July: Blog every day. Run every other.
As a guy who’s fond of personal challenges and setting goals for myself, I started thinking about what the theme for July would be a couple weeks ago. I’ve decided to make July “improve personal communication” month, and to that end, I’m going to try to blog every day this month. Maybe it’ll become a habit, maybe I’ll fail after a week. But I’m going to give it a shot. Yesterday I sat down and brainstormed a bunch of ideas and content planned the first week. It’s going to be a mixture of personal, tech, business, music, travel, how-tos, and whatever else comes up.
I’m also going to incorporate one fitness goal into this month: start running again! Not that I’ve ever been a huge runner, but I get into it now and then. While I was in Hawaii, the weather was so nice and there was a marsh near the house with a long running trail, and it was so easy to just go out for a couple miles. The beaches in both Hawaii and Florida were also great places to run.
Once I got back to Portland, I planned to get running shoes at some point. And then a month passed! So today I went to Portland Running Company, where they really took the time to help me out and had me try on like 4 pairs of shoes. After checking my stride, they said I’m a slight over pronator, which is normal for runners with low arches. Pronation is where the foot rolls inward after the heel strikes the ground. About 15 degrees of roll is normal. More than that and you’re over pronating. Less than that, you guessed it – under pronating. So, you get shoes which help compensate for that. The shoes I bought (“Brooks” is the brand) felt awesome at the store, massive improvement over what I had been running with. Feels like I’m just gliding over the ground. Tomorrow I’ll give them the field test.
The dude at the shoe store suggested running every other day to get back into it, and try to aim for time, not distance, so that’s what I’ll do. 25 minutes every other day.
But I haven’t gone running yet, instead this evening I went on a 15 mile bike ride around the Portland waterfront, down the springwater corridor and back. We also stopped by the Doug Fir Lounge for “Pickin’ on Sundays” on the Back Patio. NodeConf is starting tomorrow at the Jupiter Hotel here, and though I don’t have a ticket to this one, it was funny to see the telltale signs of a tech conference underway – dudes sitting around staring at Mac laptops in the bar / lounge area. Normal at a coffee shop, not an everyday occurance at the Doug Fir. Having just gone to and presented at Open Source Bridge last week, I’m all nerd-conferenced out at the moment, so I’m fine with not going to NodeConf. Might stop by the evening parties though.
Other goals for July: Go camping atleast once. Bike to Hood River and back with a group. Possibly combine the previous two things. Fix some issues with my FL house and my car. Do lots and lots of client work. And not fail to post every day. Until tomorrow…
Congrats on starting running! Fell upon your blog through Prismatic. In March 2011, I started running as a way to get back in shape. The years of coding and sitting on my butt had taken it’s toll on me. Now, I’m training for my first marathon after running several halfs. So far so good.
Keep up the good work! Earlier this year, I also left to start my own consultancy and it’s been an amazing journey. Will definitely be following you as I go along.
Thanks Kyle! A marathon is fairly inconceivable at this point, but we’ll see how far I get by the end of the month! It’s going well so far. I’ll follow along with your progress as well.