I did it…half marathon complete

I finished my first long-distance race today. I ran the White Rock Half Marathon in a respectable time of 2:20:47. It was a great experience and I think I’ll do it again someday. The race capped off a stellar year for me: finished my Masters in May, had my first baby in May, turned 30 in November, and ran the half marathon today (Dec 14).

I trained about as well as I could have. I think in my next training I won’t push myself so hard in my pace, but train steady and follow a training calculator verbatim. I ran faster than my suggested times in almost all of my runs. I think that might have slowed me down a little since I was fairly tired at the end. Another thing I’ll do different is to bring my own water bottle to keep with me while I run. The aid stations were great and all, but there were a few times that I really wanted something to drink but the next aid station wasn’t for a while.

The last thing I’ll do differently is I’ll exchange my shoes when my instincts tell me to. I bought an expensive pair back in October and they gave me a terrible blister. I went back to the store to exchange them, but the salesman gave me some pointers on how to prevent it from happening again. I should have just gotten a different pair, because I got a few more blisters during my training and a pretty bad one at the race today.

Other than that, it was a great experience overall. I really feel like I pushed myself to do this and I was able to rise to the challenge. If you’ve never ran a long-distance race I’d encourage you to give it a try.

After all, you have 365 days to train for next year’s White Rock Marathon or Half Marathon.

A Lesson on Communication from the Election

Today is the day after the Electuon and it’s typically called the election hangover day. You may be tired of hearing about it along with all the political ads, but I learned an extremely valuable lesson from the whole process that I knew was true before, but saw it come to fruition on a nation-wide scale last night.

That lesson is that in communication delivery trumps content. How I saw it in the election is that by most standards John McCain is far more qualified to be the leader of the USA, but Obama was always called a great communicator. The only message that Obama was putting forward was “change” but didn’t really elaborate on what that meant. McCain had a longer record of service and he has been a proven leader for many years, but the packaging of that message was not nearly as compelling as Obama’s to the majority of people.

For me, that’s a stark reminder to make sure that I have both good content along with great delivery. I know that content matters, but if it’s not delivered in a compelling way it won’t be heard.

New Comment System, powered by Disqus.com

[UPDATE: I’ve switched to IntenseDebate starting 1/17/09)

I’ve just implemented a new comment system on my blog (it’s over at kevinrossen.com for all you facebook readers). It lets you reply to other people’s comments, rate others’ comments, and much more! I’m pretty excited about the potential it has, so check it out and let me know what you think (at kevinrossen.com, again for you facebookers).

Here’s a post that’s already generated some comments: http://ping.fm/DJuJp

New Post Coming Soon…

I’ve been thinking about it for a little while and I’ve decided I’m going to do it. I’m going to write a post about the election in regards to Christians and political parties, but it will take a few minutes to write. In the meantime feel free to email/tweet/facebook me your thoughts about this issue.

Really, though, I’m writing this post to test out a new way for me to post to my blog that *might* make me post more. We’ll see.