First let me be the thousandth person to wish you a very Happy New Year; more importantly, let me wish you a Healthy New Year. And this year, I’ve committed myself to helping any of my friends who want to “lose weight/get healthy and stop making excuses/start making progress” to do so.

Thanks to our friend Nigel, I’ll be helping to support all of our friends in this year’s 10 in 10 Challenge. I participated in this last year and lost a lot more than ten pounds in the first ten weeks of 2011, so I know this is very possible to do.

The key to the success of the folks who participate in this challenge is in its community support. We’re all in this together and through Facebook and Twitter we can support others and in doing so support ourselves.

The 10 in 10 Challenge begins on January 9th, that’s when we’ll all do our first weigh-in, and that means that you can use this week to set yourself up for success beginning from day #1.

Each day this week, I’ll post a quick entry giving you something simple that you can do to start off 2012 and the 10 in 10 Challenge on the right foot.

What do I do today?

Today you only have to do two things, you have to commit to your goal of losing a few pounds and starting off the year by getting healthy, and you have to register for the Challenge. Don’t worry, it’s free, we don’t collect e-mails, there’s nothing nefarious about any of this – just a group of everyday people wanting to improve their lives by starting the year off adopting good habits while they have other friends there to support them doing it.

How do I register?

We use two free primary tools to administer the 10 in 10 Challenge:

Facebook:

Go to https://www.facebook.com/10in10Challenge and “Like” this page. Read through the info page and through the Notes page. When you complete your weigh-ins, post your progress to the wall on this page on facebook so we can all celebrate your progress however small or large that might be! (Trust me, I had a few weeks last year when I gained, but still came out far ahead of my goal.)

Buckeye Outdoors:

Go to http://buckeyeoutdoors.com and create an account. It’s super quick and easy.

Go to http://buckeyeoutdoors.com/training/challenges and join the “10in10 2012″ Challenge

This is where we will record our actual weight loss. The Challenge is set up to begin on January 9th and last 10 weeks.

We’ll show you how to enter your weight in a separate post or you can check out the facebook page to see where we’ve already described how to do this.)

Lastly, if you are a Twitter user, go to https://twitter.com/10_in_10 and “follow” 10_in_10 to keep up to date and engage in the banter there.

You won’t lose 10 pounds or become a healthier person just by registering, but you will have taken the first steps to making this commitment real. I promise you that if you do commit to this, and see it through, the benefits will last long after the ten weeks are over. The little secret is that while the first ten weeks will help you to lose a few extra holiday pounds, by doing so you will adopt better habits and behaviors that will give you more energy, better health and make you feel a whole lot better about what you can accomplish in 2012.

Say hi when yo get onto Buckeye or Twitter, will ya? You can find me as @CoachAdam on the latter. Happy New Year!

If you ask a triathlete what their greatest risk is or what they fear the most, new athletes might answer drowning, while more experienced competitors might answer not being able to compete; and when pressed further as to what might cause that, they may point toward a fractured collar bone or another similar injury from a  bike accident. Few would answer death by brain eating amoeba although three people died last year from swimming in water inhabited by Naegleria fowleri, a “brain-eating” waterborne amoebic meningoencephalitis, which causes headache, stiffness, fever and nausea before leading to almost-certain death.

Many more got sick from ingesting or inspiring non lethal but severely painful bugs that can be found in pools, lakes and rivers. This has become such an important issue that the CDC ran a video contest to raise awareness of how to avoid these issues. Here is the winning submission:

But why as we enter the winter month of December are we talking about waterborne risks commonly found in warm waters. For two reasons, fist because triatletes move inside into pools during the winter months that are shared with youth swimmers that probably haven’t heard of these risks and even if they have, they don’t much care. Adults also assume that chlorine kills all of the urine and fecal borne bugs introduced by little swimmers wearing floaties. It doesn’t.

The second reason I bring this up is because winter brings winter colds and with more and more people resisting the use of antibiotics as a quick foolproof solution, many are turning to the use of nasal irrigators, some over the counter, others through the time tested use of nasal irrigates or nasal douches like the Neti pot. A Neti pot is used to pour warm saline water into one nostril drawing out any infection and contaminants as they are swept out the other nostril and into a sink. In most cases, this is a very safe and simple procedure, but just as noted above, there have been cases, where people have gotten and died from meningoencephalitis while using a Neti Pot.

To protect yourself during swimming, you can close off passages of entry including using goggles, not swallowing pool water, and by using ear and nose plugs. To do the same while obtaining the health benefits of using a nasal irrigator such as a Neti pot, use only distilled water, keep your pot clean and only use it for short periods of time. It doesn’t take any more effort and you can virtually eliminate all of the associated and completely preventable risks.

There are other pros and cons of using nasal irrigation as a course of action, many of which are identified in this WebMD article. http://www.webmd.com/allergies/features/neti-pot-nasal-irrigation-pros-and-cons

Hopefully, you’ll pass through this winter getting in great swim workouts and without getting ill; but if you should, remember these few simple tips.

About a week ago, I woke up in the middle of the night in a Los Angeles hotel feeling like someone was stabbing me in the back and my right arm was on fire. I wish I could tell you exactly what’s going on but I can’t yet and more than a week later I’m still trying to figure it all out.

What I can share is that now that the pain is no longer intolerable, I can actually type full sentences on a keyboard and figured that my experience here is something that someone else might find useful in case they find themselves in a similar situation. I openly confess that I have no idea how this is going to end, but I can promise that I’ll be sure to share what I learn and what works and what doesn’t work for me in the hope that someone else might benefit.

More to follow…

Most importantly, as an upbeat and humorous US Marine Corporal Aaron Mankin – who has undergone more than 60 operations to repair his face and body from burns incurred when an IED exploded in his vehicle killing 7 of his troops – stated, it allowed a bunch of US Marines to come to spend a few hours at an open bar, and gave us all a sobering reminder of the sacrifices that our service men and women make each and every day to protect our freedoms. The only thing that would have made it better is if President Obama’s message about the demise of Osama bin Laden had been received that evening in front of all of those that had invested so much to make that happen.

Now that would have been a once in a lifetime experience.You owe it to yourself to learn about this great organization and this great cause by watching this short video on Operation Mend

As it was, it was a tremendous evening put on by a great team led by event chairs Bob and Kira Lorsch and Thalians Board Chair and Force of Nature, Ruta Lee.

Here’s a little snippet of the event through our eyes from start to finish. It even includes your own private tour through The Playboy Mansion.

The evening ended as perfectly as it started, at The Rainbow Bar and Grill with good friends and family, midget wrestlers, a cat wearing magician and an amazing pizza. Just another Saturday night in La La Land.

My third – yes I said two – reason is that I’ve found that some folks aren’t very good at reporting on projects, both in business and in their personal lives. So for the aspiring project managers out there or for those who just want to dip their toe into the waters of accountability and management practices, this exercise might help you as you put your own plans together, although I will refrain from over exciting all of you with terms like Gantt and Pert. In business, there is an adage that a task is not complete until it is reported upon, and the same holds true in training, meaning that your workout is not complete until you record it in your log. Kind of like the tree falling in the forest if nobody was around. Providing regular reporting is good practice because it works. It keeps you focused, provides valuable information and quite frankly doesn’t really take that much time. One caveat, I know an awful lot of people who spend more times on the report than the work. It should be apparent why that doesn’t make sense.

Why 40 in 2011? (The Outcome Goal) Well last year I participated in the 10in10 challenge, with an outcome goal to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. And yes I reported on it, and yes by the time I reached the start line of the 2010 Los Angeles Marathon in March, I had easily hit that mark. The trouble was that from March to December, I somehow found a way to let it all get away from me covering my 10 and raising it another 10. Lot’s of excuses why, lost days traveling, lousy nutrition on the road, blah blah. There’s always enough of those to go around. So to quote one of my favorite movie villain lines, “If at first you don’t succeed, Mr Kidd” “Try try again, Mr. Wint”. (extra credit if you are old enough to remember this one.) And this time it’s go big or go home! Or go small, or , well, you know what I mean.

Each week I will report out using the following format:

How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) Up or down and by how much. I use three levels of performance measures. Less than Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations. I’ll also include a report card on the Process Goals, which are all posted using Joe’s Goals.

Here’s an example of a weekly report from last year:

Report Card – Week 8

February 22 – February 28:

Then we’ll summarize our insights on these by analyzing them within the following three categories:

1. Caloric Intake/Nutrition

2. Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress

3. Recovery/Adaptation
   

I’ll be logging my daily workouts using Buckeye Outdoors, a terrific free online training log managed by some friends of mine who have dedicated themselves to providing high quality work while giving back to their community. Below is an example of a weekly report that is generated.

By the way, while you are there, if you want some additional motivation you can join 2011′s version of the 10 in 10 Challenge. Just search for “10 in 10 2011″ at http://buckeyeoutdoors.com/training/challenges You can also learn more about this on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/#!/10in10Challenge

Sound complicated? It’s not. But if you want to get even simpler in your own 2011 goals, follow these simple steps. 1) Select one to three outcome goals, 2) break those down into one to five process goals, 3) tell your friends and family about them both to declare them and because their lives will probably be impacted, 4) log your progress after each activity (paper taped onto your refrigerator works great), and 5) analyze your results and report out weekly. That’s about it. This simple process will give you structure, focus and motivation. Hope it will help you as much as it has helped me as well as the many athletes and staff I’ve worked with over the years. Conclusion: I’m just as excited as any new person using the New Year as an artificial reason to do what could be started on any day of the year. But in the end, who cares, as long as it works. Have a tremendous 2011. Thanks for coming along.

OK, not really. CLE is providing free massage therapists as a way to help ease the stress for holiday travelers around Thanksgiving. Pretty cool example of customer experience management. And they still can’t touch my junk. Winning tag line was provided exclusively by my friend Bill Porter!

For as long as I can remember, my life has revolved around human performance, sports and athletics. My father was a golfer and competitive swimmer (didn’t get that gene), my mother participated in every sport imaginable from tennis and golf to riding on boys shoulders while surfing down in Mexico, and my sister turned Title IX on its ear in her own way by being a five sport letter girl and making the boys in high school and the men at UCLA look foolish in any number of sports. It was just part of our lives. Being Jewish has also been a large part of my life, and no, ordinarily I don’t go around wearing a kippah on a daily basis or even mention it, but I do think it has influenced my outlook on life and how I approach competitive athletics. Full disclosure, for the most part I grew up as what one might casually call a Beverly Hills Jew, getting Bar Mitzvahed, and going to High Holiday services, and not much more. Even so, I have always considered being Jewish to be a big part of who I am, except for the whole slaughtering and sacrificing of animals, keeping multiple wives, all that huge portion, high calorie tasteless food and that whole carnivore thing – I haven’t quite reconciled all of that yet.

What I have been in tune with is how these two important pieces of my life, athletics and Judaism, have occasionally come together to create a perfect synergy of spirit and purpose. I’ve often wondered, however, why when the discussion of Jewish athletes arises, only a few names like Sandy Koufax come to people’s minds. Maybe that’s because there are so few well known Jewish athletes and that makes it so easy to identify the few there actually are; it’s kind of like asking the question, do you know of any “Catholic American Presidents?” My earliest competitive memories of combining Judaism with sport are from back in high school playing Yeshiva Academy in some non-league basketball game and having to wait until sundown to start the game and thinking to myself, how ridiculous it was that we had to keep stopping for one of the boys to pick up his kippah that inevitably would continue to fall off of his head while running around.

Like many, however, my first and most memorable connection to Judiasm and athletics came in 1972 while watching the summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, watching American athletes, who’s names I will never forget collect myriad medals in individual sports that up until that time were sports there just to prove how weak I was as part of the Mr. Peanuts Physical Fitness Tests we did annually in elementary school: Frank Shorter, Mark Spitz, Dwight Stones, Shirley Babashoff and of course the ultimate front runner Steve Prefontaine, who actually lost to Gammoudi, Viren and Stewart in one of the greatest 800 meter races ever run as a part of a 5,000 meter final.

Combining with these amazing athletic success stories was the unfolding horror as members of Black September took Israeli Olympic athletes and coaches hostage, finally killing them on the tarmac at the airport in a botched rescue attempt. Like Beamer’s famous last words on Flight 93 “Let’s roll”, I still remember these words from Jim McKay from those Olympic games as if  he just said them yesterday:

“When I was a kid, my father used to say “Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized.” Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They’ve now said that there were eleven hostages. Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone”

In the years that followed those 1972 games, I got actively involved in sport, even figured out how to do a pull-up and have thought about the best and the worst of those games ever since.

So as I sit here typing on Yom Kippur, thinking about what this holiday or holy day is all about, I do so through my own particular lens, one that continually combines human performance and sport with my own interpretation of Judiasm.

Beyond the tragedy of that event, it also opened my eyes up to really terrific athletes who were also Jewish, or maybe it’s more appropriate to say, really terrific Jews who were also athletes? And obviously with my passions focused since college in the area of endurance sport, I can say that we as a community still have a long way to go although if you look at the individual sports within a triathlon, we’re pretty well represented. Well, not all of the sports. Jews have continued to suck at cycling, even a guy named Levi Leipheimer isn’t Jewish, what’s up with that? We do alright in running with standout Deena (Drossin) Kastor leading that field, and absolutely own swimming. Think about these aquatic athletes, all Jewish, who are all household names regardless of your religious affiliation: Jason Lezak, Lenny Krayzelburg, Mark Spitz, and Dara Torres. As for the complete triathlete picture, well we don’t exactly dominate that sport but can point to Joanna Zeiger who was the Ironman 70.3 World Champion in 2008. Hey, it’s a start.

So with this mindset, I found myself in NY during these Days of Awe and was particularly thrilled to be able to attend services at Temple Israel in New Rochelle, NY, just a few miles from where Cindy and I lived for most of the past 10 years. It is a bet kennesit, (meeting place) where we can see old friends and neighbors and now perhaps most importantly, it is led by Scott Weiner, a rabbi, who is also a former Team for Kids member and one of the founders of Running Rabbis. Yes, you got it right, Running Rabbis, a group of rabbis that are committed to positive change in their communities and use running as a catalyst.

Scott was a TFK member back in 2006, where at the NYC Marathon he popped off a respectable 3:52 marathon. Since then he has run NYC two more times and has dropped his average pace per mile almost a full minute and finished last year’s race in 3:35. This tells me two things, First, he got a lot faster after he left the team I was coaching, and second a rabbinical appearance in Boston cannot be far behind.

Last night at Erev Yom Kippur services, I listened to Scott give an impassioned sermon on the purpose of a Jewish congregation such as that at Temple Israel, and took much enjoyment out of the fact that he made at least 4 references to sport and discussed a balanced nutritional meal of spiritual, mental and social calories. Cindy leaned over to me and whispered, “You can tell he drank the runner’s Kool-Aid”.

But being Jewish and an athlete, I can’t help but find a certain degree of humor in the process of fasting as a form of “suffering”, don’t they know that a fun day for people like us is to swim 2.4 miles and bike 112 miles BEFORE running a marathon? Like speed limits on roads that I feel should take into account the car you are driving, I’m pretty sure this whole simulated suffering thing needs to run on a sliding scale, otherwise for many it becomes simply a really convenient time to shrink your stomach and begin dieting so you can fit into you best ski bunny outfit this winter.

So here are a few recommendations for more effective suffering as our Jewish population gets increasingly athletic and performance oriented:

• Instead of fasting, don’t let us use the bathrooms for 24 hours;
• Set up bike trainers with reading stands in front of them and then make us go through services as if it were a Spinning class. Every time the arc is opened, we have to stand in the saddle;
• Tie this to an American Cancer Society Relay for Life event and have us run or walk on treadmills in the synagogue for 24 hours while raising funds to fight cancer;
• Let’s simulate a real exodus and put on an 80 lb backpack and hike the entire day in the hot sun without any food or water – I actually did this on a UCLA Outdoor Adventure instructor outing that was scheduled on Yom Kippur

Regardless of the changes we might make to how we observe the holiday, I hope Temple Israel understands the value that Rabbi Weiner can bring to this congregation by shepherding the physical as well as the spiritual health of its congregants. And they have a perfect 6-mile course right outside their temple that they can train on. Pinebrook Blvd might well become Westchester’s equivalent of San Vicente in Santa Monica, CA.

More broadly, I think it’s time for Jews to accept their rightful place in the endurance sport community. We come from a culture where suffering is part and parcel with whom we are. And let’s face it, we already have the complaining part down. We’re world class at that. L’shanah Tova. Have a happy, healthy and sweet new year.

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I’m that guy, you know the one, the guy who always appears to be running around at one hundred miles an hour, never slowing down, never smelling the roses, never having time for those closest to him, etc etc etc. While this isn’t completely true (my close friends know I’m equally satisfied driving a large complex project or sleeping on a rock in Sequoia), I figure the least I can do is completely disconnect for one hour and that hour begins tonight at 8:30PM as I will participate in Earth Hour. What difference will it make? Globally, most assuredly my participation won’t make any difference at all, but I figure if I can sit in the dark for an hour disconnected from The Matrix, it can’t be a bad thing personally. And at a minimum, it makes a great excuse for not having to watch repeats of Real Housewives of NY. Maybe you’ll join me as well.

How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) The bagel week. This was a crazy week and the bottom line is that I ate too much and worked out too inconsistently. The result is that I lost another 2.75 pounds. Hunh? Proves yet again that this weight management stuff is highly irregular, the benefits are cumulative and not even close to linear. I’m down to 209.75 pounds which is really exciting but I can’t say that it’s due to a great week on my part. Only tangentially related to my weight loss objective, my athletic performance continues to climb, including having paced out a 16-miler at a 9 min/mile pace, which isn’t fast historically but it’s the fastest I’ve run distance in quite some time.

I use three levels of performance measures. Less than Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations. My grade?

Less than Expected Overall, for week 7 of 10 I gave myself a self assessment of Less than Expected. How can I say that when I had my largest weight loss week to date? Because the focus must remain oon the process goals if I am meant to achieve the objective and then sustain it after the fact. I’m totally supportive of the motivational mantra of celebrating small victories but I can’t let the variability of the outcome goal give me a false sense of productivity. With some significant changes to my routine coming up, I really need to step it up this week.

Report Card – Week 7

February 15 – February 21:

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Less than Expected

Portion size: Actually pretty good this week.

Eat Healthy Breakfast: I’m not sure about healthy but I ate breakfast most days.

Eat light every three hours: Think this stretched to four, five or even six on some days.

Eat fresh whole foods: Good. Salads almost every day.

Avoid junk food and sugar: Ice cream a few times this week. Just silly on my part.

Eat protein first: Sort of.

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Crappy as all get out, eating too late almost every night.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Less than Expected

February 15 – February 21:

Workout early: Finally got out for a 5:30am run this week, but only once. Still having trouble waking up full of energy.

Min 45 mins of Cardio: Didn’t work out from Wednesday morning until Saturday, but when I did the quality was good.

Resistance training: I know I needed to do more but got a bit ill on Thursday so I only got one day of lifting in, which I focused on my legs on Saturday and definitely am paying for it.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Conclusion: It’s great that I dropped the 2.75 pounds but there is no rational reason for me having done so, and that can’t continue. More resistance training this week and a ruthless commitment to stay away from the sugar.  Results from all of the other great folks participating in this challenge can be found at the 10 in 10 blog. Have another great week.

It’s almost March which means a full two months have passed since most of us made our annual commitment to be better people, save the world, stop smoking, find more time for friends and family or get out of debt – some of the more popular New Year’s resolutions made each and every year. For those of you that follow my blog, you know how opposed I am to the term resolution, because it is such a weak term and lacks basic accountability as evidenced by how much meaning is put behind a resolution in Congress. But hey, it’s a whole lot more catchy and less corporate than New Year’s Objective, a term which actually creates visions of drinking oneself into oblivion while hooking up with strangers at a New Years party. So New Year’s Resolution it is.

My own objective/resolution was to lose ten pounds in ten weeks, and I’ve been pretty darn dedicated to doing this including posting weekly results on my blog and being a part of the 10in10in10 Challenge. Even with my background in health and fitness, I have found this seemingly simple task quite the challenge. I’m down four pounds so far but it has been quite the yoyo experience, lose two pounds one week, gain one-and-a-half the next, and so on.

Having recently moved to NE Ohio, I have found both the good – lack of typical restaurants, and the associated calories, that I would typically frequent in NY, and the bad – Duck’s kitchen. OK, in all fairness, I have to openly admit I absolutely love Duck’s kitchen because it is incredibly warm and friendly with family members and friends stopping in at all hours of the day and night to sit down and partake of any number of delights that she has somehow constantly bakes throughout the day. I’ve often wondered to myself if this is how Mrs. Fields got started. The bad part is that the house should essentially be built out of gingerbread. There is sugar everywhere, cookies and pies on the kitchen table and counter tops, bins of cookies stacked five feet high in the family room, pancakes and waffles being made as soon as you wake up and more deserts being prepared right before you go to sleep. It’s utterly a diabetic shock waiting to happen. This is what I have to navigate through to get from the living room to the kitchen table, and again, this is not for any holiday, this is just what it looks like during the middle of any typical week and I’m not even showing the bins of cookies.

So as I’ve been going through this 10in10in10 Challenge, I have been hard pressed not to partake in any of these sugary treats and have been outstandingly successful. I think this is a positive indicator of how committed I am, this and the fact that there is a Cold Stone less than 10 minutes from my house and I haven’t been there once; alright, that’s not exactly true, I went there once but they had just closed and I didn’t have a sugar tantrum and try and break the door down as I probably would have done in past years. Long story short, once again, I have proven to myself that objectives/resolutions/goals or whatever you may call them are best achieved when they are realistic and when a clear road map to success is set out. I hope your resolutions are still top of mind for you and if not, perhaps this is yet another opportunity to get re-focused. And if that doesn’t work, just stop by Duck’s kitchen and put yourself into an insulin coma. Hey no worries, Duck can take care of monitoring that too.