My run routine has been a 1.7 mile course, of which I was running about half; walk a few hundred yards, run a couple blocks, walk a block, run a couple blocks, etc. When lifting weights and doing cardio both I’ve often taking the approach of trying to get to a certain performance level (i.e. twelve easy reps at a weight, or an “easy time” running the blocks as above) before I try a harder level.

Part of the gestalt of high-intensity training, Tabata, CrossFit, etc is not “getting comfortable” with a performance level, but rather pushing yourself as hard as you can, even if that means fewer reps or not running as far or as fast as you’d like. I talked a bit about this last time when I mentioned that I felt that I could push myself to do more sprints, instead of “giving up” after four or five. Indeed I was able to do six.

My Saturday group starts with a 3/4mi timed run, and then does sprints of various flavors. That’s shown me that I can run .7 miles continuously. I started modifying my daily run to be more continuous, and less interval-y. I did a full mile twice over the extended holiday weekend, without slowing down to walk at any point. It’s getting easier.

Pushing myself showed me that I can do it. The point I was trying to make in my previous post is that the body responds to challenge. If you’re not challenging yourself, then improvement will be slow. I’m challenging myself to run further and faster, and I’m seeing improvement! That’s awesome. It’s a great feeling to see dozens of seconds come off my times; to make it further without running out of breath. And it’s definitely motivating me to get out there again, and to try to run further and faster.

Plus, snowboarding in a month! Gotta get ready!

Ya know, after the sprinting vs running vs jogging vs walking post I made last week, I feel like a bit of an ass. I’ve just started running, can’t run too fast, am still overweight, etc etc, and here I am pronouncing for all the world that walking is bad exercise… well not exactly what I said, but the important theme here would be the pronouncement. I don’t really have the expertise for that. What I wrote is my opinion; it’s how I feel about exercise at the moment. I think it’s much better to sprint and run than to walk.

But while I’m giving advice on how to do things that I can’t do myself, then why not write about being a pro snowboarder? I’ve watched a lot of videos, isn’t that enough?

Actually, this post is a response to the videos I’ve seen on youtube and vimeo by kids looking to be sponsored. “How to get sponsored” and “How to be a Pro” are two big topics that come across on searches about snowboarding. So I dug around a bit, and here’s what I’ve got. I think the snowboarding community is a bit like the games industry here: there’s tons of people that want to do both professionally, and both are perceived as hard to get into. So here’s my suggestions.

I don’t mean to be too pessimistic in the following. In both game dev and snowboarding, I think the path to being a pro is straightforward. It requires hard work and dedication, but it’s not especially complicated. But let me repeat that hard work and dedication line, because you need both, and you need them in spades!

First, know where you’re going. Be aware of what a pro is. A pro is someone that makes a living in their area, whether that’s game development or snowboarding. If you still have a day job that pays the bills while you push your hobby every night and weekend, you’re not yet a pro. If your goal is to be a pro, that means making enough to do it 24/7.

There’s not a lot of pro game developers. There’s tons of hobbyists that might be considered pro-am. They make a bit of money from their hobby, but not enough to pay rent — much less car payments, food, insurance, and supporting a family, too. And saving for vacations, retirement, rainy days, and your kids’ educations. They’ve got a day job, maybe working near the industry, but right now it’s just their hobby and they’ve managed to make a wee bit of money from it.

If you want to be a pro, your first step is to be pro-am. There’s enough people clamoring to be at the top that you need to set yourself apart. Filming yourself hitting a couple features on the mountain ain’t gonna cut it. It’s a start, but you need more. Start making money in little ways. For snowboarding, that really means placing in contests. If you don’t compete, how do you know how good you really are?

Take a look at the Swatch TTR men’s rankings. There’s over 3000 guys listed. Are you on that list? The guys down at the bottom showed up at one event and placed at the bottom of the heap. But they did compete! They practiced, they scheduled, they applied, they showed up.

Fifty years ago, a band could sign with a major record label and pump out a few albums until they had to get good and start building fans. Now, there are so many bands clamoring for contracts that they have to be popular before they get distribution. It’s the same way with sports and game development; prove yourself among the hobbyists, and you have something that the sponsors/labels/employers will notice. That doesn’t mean they will notice, but it’s a prerequisite. Contest results get you noticed; videos help.

I think it’s a common fantasy to think that you can just display a measure of your desire and some snippets of your work and have people see your genius and come knocking on your door. The world doesn’t really work like that; your work has to be truly exceptional, or you need to get your name out. The first requires tons of skill and dedication, but luckily the latter is much easier.

Participate in forums. Talk to other hobbyists. Get your friends engaged. Go to social gatherings (like contests & conventions) and talk to strangers. If you’re good and people know who you are, opportunity will come to you. This is making opportunity. Hiring managers in the game dev world tend to spend their time managing, not hiring. When they do need to hire, they don’t surf the internet looking for cool project videos; they post a job listing and sift through the resumes that come in. And many jobs are filled with friend-of-a-friend, ex-coworkers, and the like. The more friends and coworkers you’ve had in the industry, the more positions will be available to you. And that’s why you network: not because these guys will get you a sponsorship or a job right now, but because they’ll remember you when an opening does come up.

As you continue to develop your skills and network, eventually you’ll catch a break. That’s how it happens. If you’ve got a time limit, you might fail. But how serious are you? If you’re dedicated and skilled, it will happen. But those two are incredibly important.

Pro snowboarders don’t hit the mountain a few weekends a year; they live up there. If you’re not boarding at least every weekend, you’re not going to make it. That brings me back to what it means to be a pro. Not only are you getting paid to pursue your passion every day, but you are actually working at it every day. I learned far more about being a professional developer in my first six months on the job than I did in the twelve years before that. Sure, I learned a ton about games and programming in twelve years as a hobbyist, but being on the job 24/7 is a categorically different experience. Pros learn far more about their sport while being a pro than they did beforehand. And that, in part, is what you’re competing with. Are you practicing as hard as they are?

I guess I can summarize my point by saying that success isn’t hard, but it doesn’t come easy. You don’t need to be a crazy genius talent, but you do need to work as hard as one.

Summary:

• Develop your skills
• hook up with other hobbyists to push and learn from each other
• hang out at social gatherings (contests, conventions, etc)
• put some work out (videos, contest results)
• start networking
• and keep developing your skills!

A snowboard bum (or a ski bum) is someone that lives in (or near) a ski town for the purpose of hitting the slopes nearly every day. If you live near the mountains and you go up to the slopes every weekend, you’re not a snowboard bum, you’re just an enthusiastic rider. Being a bum implies a commitment to being on the slopes as often as possible, and that means near-daily.

The “process” is fairly simple — just drive or hitchhike up to a mountain and you’re set. The trick is surviving, not getting your gear stolen, and feeding yourself. Here’s some tips.

Step 1: pick a location. Chances are, you already have this decided. But picking a good location can make a huge difference in how much you enjoy your season on the slopes. A mountain with a short season means you’ve got to go back to normal life fairly quickly — but maybe you don’t want to be gone too long. Many smaller resorts are limited in their terrain and so you’d want to choose one to match your riding style. Tony Crocker has a bunch of great guides; his Powder Skiing article for Inside Tracks gives a great overview of resorts across North America. You could be an itinerant, car-bound snowboard bum. That fits the profile well. You get mobility, but at the cost of buying a lift ticket every day. You save on lodging, but lift tickets easily outweigh that cost.

Step 2: Find a place to live. If you’re only going to be up for a few months, you might find short-term lodging by crashing in someone’s loft. If you’ve got a bunch of friends on the slopes, you could couch surf. My route will be to find a room for rent, since I’m planning on staying through the season. Six-month (and longer) leases are easier to find than 3-month leases.

Places to check include the official forums for your target mountain, the local newspaper, craigslist, local property management companies, bulletin boards, and word of mouth.

For a longer stay, finding a place ahead of time makes sense if you’ve got the resources and inclination to stay for months. If you’re planning a short stay, you might be able to just get to town and then start looking. I don’t recommend the latter, but if you’re in town and need a place to stay desperation will drive you. If you stay in a cheap hotel or hostel, ask your fellow residents. Ask around on the slopes. Ask in the lift lines, at the local grocery store, and in parking lots. If you drove up, you can crash in your car for a couple days while trying to find a place, but definitely do some research on car-camping, since you’ll want to avoid getting towed, or killed by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Last time I went up, I found a couple that had moved into half of a 2-bedroom condo and were looking for a roommate. The situation was great; my own room, but shared utilities. Someone was nearly always in the unit, and rent was much cheaper than paying for a 1-bedroom apartment or condo by myself. I found them by sifting through ads in the local mountain forums.

Step 3: Save up some money. In addition to someplace to sleep, you’ll need to keep yourself fed, and bring equipment and clothes. Showing up broke and eeking out a living is possible, but not recommended. If you’ve got six months of savings, you’ll not only have enough to get to town and move right in to a place, but you’ll also have a bit of time to find a good job, plus enough saved up that will last you through an unexpected layoff or the end of season, and pull you through until the following season.

Rent will most likely be your biggest expense; make sure you include your cell phone and utility bills. It’s easy to eat cheap but it does require planning; a paleo diet (including grass-fed meats) can be expensive but it should still come in well under your rent. Don’t forget to budget for a season pass.

Step 4: find a job. If you don’t have a year of savings to rest on, having a job will be crucial. If you do have a year of savings, a job will let that money last much more than one season.

There are seasonal jobs available on the hill but they are, again, seasonal; they could disappear without notice. Even local jobs can disappear if snow is poor and tourists don’t show up. Finding a job ahead of time will give you a chance to hunt for a better wage, better hours, more reliable employment, and work that fits you. Again, check the mountain’s web site and the local paper for leads.

Step 5: plan the trip. When do you leave? Do you need to sell your car, or put stuff in storage? Are you going to visit friends and relatives along the way? Fly home for Christmas?

Step 6: go ride!

My normal run routine is a path that’s about 2.2 miles long. I walk about half of it and jog the other half. Over the last couple months I haven’t done any sprinting, but I started back up again a few weeks ago, in part because my Saturday morning running group does some sprinting exercises. Being in that group has also pushed me to start doing “long runs,” which for me right now means 3/4 of a mile. That is, a continuous run (no walking breaks) of 3/4 of a mile.

I weighed in at 246 pounds this morning, and that isn’t “all muscle.” Hah! So, yeah, I’m packing a lot of body fat. It feels to me that losing weight is having the biggest effect on my running right now. There were some easy gains early on as I started getting frequent exercise, but now I think I’m at a balance between needing to improve cardiovascular fitness and not having to propel so much mass around.

When I started running a year ago, I could make it about 100 yards before being out of breath and needing to stop. Foot pain set in a couple months later and I stopped running for a few months. Five Fingers got me back out on the road again. I’ve stepped up my running, and one of the great things about running is that it’s easy to see my progress.

Sprints are cake. I can do four or five short sprints (about 100 yards) before I stop; I think perhaps I’ll push to one more. When I lift weights, I push myself to lift until I can’t physically lift the weight any more. I think lifting to exhaustion is more effective than just pushing a weight around a bit; I’m surprised at the people that go into the gym and pick weights that they obviously have an easy time lifting. I think the stopping point should be physical, not psychological. Five sprints does wear me out a lot, but I’m not sure (now, in hindsight) that there really was no way that my body could do a sixth.

As I understand the physiology, sprinting burns up quickly-available energy sources and forces muscle cells to scavenge for energy. Mitochondria respond to that stress by replicating. To me, that suggests some measure of fitness is tuned on the scale of mitochondria, not on a human scale; that means that the system should respond much faster to stress than my whole body does. For example, it would be very difficult for me to lose more than a pound a day; losing weight is a process that takes months. Could I improve fitness faster? I don’t know, but I’m going to be sprinting tonight.

I use the word “jogging” to mean running at a slow pace. Jogging is a use-it-or-lose-it activity; that is, one jogs to prevent adaptation from fading. If injury prevents you from running or sprinting, then jogging will help keep your fitness up. It’s a crappy way to lose weight, and probably also a poor way to improve fitness, but if you aren’t going to sprint or run it’s better than sitting on the couch. Walking, likewise, is better than sitting down but is an ineffective way to improve fitness. Walking and jogging are also something to do if your fitness is very low and you are just starting to exercise.

Running is between these two extremes; it’s less effective than sprints but more effective than jogging or walking. Running is the “performance” speed: sprints build fitness, and then we test ourselves by running a 5k or 10k or half or full marathon. The common wisdom says to run a few miles every day and do a long run once a week, but the research I’ve seen on Tabata training suggests that intensity (sprints) is more important than volume (running). Given the success that most mainstream runners have with running itself as the training protocol for performance running, it seems that it’s a sufficient challenge to the body to induce adaptation.

I have issues with accepting the common wisdom of running 35 miles a week to train for a marathon, and doing a long run once a week, when that wisdom comes from a community that consumes lectins, phytates, and carbs with reckless abandon, and that insists on wearing giant padded shoes. Sure, if I eat crap and wear pillows on my feet, maybe that standard training protocol works; but I care about my fitness and health. I expect it will be years, if not decades, before any significant study on paleo-friendly training regimens. Until then, I’ll follow what good research I can find.

And that means sprints tonight!

After reading about K2 on a number of blogs, including Richard’s and Stephan’s, I started taking a K2 supplement (Carlson’s 5mcg, 1x per day). A couple months later when I stopped by my doc, she asked why I was taking it (and a bunch of the other supplements I was taking), but by that time I had forgotten.

I think it’s useful to be prepared. I want to say “I’m taking it because I read a couple studies that showed it did X.” I don’t want to say I’m taking a supplement just because I read about it on a blog, although that was really what happened.

The difference between “reading something on the internet” and “reading a study” is just the vagueness of communication. If you read a study on the internet, then you are getting peer-reviewed info. If that study was linked from a blog, then you’re getting peer-reviewed science from an “unreliable blog,” as I think the MSM would prefer to call it.

I don’t think there’s anything unreliable about Peter, Richard, or Stephan. Quite the contrary. Their posts, the discussion in the comments, and then the studies (that I could read without paying anything, at least) convinced me that K2 was a good thing. I believe in getting my beliefs from evidence. I think believing something because you read a convincing argument is, well, foolish. It’s not the argument itself that should be convincing, but rather the evidence. So go read Richard and Stephan, and read the papers. You owe it to yourself to get the info directly from research whenever you can; us bloggers are here just to point you towards the papers and provide some context and interpretation.

These bloggers did mention that supplementing wouldn’t be necessary if one eats a decent amount of organ meat, fish roe, shellfish, fermented foods like sauerkraut miso and natto, and/or pastured dairy products. I eat a good bit of raw, pastured cheese, but not a lot of organ meat; maybe just once  a month. And except for some roe sprinkled on sushi, I eat very little roe and shellfish. K2 is a pretty expensive supplement; about 50c a day. (I’m not breaking the bank here, but still, that’s an expensive pill. I’m glad I’m not paying $3 a day for a statin.)

So, what’s K2 do?

* prevents heart attacks

* prevents arterial calcification

* reduces the chance for osteoporosis-related fractures

* activates clotting factors (as a substitute or conversion into K1)

Since my dad and my mom both have had heart attacks, and my dad’s father died in his early 40s from heart disease, I’m very concerned about my own heart health. If there’s anything genetic to it (tho I think it is primarily dietary), I want to do what I can to keep my heart healthy.

I’ll continue supplemental probably until I’m eating organ meats weekly, and these other great sources (eg sauerkraut and fish roe) more often.

I’m running nearly every day at this point, but not very far. During the week, I’ll run in the afternoons (around 4:30pm), going just over two miles. On Saturday, I get together with a group at my apartment complex and we do a 3/4 mile run then some sprints and other running/cardio exercises.

The daily runs haven’t been getting easier lately. But then, I feel like I’ve been sick for a couple months now. For a few weeks it was a cold, but now I’ve got an allergy cough that’s really annoying. I want to run three miles, or more, but making that distance without stopping is beyond me at this point.

I hope some of you can commiserate. Half the people in the Saturday running group have no trouble busting out that 3/4 mile. Anyone that’s a serious runner would scoff at that. But I’m at 250 pounds right now, and 5′10″. I’m carrying a lot of mass, and I’m not very fit. Running 3/4 mi would have been a crazy idea a year ago, so at least I’ve improved, but I still find it difficult.

Walking is cake. I can walk for miles. I can also sprint … for very short distances. At a slow jog, I can probably make it through a 5k without stopping to walk at any point, but I haven’t come close to trying. The 2.2 mile “run” I normally do is usually half jogging and half walking, skewed a little towards jogging. But I don’t run very fast.

What’s the difference between running and jogging? It’s useful to describe different concepts; I’d probably guess a run requires a faster pace. So: I’m jogging. Sprints are sprints, but normally when I go out for a “run” it’s just at a jogging pace.

I think I’m going to try doing sprints tonight. Haven’t done them in a long while (except during Saturday runs), and I think it’s a good way to improve fitness.

I’ve done the math, planned out my budget for a year and… I decide, this weekend, if I’m going to be spending the season on the slopes.

I keep asking myself, “what would it take to do X”? And I worked out, I have what I need. I’ll need to pay food, rent, utilities, incidentals, gas, insurance, etc while I’m up there. I’ll need to set something aside for emergencies. Gear, from a board to thermals, is essential. Travel expenses. All that. I have it.

What are my other options? 1) I could go at the end of December. An extra few weeks at work reduces my time on the slopes but it also means saving up a bit more. It doesn’t make sense to go mid-December, since I’ll be home for XMas and that mucks the plan all up. So it’s either early Dec or late Dec.

2) I could just not go at all.. you know, continue to work a day job for the rest of my life. Many people do this. Most people do this. I don’t have a family to support so this isn’t a question about being responsible to those commitments. If I had chosen a family ten years ago, I wouldn’t be asking this question now.

But I don’t want to be an employee for the rest of my life. And my expenses are low enough (now with debt almost paid off) that I can take some time to make a go of working for myself. Option 2 isn’t really an option.

3) I could plan on going next year. The most appealing part of this option is that I don’t have to do anything… I sit on my butt at my current job and wait. I can build up savings and investments, build a portfolio of projects, etc etc.

So, do I go now, or next year?