Sweet Victory

Well, it took me two weeks to get my foot to heal up well enough to start moving much again.... I got a nice workout on the exercise bike earlier this week (yuck) and was finally able to put together a mostly painless three and a half miles tonight, which means I still have a shot at my next two goals: 1.) Run in Central Park next week when I go to NYC. 2.) Break 40:00 in the White Rose Run 5mi. race in November. However, this injury has reminded me how much I want a road bike so that I can cross train... Ebay, I've got my eyes on you....

I wasn't sure how long I'd need to recover from last Saturday's half-marathon. On one hand, most reports recommend you take two weeks off running after a full marathon and this was only a half. On the other hand, I've only been doing this for three months, so it's not like I'm in *prime* shape. But other than all the hands was the matter of the foot - the same foot I madly iced in the two days before the race. Five days after the race, it's still quite sore and informed me during a one mile test run last night that the recovery process isn't over. The good news is everything else feels great. Here's hoping another week does it good - I have two upcoming trips to places that would be great to run in, and I'd prefer to do that, rather than hang out on the hotel exercise bikes when I'm there.

Last weekend, I completed my first-ever half-marathon. Here’s one of them blog posts about how it went and how it came to be. Backdrop: On July 3 rd of this year – after 15 years of doing very little exercise – I came back to running again. Working out every other day, I gradually brought my mileage up. By late August, I had my long run up to about 8 miles. I ran a 5k in 26:14. When I plugged that time into my McMillan Calculator , it said that if I were to train for a half marathon right now, I should be able to do it in 2:01. I wondered if I could… more important, I realized that if I continued to add a mile a week to my long run, I’d be up to 13 by the last weekend in September. As fate would have it, there was a half Marathon in my town the same weekend. So, I decided to go for it, with a goal of breaking two hours. The training: Most of September went about as expected, though not without aches and pains. A slightly pulled hamstring in early September after my 9 ...

Do I know when to jump off a sinking ship or what? Less than 1 week after I move all of my newsletters from the uber-buggy Zookoda to the very orange but very effective FeedBlitz , the Australians have thrown in the towel, offering Zookoda up for sale . Here's some comments from Zookoda's announcement, along with my own commentary: "Over 5200 blog publishers have adopted Zookoda as their blog marketing tool..." Yeah, but how many of us have left? Moreover, FeedBlitz claims to have more than 65,000 active feeds. Conclusion: Zookoda never really got that big. "A Zookoda user has the right to add or delete their mailing lists from the system at any time." While they may have the right, Zookoda appears to have turned off this feature (probably to try and hold onto the data from folks like me who are trying to leave), thus bolstering the appearance of a robust operation. "As such - NOTHING WILL CHANGE for at least a couple of months. During this process we ...

So Saturday was a 12 mile run - my longest run in probably 17 years, and my last long run before the 1/2 Marathon in 2 weeks.... all that considered, it went pretty well, just under 1:54:00. All of which means it's going to take a very special day for me to break 2 hours in two weeks.... Which means it's important to remind myself that I started all of this nonsense only 75 days ago. From zero to 12 miles in less than 90 days is pretty cool. Then again, I'm also pretty sore today, likely because of the hills I climbed in miles 8 and 9:

I got my notice that I could download the new Times Reader from Microsoft and the New York Times. Thus far, I'd say the Times Reader is about as good as most of Microsoft's beta products.

Ever since I started running in July, I thought it would be cool if I could post snippets of my workouts on my blog. I have no good reason for this other than to brag and to motivate myself, but hey - whatever gets you through the day. I finally found a service that lets you do just that. If you keep your running log at Breaking the Tape , you can easily get some javascript like I have on the right (I selected my last three workouts, but they have many options.). So now even my blog readers will know if I'm staying off the couch!

Those of you who've followed the blog know that I was once one of Zookoda's biggest supporters. When I started using it in April or May, it was one of the snazziest blog to newsletter tools out there. I immediately started using it for this newsletter, as well as three different corporate newsletters. Previously, I'd been a free FeedBlitz customer, and while their service over the years had been good, Zookoda had some features that FeedBlitz either offered for a fee or - in some cases - not at all. So I jumped on the Zookoda bandwagon. Around mid-June, the problems started, as when my newsletter was first delayed. I'm not going to spend time rehashing Zookoda's lack of response to this issue, other than to say they didn't seem to care. Service only got worse from there, and by this month, the Zookoda success rate for me was somewhere less than 50%. In the past couple weeks, I've certainly driven FeedBlitz crazy, as I asked Phil (their CEO, who actually re...

I think with my latest blog-over, I've committed the cardinal sin of bloggers. Blogs - I believe - should be focused. They should be specific, so that the reader can say, "Hey, this is for me," or "No, it isn't." But the reality is that - as a human being - I struggle with focus. Not for short stretches of time, mind you, but in the grand scheme of things, I'm simply into a lot of things. I have my profession, my family, my diabetes and my hobbies. At the moment, I'm not happy having a blog that only addresses one of these things so - at least for the time - being, I'm going to declare this blog as fair game for whatever strikes me. I think these types of blogs tend to make for bad reading and if so, I apologize. But hey, it's still free, so who are you to complain? ;)

Thank you to the two commenters who congratulated me on the start of this exercise thing. I appreciate your kind words muchly. First up, an update on the exercise itself. Second up, an update on how I'm using the Internet to help me. As the summer has drawn to an end, I've backed off on my swimming, but am still running 3-4 days per week. My weekly mileage is now up over 20 miles and my longest run - last night - was a hair under eight miles at a 9:00/pace. To think that I only got off the couch eight weeks ago and am up to that kind of mileage is kind of cool. Again, I think the main reason this time has been successful is because I'm only doing workouts every other day. The rest day seems to be doing a lot to keep the knees, shins, etc.... healthy. Last weekend, I ran my first race in nearly 15 years! It was only a 5k, and my eager beaver first mile resulted in a less than stunning 26:14, but the good news I came in 150th out of 305 - just ahead of the bubble, so all in ...

Here's a don't-miss anthology: Rebellion: New Voices of Fiction , features twelve of the best new writers out there, including me. Most of the writing in the anthology I'd call lit.fic. bordering on contemporary fiction with maybe a little noir in some cases. Want a taste of the book before slapping down twelve measly bucks? Here's a bit of my story for your review . So do it: be a rebel!

A great surprise showed up on my door-step yesterday: my own autographed copy of Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA , by Ellen Meister . You'll find my name in the Acknowledgments section of the book (woo-hoo!), assuming you're the type of person who reads the Acknowledgments. Ellen and I traded ms edits a few years back. Obviously I'm a better much better editor than Ellen because her book got mentioned on Leno last week and my book is... is.... frankly, I'm not even sure where you'd find a copy of it these days. Certainly not in stores. Perhaps on the hard-drive of the computer I wrote it on, which I believe is at a landfill near you! But if you like chick-lit or mommy-lit or minivan-lit or whatever else they call it these days, buy a copy. You won't be disappointed.

What's with the radio silence on the blog, you ask? Well, a couple reasons: 1.) Summer, in general: Internet traffic dips in the summer. Since this blog tends to be the best info. I've found online, there's less of it to find. 2.) Summer, in specific: Last week was a glorious week at the beach. I came back feeling tanned, rested and ready - uh, until I opened up the 400 e-mails I hadn't gotten to. 3.) There's a new love in my life. Yes, believe it or not, I'm back on the exercise wagon. Here's the least you need to know about that: I was a long distance runner in high school and college. I wasn't great, but I was one of the best ones to finish after the great ones did. No, I wasn't the worst of the best, but I was one of the best of the ok crowd. Then, mid-way through a training run in college, four miles from the campus, I stopped running and walked home. Four years before Forrest Gump did the same thing, mind you. In the fifteen years since then, I...

Sometimes businesses need to decide if they have a company or a hobby on their hands. I'm starting to feel that way about Zookoda. I blogged about Zookoda several months back. They have a wicked slick interface and a nice system for sending out blog-based news. Most of the time, it works great. A few weeks into it, I was having a rather simple problem and complained about it. When they finally responded to my complaint - three days later - their tone was basically, "Hey, this is beta and it's free - what are you complaining about?" I send a few different newsletters every Friday and for the second time in four weeks, my newsletters didn't go out this Friday. Or rather, according to the Zookoda system, they were sent, but not delivered. Last time this happened, they ended up getting delivered about 14 hours later. Let's make this simple: if your business is one that delivers e-mails, you better deliver the e-mails. Whether you're in beta. Whether you'r...

Just because the competition is doing it, is not necessarily a reason for you to do it.

One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. … 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school. 42% of college graduates never read another book.80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year. 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. 57% of new books are not read to completion. Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased. Customers 55 and older account for more than one-third of all books bought. Number of publishers1947: 357 publishers 1973: 3,000 publishers 1980: 12,000 Publishers. The New York Times, February 23, 1981. 1994: 52,847 publishers. Books in Print.2003: About 73,000 (plus those who publish through POD/DotCom publishers; they use the publisher’s ISBN block.) 78% of the titles published come from the small/self-publishers. Most initial print runs are 5,000 copies. A larger publisher must sell 10,000 books to break even. A book must move in the st...

History was made today, as Lancaster County's Floyd Landis recorded one of the greatest stage wins in Tour de France history. You can read about it here . Yesterday in the Alps, Floyd got crushed, falling from first to eleventh place. Most people said the Tour was over for him. But those close to him said that Floyd was doing OK . I guess they were right! Floyd goes into Saturday's time trial in 3rd place. Right here, right now, I'm predicting that the next winner of the Tour comes from Lancaster County, PA! Go Floyd!

Marketing guru Seth Godin says that "the most successful marketers tell two stories at the same time. A shiny one and a deep one. The shiny story is easy to notice, easy to enjoy, easy to spread. The deep story is fascinating, worth your time. It has texture and mystery and it lasts." Peter Leach is a good friend of mine. He's also technically a client of mine, though I think over the years I've bartered as much as I've bought or sold with or to him. Peter's a great photographer and had an idea for in-action pictures of your student athletes, printed on durable automotive magnets. I think it's a great idea and you can see the tiny website I put up for him here . So the "shiny" story for Sportscarz is the fact that you get a magnet for your car with a picture of your kid on it. That's cool and we think it'll make people at least inquire. The "deep" story, though, is that Peter's been a professional photographer for more t...

A great article on youths, sports and coaching: The only measure of success for a coach is if the kids come back to play the next year. If they don’t return for a second season, you weren’t a good enough coach, period.

I think he may be. This email was in my in-bin this morning: Dear Mr. Grimm: Having personally witnessed the devastation from flooding in central Pennsylvania in the past week, I am writing to make you aware of federal assistance that you may be eligible for. As you may know, President Bush issued a disaster declaration for numerous Pennsylvania counties. This declaration allows eligible individuals in these counties to apply for federal disaster assistance. If you have been affected by recent floods, I urge you to contact the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as soon as possible to apply for possible relief. FEMA can be contacted at (800) 621-FEMA or www.FEMA.gov and the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) can be reached at www.pema.state.pa.us/paflooding. If you own or operate a small business, you may be eligible for relief from the Small Business Administration (SBA). The SBA can provide low-interest loans for business repairs or replacement costs to eligible i...