For those new to this blog, I and a bunch of other tweethletes embarked upon this year’s 10in10 challenge, with the outcome goal to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. This report covers progress through week 3 of 10.

How’d I do? (The Outcome Goal) During week 3, I succeeded in losing .75 pounds and am now at 214 lbs, and overall I’m down 2 lbs from my starting weight.

Peter Gabriel, No Self Control

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

Less than Expected Overall, for week 3 of 10 I gave myself a self assessment of Less than Expected, sliding back from all of the good work I did in the first two weeks because of a complete #failwhale related to portion control. The Peter Gabriel video above says it all! I ate two full pizza’s this week without even knowing it in two different days. Well of course I knew that I did it, but it’s back to the addictive personality. Being back in NY this week, I found myself out at lunches and dinners with friends and got caught up in that all too easy self convincing attitude of “It’s only one time”. For me, my nutrition and “feeding” needs to be a stand alone event where I get the food, eat the food and finish, separate and apart from other distractions or activities.  It’s far too easy to get caught up in the moment and then realize that I consumed the gross national product of Uganda before the evening was complete. The result is that all of my great routine built up during the prior two weeks is snapped and I’m forced to go back to the beginning. I lied where I had gotten to, that place where my body tells, me “Hey idiot, you’ve eaten enough and if you eat any more I’m going to make you feel sick.” But if you keep piling on, your body won’t be able to tell you. Just like a muscle, it adapts to the behavior you impute on it. Major need for a quick refresh to get back on track. Only seven weeks left.

Why am I rating myself Less than Expected when I still lost weight? Just like in Week 1 when I actually gained weight, the outcome goal does not always reflect what really matters and that is my behavior in executing on and achieiving the process goals I’ve set forth for myself. Yes, I lost .75 pounds, but in reality, that’s just blind luck, or more likely a timing issue. I know from practice that what I do nutritionally on one day doesn’t show up in my weight for five to seven days. All this means that my work is REALLY cut out for me this week, just to stay even.

Report Card – Week 3

January 18 – January 24:

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Less than Expected

Portion size: Horrible. As described in my preamble. Enough said. Cut the portions down to levels not required by Attila the Hun!

Eat Healthy Breakfast: Healthy but I allowed the portion size to creep up here as well.

Eat light every three hours: Not even close. I ate every three hours on some days, skipped meals on others and ate light then heavcy, then even heavier then light. Yuck!

Eat fresh whole foods: Probably the positive side of the nutritional elements. I did eat a lot of whole fresh foods, just too much of it. The one change this week is living off of Carolyn’s juicer. Each morning, we’ve been playing “Guess what’s in the juice?” So far she and Cindy haven’t tried to put in my athletic socks. Brett Blankner and Christine Lynch would be really proud, as they also have been on the smoothie kick, but we’ve gone one better because we’re using Carolyn’s heavy duty auger.

Avoid junk food and sugar: Not too bad with sugar this week. None of Aunt Duck’s oatmeal raisin cookies to graze on.

Eat protein first: Kind of a mix here. I can still be much better. Who am I kidding? I didn’t eat protein first, yet again. No self control, cue the Peter Gabriel song.

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Average at best with a number of late nights grazing.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Met Expectations

January 18 – January 24:

Workout early: Got out early on the weekend but still not regularly starting my days out by working out or running. I know how important this is because it really does set the tone for the rest of the day and allows me the flexibility of getting in a second workout later in the day or evening if my schedule allows.

Min 45 mins of Cardio: No problems here, and was happy that the issue in my left calf didn’t rear its ugly head again, even with me getting in 48 miles of running this week including a 19-mile long run on Saturday followed by a 10-mile run at Rockefeller Park on Sunday. Total time training for cardio and resistance was 11 hours.

Resistance training: As you can see from my Joe’s Goals report above, I only lifted two days this week. So important! Need to do even better.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: Not much to say here. I slept a lot.

Conclusion: Stop being such a glutton! Not much more to say than that. Keep up the good work on getting in my runs (I’m only a few weeks away from the Los Angeles Marathon) lift even more and drop this BS weight. Do the things I know I need to do. Results from all of the other great folks participating in this challenge can be found at the 10 in 10 blog. Have a great week.

For those new to this blog, I and a bunch of other tweethletes embarked upon this year’s 10in10 challenge, with the outcome goal to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks. This report covers progress through week 2 of 10.

How’d I do? During week 2, I succeeded in losing 4.75 pounds and am now at 214.75 lbs, and overall I’m down 1.75 lbs from my starting weight.

Below is my report card from the past week. I use three levels of performance measures. Less then Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations. Overall, for week 2 of 10 I gave myself a self assessment of Met Expectations, building on the good start from week one and working even harder in a few areas. Recall that in week one I actually gained 3 pounds but knowing that I was doing what I needed to do, I persevered and the results this week have been positive. That said, I still have plenty of room for improvement.

Report Card – Week 2

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Met Expectations

Portion size: Better. But still have a lot of work to do here! I definitely had a few slip ups but I consciously recall walking away from food when I otherwise would have continued to eat. And wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t starve in the process.

Eat Healthy Breakfast: Continued my breakfasts of cottage cheese although I threw in a bit of cereal on occasion.

Eat light every three hours: Still a work in process, but eating frequently did help with the typical hunger I might otherwise feel.

Eat fresh whole foods: Probably still my weakest link. Still a slave to too many processed foods. Trying to hit the salad bar immediately after working out to avoid last minute convenience choices.

Avoid junk food and sugar: Good except for an indulgence in Aunt Duck’s oatmeal raisin cookies that were irresistible. Continued to avoid chocolate and it’s getting easier.

Eat protein first: This one is most difficult because protein is hard to come by at every meal around here. Need to get more creative.

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Better as well, only having some dried apricots at the one hour mark.

Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress = Met Expectations

Workout early: Still not getting into the gym as soon as I wake up. I think this is because there is still so many moving pieces in the other parts of my life and I’m trying to attack those first thing in the morning as well. I did get out and run on Saturday and Sunday before seven am, so its getting better.

Min 45 mins of Cardio: No problems here, and was able to return to running after my lay off due to the calf injury, including an 18-mile long run on Saturday.

Resistance training: Unfortunately the return to running also meant that I slacked off on the resistance training which I know is absolutely critical to building lean body tissue.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: Pretty good about going to sleep early this past week, which also allowed me to get up early feeling much more energized..

Need to continue what went well and work even harder on what didn’t as I move into week 3. Love seeing all of the great results being posted on the 10 in 10 blog. Keep up the great work and don’t be discouraged about any lack of expected progress in the outcome goal, keep focusing on those process goals and the outcome goal will take care of itself.

Week 1 of 10 – Gained 3 Pounds

Some of you already know that I decided to jump into the public mix and join this years 10in10 challenge, essentially the Biggest Loser without the threat of getting kicked off the show and without the ability to win a lot of money. This community/challenge was started by our Twitter and podcasting friend Nigel. The objective is really simple. Lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks.

On Monday January 4th, we all weighed ourselves and posted our weights on a Google Docs spreadsheet. I weighed in at the gym just before working out. I came in at a NFL Quarterback svelte 216.5 lbs, except that I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the NFL Quarterback fraternity. Blacklisted from that as well. I wasn’t surprised by the 216.5 weight; after all, it isn’t a good or a bad number, it’s just a number, a benchmark from which to measure performance and change. Now with an outcome goal of 10 pounds in 10 weeks firmly in place, I set out to develop the process goals that if implemented would positively affect that number. Note: I acknowledge that weight management is materially affected by stress, emotions and psychology, those elements that fall into the Spiritual, Mental and Emotional dimensions of human performance, however the process goals I chose for this endeavor are exclusive to the Physical dimension, as I felt the physical foundation needed to be solidified first or the desired accomplishments in the other dimensions would equally fail. I placed these Physical process goals into the following categories:

• Caloric Intake/Nutrition
• Caloric Expenditure/Positive Stress
• Recovery/Adaptation

How’d I do? During week 1, I succeeded in gaining three pounds and am now up to 219.5. So why am I not freaking out? Well, for a couple of reasons. The first is that I was on meds for my head cold when I did my initial weigh in which may have had me dehydrated aqnd therefore lighter than I really am. Case in point is that I did my weigh in yesterday before my workout and came up with 219.5. I did another weigh in after my workout and weighed in at 215.5, that’s a 4 pound swing in under two hours, all of it related to hydration. But being conservative, I’ll use the observation from before the workout and will hope to see improvement in the coming weeks from doing one thing, executing ruthlessly on the process goals I’ve set out for myself.

Below is my report card from the past week. I use three levels of performance measures. Less then Expected, Met Expectations and Exceeded Expectations. It doesn’t make much sense to get more granular than that, although I recognize that there are valid reasons for gradation. Overall, for week 1 of 10 I gave myself a self assessment of Met Expectations, a good start with plenty of room for improvement.

Report Card – Week 1

Caloric Intake/Nutrition = Below Expectations

Portion size: Clearly I still fall into the trappings of being a child of depression parents and still feel the need to clean my plate

Eat Healthy Breakfast: For the most part I now eat cottage cheese for breakfast which also helps with the eat protein first process goal

Eat light every three hours: Not sure I’m eating light and trying to eat regularly but not exactly hitting the every three hour mark

Avoid junk food and sugar: I’ve been off chocolate since January 1st, which is my biggest sugar vice, but I’m still eating too much bread and carbs

Eat protein first: Starts of really well with breakfast but I know I ate Mexican a few times and did fall into the trappings of the chips on the table

Stop eating 60 mins. before going to sleep: Just failed at this one.

Caloric Expenditure/Postive Stress = Met Expectations

Hit the gym early: Been going to gym but usually around lunch time, not first thing in the morning as I’d planned on doing. Lots of good excuses but no matter, I still haven’t been getting it done. I also missed two days this week due to other commitments.

Min 45 mins of Cardio: I pulled the muscle in my left calf on Tuesday on the treadmill but didn’t let it deter me. I quickly switched to more hours on the bike and walking steep inclines on the treadmill to keep up the routine. Would have been a higher grade but I missed Monday and Sunday due to other commitments.

Resistance training: Lifted weights Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for a total of three days this week. Also given that Wednesday was the first time I’d done squats and lunges in ages, it took me until Saturday to recover functional ability in my ass and hamstrings again.

Recovery/Adaptation = Met Expectations

Sleep min of 7 hours per night: For the most part I’m getting more sleep now than I ordinarily do, but I still need to work on reducing the negative stress in my day to day life. Obviously my career has a lot to do with this at the moment. I still need to do a lot more on this front.

Now it’s on to do even better in week two. Best of luck to all of my friends who are engaged in pursuing their own 10 in 10 objectives. Wishing you all continued success.

You all know that I love technology and I love automobiles.  Let’s be honest, I still drive a ’91 Ford Explorer that even off the line, cost less than the stereo I had Howard Becker put into it. People thought I was crazy because I dropped the truck off on La Cienega the day I took possession and didn’t get it back for three weeks. But when I did, BAM the truck was amazing, it was like driving around with the Counting Crows playing in my back seat – crazy sick!

Growing up in Los Angeles, every weekend two things would happen. The first is that on Sunday mornings I’d hook up with the Santa Monica Trail Runners and head up to Sycamore Canyon or some place north of Malibu to the run trails before the first NFL game. Along the way, we’d pass all of these RV parks along PCH, and on the one hand, I’d think, man don’t these people have homes? Do they all live like Jim Rockford as PI’s for $200 per day plus expenses? On the other hand, I totally envied them that they could live on the beach anywhere they wanted to. The second thing that would happen is that on the radio and TV, every twenty minutes we’d hear another commercial for the 42nd Annual California RV Show at the Fairplex in Pomona. And it was announced in that same voice that announced the Monster Truck Rallies at the Los Angeles Coliseum, you know the one, “Sunday, Sunday, Sunday“, I know you all just said it out loud with me.

Long story short, I never knew anyone who went to that RV convention or who lived in one on the beach north of Zuma. And then about four years ago, I went to a place called Deer Meadow Campgrounds in Cook Forest, PA with Cindy and her family. You guessed it, it’s a campground with RV’s, hundreds of them, maybe thousands of them. And let me tell you, if you want to know where money is being spent in this economy, look no further than the RV community. There are rv’s and then there are RV’s, including buses that cost upwards of $750,000. Are you kidding me? Some are even amphibious!

I’ve decided that Tour Bus is a more palatable term for snobs like me that still get embarrassed at the term RV. I know it’s rediculous but hey, I’m still evolving. In any case, in Cook Forest, I had a great time doing what I love to do, which is to run trails and cycle 100 miles out into nowhere just to get lost. And thankfully I’ve been invited back many times since.

So today, I’m making it my mission to enlighten other cynics like me to how super cool there tour buses, I mean, RV’s really are. I’m going to the Ohio RV Show in Cleveland. From what I can tell, I should be able to broadcast live from at least a few of these vehicles that are all tripped out with Wifi and satellite uplinks. Follow me on twitter at twitter.com/CoachAdam. Why should SWAT have all the fun with their toys?

Who knows, one day I might be a super successful management consultant engaging with clients and team members from anywhere that my explorer personality takes me. Jealous? A little.

If you haven’t heard it already, USC football lost once again to an unranked team (and a Pac-10 opponent) severely hindering its hopes for another Pac-10 championship and BCS Bowl appearance.

Now what I’m about to say may seem like heracy given how dedicated I am to the USC Football program, but here I go. The USC team is just not that good this season and they have bigger problems than their annual lapse of concentration. Hans Tessalar of The Los Angeles Times writes:

“The surprise from the 16-13 loss to Washington on Saturday is that the Trojans have now played two bad games in a row.”

That isn’t a surprise, that’s a fact. The team is flat, uninspired, slllloooowwww, soft, without field leadership and inexperienced. The highly touted offensive line got pushed around the field by both Ohio State and Washington. The play calling looked more like that of Jim Tressel than “Big Balls” Pete.

Now we’ve had stupidass losses before, Oregon State, Cal, Oregon, Stanford, and Stanford but in each of those games there was a clear reason including the famous “they had a running back that was so small our defense couldn’t see him” excuse.  I didn’t say they were good excuses, just clear. But in all of those seasons the team rebounded and asserted itself as the dominant force in the Pac-10 if not in college football. Why? Because those teams still had something that was undeniably “dominant”, an offensive line, a defense, a quarterback/wide receiver, Thunder and Lightning, something that you could look at and say, yup, we got cocky and complacent and blew it, but we’re a solid team and we’ll adjust and they did.

This season is different. This team is not dominant ANYWHERE! Not even in special teams. In short, this is NOT the type of USC team we’ve become accustomed to. This is much more like the teams of the drought years, and I can say this because from the year I started college to the year I graduated grad school I had to endure loss after loss to both UCLA and Notre Dame. I for one do not want to go back there again.

But I digress, the biggest issue that nobody is talking about is that this isn’t an issue of getting their quarterback some experience in games. And the issue is not that USC is losing, it’s that they might not be able to get better.

The secret sauce in USC’s success is that any team they have faced on a Saturday afternoon since 2001 has never been as good as who they have faced every day in practice. Yes the key to USC’s success is that because they have been so dominant that they have practiced to the level of USC Football, the level of their competition has largely been irrelevant as very few teams have been able to rival the speed, athleticism, inspiration and focused passion and play calling of a USC Football team.  So Saturday’s games have been really an extension of team scrimmages rather than a test of ability or execution. Now throw in Pete Carroll’s inspired leadership and a Norm Chow offense and you have magic. But they couldn’t have done it without both of these factors. Inspiring medicoracy might get you a surprise performance but it isn’t sustainable and it certainly doesn’t lead to national championships.

With the team this season being so average in every way, they won’t be practicing against competition that is as good as let alone better than who they will face on Saturdays. And the old adage of “the harder you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle” may not apply, because while they might put in the effort, they simply won’t have the competition across the line to MAKE them better.

And that should be frightening to the USC faithful.

On the Phedippidations Message Board a discussion about what makes the Boston Marathon special popped up in part because of Steve Walker’s recent opportunity to run the race again this year. The following is an excerpt from a runner and podcaster who I have great respect for who goes by the name dumprunner on the message board. He writes:

I am probably contrarian but Boston is  simply not as special as it is made out to be. It has history, great crowds, is extremely well run (that could be said for a lot of marathons) and a great booming voice at mile 22.

But the minute I finished, I had no desire ever to run it again and that hasn’t changed.

My mind filled with dozens of loosely connected images as I thought about how I would respond to his comment, arriving at what might be only described as a schizophrenic pattern of thought, which for those of you who read my missives know is nothing new for me.

The most amazing experiences for me at Boston always come at the point in time when I land at Logan International Airport in Boston. As soon as I step off of the plane, I see a sudden shift in the morphology of the general population around me. Lean, clean shaven, athletic folks abound, carrying water bottles and wearing t-shirts espousing the various running clubs or races that they have been affiliated with. To your right and left are small groups of folks chatting quietly and confidently while chewing on a Clif Bar or a baggie filled with celery. In truth, if you are flying into Boston, you only need to look around the plane you are flying in on to see hints of this already.  These people need no medals swung loosely around their necks for us to understand just how talented these runners are. It isn’t the Tevas on their feet or the small duffel bag on their shoulder that gives them away. Nor is it the cross country t-shirts marked simply by the graphic of two adjacent C’s split horizontally by an arrow. In fact it’s in their confidence.

What makes Boston differnent than any other marathon is that everyone that has qualified for this race has already done the work to get here. There is nothing left to worry about or be concerned about aside from any demons that we all continue to carry around with us in search of our next PR, and if it should be at Boston, so much the better. Boston is about celebrating your accomplishments, setting new standards or simply not looking silly when running next to legends of the sport.

Two years ago, I reported from La Guardia airport on my way to support @texafornia, @jettpack, @simplystu, IronWil and the rest of my friends on Team Race Athlete at Ironman Wisconsin. The piles of bike boxes stacked 6 feet high in the ticketing area at La Guardia told me that I was part of something much larger than just another race. These are the tools of battle, packaged with care and sitting innocuously just waiting to leap out before traveling 112 miles at 22+ mph over the roads around Madison. Arriving in Boston is very similar, and unlike NYC, Chicago and Los Angeles, where people wander aimlessly around the expo, the Boston Marathon Expo is very much business as usual, with runners getting in, and getting out as efficiently as possible. Remember, these folks have all done this before. Perhaps then, Boston is really about being humble, because everyone there knows what they are capable of accomplishing.

The charity entries have definitely changed this atmosphere, which is why I actually discourage folks from running Boston under a charity entry – and I founded a charity endurance training program. I simply think that there’s nothing wrong with one marathon to be held aside for those age-groupers who purely by genetic gift or training have risen to this level of performance.

All marathons have their personalities and Boston is no exception. I give great complements to those, like dumprunner and Avi who PR’d on that course and even more so to those who do so while running negative splits. The course is no joke, but it is after all, just another course, 26.2 miles long.

To me what is really special about Boston is that for a few hours you can count yourself among those who perform at that level and, especially for those who do not come by this naturally, that you have a community that is singularly committed to celebrate all of the sacrifices that you made to get there – all of those mornings waking up and running at 5am so that you could complete your run before you had to start your normal working day and before attending to all of your other responsibilities that did not take time off just because you were “in training”.

In short, The Boston Marathon is the 360 tomahawk dunk of running. Not everyone can do it, but when you do, the world takes notice and you can’t help but feel that it was all worth it.

Congratulations to all who will be participating in Boston in April. Again, as always, I am humbled by your achievement.

I just made it onto the 7:57PM train out of Grand Central. This was an express train which means that it looks a lot like the picture here except that not a lot of folks wear hats like this anymore. If you look toward the back, however, you’ll see the vestibule area where latecomers like me are relegated to stand for the short forty-minute ride to the first stop in Southern Westchester.

I didn’t notice it at first, leaning against one of the glass walls that separate us from those who actually had seats. I was doing my normal thing now of flipping through my Blackberry catching up on e-mails. I just saw a young guy in khakis, a button-down long-sleeved white shirt with light blue checks and holding his greenish tweed jacket in between his knees as he read a copy of The Economist. I looked over and saw he was reading an article on corporate bankruptcy and he seemed deeply engaged in what he was reading.

Then it happened. He reached down, bent forward slightly and tugged at his crotch, adjusting what was obviously an anatomical protrusion that he was having difficulty dealing with. Now this gesture wasn’t subtle or coy or hidden. He was down there for a good five seconds which is an eternity. Think about it, one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand. Now release your hand. As far as I’m concerned, after five seconds you either deserve an engagement ring or need to leave money on the end table.

I was stunned. I looked around and was more surprised that with all of these people standing around us, I seemed to be the only one who noticed. He read on.

Finishing that article, he shifted both the page and his body position. “Give me your Scientists”, reach down, tug and adjust. “Physiognomy and Money Lending” tug and adjust, “Resisting the Immigration of Highly Skilled Workers” Tug and Adjust.

The more he read, the more excited he seemed to become and the more he felt the need to reach down and fix his situation.  I looked around to see if there were any unbelievable attractive women behind me, nope, just a guy wearing a leather jacket and a Ducati backpack, another woman wearing Puma shoes, a skirt over her blue jeans and a black jacket, and yet another guy about six foot eight with a Mr. Robinson sweater and a black down coat. Let’s face it, New York commuters are not exactly the best looking folks around. Hey, I’m one of them so I should know. It didn’t matter anyway, because he never looked up, never, not once.

I looked over the magazine again, to see if he had somehow hidden some porn magazine inside to be discreet. Nope. He kept reading. “The Bees are back In Town”, Tug. Adjust. “Bearing it All, The Fall of Bear Stearns.” Tug. Adjust.

OK, maybe these provocative titles were somehow stimulating to him, after all, they did include phrases about bearing it all and bees, although I read the Economist and I can tell you that it doesn’t have quite the same effect on me. “Just Click to Park”. Tug. Adjust.

Even his constant gum chewing made his actions seem that much more casual and almost normal. Tug. Adjust. Switch his magazine from his right hand to his left. Tug. Adjust. I looked around again and still nobody seemed to notice, not one person. I felt like I’d entered the Twilight Zone, except that instead of a man on the wing of the plane, I was across from an intellectually curious pervert that was only visible to me. “Hillary Clinton In The Middle East: All Charm and Smiles.” Tug. Adjust.

OK, maybe that one I get.

I’m at work with the craziest, meanest sugar headache that I’ve had in months, and I’m absolutely ecstatic. I ate a muffin and this was the result.

Now while you might be wondering if I have an affinity for piercings, dental drilling without Novocaine or brain freezes, there is actually a rational reason why I’m thrilled about this. It’s because it means that I’m becoming sensitive to sugar again.

Yes, for quite some time, and I mean quite some time, I have been eating like crap, and one of the first thing that happens when you eat like crap is that you desensitize to sugar, which allows you to eat a ton of it, hoards of it, mountains of it, all of the time. You get the picture, sugar desensitivity is sort of like the evil baby brother of insulin resistance and we know where that leads.

So I’m thrilled because while I’ve been working absolutely crazy hours, I’ve begun to commit myself to a few basic things that I know are tried and true (heck, I’ve been successfully using them with clients for years) and will help me to get back to the Coach Adam of new.

Now I’m not going to go into goals setting, which is a particularly favorite topic of mine, but I will say that writing down your goals and then publishing your goals are two very important steps in the process. You also might notice that my goals are not outcome goals, they are process goals. I’m happy to go into the difference between the two if anyone cares to ask, but suffice it to say that if you achieve all of your process goals, your outcome goals are essentially faite complete.

The chart you see above displays the basic process goals for weight management that I have used for years with my athletes:

• Eat every three hours
• Write down everything you eat
• Eat fresh whole foods
• Avoid junk foods and sweets
• Eat protein first at every meal
• Do a minimum of 45-mins of cardio each day
• Do resistance training
• Sleep a minimum of seven hours

I also added in a couple more goals specific to me including stretching daily and then walking the 1.5-miles each way to the train for a little extra outdoor fun.

Now being the intelligent soul that you are, you can see that I’m just getting started and it looks like I’ve sucked in most all of the categories. And that’s the cool thing about process goals, they’re binary, you either did or did not accomplish it within the time frame you set. And in most cases during my first week, I didn’t fully accomplish those goals, and there is not a half check mark for not fully accomplishing it, so I get no credit. That said, I have gotten credit where I’ve simply done what needs to be done with most of my focus so far having been on establishing a routine around my running. And happily I’ve done pretty well with this. And while I’ve been sucking at the other stuff, we all know that this is interrelated and establishing one routine certainly helps with the others.

You might be thinking, “Uh, you have ‘don’t eat crap’ as one of your process goals and this entire post is about eating a muffin and furthermore you’re excited about it”. And you’d be right to think that, except what you may be missing is that while I haven’t been nearly perfect…ok, my diet still sucks, the good news is that my body is coming around to help. Today, for the first time, when I ate that muffin, I felt like crap. No, not like I felt guilty, I mean I genuinely felt like crap with my head killing me, and that’s because of the running routine that I’ve gotten back into and the fact that while I might have had one thing that was crap each day last week, it was still an improvement from my prior behavior of eating dinner at the office at 11:30PM from the vending machine.

Now I know that if I continue to eat sugar, the headaches will eventually go away because I’ll desensitize to them again, or I could enjoy the misery for just a little while longer and remember that running and exercise have the same effect as eating sugar on my insulin levels. So if I can get out of here at a reasonable hour and get a run in, then that too will help to get rid of this headache.

Hopefully I’ll choose the latter.

I recently read a post by Jim Storer, entitled Five Questions to Ask a Social Media Expert which identified five questions you would want to ask of a so-called socail media expert before engaging them to help you with your strategy, or I supposed before hiring them to work for your company.

The five questions were:

1. Do you have a blog?
2. How many comments do you average per blog post?
3. Have you ever managed a community?
4. When did you get started in community/social media?
5. Should I have a blog?

Commenters then added even seven more, including:

1. Why are you positioning yourself as only knowing one facet of business/communications? (from Jennifer Leggio via Twitter)
2. How long have you been on Twitter and how do you use it? If they say to sell things, then don’t talk to them further. (from Jason Peck)
3. Who have you worked with in the past? Were they successful? (from Sean Bohan)
4. Do you have an “war stories” from your past clients? (from Sean Bohan)
5. What tools do you use regularly? (from Alex Jones)
6. What tools have you seen or used that didn’t quite make it and why do you think it happened? (from Alex Jones)
7. What are the top 5 social sites you would say are essential to know about in social media? (from Eric Mertz via Twitter)

While I think these are all interesting questions, I’m not sure I understand why the information request for social media should be any different than for any other type of consulting or advisory type engagement, albeit with some slightly different twists for this specific subject.

If taking this approach, then the questions I would ask expect to be asked would include:

• Who are you? Why do you feel you are uniquely qualified to be helping us to address this issue?
• Why should we be considering the use of social media?
• What is the breadth of your capabilities and experiences?
• Specifically, in which area(s) of social media is your expertise? (e.g., SEO, community development, community management, vendor selection, strategy, business case development, feasibility analysis, assessment, design, implementation, measurement and monitoring, business intelligence, systems integration, marketing, online marketing, operations and use of business intelligence in operations, enterprise applications, etc…)
• Where have you done this before?
• What was the impact?
• What is the extent of your network to bring additional resources to bear?
• Do you have access to peer benchmarking data?
• What do you expect to achieve?
• What is your point of view on the areas in which you have demonstrated experiences and success?
• What reports/thought leadership have you published? What was your point of view, what positions did you support or refute? How did you support your research?
• What is your availability?
• Are you the same people that will be delivering the work or are you just a customer service/account management person?
• Are you part of a team and if so who is that team comprised of?
• In which industries and sectors have you applied your services?
• Fees, Rates, hours, etc…?

I think all of the personal stuff asked above about your activity on the web is interesting fodder for conversations, but it is secondary to the services you’ve already delivered and your actual experiences. Even more important is understanding and describing the impact your services have had, because that shows that you are vested in their success. In short, where you have done the same or similar work before and what was the result?

Perhaps it’s because this space is still so new and so many folks don’t have actual experiences that they need to rely on a more general description of awareness of social media – and by definition, that means that you aren’t an expert, you may be a knowledgeable enthusiast, but you are not an expert.

I am an expert in exercise physiology and endurance training, and I am an expert in business strategy and strategic communications and I can provide solid and compelling responses to the questions above in those areas to support that. I can have a targeted conversations backed up with analytical reasoning and quantitative support around those issues – it goes far beyond cocktail conversations and enticing rhetoric.

As a part of business strategy and communications, I have had numerous conversations with organizations on how to begin to incorporate social media into their overall strategy, but I do not consider myself to be an expert – I invite the experts into the conversation – the right ones for the right conversations, for example, how many reading this actually know what to do with the information that they collect in an online community? How to set up systems so that the information is incorporated into an overall business intelligence strategy? How to systemetize this into the organization’s current Oracle or SAP implementations? How to build in specific security and identify management plans to ensure the integrity of the system?

Individually, you don’t have to be an expert in all of these areas but in today’s business discussions, I find it increasingly apparent that you need to “bring” experts to the table in more of, if not all of, these areas when you are talking about social media and business. That means that I’ll bring a community management expert into the discussion if that’s the issue we want to address, or I’ll bring a network analysis expert to the table of that’s where the conversation goes. But I’ll bring the experts, not just the enthusiastic participants.

Our friend Adam Tinkoff, The Zen Runner, recently published an article in a UK publication entitled Running Free, in a column called Both Sides Of The Track. He was profiled as the Zen side of the argument of running. His opponent is Gary Palmer, a well known UK exercise physiologist and endurance coach. Gary took the scientific side of the debate.

This is not a new discussion topic and one that people come back to more often than not as they progress through their evolution of running, swimming, biking, rowing, kayaking, cross country skiing, triathlon or any other type of endurance activity that becomes more than just a sport, and certainly a significant part of, if not a way of, life.

Both authors raise some very interesting issues although the lead into the debate seems to create the impression that the discussion will be focused on the scientific vs the zen debate over sports nutrition which in my mind it doesn’t really address. That said, there are some really useful take-a-ways for newbies and reminders for veterans, and it’s always great to reflect back on where we are in our own evolution because like most things, the pendulum swings back and forth on fairly regular intervals and knowing where you are in that arc can be really beneficial in finding peace and balance within your life and your training.

Check out Adam Tinkoff’s “Both Sides Of The Track” article and let us know what you think.