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Just to bring you to up to speed (hah: if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s speedy):
Friday: 2.5 miles outside.
Saturday: 8 miles, done as 5 minute run, 1 minute walk intervals.
Monday: 1.5 [stomach troubles day]

I play mental games with myself to keep me going. Friday was 2.5 rather than 3 because I told myself if I ran all the hills on Friday straight through, that I’d give myself a break on distance. Hills are a key objective for me, since Marine Corps has a few, including a really steep and obnoxious one right at the finish line. (Something about storming Iwo Jima: can you imagine?! 🙂 )

Monday was 1.5 rather than more just because my stomach gave me tremendous grief. I had to stop running at about 1.5 miles and walk very carefully back home. I tried to short-circuit my morning routine to get out the door quickly. Runners have routines and rituals (eat only this, drink only that, BodyGlide in these specific areas, wear only this pair of socks….) that help them avoid discomfort. Cheating to get out the door quickly cost me what was shaping up to be a great run.

So, instead of Wednesday being a cross-training day, I’ll run on Wednesday. Tuesday evening I’ll do treadmill intervals, Wednesday I’ll do an easy run, Thursday probably some hillwork, Friday an easy run, and then Saturday will be my first 10 miler this season. Need to remember the BodyGlide!

On the fundraising side, I’ve been sending out emails in batches of 5. I’m keeping a spreadsheet of who I’ve tagged and when and how I tagged them. Each night I’ve been adding more names to the list to use in a later batch of emails. I don’t want to send out all at once because I keep tweaking the letter.

Also have set up a date for a Pampered Chef fundraiser party. Instead of me ending up with more Pampered Chef items in my kitchen, my consultant will contribute a percentage of the proceeds to Back On My Feet. It’s a win-win situation: my consultant is a friend of mine who’s getting laid off this week. This lets me help burgeoning Pampered Chef business support her between jobs, and helps my fund-racing, as well.

If you’re aware of other people / companies I should be talking with, please let me know! I’m not shy, and/or I can make myself get over it for the benefit of the BOMF fund-racing.

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Jotting down some notes for myself. Some folks keep a true running log, keep track of pace, etc. My pace is slower than I’d like to admit, so will just concentrate on distance here and assume that speed will improve as I start adding intervals.
Basic running for this week:
– Monday: 2.5 [long loop near my house]
– Tuesday: 4 [treadmill at work]
– Wednesday: none – rest day
– Thursday: 3 [treadmill at home; wanted to run outside, but it’s storming]

Notes: MUCH prefer running outside to inside. Getting more sleep this week would have made all of these miles easier, I think: Thursday’s in particular were much slower than usual, but took it as an exercise in “stick-to-it-ness”.

Plan:
Friday: 2.5 – 3.5 (shorter if inside, longer if outside)
Saturday: 8 @ 5 minute run, 1 minute walk intervals

Need to get new shoes: mine are showing their wear.

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$5K is no small fundraising goal for me.  I’d previously considered running for various causes I’d like to support, or just because a race was in neat place, but asking folks for money just seemed a bit too intimidating.  Some of that’s changed for me.  I’m going to be asking lots of folks for money to get to $5K, and I’m now viewing it as an opportunity to let lots of folks know about BOMF.  Giving also lets them participate in the fund-racing in some less strenous way than running 26.2 miles, not counting the hundreds of miles I’ll log before the race in preparation.

What I’d like to do in this blog is let folks know how things are going, both from a fundraising perspective and from a running perspective.  Bring you along for the adventure, in a sense.  If you comment on something you see here, that’ll also act as encouragement for me.  I didn’t come into this thinking it’ll be easy, and in fact, that’s part of the fun: I want to achieve a goal in partnership with all of you, something bigger than we’d individually be able to achieve.  That’s the point of BOMF anyway, isn’t it?  The program helps homeless individuals who have been told by society they can’t accomplish anything, and gives them something to accomplish.  The program does it teamed with that individual,  and even better, sets up a whole group that are trying to help each other succeed.

So keep an eye out for updates to this page.  You can get to a direct link of all my BOMF posts at https://www.nerderypublic.com/archives/category/bomf.  Comment on things you find interesting.  Donate!  Join the fund-racing team.

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I first read about Back On My Feet in Runners World earlier this year. The article talked about a group of folks who were inspired to set goals for themselves and to persevere to do something they had never considered doing before. I’m a goal-setter, so this all resonated with me: it’s why I run marathons, to run farther and faster than I ever thought I could. But while my biggest challenge is figuring out how to motivate myself and fit in my runs around a hectic schedule, these folks were fitting in their runs around the “challenges” of homelessness and addictions.

Back On My Feet is a program begun by a 27 year old (!) who recognized that everyone wants an opportunity to achieve something for themselves and with others. The Back On My Feet program works with homeless shelters in Philadelphia and Baltimore to set up running programs that provide structure, dignity, and an opportunity to accomplish.

I’m running for Back On My Feet as a fund-racer in the Marine Corps Marathon. My fundraising requirement is $2500 – I’m setting “bold and audacious goals” of doubling that because I believe that (1) this is a great program, (2) this resonates deeply with what I believe of supporting folks while helping them pull themselves up, and (3) I think that my network of friends and acquaintances should be introduced to this program in a big way.

If you’d like to support me in this challenge, my fundraising hub is available through Active.com

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I’ve been described by folks who know me as ambitious. I’m a goal-setter and list-maker, and I push myself to get to the next rung on my personal ladder. That has both its pluses and minuses. On the minus side, I end up frustrating myself if I’m not making forward progress towards a goal. Hence this post…

I started my current job some two plus years ago. It’s a good job, with a mostly good company. Note that mostly good is pretty high praise for any company: I figure that just like people, companies have their quirks. You have to decide if your particular company’s quirks are ones that you can work with, and/or work to improve. (I don’t think I try to change my husband, but I definitely count it as part of my job to improve my company.)

The quirk with which I’m wrestling and which I’ve wrestled for most of the time I’ve been there, is to determine whether it fits my career goals. If it doesn’t, it’s time to move on. I’ve aspired to start my own company for quite a while now, and I’m interested in proving my business acumen and leadership potential for someone else’s company’s benefit, with the idea that I’m also doing it with a stable salary till I build my own confidence level to go it on my own. Haven’t seen much opportunity for that in the last two years, even though I’m not shy about discussing my goals with my managers.

My annual performance review is coming up, which will round out last year’s cycle in which I listed some specific opportunities I wanted to work on with my manager. Not much progress there. So I’m now at a crossroads… stay in the stable job, doing good work for a decent salary and benefits, or risk the new job path? Is staying put giving up on the next rung? And if it is, am I willing to do that, and what does that say about me? Walking into a new job requires building new networks again, and being seen as the newbie again: are there other options I’m not seeing in my current job to get past the ladder block? Debating… and really tempted to illuminate this debate to my manager at the performance review. Stretch his people-management and coaching abilities…

Interested in thoughts…

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I’m about to become the next great exercise (though not diet) guru.  Realized tonight that TiVo + treadmill makes a great workout.  Pick a show you’ve already TiVo’ed, but haven’t yet gotten to watch.  If you’re just starting out, pick a half-hour show.  (Are there half-hour shows for adults???  If you need to, pick your favorite old cartoon!)  If you’re further along, your typical prime-time hour show works well.  Pick a pace you’re comfortable with.  And go.

Now, the twist: if you’re just starting out exercising, walk through every commercial break.  That’ll give you roughly 7 or 8 minutes running time, and then 2+ minutes walk time, in basic intervals.  If you’re feeling a little stronger, do what I did tonight: run through the whole thing, but do the 30 second skip thing through the commercials.  Turns out, that 60 minute show was just shy of 44.  Next time I do a “long” run, I’ll run through a few of the commercial breaks, to extend the run.  Or if I’m feeling like a speed pick-up or a hill boost, through the commercials, change tempo / elevation / whatever floats your boat.

Just remember when you get really good to have more than one show saved.  Grey’s Anatomy worked for me tonight.  Hoping to bank an Ugly Betty later this week, and then maybe catch up on those Burn Notices that are piling up, as well.  No, I’m not just wasting time watching TV.  I’m “waisting” time while I’m watching TV.

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Marylanders don’t consider themselves as really part of the south, but we’re sure not northerners, either!  It’s 21 degrees, give or take a few, outside today, with wind chill making it feel more like 10.  That’s way cold.  And to make life all that more interesting, our heater has decided to start leaking gas.   The BGE guy wisely decided for us to turn off the heater, to avoid us making our house a bit more accidentally HOT than is advised.  But it’s 21 degrees outside!  Inside of our house isn’t yet that cold, but we’re getting close to 60, and still falling.  [Heater repairman is here now…  no word yet on what the necessary remedy will be.]

At the end of December, we had a plumber out, to fix what ended up being a root ball in the pipes.  Water in the basement, luckily confined to the laundry room, and luckily shower water was the outflow, rather than toilet water.

Last night, my hubby realized our sump pump isn’t working, luckily by observation, rather than overflow.  Looks like some time spent on Monday doing a sump pump replacement, which will have the side effect of causing us to clean out the workroom so he and his dad can actually get to our sump pump without a huge hassle.

So…..  this new year isn’t starting off so hot, from a home upkeep and maintenance perspective.  Now, thinking of cash inflows into the economy, well, we’re doing our part to keep the service and home repair and supplies industry going strong!

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Earlier this year, I was in shape enough to muscle my way through a half-marathon, albeit more slowly than I would have liked.  My dear hubby and I had had been having some success with a weight-lifting routine called 5×5.  However, lately, we’ve both slacked off.  The holiday season doesn’t help, of course, and neither does our natural state of putting-it-off-it-ness.  My pants are getting snug, and I’m nowhere near in shape enough to tackle some of the races I’d like to run this year (another half and a marathon), so it’s time to kick myself in the tail to get back out there and log some miles / lift some weights / otherwise make sure I stay in at least my same clothing size.

A horribly awful motivational approach came to me as I gazed at the magazines in the grocery store checkout aisle today.  Looking at the various starlets shown in their swimsuits, some of them not nearly in good swimsuit shape, a beautifully terrifyingly inspiring approach to self-motivation came to mind.  There had been a guy in some magazine or NPR recommending that we motivate ourselves by avoidance therapy: if I don’t meet this goal, then I promise I’ll do this thing I would otherwise be horribly averse to.  His example was giving money to a politician you radically disagree with, or supporting a cause you’d otherwise avoid like the plague.  Combining aversion motivation with swimsuits, this idea popped to mind: a person who really wants to lose weight could vow to lose a certain amount of weight within a given time period, or else post a picture of themselves in a swimsuit up on Facebook.  It’d work like this: at the beginning of the weight loss period, you take a pic of yourself in a swimsuit.  If you succeed in losing the weight, the pic gets deleted.  If you don’t succeed, it goes up online.  Bleah.

Not sure yet that I’m THAT motivated to risk that particular form of self-abuse.   But if I don’t come up with another form of motivation, this may be the thing that does it.  You might want to avert your eyes from my Facebook page come, say, March…

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The past day or so have been laden with good, geeky happenings.  First, my family got a Wii for Christmas.  The sheer delight of my kids as they tore off its wrapping paper and shouted ‘Wii!’ in unison was wonderful.  They (and us) have now spent hours playing tennis and bowling against each other.  My younger daughter’s found some way to really scream the tennis ball on her serve: I haven’t been able to figure it out yet.  It’s nearly unreturnable, at least for me, anyway.

Next, I got to reference a teen boy from my church who was griping about wanting to do Unix-like things on his Microsoft laptop to Cygwin.  Now, what makes that even sweeter is that when the youth group was over at Christmas, when the guys had a tech question, they immediately turned to my husband.  No knocks against my husband; he was able to answer their questions, and frankly, does have certain tech areas covered much better than I do.  However, given that they don’t know him really at all, I was a bit peeved that the assumption was that he would be the person to answer the question.  It was nice to toss a technical morsel to at least one of the guys.

Lastly, my Facebook Scramble score went up by 32 points this weekend.  I had held the lead position in my circle of friends for months by some 15 points, but hadn’t been able to beat my personal best.  I beat it, and then beat my new top score, to really annoyingly widen the lead.

So, I’m happily geeking out.  No coding as yet this weekend, though I’ve seen a few headlines in the tech world I want to poke at.  Merb + Ruby?  Two technologies I haven’t played much with have now merged: hmmm…  time to do some poking.

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Following on my earlier post, ‘EclipseCon submission‘, needed to round out the tale with the ‘EclipseCon rejection’ entry.  They did it with what’s obviously an automated email.  However, it’s also one of the classiest approaches I’ve ever seen to such a letter.  Quoting from it:

‘We received almost three times as many proposals as we have space for, and thus have been forced to decline a large number of quality submissions. Unfortunately, and with our apologies, your proposal is one of those we had to leave out.’

Wow.  They balance that just right.  They don’t actually come out and say my particular submission is was a quality submission, so if they get submissions that are crap, they aren’t intentionally lying.  However, they do leave you with the overall impression that you were in good company in the reject pile.

They then go on to say: ‘There are still plenty of opportunities for you to participate at EclipseCon, including BOFs and posters, both of which tend not to be over-subscribed and will be open for submissions in February. We look forward to seeing you at EclipseCon 2009 and we urge you to register early to take advantage of the lowest price.’

Yep, the BOFs and posters aren’t nearly so over-subscribed, as they don’t have free admission tickets to the conference associated.  And I love the direct link to register here: great sales job, honestly.  My submission didn’t earn me a free entry to EclipseCon, and they’ve let me down gently about it, but they’ll give me a link to cut me a deal on the early registration deal open to everybody.

I know you could read this posting and ascribe some sarcasm to it.  It’s probably in there, too, but I also have to say that I was geniunely impressed by their handling of the submission process.  I do intend to go to EclipseCon this year, if I can swing it through my employer, and I REALLY want to go to the sessions covering the topic area on which I was intending to submit.  All I can say is, your stuff better be good!