Last year was my first year ever running a marathon. I started off pretty slow but managed to complete 5 full marathons through the year without stopping once during any of them. My best time was 4h 07m 58s in Atlanta on Thanksgiving day, with times for every race coming in under 4h 20m. I can honestly say that I am in better shape now than I was in my 20s and I feel great.
My 2010 New Year’s Resolution is to run eight full marathons and one ultra marathon. Here are the races I have have booked or will book as soon as registration opens.
January : ING Miami Marathon
February : Jacksonville Marathon and Gasparilla Marathon
March : ING Georgia Marathon
April : Charlottesville Marathon
May : Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon
June : Newport Marathon
July : San Francisco Marathon
August : Extraterrestrial Full Moon Midnight 51k (Ultra Marathon!)
September : TBD
October : Steamtown Marathon
November : NYC Marathon and Chickamauga Battlefield Marathon
December : St. Jude Memphis Marathon
Commit to Success, Plan for Obstacles
You may have noticed that I have more than 8 marathons listed above. I have done that for two reasons : 1. I fully intend on shattering my goal. 2. I realize that I may get sick or have to deal with an emergency causing me to miss a race. I had scheduled the Disney marathon earlier this month but had to punt because of illness.
Big, audacious goals require upfront planning and milestones along the way. You can’t just say “I am going to run 8 marathons” or “I am going to lose 30 pounds”. When and where do you plan on running each race? When do you intend to lose your first 10 pounds and how? You need to break up big goals into smaller, achievable pieces and create a clear path to success.
Quick Tip
I find that blogging my goals helps me really stick to them. Once they are on public display it is hard to take them back or make excuses.
Despite all the videos, signs and screaming TSA employees there is apparently still some confusion about procedures at the security check point. For those of you who have difficulty I have compiled my own guide to getting through security quickly and not annoying your fellow passengers.
Much like sharp objects, you are prohibited from carrying on weapons along with martial arts and self defense items. These include guns, grenades, billy clubs, black jacks, brass knuckles, kubatons, mace, nunchakus, stun guns and throwing stars. If it could kill someone it is best to leave it at home.
I have talked about personal branding quite a bit in the past. I believe that it will be an area of growing importance in the future as the global economy becomes more competitive. A strong personal brand can make the difference between landing a job, winning a client or even finding a mate. Most of us start with a disadvantage… our own name. Do you know how many Ted Murphys there are in the world? It is much more difficult to build a brand around a name when other people have the same name. That is why corporations trademark and protect their name and celebrities adopt new names they can uniquely call their own.
If you are a web developer or designer here is your chance to learn from and 
TweetSvr is a very basic Mac screen saver that displays tweets from you, your friends, or the public timeline in floating clouds. I grew board with this screen saver instantly. You can’t customize the font or size of the text. It’ doesn’t display the avatar of the person that made the tweet. The graphics are just blah. The only good news is that it works with Snow Leopard and doesn’t seem to have any technical issues. You can 