coursemap with obstacle descriptions. They ranged from ropes over icy water at the beginning (the “Ball Shrinker”), to traipsing through a long and uneven mud pit filled with waist-high icewater, to running between zig-zaggy rows of hay bales (while they’re on fire), to going over 10′ high walls (little help, please!), to greased and inclined monkey bars (again over chest-high icewater), to carrying a tire around an asphalt track, to climbing a very slick and muddy motocross hill (sprinklers going nonstop to keep it muddy…we all needed to help each other on this one), to walking a wiggly balance beam over (you guessed it) chest-high water (“Twinkle Toes”), to squeezing through small conduits 20′ long (“Boa Constrictor”), to going over/under logs/trees on a forest trail, to running through live electric wires (I had no problems, all looked like just plain string to me, and I didn’t see any power source that could be providing the live high voltage described…but some people *swear* they were shocked. Now, to be fair, I was exhausted at this point–this is in the last half-mile of the event–and I wasn’t looking at anything too closely).
This is the longest of the Tough Mudder races (the others are typically 7 to 10 miles rather than 12.3), but it’s also one of the flattest (the May race at Stowe in Vermont, for instance, has you run up the mountain…more than once–which I suspect will make up for the shorter distance. They’ve also added additional obstacles). This was also possibly the COLDEST of the Tough Mudder races. Late November is NOT warm. For my race it was below forty degrees. That’s not bad for a run…unless you have just climbed out of muddy water. Soaked to the skin. Running into a stiff wind. Brrrrr! There were parts of the race where I couldn’t unclench my hands–too cold.
Tips for those of you gearing up for one of these:
- Find something that will protect your knees and elbows. I was more careful this time after my prior mud run, but I had bare knees and elbows and I was pretty scraped up at knees, elbows, shins, and ankles for over a month after the event.
- Do some of your longer practice runs without your iPod. In the actual race, you won’t be wearing it (iPod + mud = bad). Best get used to the experience ahead of time.
- If you’re going to be racing when it’s cold, practice with the clothes you expect to be wearing in the race. Remember that it’s a long race, and that you’ll wind up ditching gloves and hat. You’re going to be soaking wet within the first mile or two…do you really want to wear sopping wet gloves, or have water dripping from your hat for the next 3-4 miles? No, you really don’t. I put mine in my pack before jumping off the 15-foot platform into the water, and never put them back on. I had made a point of exposing myself to a little more cold than usual all fall (didn’t zip up my coat, didn’t over-dress for my runs the way I typically do, etc.). I think it helped.
- Wear light clothes that will dry quickly (I wore triathlon shorts designed for swimming/biking/running…they are designed to dry quickly; I wore a long-sleeved poly running shirt that also dried reasonably quickly; I wore some wicking smartwool socks which proved to be very comfortable (ruined by the mud…that’s the last time AC lends me something of hers to wear for a race <grin>); I wore my typical running shoes (I’ve seen several folks recommend good trail shoes that drain well…would have been better than my worn-out New Balance running shoes which filled up with mud and were uncomfortable by mile 6. I had to stop and empty them out.)
- Assume that everything you wear will be totally embedded with mud and may not be recoverable. I did recover my shirt and sneakers through a lot of soaking and scrubbing with Oxyclean (the shirt is a favorite exercise shirt), but it was quite a bit of work.
- If you care about your time, bring your own watch. One of the things I really liked about the race was that there’s no timer at the end of the race. They do time the frontrunners, but that’s not really the focus of the race. It’s more about getting to the end, and helping your fellow racers get to the end.
- If you’re doing an early spring or late fall run (it was COLD doing this in late November–it was under 40 degrees and windy and many obstacles leave you wet), bring a thermos of something warm to drink after the finish. My sister brought me a thermos of tea…VERY restorative.
- Obviously bring warm, dry clothes to change into—and don’t forget other shoes and socks. There was a massive pile of shoes that folks were leaving to donate to a shoe charity of some sort.
- Don’t forget plastic bags for all your wet stuff, and/or to sit on in your car to protect the upholstery.
- Bring your own Sharpie marker. That way you can mark your legs, your forearms, your forehead, etc. This optimizes the chance that pictures of you by the event photographers will be identifiable as you.
- If you’re going it alone, make friends as you go. I met an organic farmer from Upstate NY, some marines, a woman recovering from a recently broken foot (arch, bike accident) from Colorado, teachers from NY, a number of college students (Raleigh, NJ, NY), and a bunch of other folks that I helped or was helped by through the race (giving/receiving boosts over walls, being pulled/pulling people up the top of the muddy motocross hill, sharing my Gu Chomps (little sugary carbo energy boosters) with others cramping up at mile 8, etc.) It’s instant community, it takes the focus off of yourself, and it really helped my mental game. When I wanted to whine, I’d encourage somebody else instead. Per the Tough Mudder pledge: “No whining. Kids whine.”
- General rule for races: don’t wear clothing you have never worn for a workout. If it chafes, you want to discover and fix that before, rather than during, the event.
After you’ve just about dried out at each point in the race, there’s another water obstacle to get you good and wet again. I was sopping wet at mile 1, mile 6, and mile 11, (and to a lesser degree in between each of those).
The biggest challenge for me (other than the swim) was the monkey bars at mile 11. They were angled up and then down again (I’m guessing a total of around 25-30 rungs, plus-or-minus), and they were slick with a covering of mud from prior Mudders (and some rungs were apparently greased with butter to start). I’d been running for over two hours, I’d already hauled myself up nets and over a number of 10-foot walls and other obstacles so my arms were tired, and I was wet and cold so my hands weren’t working very well. To keep it interesting, the Monkey Bars were over chest-deep water…and needless to say, lots of Mudders fell in. I watched a couple of guys look up at the bars, think about it for a while looking demoralized, and then just jump in and wade across without even trying. One guy climbed up on top and crawled over–seemed wrong to me, but then again, why not? The goal was to finish, after all. The monkey bars were followed immediately by a balance beam across the water (“Twinkle Toes”) that was not just narrow, but also wiggly. At mile one I don’t think I’d have had a problem with either obstacle. At mile 11, I barely made it across the monkey bars (making copious use of legs and feet to help–strength training some time during the past 20 years would have been a really good idea <grin>). Once across, I confidently stepped onto the balance beam (I have good balance…gymnastics, unicycle, rock climbing, etc.) and only made it halfway across before slipping into the drink (my balance and coordination were both shot at this point, and I didn’t compensate enough). I’d guess that more than 2/3 of the people fell off either the Monkey Bars or the balance beam into the water.
FUNNY COMMENTS
Here were my favorite comments from the day:
- In the restroom afterward, while changing, random voice from another stall: “If anybody finds a penis, let me know. I seem to have lost mine during the race.”
- From me, going into the water at the beginning, about waist deep: “Sometimes I’m not thrilled about being SHORT!” <snickers from tall guys around me>
Yes, it was low-brow humor, but it was that kind of crowd and event.
- Woman, passing two Marines at the same time I was doing so: “You still here?” They turned to me and said, “We’ve got to beat her…she passed us in the tire-carry while carrying TWO tires.” She says, “Well, I’ve got two arms!” She left them (and me) in the dust.
Near the finish, I was encouraging a young college student who was hobbling near me. He asked where I was from, and I said Boston. He asked,
“Do you go to school there?” I laughed…it got me to the finish line (apparently the mud filled in my thinning hair
).
- I said “good job” to a couple of guys in the parking lot afterwards, and they said the same. I said “see you next year!” Immediate response from both of them: “Hell, no!”
To keep your spirits up, these signs are posted throughout the race:
- Waiver Reminder - photo (c) 2010 Kimberli MacKay
Honestly, every time I saw one, it made me snicker, which really helped a few times when I was dragging.
MEDIA CLIPS AND OTHER INFO
Photos from the race (not explicitly of me):
This Forbes Sports Money interview (6:20) with Will Dean (Tough Mudder co-founder, former British Special Forces Counter-Terrorist, and Harvard Business School Grad) talks about their original business plan, and it shows a lot of the obstacles at the actual race that I ran:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMPDStSAzBk&feature=related
Category Fitness, Motivation, Personal Growth/Change |
I am helping people in several startups that are thinking about names at the moment. Here are the best articles I’ve come across that deal with this:
http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/17702/17-Mutable-Suggestions-For-Naming-A-Startup.aspx
http://thinkvitamin.com/uncategorized/how-to-name-your-company/
http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/startupbasics/namingyourbusiness/article21774.html
Note that many of these can apply to naming your band, too. In one band I was in some years ago, we did a naming exercise. A week and dozens of sheets of potential names later, we still didn’t have a clear winner–we ended up going with the name from the band leader’s former band.
This band name angst is such a typical story that it has become expected. I’ve heard it attributed to the fact that the typical band is composed of young people without much direction. Now, having been involved with several startups that involve older individuals than the typical high school garage band (and hence, purportedly wiser individuals), I can say that neither age nor lack of decisiveness seem to be the root cause of the problem. It’s nearly always hard.
The name of one of my companies, TechnoFacto, popped into my head as I was playing with words and thinking about a newsletter business to cover technology. Mind you, this had been a commute-time exercise for a couple of weeks–like many overnight successes it first took a lot of hard work.
I never started that business (other, better ideas came up), but I kept the name TechnoFacto. I like the way it sounds (rolls easily off the tongue), and it’s similar enough to ipso facto that it feels familiar, like you’ve heard it before. The play on words is fun, too (for me, anyway–your mileage may vary). For me, the name works sort of like when you hear a song that taps into the zeitgeist enough that it becomes an instant classic and feels familar, even though you’ve never heard it before (You want an example? Hmmm…dating myself here, but I’d classify Richard Marx ‘Right Here Waiting’ as that type of song…simple ballad, well done, tapped into all the tropes so it resonated–I’d be curious to know your alternate examples in the comments).
Category Band, Entrepreneurship |
This is number 2 in a series of 16 posts regarding what I learned about weight loss during the 2-year CALERIE study at Tufts University. A summary of all 16 posts with links can be found in the post “How I Lost 37 Pounds“. An overview of the study and my thoughts going into it can be found in the post “My Last Meal“.
A strong support network matters A LOT. The folks who have the hardest time in the study are the ones who try to do it on their own, without support from friends and family. I spoke to one participant who was effectively keeping the study a secret from everyone—I would find that impossible. I was stunned when she told me.
The study provides a built-in support network of nutritionists and counselors who I have found to be really wonderful, but you only see them a few times a month–and they aren’t there when you’re being tempted by gargantuan slushees or donuts (or, OMG, cider donuts!). I am good at recording what I eat, but not good at making the time to figure out the calories for same. Finally, annoyed, I drafted my kids to ask me when I sit down to dinner, “Daddy, did you record your food today?” It generally shames me into doing it if I hadn’t already. Also, AC (my brilliant, talented, sexy, and supportive wife) does most of the shopping and cooking, so without her onboard, I’d have a hard time sticking with the regimen, especially given my schedule at the moment.
It’s not that the rest of my family eats all of the same things that I do outside of mealtime, but rather that what is AVAILABLE to me works with a reduced-calorie regimen. The kids still have some snacks that I avoid, and drink juice (I avoid most liquid calories), and so on. AC does a great job making sure that I have alternatives that work for the diet, and many of these have been adopted by her and others in the family as well.
AC has a large extended family, all of whom are quite close, and whom we see fairly frequently. This means a lot of (big) communal meals when people are in town. I *love* the food prepared by the family (there are many amazing cooks), and the sort of celebratory feast dishes that get prepared for the crowd are often decidedly NOT CR-friendly. I treat these events like restaurant visits, and I try to plan ahead to allow the inevitable splurges and overindulgence that will occur. This means cutting back a few days ahead of time, snacking on FiberOne or other high-fiber snacks before getting together to eat, and trying to remember to limit portions. The extended family supports me to varying degrees (ranging from consistently trying to feed me because I’m too skinny to fascination with my obvious insanity). Luckily, we have a long enough history that nobody can remotely think that I dislike the food…so no major offense is taken at my smaller portions.
Tags: CALERIE, health/nutrition, Personal Growth/Change, weight loss
Category CALERIE (calorie restriction study), Health/Nutrition, Personal Growth/Change |
This is number 1 in a series of 16 posts regarding what I learned about weight loss during the 2-year CALERIE study at Tufts University. A summary of all 16 posts with links can be found in the post “How I Lost 37 Pounds“. An overview of the study and my thoughts going into it can be found in the post “My Last Meal“.
Weight loss comes more easily from diet than exercise. My colleague Adam put it succinctly: “You can’t make ass out of air.” In other words, you don’t gain weight unless you fuel it via calories–and conversely, you don’t NOT gain weight unless you cut back on calories.
Case in point: When I finally decided to get back in shape, I first gave up the flavored coffee drinks (dunkaccinos, frappucinos, macchiatos, blended-whippee-thingees, etc.) With no other changes in diet (and no exercise program yet started), I lost 5 pounds in the first month. Maybe it was an anomaly, but I tend to think not.
When I then started exercising (without any further change in my calorie consumption), I lost a little over a pound per month for the first 8-9 months, then about a half pound a month for the next few months. When I joined the CALERIE study and began with my calorie budget, I lost about 4 lbs per month at the beginning, tapering to about 1 lb/mo a year in. I was still exercising about the same amount as before over that 1-year period, so it’s hard to know exactly how much was diet vs exercise, but it’s clear that the diet made a much larger difference.
Don’t take this to mean you should skip exercising–there are a ton of benefits to exercise (it improves many things, including: sleep, endurance, strength, flexibility, mood, sex, muscle tone, muscle efficiency/metabolism, etc.) I’ve seen it claimed (though I haven’t looked for studies to confirm this) that getting more fit allows you to burn off the calories you ingest more efficiently EVEN in a resting state–so paradoxically, if you’re working out enough, you don’t need to work out so much to get the same benefit from exercise.
With all of that said, it’s much easier to lose weight by eating fewer calories with better nutrition than it is to add additional exercise.
A pound of body weight is equivalent to roughly 3600 calories. If you eat only 10 calories more than your perfect weight maintenance diet (by which I mean the diet that will keep you at a constant weight given your typical level of physical activity), you’ll gain about a pound a year (10 cal/day equals 3650 cal/year, or 3660 on leap years). An extra 100-calorie snack per day (very easy to do), and you’ll gain 10 pounds IN ONE YEAR! You know all those paltry 100-calorie snack packs that you see for sale nowadays? Giving up JUST ONE of those a day can keep you from gaining an extra 10 pounds this year. It’s no wonder that in the last 10 years of my job (managing a software company…95% sedentary, broken up with occasional sprints from one airport terminal to the next), I gained over 35 pounds without thinking about it. If I’d been able to burn 35 more calories per day over that time (or skip 35 of those calories per day), I might not have had to work so hard this past 18 months to lose it all again. For reference, 35 calories is about 7 M&Ms (plain, not peanut…it would only be 3 1/2 peanut M&Ms).
A large part of this is habit. With the way I’m eating now, I’m rarely hungry–but as I was getting used to the regimen, in the mid-afternoon I would sometimes feel peckish when I’d already eaten all the snacks I packed for the day. I have learned not to head reflexively for another snack unless I will be so distracted by hunger that I’d be unproductive. Instead, I just suck it up until dinner–and find that it generally isn’t a big deal. Once I got used to the regimen, I didn’t need quite so many snacks–and I found that I nursed them a little bit more to make them last, so I couldn’t allow myself to feel denied. More about denial in post number 4 of this series.
Tags: CALERIE, health/nutrition, Personal Growth/Change, weight loss
Category CALERIE (calorie restriction study), Health/Nutrition, Personal Growth/Change |
So, I’ve been in the CALERIE study now for a year. What have I learned?
First and foremost, I’ve learned that this regimen self-selects for people who are at least borderline OCD (though, as I’ve said before, I prefer to think of myself as “detail-oriented” <grin>). The study involves a lot of recording and obsessing, which comes quite naturally to me…your mileage may vary (YMMV).
If I were to compare this to the commercial weight-loss programs, as best I can tell the regimen is most like Weight Watchers®. I’ll outline the study details and how to do something like this on your own, and will insert the link here.
Now, on to what I’ve learned about losing the weight and (so far) keeping it off. The following 16 points sum it up as best I can, and I’ll elaborate in a separate post per point.
- Weight loss comes more easily from diet than exercise.
- A strong support network matters A LOT.
- Tracking everything I ate (At least at the outset) taught me tons.
- Portion control IS NOT deprivation.
- Some things are easy to give up, so I did (mostly).
- Some things are hard to give up (so don’t!).
- Many calorie-dense snacks are easy to replace.
- Prepacking lunch and ALL snacks for the day makes it easier to avoid temptation.
- Planning ahead for splurges is MUCH easier than cutting back afterwards.
- For restaurant meals, take George Burns’ advice.
- Zoning works for me.
- Protein in the a.m. makes a big difference.
- Being accountable changes your behavior. A lot.
- Reset your sweet-meter to succeed.
- Commit. If not accountable to yourself, you won’t follow through.
- Don’t fall prey to complacency—it’s very easy to do.
To sum up–it’s not magic. Gotta do the work and pay attention. None of this is new, or earth-shattering. Many of these things won’t work for you–but some of them might.
One interesting thing about the study for me is what they DIDN’T care about. I’ll speak to that in another post.
Tags: CALERIE, health/nutrition, Personal Growth/Change, weight loss
Category CALERIE (calorie restriction study), Health/Nutrition, Personal Growth/Change |
So I managed to get a DND (did not drown), which was definitely my first goal. Unfortunately, I swallowed a lot of water (open-water swimming has WAVES! Go figure!), and when I flipped onto my back to recover, I inhaled just as a wave washed over me. Not recommended. I flagged down kayak-guy (one of the lifeguards) to tow me back to shore, rather than throwing up while swimming. It seemed likely, and it struck me as a very bad idea given my (lack of) swimming skill.
So, back to YouTube and the books. I’ll learn to swim yet. Oh yeah, and I’m going to try crossing over with the coach again.
I had a fat biopsy and a muscle biopsy last week as part of the CALERIE study, so I didn’t swim last week. If I can make it over to UMass again over this next few days, I’ll plan to get into the swim again.
In the meantime, the experience was very good–people were great, Sun Multisports did an amazing job with the organization and logistics, and everything went much smoother than I had any right to assume given what I’ve heard about other races. People were friendly and supportive, and AC and the kids came to cheer me on. They were particularly happy that I DND.
As an added bonus, we got to stop at IKEA since the tri was on the south shore (New Bedford, Whaling City).
So, once I get some good pool time in, I’ll sign up for another sprint tri, and finish same. I’ll let you know!
Tags: Fail forward, Fitness, Personal Growth/Change, Triathlon
Category Fitness, Personal Growth/Change |
Well, the coach and I have not crossed over, so I’ve been doing my best to learn to swim from YouTube (plus some exercises/advice from some different people I know that teach swimming, plus some actual practice in the pool). Coach was visiting family for two weeks, then I was traveling to different client sites for two weeks, then coach was sick for a week (at 10am we scheduled an appt for 2pm THAT DAY, and when I arrived he had gone home sick…). Nevertheless, I don’t really know what I’m doing when I try to breathe in the water. I thought I was getting it, but AC, watching me in the pool in Mexico, said I was sort of desperately lifting my shoulder and entire head out of the water for each breath. That doesn’t sound like the confident, energy-efficient machine that I should be. This means I’m going to be going with plan B, which is “do what you can, then flip to your back to rest as needed”.
In a triathlon, any stroke is legal. Drafting other swimmers is legal (I’m not fast enough to keep up with other swimmers, so I need not worry about this option). Stopping and resting by hanging onto the lifeguard boats, the buoys, or anything else that is STATIONARY (i.e. which doesn’t carry you closer to the finish) is legal.
I had a setback with my bike, too. After I pulled it out of the attic and started tuning it up for a ride, I found that the rear tire is in rough shape, likely to peel itself off the rim at any moment. I’m trying not to spend any more on this first tri, so I started talking to people about options. My parents mentioned that they have some bikes in the barn, and I’m welcome to borrow one. We went to check them out, and found that the JCPenney ladies 10-speed road bike looked like the best option. I brought it home yesterday and did a brick today. This is about it for me before the race, as I am going in for my one-year evaluation in the CALERIE calorie-restriction diet study and need to avoid exercise for 48 hours ahead of time. The evaluation means two nights at Tufts Medical, so I won’t get to work out on those days, either.
The brick was as hard as people say. Even though I only biked about 6 miles, my legs were jelly when I tried to start running. It tool the first mile to get my legs back to feeling normal.
This was valuable for my running strategy, too. Right now, a lot of my speed gains have come from going faster during the first mile, which helps me keep up the pace even when I ‘slow down’ in the 2nd and/or 3rd miles. I am thinking that I need to change this to be: go out pretty hard for mile 1, but really try to pick it up in mile 2. My brick made it clear that I have little control over my legs for the first mile, but get control back in the 2nd mile. As a training strategy, I’d be better off going a little bit easy in the first mile, then hammering the second mile.
We’ll see how it goes!
Tags: Fail forward, Fitness, Personal Growth/Change, Triathlon
Category Fitness, Personal Growth/Change, Uncategorized |
Vic’s Waffle House on Rte 38 in Tewksbury MA (just off exit 38 on Rte 495) is owned by a friend of ours (named Vic, oddly enough), and Vic and his crew make truly excellent breakfast (and other) fare. They make all the classic breakfast fare (eggs / toast / bacon / sausage / homefries / hash browns / pancakes / omelets etc.) They also make some signature special dishes. Some of the things that distinguish the place, in no particular order, include:
- the (inspired) Elvis Waffle (see picture).
Vic’s Elvis Waffle
We like it built on a whole-grain waffle. It consists of a waffle with embedded pieces of bacon, topped with peanut butter, banana, bacon, and drizzled honey. Genius!
- The fresh-squeezed orange juice is fun to watch and consistently delicious.
- The everything hash browns has jalapenos, cheese, some kielbasa, and onions (as I recall). I add pepper and ketchup. Smacking my lips just thinking about it.
- The Southern Benedict (with spinach–yum!) is tremendous, and if you’re feeling bold you can get it with the habanero hollandaise. The habanero hollandaise also goes extremely well with their chicken wrap.
- If you’re feeling reckless rather than bold, you can try to get the Luther Vandross burger–this is a tasty hamburger where the bun is actually a large glazed donut from a local donut shop. It might not sound appealing, but it works surprisingly well. It might also only be available by special request…I’m not really sure.
- If you are a chocolate fan, the chocolate chip waffles are always popular.
The coffee is bottomless and the service is fast and pleasant. Note, however, that on the weekends it can be *very* busy–go early or late to make it better for all concerned. It’s a family-friendly place, and the kids can color on provided coloring book pages while they wait.
Tags: Food, Friends, Restaurant Review
Category Food |
