despite a late day emergency at the office, I made it to 6pm crossfit and did the following workout:

Warmup
400m run
Stretching - pigeon, cosak, shoulder rom, good mornings
3 sets of 5 each of kettlebell swings, squats and pull ups

Workout
4 by 400m for time - 1:40 ave
3 sets of:
3 bench press
10 sit-ups
3 ring dips
10 pushups
3 pull ups
10 Russian twists

Good times!!

Today I didn’t have time to go to the gym or to go out for a run and truth be told, I was having really good momentum downloading mashups from Zune Marketplace, so I decided to stay in for my workout.

To get some ideas, I went to crossfitendurance.com and scanned through some of their past workouts.  That led me to another site I found called gymnasticswod.com.  So between both sites, I came up with my own workout and it went as follows.

Warmup
Tabata front and side leg swings.  (Tabata Protocol is 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off (read more about it here).  So in this case, I did one side leg swing for 20 seconds and then rested for 10.  Then the same leg swing but with the other leg for 20 seconds followed by 10 seconds rest.) 

Stretches - counch stretch and 4-pt glute (90 seconds each leg each stretch). This burned but felt good as a mofo after the leg swings!!

Workout
5 sets of
20 air squats
20 pushups

Warmdown
2 sets of Plank - front, right, left for 45 seconds each 

Cooldown
jump into cold ass pool 

On Friday I gave a presentation at work about my upcoming Tough Mudder event (squaw valley sept 17). The question came to how I’m planning to train to which I had absolutely no idea. I figured I would eventually come up with some sort of plan, but with only 43 days remaining my time was starting to run thin. Since that day (yesterday), I’ve already done 3 workouts and since I’m betting other first timers are going to be curious how to train for their first Tough Mudder, I’ll document my 42 day regimen on this blog. So without further bs, here are my past 3 workouts.

Friday - crossfit class at defiance crossfit. First we did a warmup which consisted of the following

600m run, various stretches and 15 each of pullups, kettlebell swings and goblin squats.

Then we did a strength workout where I did about 8 sets of 1 rep each of 125 pound thrusters.

And then the all fun Death by Burpie workout where you start with 1 burpee on the minute and then do 2 burpees at the second minute and so on and so forth until you die an can’t do anymore. I lasted through half of my 11th round before being the first to die :(

Then I came home jumped in my cold ass pool and called it a workout.

For my second workout and first of my day today, I ran the Dish over near Stanford - that’s a nice chill 3.5 miles.

About 2 hour later, I did the real sprout for the day. James came over and we went over to a local park where we did this whole obstacle coarse on the kids playground. This consisted of pullups, monkey bars, rope climbs, some rock climbing and a few others. Then we ran over to Gunn High and ran a burpee mile on their track - 4 sets of 400m followed by 10 burpees after each loop.

So not bad way to start my training. My goal for these 42 days:

Get in sick shape Be able to run the big loop at Rancho without feeling like I’m doing to die Go to crossfit regularly and to stop coming in last :) Do lots and lots of pullups, pushups, burpees and sit-ups.

I watched The Social Network last night and I thought it was a brilliant movie.  It did a great job of telling the Facebook story and seemed to capture the underlying characteristics and motivations of all players involved.  Yes, I am sure many of the situations were dramatized and made for Hollywood, but given all of the actual true-to-life accusations and settlements, I believe that many of the high level themes and points made in the movie were based on the actual truth. Anyways, below is my opinion: 

• Mark Zuckerberg is a genius and he deserves every bit of the billions of dollars he is worth for creating Facebook.  Hands down, no arguments.
  
  
• Mark probably did steal the idea, but so what, ideas are a dime a dozen and when it was all said and done, he paid over 65M as a settlement.  That seems like a fair trade to me.  Plus the Winklevoss twins would in my opinion likely done jack shit with the idea as did the thousands of other entrepreneurs who all tried creating Facebook clones, so as fucked up as it was that Mark stole it, the world is actually better off for him doing so.
  
  
• Mark did screw his best friend Eduardo Saverin out of a 30% share of the company, which Mark did seem to actually regret for doing so.  I think all being equal, Mark would have preferred to keep his friend Eduardo onboard, but for a 30% partner, the guy seemed completely unaligned with Mark’s vision for the company and was in fact holding him back from the success he is realizing today.  This seemed like a complex situation and all being equal, I don’t think Mark intended to screw his friend but what should Mark have done, sacrificed his vision for Facebook?  I don’t know the answer to this and I am curious for some perspective here.
  
  
• I think Justin Timberlake did a horrible job portraying Shawn Parker, original founder of Napster and current board member of Facebook.  According to what I have read, Sean is absolutely brilliant and one of the true visionaries of our generation having been a key contributor is the development of napster, plaxo and facebook - all disruptive in their own regards.  This movie however portrayed Sean as being much more of a poser and big-talker vs a vision setter and an industry disrupter.  Poor casting on this one!!

I was a friends house yesterday when the topic turned to referrals. One of the guests asked the host for an attorney, when the host responded with an interesting story.

Here goes: So the host was working on a real estate deal a few years ago and one of his clients needed an introduction to an attorney. So the guy worked with the attorney and surprise surprise the attorney fucked up. So the client calls the host and starts complaining about the lawyer and insisting that he fix it. Apparently this client thought that the referral was an extension of the host services and the host was his goto guy re the full experience. Now the host who has nothing to do with the situation besides having been a nice guy and making a referral, found himself knee deep in this mess that considerably outweighed the benefit of making the referral in the first place. In the end and after 6 months of dealing with bs, the host actually said that he eventually had to pay the lawyer an extra few grand just to clean up the mess.

So what was the net net from the situation. Lawyer made some money. Client got his work done. Guy making the referral got fucked!!

So now three years later, the host still isn’t over it and stands by his principle of “I don’t make referrals”!!

It was interesting hearing this story, especially since I’m personally into a very ‘help the world go round by making lots and lots of referrals’ mode. I figure if I can make an introduction, I increase the likelihood that some kind of positive transaction will consumate. I do assume however that whoever I introduce will do their due diligence on each other. But maybe they don’t.

I’m trying to think what happens when somebody makes an introduction to me. Some questions come to mind: why did they make the introduction? How qualified is this introduction? How obligated am I to follow up with this introduction? What is the person on the other end of this introduction expecting from me?

But then the biggest question of all - if this referral either works out or doesn’t work out, how big of a reflection will my experience be on the person who made it in the first place?

Here are my rules:

1) qualify any referral before I make it. I like to do some kind of light screen on both parties to make sure that the interest of both parties are aligned.

2) I think through the positives and negatives of making the introduction and if the positives outweigh the negatives, I’ll usually make the introduction.

3) as far as my personal obligation in regards to the two parties working together, I’ll usually set the expectation during the qualifying call that I’ll be hands off beyond the introduction but will do what I can to help out in the event that something goes wrong. With that said, if I smell that somebody is going to be trouble or expect me to do their work for them, I don’t like that and will usually not make the introduction.

Now go help the world go round and make some introductions!!

Yesterday, I was doing a Crossfit workout (we were learning the snatch) when our coach was noticing everybody getting really stiff leading into the actual lift.  Don’t ask me why, but tensing up as we prepared for a heavy lift felt most natural.  

Apparently not!  Quite the opposite in fact.

According to our coach, the most optimal way to approach a heavy lift is to be loose as a goose up until you actually engage in the lift itself.  He demonstrated by shaking out his arms and hands up until he actually grabbed the bar itself.  Then he spent a few seconds turning the bar so as to transfer some of your tensed up energy out of his body and into the bar.  Then he lifted the bar to hang position (balanced near the knee area).  He’s still loose.  And only as he set that bar into hang position did he release that full ball of energy into the lift and BAM that heavy ass bar of weights was over your head in no more than a split second of fully released energy.

He described this practice as “being like water” reminiscent of Bruce Lee’s famous quote and overall menatility towards life:

Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

I like this mentality especially since I notice that I do so much better at whenever it is I’m doing when I’m fully relaxed going into it.  Running, recruiting, whatever… The more tense I am going into it, the worse I usually do.  

So note to self until the next time I forget - be water, my friend

Well, actually the original Shakespeare quote was:

To be or not to be

But the vein of my existence isn’t my debate tonight.  I’m pretty certain of the answer to that one.  Or at least I’m certain enough to not debate it.

Today my debate is whether I should run or not to run.  I’m training for a marathon and for very practical purposes, I NEED to run tonight.  My training plan says I have to run.  I know I have to run.  Guaranteed I’ll feel it during the marathon if I don’t run.  But there’s some idiotic voice stuck in my head that’s telling me it’s ok to not run tonight.  It’s saying things like, ‘you just ran last night, take a break’.  Or things like ‘you’re doing such a good job already, you can easily skip a night and you won’t even miss a beat’.  Or how about the, ‘I know your marathon plan says to run tonight, but for sure there’s a plan our there that says tonight is a rest night.  Don’t worry you’ll be just fine’

It’s interesting because I know I’m being mind-fucked right now.  And by the same voice who does it to me all the time.  The same one who convinces me to sleep in, the same one that convinces me to eat that extra piece of brownie or the same one who just earlier today was trying to convince me to not make that extra cold call.  The fuckin nerve of that voice.  I just started working on a new recruiting project.  I need to get my client some new candidates BIG TIME.  And this jerk is telling me to take it easy, go on facebook, have an extra long lunch.  If only he would show himself to me, I’d knock him straight in the face and tell him exactly what I think of him.

But here I am, all the wiser and fully aware of the negative influence this voice has over me.  And here I am, still in debate.

Ok fuck it.  I’m over it.  This debate is getting old.  I’m going to get dressed and going on my run.  Unless of course, there’s a good show on tv or my kids distract me or I get too into checking my email or I oooh maybe if I rest tonight, I’ll wake up early in the morning and go for an even bigger run then.  Fuck there goes that voice again.

Ok I’m out.

Still can’t believe I had the patience to read like 6 of the books in this series. At a thousand pages each I’m betting that comes close to the total sum of all other books I’ve ever read otherwise. Well maybe not but that’s a lot of pages dedicated to one series or set of stories. Great books though and highly recommend them. One of the reasons I never finished the series (I think there are about 10 books total) was because the author (robert jordan) was nowhere near being finished with no end in sight. But now that he died (rip!!) I think the series will finally be concluded. Hmmm I wonder how long it would take me to get through all 10 if I start over?

Ok so everybody has heard the famous quote:

“The fluttering of a butterfly’s wings can effect climate changes on the other side of the planet.”  

So today I went for a run and well, there’s a lot of time to think about stuff while on a long run.  So of all the random things that go through my head, I got to thinking about this quote.  I was thinking that if something so small and insignificant as the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings can effect climate on the other side of the world, then what kind of impact do I have on this planet, and I’m not talking about the big things that I do.  I’m talking about little insignificant things like deciding to go on this run and deciding to run one route vs another route and deciding to run through a red light or wait; what effect do I have on this planet.  

So as I was running, I began noticing everything happening around me and I began wondering, how were lives effected by the simple action of seeing me run down the street.

 Now let me describe myself so there’s some content to this story.  This run took place at about 10pm on a weekday in the relatively quiet neighborhood of Los Altos, CA.  During this run, I was wearing all black; specifically black sweats, a black running jacket and a black beanie.  Oh and I’m 6’2 and weigh 210 pounds, so a pretty big guy.  I have no idea what the people who I encountered were thinking, but I imagine they see a pretty big guy in all black running by their car or past their house at 10pm at night, some kind of thought crosses their mind.

And everybody knows that once a thought is thought and a seed is planted, there’s no turning back.  So let’s hypothesize on how my run tonight might have impacted the world.

1. Seeing me running could have been that extra bit of motivation somebody needed to begin an exercise regime of their own.  That person could go on to be a marathon runner using running as a means to improve their health, their life, their profession, etc.  Hell, they could go on to become the next goddamn Tony Robbins and it could have all started with seeing me run tonight.
   
   
2. As I was running, I saw a red light up ahead.  Betting that somebody won’t run me over and not wanting to stop my run, I decided to run right through it.  Now there was a car at the light who had to wait an extra few seconds to let me pass.  I looked over at the lady in the car and she din’t seem to mind too much or be in a hurry.  But as I was passing her, I was curious what might have happened to her life if she didn’t have to wait those few extra seconds.  Might she have gone on and made the light