This year I’m pushing further. I’ll be doing a few mixes through the year, hopefully DJ a few parties in there and produce a few tracks. Here is the first mix for the year. A lot of the songs are from artists I got to see in Mexico in January at BPM festival. Thanks to lifemusicfun.com for lighting a fire under my butt to get it done.

Follow me on SoundCloud and MixCloud.

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Sunday morning started out with a quick 4am breakfast with half a bagel, banana and protein shake. Squeezing in 30 more minutes of sleep and I was up getting geared up and out the door. Traffic was crazier then I anticipated driving it so I hopped out of the car early and let my dad drive so I could bike the rest of the way in to start race warmups in time.

After a jog and a quick warmup swim I was focused and ready for the long haul. The water start was fun and steady open-water practice made the swim feel natural. I went to the outside to avoid early traffic since I started in a little faster group then normal. I slowly started to bring my path tighter to the inside as the field spread out. It was probably one of the more bumpy swims I’ve been in, being kicked in the face once and swam over twice, typically by people a bit off on their direction.

Coming out of the water I felt strong and confident I had paced well and saving my energy. On the run over to the bike I somehow took a bad step and rolled my left big toe over. I instantly knew this was going to start hurting, bad. As I got to the transition and started to put on my bike shoe I could see a bit of blood on the nail from rolling it. Jogging out onto the bike course I could feel my foot was pulsing, but chose to ignore it. Finally getting some wind in my face and turning the legs felt great. It was one of the funner long rides I’ve been on, getting to blast through closed streets up north of Boulder. As the ride progressed I didn’t feel my foot getting much better so I started to pace off it hoping it would get better.

As I pulled into the last transition I knew this would be the hardest part, my foot was in main and my quads were definitely feeling the 56 mile bike. I also started to feel my stomach being upset from perhaps drinking too much water on the bike. For the next 5 miles it was a pretty hard struggle between the painful foot, sore quads and upset stomach; but I tried to slow down my pace to ease into the run and accept that there would be lots of people passing me because of what I was dealing with.

A funny game Andrew Hyde likes to play when racing is looking for your “top score”, which is the oldest person to pass you. I’d say mine was somewhere around 60, Boulder is a crazy place like that.

Around mile 6 the stomach started to feel better but my legs were on fire and the heat was intense. The last 3 miles were definitely the hardest, all I could do was try and focus on doing intervals of walking and running to get as far as I could. My world became getting from one aid station to the next. Coming into the finish I saved just enough energy to put down a solid sprint towards the end, finishing with the classic Captain Morgan’s pose for the finish (likely more photos to come).

Shortly after I had to collapse on the grass and let out a cry that was 1/3rd happy I finished and 2/3rds from the pain I had been holding back. The feeling of being able to fight off the pain and make the finish was worth it. Luckily with some support from the GF holding me up and a massage later I was able to waddle my way around at about .01 miles/hour.  It is currently day 2 since the race and I still having trouble walking as my legs recover and I will likely have my toe x-rayed to make sure I didn’t break something.

My final results are as follow:

Swim: 42:09
Bike: 2:48:30
Run: 2:37:50
Overall: 6:14:11

Rank:
75/110 Age group 25-29
996/1674 Overall

When asked “will you do one again?”, I would say yes. I’m even thinking of a full-ironman but not for at least a year while I build up my strength in areas that are lacking, mostly swimming and running. There will always be something about finding your edge, that limit of where you can push your body. When you reach it you have to push further and then appreciate what you’ve done. This will likely not be the last half-ironman I do, but it will definitely be one I will never forget. Thanks again to those who showed their support and kept me motivated along the way.

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Phase 1 – Get Fit

I debated exactly how I would do it this year, going back and forth between joining crossfit or trying TRX cross-training at a small gym next to my office.  Here is why I choose TRX & cross training over Crossfit.

1. Fewer barriers to entry, and cost is less.
2. Exercises involve more body weight stuff (pushups, sit-ups, etc) and less use of weights.
3. Easy to push hard or hold back and understand what my body can take.
4. Super high intensity for 1 hour
5. Small, intimate classes and great training.

Since February I saw a significant improvement in upper-body strength and overall stamina. I was wondering if I could get strong again after my rough shoulder surgery but it paid off. If you are in Boulder and looking for a good gym definitely try out Define Defense.

Phase 2 – Get Lean

Time to implement the second phase.  It involved some the obvious part of getting out and running, swimming and biking more.  That would obviously help me lose some weight but I needed something more. I decided to try a cleanse after seeing the results it got for 2 other friends.

I wouldn’t recommend this but due to time constraints I had to squeeze in the cleanse and only finished it with 1 day between my first triathlon race of the summer.  Luckily I was hyper aware of everything I was eating so it worked out.

I did it by using the GoCleanse 11day program using Isagenix products, some good meals and lots of nuts and water. In the first 5 days I lost 11lbs, pretty crazy shift.  Over the following 6 days I saw minor shifts but my continued training for my tri race and extra calories I chose to add in likely contributed to that.

Honestly this cleanse isn’t for everyone, it requires being committed to seeing it through and you do have coaching as you need it. If you would like to know more and try it yourself leave me a comment or contact me and I’ll get you set up!

The Race & Results

After completing the cleanse I had lost a total of 12 lbs, felt stronger, faster and like I had lost weight in the right places.  I can definitely feel the results when playing volleyball, being quicker and more on point. I also finished my first sprint triathlon of the summer, and here are the results…

It turned out pretty good, definitely better then last year although I had a few hiccups on the way.  The swim always seems to throw me off a bit, I’ll be working on that.  A month later and I have still kept the weight off and the results of my Boulder Peak Tri were strong.

My swim was only a little faster but probably the first time I actually felt strong and composed the entire swim.  I killed the bike section improving my time by nearly 15 minutes (I had a new bike which helped, but hill training was a big part too).  My run suffered because my feet took a beating in life and training the two weeks prior, hoping they will be strong before the next race.

Onwards and upwards on continued training, the 70.3 half ironman is this weekend. After that its time to get get up on some 14ers and get ready for winter!

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#1. Open Your Ears and Then Take Action

Its likely that an early startup has design challenges that have not been addressed, one thing I have a habit of doing is sitting back, observing and listening to how people use the product and not try to make harsh judgements without understanding all the angles.

#2. Do things that matter

There are a lot of things I COULD do, but in a startup there are things that will make a greater impact.  Its important to look at what you spend your time on.  I tend to focus on 2 things, one that is most important to the bottom line and one that I’m more interested in completing.  I try to break up my time 80/20, 80% on the most important work and 20% on the things I want.

#3. Get Aggressive and set goals

I like a pretty laid back person so I really have to force myself to be an extravert, set goals and get aggressive with pushing people to meet them.  I have to set my own goals and get after reaching them, no matter what it might take.  We just put out a major release which took some late nights on our teams part to pull together in time.  We are looking for some big things to come out of it.

#4. Be Confident

I struggle with this like I’m sure many others do.  One external way of improving this is living a healthy lifestyle, I certainly try my best.  The more confident you are in your life outside of work, the more that will come through in your craft.

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Enter Quick Left’s Hackfest. A 3-hour hustle to churn out an app or related service related to a theme for that night.  I got to fool around with my fellow LinkSmart crew and try to build a collaborative music app that let you create beats with two people.

When it came down to the buzzer our team bit off more than we could chew in 3 hours.  We tried learning a new framework called Meteor. I lost 20 minutes worth of code from a bad merge, we also had a big feature set which included chat, change logs, and collaborative beat editing. So we resorted to Nicholas Cage memes to get our point across about how you could build the first beat.  It was really fun using github and collaborating as fast as possible to build something.

You can read a recap of the event here, if you are local to Boulder you should try to make the next one. If you really want to see more and want to install Meteor and run it locally you can view the github for the project.

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• I left one startup after 3 years and joined a new one.
• I organized a group of 20 first-time sky divers to join me.
• Learned to rock climb and went on some fun trips
• Learned to play volleyball again and enjoyed weekend volleyball with friends through the summer.
• Did a Tough Mudder
• Did the BoulderBoulder, a sprint distance triathlon, an olympic distance triathlon and the muddy buddy.
• Recovered from a broken shoulder (kind of) and got my snowboarding legs back.
• I biked almost every day from February to October
• Re-launch my website
• Spend more time with my brother.
• Went to the HOW IDC in SF to learn from some pros.

2012 has been fun, but looking forward to 2013 I can see even bigger things to come.  Here are just some of the things I can think up right now:

• Make a short snowboard part to get in a snowboard film, or at least save to show my future kids I could rip.
• Joining CrossFit and reaching a new level of fitness.
• Not go on a diet, but improve my diet and be smarter about what I put in my body.
• Travel more in my new car.
• Get better at ping-pong.
• Improve my writing, thus why I need to post more on my blog.
• Doing a few marathons, and an Iron Man.
• Hike as many Colorado 14er’s as I can squeeze into a summer. (Want to join me? let me know.)
• Brew my own beer, hoping Jeff Sutherland at LinkSmart might show me some tricks.
• Go Bungee Jumping & More Skydiving
• Learn Ruby Programming Language
• Find more mentors to help guide me to improve aspects of my life.
• Save to go to Brazil for the World Cup in 2014
• Be more open with family and friends.

And one last thing as part of my motivation I suggest reading 6 harsh truths, its pretty bad ass and was shared with my by Chris Hough.

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I got a chance to have lunch with Jose Caballer from This Week in Web Design with a few other designers and talk about the challenges we all face in our own design worlds.  I even got to have some wine in the city with the quirky Steve Fisher.

Talks that stuck with me

Matthew Richmond‘s “Tools of the Trade” – Helped me catch up on some of the technologies I haven’t had a chance to check out yet, basically a nice refresher of things I knew and a few I didn’t. Some of which included Lettering.js and Parallax scrolling frameworks.

Steve Fisher‘s talk “A Responsive Process” – It was a the most humorous talk of the event and brougth up some key points in the process of building a site.  A big theme of the entire event was responsive and mobile sites, but Steve was able to also bring it back to talk more about the process of building responsive sites and reasoning behind it, not just the technology. I also found out about style tiles which I’ll be sure to give a try.

See the slides here.  He was also nice enough to share some of the assets he builds projects with.

Mark O’brian‘s talk “The Modern Marketing Website” – I am in the midst of starting on a new marketing site with LinkSmart this was the perfect talk to reenforce the core strategies of a conversion-focused website.

He also reaffirmed something I’ve said for some time that

A blog you are writing for business purposes should always be wrapped into your existing site.

It helps with driving traffic and keeping users from getting confused.

Key take aways.

• Try the approach of “Page Tables”, building out content for sites by priority and content first and design/layout second.
• You should always be selling, always. Its silly I never thought of even having a newsletter signup on business blogs before.  Everything you do should driving somewhere.
• Dont be afraid to share more of my work with the large team in general to improve feedback and discovery though weekly design studios.  A great artical “The 3 Qs of great experience design” was shared too. Worth the read.
• Spend 30min a day learning something new, for me over the next few months will be Ruby.
• A cool little bookmarklet app for testing responsive sites.

Finally a big thank you to the speakers from this conference and the organizers.  Its a great conference if you are someone currently working in digital or trying to get into digital.

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The past 3 years have been quite a roller-coaster for me since I joined Lijit back in 2009.  I was shortly out of college (again) and working for myself on contract jobs under Another Color.  I was looking to get out of freelance work for a while and stumbled upon the craigslist posting for a design job in Boulder.

When I first joined Lijit I slowly started to find a better balance in my life. The energy of the business was contagious and encouraged everyone’s entrepreneurial spirit.  The memories and people I’ve worked with have been the best take away from the whole experience.

Highlights

• Todd saying to everyone “We don’t have the money to pay you next week, but we will pay you next week”.
• Crazy stories that came out of our holiday parties including stolen paintings, grinding with the wrong wife, and cars turned into smelly messes.
• The end-of-year roller coaster that is the ad industry.
• All the great publisher feedback on our dashboards.
• The acquisition of Lijit by Federated Media Publishing.
• Being known as the guy who just got sh*t done.
• Trips to San Francisco to visit FM and exploring the city.
• Helping the Lijit Network grow from roughly 5,000 publishers with very few ad requests to currently 15,000 publishers and over 800million ad requests/day

Things I’ve learned

Shout outs

Todd & Walter – You guys know how to build a powerful startups and inspire people in your own way like no one I’ve ever met. I hope we work together in the future.

Manny – Your technical know-how and personality make you a powerful force. I’m lucky to call you a friend and a boss.  I also appreciate your blazers and scarfs, your style is still questionable though.

Daniel – Psyched to join you again at LinkSmart, your ability to manage projects and create a vision is what ever business wants.  I just couldn’t do my job as good without someone like you as a partner.

Nick & Ryan – What can I say other then you guys know your SH*T.  I couldn’t have gotten where I am now without your help and feedback.  Good products aren’t build by just by one person but a team.

Sonya – You are a marketing ninja, always finding ways to get things done without any real team. Kicking back with you has been great.

Lijit & FM Familia past and present – You’ve made the ride so enjoyable and I can say without a doubt that this has been the best place to work for.

So come this Monday I’ll be at LinkSmart joining friends Daniel, Greg and soon Manny as we build the next great Boulder startup.  Looking forward to working back on Pearl Street, getting margaritas and hanging out with the downtown crew again. Bring it on!

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Back in the winter of 2004 I was still in my big snowboarding phase.  I was going to Mesa Stats College for Graphic Design and snowboarding on the weekends.  One night we got a DUSTING of snow and my friends got the shred bug.  What else would you do other than find the most intimidating down rail w/ a donkey nub at the end.  Well we strapped up and I took a first run, cam off the rail early and landed on my ass.  Ok, not good to start.  Second try I got up on the rail and road it to the end, until I hit the donkey nub and went shoulder first into the concrete.  Thus began the first break of my scapula.

A few years later and I’m snowboarding in Keystone, just riding park early in the morning waiting to meet a friend.  It’s a bit icy but still manageable.  I ride around and go to jump over a tube but don’t quite get my board up high enough and hit the front, sending me again into the air and down onto my left shoulder, this time dislocating it.  If I can tell you anything, it’s that a shoulder dislocation hurts WAY more than a break.  Unfortunately that was the end of me riding full-time as I was scheduled to ride the Grand Prix at Breck in two weeks.

Times changed, life changed and I took off to Brazil for a bit, came back and got into design and started working at Lijit soon after getting my BA.  April 4th, 2011 I decided taking a day off to go ride at keystone would be a great idea, and so I made my way up.  The park was great and it was an awesome day, jumps were great.  I actually took this picture right before tragedy struck.

The run prior I had landed a backside 360, never my strong spinning side, so I was feeling confident.  Went for run too for the same trick and came up short on the landing, hitting my boards nose and again landing on the shoulder.  This time it felt like a dislocation but I couldn’t know for sure.  I snowboarded down to the medical center to check it out.

After some x-rays they said it had been dislocated but would be ok.  Back I went to regular life and hoping it would simply recover.  A month or so later it just wasn’t feeling right, so I went for a followup w/ a shoulder expert.  After some x-rays it appeared that the scapula had been broken again, but “should” heal on its own.

After several more months of waiting around and hoping for it to heal we went for an MR Arthrogram to check the bone and the muscle.  Next day the Doc called to let me know it was definitely broken beyond healing on its own, thus surgery was the only option.  August was getting close and I wanted to get this done ASAP so I could have a chance at another winter.

Surgery came and went and I got some new hardware.  Cross fingers I wont set off the medal detectors.  Now I was just sitting around waiting again, hoping it would heal.  After starting physical therapy and some message therapy it appeared everything was on track.  A mid December checkup with the doc again and xrays are still inconclusive so we go for an MRI this time.  Results come back and it’s still not healing as fast as expected, but showing some signs of healing.

Back in January I got on an electric simulator to hopefully wake up my shoulder into healing.  Unfortunately after check ups it still was questionable if it had healed by april.  Now after a long summer of adventure races and climbing its feeling stronger, but may still be questionable.  At this point all I can do it hope it heals up, otherwise I’ll be back under the knife again.

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I always remembered being into music was a pain in the ass because it was hard to keep up with what the best new music was and then going to buy the CD.  Then came along the internet and you could download the songs (legally or not), but you still ran into the issue of it being expensive and time-consuming to discover what new music was coming out and what your friends were listening to.  As a result I really didn’t care much about music other then what came on the radio or classics that “everyone” knows.

Enter Rdio in 2011 as the first music streaming app that let you select the songs you wanted to listen to, keeping in mind that Spotify had yet to come out in the US.  I heard about it in passing and tried it out on my work computer and what do you know, it worked amazing.  I could listen to new music coming out while also discovering what my friends were listening too and what “everyone” was listening to.  You could also que up music to listen to when you had nothing else to listen to, making it so I could almost always have something ready to listen to.  The entire interface for Rdio is also slick and well done, making using it enjoyable.

I gave the Android app a try and soon the Apple app once I got an iPhone, both of which work great.  I know find myself using it all the time when I’m out running, snowboarding, in the car or just walking around town.  Even better is that you could sync music to your iPhone for times when there was not internet service, pure win.

When Spotify came out I found myself wondering if I should switch or not, but I didn’t based on 3 key points.

• Rdio was first in the US and had earned my loyalty,
• The music discovery from friends and sharing music was said to be much better.
• The User Interface beat Spotify because it was so simple and enjoyable to use.

A followup note to Rdio is also SoundCloud, another app I find myself using more frequently.  What I like about SoundCloud is it allows for more underground music to get to me more easily without scouring underground artist’s websites, I wish more artists would adopt this because myspace pages are dead (event with the redesign).

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