Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Topic Change

Diabetic by association.

I my 8 month old daughter almost died 6 weeks ago She was in a coma for 3 days after succumbing to acute diabetic ketoacidosis.

I am so disheartened by the drivel of negativity around bloggers with diabetes, perhaps moreso than my daughter's diabetes.

GET OVER IT, it's your life and life, in general, far too short to dwell in the negative.

Like I do for all my patients....I will try to bring honest positivity to this disease and what it's like to manage as a parent.

b.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Video analysis update!

Throught the past number of years in practice I've had the opportunity to do form analysis on a wide variety of athletes: runners, golfers, cyclists, etc.

I am very close to being able to offer video analysis of these activities. I'm working a few bugs out of the process as we speak but should be up and running soon.

I'll post examples of this analysis here once we're ready to go.

b.

Friday, June 8, 2007

Seeing the want in need...

Last year at ironman, my finish although one of the most unforgettably important moments of self discovery was also tagged by feelings of regret that I bonked in the marathon, spent 18 miles in nauseated delerium...only to recover and negative split the last 4 miles.

Truth: I am extremely proud and different as a person for having pushed myself through not only the distance involved, but more importantly, the pain of my body shutting down 4 miles into the marathon.

Truth: I signed on this year to redeem myself and crack 11 hours.

It's funny, in January of '06, I could barely swim. In August of '06, had never ridden more than 110kms, had never run more than 24kms. Fast forward 8 months and there I was....racing "debatebly" the single toughest one day event in the world.

Now this year, with my daughter Cadence being born...I look at my reasons for sigining on for another kick at the cat with clouded vision. It's hard to find and even harder to justify the time involved in training, balancing a career, a family.

Do I go to the start line with what I have in my heart and try to finish with respect "have 3 good events", but potentially disappointed again with what could have been??? Or do I pull the plug and spend the year enjoying the new addition to the family...and possibly be disappointed I didn't try....


confused,
b.

Friday, May 25, 2007

Newton Running Shoes

"in the name of science" and my aching metatarsals, I ponied up and bought the latest of the greatest running revolutions aka fad. The Newton Running shoe.

Promoted by all the big names in running, it aims to create a forefoot/midfoot runner out of the average age-grouper and eliminate injuries. With a world champion price tag (although less expensive than the Asics Kinsei I have been running in), I'm going to try these shoes out and do a full review on their benefits. I'm really excited about these shoes, the research, science, and design seem to be right on track.

The package came from Colorado via the brown santa aka UPS. Now I have a particular loath for UPS because of the absurd "brokerage" fees they charge for US to Canada shipments. They appear to be the only shipping company who is still ripping off their international customers with blatantly unnecessary charges.

Newtons: 186.00
Shipping: 11.23
Brokerage: 44.21

55 bucks in shipping....Assholes. "What can Brown do for me?" - kick me square in the groin.

Too bad Newton is too inflexible to offer alternative shipping methods when I called them.

Anyway back to the shoes. The site describes your calfs will be tight after the first useage and they were right. My metatarsal were very comfy in these shoes though. I only ran for 40minutes and it was a fast one.

Some more wear and testing to come this weekend and a full report to come soon.

In the mean time support this.

b.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Blatantly Albertan


The one thing I don't want my blog to be is another page of negative rants. I believe in being positive, every situation can be a win if you look for it.

However...the Federal government should be absolutely ashamed of themselves to call into question the ethics and motivations of the captain of our national team, Shayne Doan. He was accused in 2005 of derogatory comments toward a french official. The NHL aquitted him of any wrongdoing, case closed.

With all the crap that is ongoing in the world, the world hockey championships is just one small way to find a positive way to exist in the international community. For our government to bring one of our own into question about something he didn't say in 2005 while he is working his ass off in Moscow right now FOR OUR COUNTRY...

Layton, Harper, Dion, Duceppe, and all the rest of you clowns in O-Town...get a beer, have a glass, pop some bubble wrap, get laid, or do whatever you need to do and get serious about leading our country. Stop wasting my time and taxpayer money on yet another "we're so hard done by" drivel by the French separatists.

I would love to hear of one person in Montreal that is still offended by what Shayne Doan didn't say in 2005.

Give me a break.

We would have better direction under monkeys.

Ok...I feel better now.
b.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Ramblings on accountable business practices...


My practice is based on a number of simple principles including:
- Accountability
- Win-Win solutions
- Ethical transparency

We make sure that the people that come through our door are met with sincere kindness and depart with sincere appreciation. People enjoy coming in, hearing their name and being thanked for their valuable business. They feel valued.

It's hard to not be frustrated at times with other businesses in the city. I purchased a new TV on the weekend at Best Buy, a floor model (that had been out for a day). The TV was missing some hardware to hold the base in place. The sales guy said he fixed it with hardware from another TV. When I got home with it, I found that he used one oversized metal screw in one of the holes, no hardware in the other three holes. The metal screw stripped the threads in the TV and now the screen wobbles back and forth.

I went back in on Monday to chat with the Manager, who was accomodating in person, (as opposed to when we were on the phone) and wanted to find a solution. The salesperson tried to tell a "we sold it As-Is" tale, even though the stand problem was not disclosed. I was able to poke significant holes in that story with the manager.

The other crux of the issue is that they told me that I would have to pre-pay for a replacement TV or I could wait for them to get the proper screws and just use 3 of them.

Now, let's put this in context. If your mechanic breaks something in your car, doesn't tell you about it, jerry-rigs a solution which you find out doesn't work after the fact. You go back to the shop to find a solution and the store makes you pre-pay for the replacement part that they broke or you're out of luck.

Exactly what happened at this store. This is not a rant against how the store "screwed me", it's more of a commentary of where business practices are centered. Are they customer centered or are they self-centered?

Thankfully, the manager understood my hesitancy toward putting another huge pile of money down on my credit card to fix their error and found a work around. My question is: If your business is about customer service, the "buying experience", etc... how can you violate these three principles:

Accountability - as company policy, the customer takes accountability for the error and the replacement?
Win-Win solution - obviously not.
Ethical Transparency - the sales person tries to cover his mistake and insults the customer's ethics by fabricating a story.

So, in the end I get a replacement and everyone is happy. The problem for Best Buy is that it took a few hours and no less than 5 different employees and managers to remedy their own error. If you look at profit margin compared to lost productivity in simple problem solving...the business model needs a tune up.

b.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

sometimes you're the Louisville Slugger, sometimes you're the ball.


Having completed my first Ironman last summer, I have a new way of looking at events. I have been out there, seen the suffering, felt the pain, and understand the enormity of the undertaking. All of the preparation, training, time, sweat, blood, effort, and pain...all for one single day of self discovery. And that is what racing is about for me, self discovery.

You can have the perfect plan, coach, program...but if one thing goes wrong, you're fighting for survival and victory then is found in finishing. I have never DNF'd a race...I don't think I have it in me to do so.

I took on the task of an Ironman last year with much doubt about whether or not I was capable physically and mentally of doing it. I could not swim 50 meters, I had never run farther than 20 kms at one time, never ridden farther than 110kms. How could I possibly complete a 4km swim, 180km bike, and a 42.2km run in the same day?? How could I assume I would be able to stand along a very select group of athletes who have conquered the beast? I discovered the core of how strong If I set my mind to it. When I ran into problems during the marathon and got very sick...I should have quit. But I decided that I would kill myself to finish this race, gain the accomplishment. Standing on the other side, how would anyone understand wanting to push yourself to the brink, just to finish a race. It's not something you can teach.

So, this morning while out for a longer run...I started to hurt pretty badly. My former self would have backed off and walked, bummed about my state and do something shorter the following week "for recovery". This morning, I lengthened my stride, gritted my teeth, and thought of myself crossing the finish line and the pain seemed to dissipate and the pain became my badge of honor.

What can you challenge yourself to discover?


brad.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

I love toys



I field about 3-4 questions per week about the current fitness electronics trend of workout data measurement rot runners.

Currently there are two standards that exist in the marketplace that will provide the recreational to professional athlete, feedback on their speed, distance, pace, and heartrate. These standards are:
Polar Foot Pod
Garmin GPS

Now, the disclaimer. I sell Polar products through my office and I like them alot. That said, I also own a Garmin. As I say, I'm a slave for gadgets.

The third device that has hit the market with considerable steam, due to the price, convenience, and capitalization on the Ipod nation, is the Nike Plus system. Basically, this is a similar technology to the Polar system but plugs directly into the Ipod Nano. It requires a small chip that fits inside special Nike shoes, or you can buy a shoelace holder (some claims of inaccuracy have been reported).

I had to have this too.

Now for the nerdy part. I decided to test the technologies side by side by side to see how accurate they are as compared to themselves. Meaning, I don't have an absolute perfect, objective, distance measurement standard to use, I just want to see how they all read a common distance.

I took all three devices for a variable elevation suffer-fest (hills), in my neighborhood. Out the door wearing all three devices and feeling like I was wearing taped glasses and a pocket protector too, I broke into stride.

Garmin 305 - the Garmin takes a minute to link up to the satellites but once it does, it gives outstanding information about the run. My knock on it is though, the pace is quite variable in that it eems to wobble up and down a bit. A bit frustrating while trying to keep a consistent pace. One feature that I love about this device is the auto-pause. It automatically stops the timer and recording when you stop moving. This is an awesome feature for those of us who live in suburbia with lights and crosswalks.
The on-screen info is great and everything is right there for you. The fact that you can customize which screen shows which information is pure brilliance. The knock on this device is the heart rate strap which is quite uncomfortable comparative to the Polar wearlink strap. Of course the knock on the Garmin is the dependence on satellite position and blockages to that signal thus the pacing information changed alot during the run even though I hadn't. The overall average on the pace was accurate, but instantaneous information is extremely variable.

The upload is the true gem of the Garmin system with the motionbased software/web client. It takes your gps data and overlays it onto a google map and shows the elevation, speed, distance, etc. Best of all, if I want to do a 10km run while travelling somewhere...other users will have a 10km run in that city uploaded to the site. I download to my garmin and follow the icons without worry about getting lost. I find myself excited to get the info off the watch when I return from a run.

Garmin showed distance as: 11.56kms



Polar 625X- The Polar products are scary accurate in my experience, as long as they are calibrated properly, however, what i've found was that the surface you're running on and the elevation changes can have big effects on its accuracy. The heart rate strap (wearlink) is dreamy, the readouts are easy to cycle through, and the information is excellent as well. The Polar is not affected by weather or buildings (unlike the Garmin), and the data when extracted t to the computer is very consistent, meaning paces are not wildly changing throughout the run. The problem, I believe, with accelerometer technology is that it's not very good with hills. The distance of your stride reduces but the turnover can increase. Definitely advantage to teh Garmin. However, on flat surfaces, the Polar wins.

The upload software is clunky and not very motivating to bother. I usually end up deleting my info from the watch before uploading. There's just not that much that's fun about it. Lots of information, but not alot of jazz.

Distance: 11.9kms



Nike + Ipod system
This a must have for the cool gadget factor. Admittedly I haven't calibrated this system yet but the distances are pretty far out of the range. Even on a straight out and back of 6kms the other day it was 200 meters out. But it's just so darn cool. It talks to you, you can hit the centre button your ipod to bring on your "power-song", it instantly sends your info to itunes and the nike website. It's a very, very well though out system. In terms of accuracy? Again, it's not very reliable but for the everyday runner for fitness, it's more than accurate. Even better, it's an excellent motivator, and that's half the battle.

Distance: 12.6kms



In conclusion, the Polar and Garmin have their strengths and weaknesses. I like them both. For a flat straight tempo run, the Polar is the device to have. The data is extremely accurate. For the hardcore training info consumer, it's the instrument for you. If you're out trailrunning and want a cool printout, the Garmin is the ticket. There's really not a clear winner between the two. The Nike plus system is ideally suited to the beginner to intermediate runner that needs the music motivator and the approximate distance they ran. To have your tunes on the run, it's great to have even in addition to the other devices.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Doctor's Blog



Hello world!

This blog is a project of mine to be able to casually discuss health topics of all types. I intend to provide insight into healthy living while stimulating controversy and discussion all in the same run-on sentence.

Welcome and thanks for the time!

bk