Ramblings of a Geek

I started off 2011 as a couch potato. My wife was sick and had been since October, work was busy, and all I wanted to do at the end of the day was sit down and vegetate. It was a couple of weeks into the new year when I finally made my resolution for the year. The resolution seemed like a daunting task at the time – to be able to run a 5k by the end of Summer.

I had been a member of one of those gym chains that have popped up in strip malls all over the place in the past few years. I had gone every so often with the goal of “to get in shape” or “to lose some weight” on and off the past year or two and it clearly hadn’t gotten me anywhere. My local Lifetime Fitness was doing their annual New Year’s membership promotion so I convinced my lovely wife that I needed to change gyms and it was only a few bucks more per month. So, I signed up and started going.

I had my first weigh in and fitness consultation with one of their personal trainers. As I stepped on the scale it read 303 pounds. “Yikes,” I thought. I knew I was heavy and had teetered around the 300 lb mark for awhile but to have someone else see it and write it down was embarrassing. While we talked over what I was looking to get out of my membership I told the trainer that I wanted to be able to run their Torchlight 5k in the summer and to lose 50 pounds for the year. She set me up with a couple of workout plans that while difficult, weren’t too bad. I also started to walk and jog on the treadmill.

This isn’t the first time I’ve said I wanted to run a 5k. I had previously tried with the Couch to 5k app on my phone and I could never quite get through the 3rd or 4th week for some reason. This time I decided that I would just walk for a few minutes and just slowly increase the speed until I was jogging just a little bit and see how long I could go until I had to slow down again. At first I could jog for just a little bit – about a quarter mile. After a few times doing this I got up to a half mile, then to three quarters of a mile and then finally, on January 31st I made it to one mile without walking. This was the first time I had run that far since 10th grade which is now quite a few years behind me.

I kept working at it, I would do a couple of running workouts in a week. One where I tried to keep pushing my mile time faster and faster, one sort of longer run, and I eventually incorporated some intervals into it as well. I kept lifting weights a couple of times per week along with the running. In early May I thought that I might be ready for a full 5k so I signed up for a race, The Autism 5k which was to take place on May 21st. When the day came I got out of bed to a pretty heavy rainstorm and it continued all the way after packet pick up so I hid in my car as long as I could. The rain finally stopped about 15 minutes before race time which was just about perfect. I ran the 5k and had a blast, and after I was done I knew that my legs had more to give which was sort of the cherry on top of a good race. My pace for that race was 11:48/mile which is slow by most standards, but it was good enough for me.

I promptly signed up for two more 5k races, the Delano 5k and the Torchlight 5k. The Delano 5k would turn out to be brutal with heat and not enough fluids but I still managed to get through it with a slightly faster time than the Autism 5k. The Torchlight was a really fun run where I did much better with fluid intake and I went out to just enjoy the run. I was able to achieve my goal for the year before summer officially hit, so what was next?

In June, I made a note that I wanted to try a triathlon. I was pretty sure I was going to need months and months of training so I set my new goal of competing in the Lifetime Indoor Triathlon in the spring of 2012 and perhaps their fall version if I was feeling up to it. This is where the fun really started. I dusted off my Schwinn Mountain Bike and started riding. Riding was different than running in that I could still make forward progress while taking a breather by coasting which was a nice change of pace. I found that I could make the distance for a sprint distance triathlon alright so I started to add riding and running together. I then started out in the pool to see how well I could swim which was an eye opener as I could barely make it down and back in the pool. I kept going and on the day before Labor Day I completed my first triathlon in 1:54. It was 1/3 mile swim, 10 mile bike ride, and finished off with a 4 mile run. I really enjoyed my time on the course and definitely will keep at it.

I had two more races before the end of the year – I did compete in the fall indoor triathlon at Lifetime and I ran a 10k right before Thanksgiving.

Over the course of the year I was able to turn chasing my goal into a habit where working out and training is just part of who I am. I am still slow on all three disciplines but I can do them and I have fun.

When I stepped on the scale a day or two before the year closed out it read 273 lbs. I’m down 30 pounds with probably double that to go but I’m easily in the best shape of my life. I now consider myself not only a runner, but a triathlete and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My goals for 2012 are lofty and I’ll be posting them soon.

I first thought about trying a triathlon in early July as I was getting ready to run my second 5k of the summer.  I was on my way out to tour the 5k course and I had a fleeting thought that a triathlon sounded fun but only knew a little about triathlons and it was pretty generic.  I started by learning the basics; the distances, the different types of events, and transitions.  My initial goal was to participate in the Lifetime Indoor Triathlon in the spring of 2012 and then their Mid-Summer Triathlon in July.  My target was the sprint distance which typically is a 750 meter swim, a 20k bike ride, and a 5k run.

A couple of days after the 5k I grabbed my bike one morning and rode aiming for 20k.  I was able to do it relatively easily though I was pretty tired at the end of the ride.  I rode a few times and found myself getting better at the distance and even had some energy to spare as I finished up my rides.  I was also increasing my run distances; I started at 3 miles as part of my 5k training and increased it by .5 miles per week until I hit 5 miles.  At that point I decided I’d try to find an event in the late summer/early fall to race in.  My initial goal was just to finish and hopefully not be the last one to cross the finish line.

I found the St. Croix Valley Sprint Distance Triathlon which while not an official USAT event was made up of a 1/3 mile swim, 10 mile bike and a 4 mile run.  It was scheduled for a weekend that we didn’t already have earmarked for anything else so that became the target for my training.

I started by doing what I now would call mini-bricks which were done indoor at my gym where I would ride a stationary bike for 30 minutes and then run on a treadmill for 20.  After I was able to get through a couple of those I thought it was time to try swimming.  I expected swimming to come pretty easily since I swam a bunch as a kid at the beach and fancied myself a pretty decent swimmer.  My swimming expectations were FAR off from my actual ability in the pool.  My first swim was brutal. I could barely make it down and back in the pool, my goggles leaked and I was so winded I thought I might just pass out after each lap.  I was honestly worried that I wouldn’t have enough time to get my swimming up to where it needed to be.  For my second swimming attempt I swapped goggles and tried again.  Surprisingly the swim, while not great, was much better than my first feeble attempt and my goggles didn’t leak.  From that point on (late July) I made a point to get in the pool at least twice, if not three times per week.  I studied swimming strokes on Youtube and just generally tried to increase my fundamental knowledge of how to swim better.

From mid-July to the week before the race I worked out on average of 5 or 6 days a week.  Two in the pool, one longer bike ride, one easy run with weights, one interval run with weights, and a brick where I would bike about 10 miles and run 4-5.  Thankfully, my wonderful mother-in-law watches the kids during the day in the summer so I was pretty much able to get a healthy portion of the weekly workouts in before going into work.  My amazing wife also let me sneak in quite a few training sessions in the evenings or on weekends when I could have spent time with her (and/or the kids).  With all of my training I felt like a goal of finishing in under 2 hours was reasonable.

The last major hurdle was this hill on the bike course – it easily was steeper and longer than any hill I had ever ridden on a bike.  I spent plenty of time thinking about it and nearly psyched myself out by driving it in early August.  The weekend before the race I grabbed my bike and headed over to the course.  I rode the hill and made it all the way up.  It was tough on the way up, but lots of fun on the way down.  I also ran 90% of the run course to complete the brick for the week.  Unfortunately this last week I ran a bit more than normal (as it turns out about 40% more according to my Nike+ app) so my legs were really exhausted the week leading up to the race.  I took it easy that last week; I swam once and ran a couple of short runs before the race.

I barely slept the night before the race, and it didn’t help that the morning of the race was an early one.  Thankfully I had packed all of my stuff the night before with exception of a couple of quick things.  We got out the door and it was still very dark outside.  The temperature was in the mid 50s and felt pretty chilly.  The closer we got to Hudson the more nervous I became; I was nervous about pretty much everything from setup to completing the race to not wanting to look like an idiot in front of all of the much more experienced athletes.  We got there very early and I was able to get my transition area setup without much issue.  I picked a spot straight up from the swimming entrance and more-or-less halfway between the bike in/out and the run out areas.

I shuffled over to the registration area to get my number marked on my legs and arm.  Then I experienced probably the toughest thing I would experience all day: waiting.  Because we got there plenty early there was about an hour to wait until the start of the race.  I finally ditched my sweat pants and started to warm up a little bit just before the pre-race meeting.  Then it was time to head down to the water; I tossed my windbreaker to my beautiful wife and made my way to the water.  There was about 5 minutes to the start of the race so I got in the river and tried to get a little bit acclimated to the water.  I also had a chance to make sure my goggles were on and watertight.  The water temperature was about 70 degrees which was an easy 10-15 degrees warmer than the air which meant coming back out of the water to get lined up for the start was pretty chilly with the wind.  Thankfully I only had to wait a minute or so before the starting whistle.  The first couple of minutes in the swim was just chaos in the water.  I was kicked once or twice which I had read about but never experienced in training.  I swallowed a bit of the St. Croix right away which wasn’t what I was hoping for, but as the stronger and faster swimmers put some distance between us I was able to get into a little bit of a rhythm and made some progress.  I pretty much went with my plan to stick to the breast stroke and side stroke and it worked alright but the current of the river along with the pretty steady wind definitely slowed me down a bit.  It seemed both like a spit second and an eternity but I was down the first side of the swim and making the first turn.  Unfortunately, the second wave’s stronger swimmers were catching up to us slow-pokes in the first wave. I kept moving through the water at my pace and eventually I was coming up on shore.  I made my way up to the transition area as quickly as I could but my heart was racing so it was tough to coordinate getting my socks, shoes, shirt and helmet on for the bike.

I did eventually get my gear for the second leg of the race on and made my way to the in/out point and got on the bike.  For the first mile I was just trying to get into my cadence and my heart rate stabilized.  Pretty soon I was moving along at my normal pace which by the amount of people passing me was slow compared to a bunch of competitors but I was feeling pretty good overall.  I had a chance to draft another guy going down a hill which was pretty cool as I could really feel the draft almost pulling me forward faster.  As I saw (and felt) the big hill looming ahead I tried to get my cadence where I wanted it but about halfway up the hill on the steepest part my chain fell off my bike which had happened in training once or twice.  I hopped off and got it back on as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately, I had lost all momentum and as I saw a couple of others walking their bikes up the hill I decided it was okay if I did the same.  I only had about 150 feet to go to the crest of the steepest part of the climb.  I got back on the saddle and tried to get my speed back up.  At the top of the hill I made the glorious turn to head back down.  I downshifted as much as I could to get as much power and speed out of the decent as possible.  The way down the hills were really fun, and REALLY fast.  I had to brake around the corners, but was able to pedal hard down the straight aways and really enjoyed the rapidly passing scenery.  As I made my way back to the transition area I got behind another couple of racers and matched pace with them which was very helpful.  Transition 2 (T2) was interesting for a couple of reasons; First, I saw a guy who clearly had taken a bad fall on his bike being tended to by several medical personnel, and the woman that I finished the bike with didn’t know where the run started.  I pointed her in the right general direction and was happy it wasn’t the other way around.

As I started my run I was able to get my headphones on and got my music going.  On the way out of the transition area I noticed that my time was 1:10 and change.  I had about 50 minutes to complete the run and meet my goal.  My legs felt like lead the first mile.  I had to take a couple of walk breaks just to get through that first mile.  Once I hit the one mile marker the legs started to loosen up.  My phone told me my mile split was 11:34 and I realized that if I was able to keep that pace I would meet my 2 hour goal.  I was able to settle into a relatively aggressive pace but made sure to keep some gas left in the tank.  I hit the two mile mark and was elated  as I knew that I had the legs to get home.  The rest of the run seemed to fly by and my mile splits kept getting slightly faster.  As I was getting close to the end I pushed my legs as hard as they’d let me, and was able to finish really strong.  I saw my wife just after I crossed the finish and was happy to be done and excited I was able to reach my goal.

My final time was 1:57:43, and my wife snapped a great picture as I crossed the finish with that time on the clock.  She gave me a hug and kiss and the race was over.  After a couple of minutes we made our way over to the transition area and packed up.

I would like to thank my wife for being supportive during the whole process of training and throughout the event.  I would also like to thank my mother-in-law for her encouragement and for watching the kids throughout the summer which allowed me to get many more training sessions in than what would have been possible otherwise.  Now that I’ve achieved what my goal was for next year fitness wise it’s time to set some new goals.  I am planning on running a 10k race yet this fall, and possibly a half-marathon next year.  I am also planning on racing in the Lifetime Olympic Triathlon next July and would also like to race in this race again next year. It will be interesting to see how my time next year compares wit this year’s time.  I have a feeling I’m pretty hooked on this whole triathlon thing, I really had a lot of fun racing and while not all of the training was fun I certainly appreciate the effort involved with training for something like this.

I now consider myself a Triathlete.

As some of you already know, my wife has been ill for the past several weeks.  When this saga started I was having a hard time keeping everyone up-to-date.  Between updating Facebook, my work, her work, our sons’ school, daycare and family/friends that don’t have Facebook accounts it was getting difficult to keep everyone apprised of what was going on.  I often found myself frustrated that I had forgotten to update someone late at night and I’d have to go send an email or make a reminder to call someone the next day.  I was considering making a specific blog either here on my site or somewhere else online but it sounded like more time and effort than I wanted to spend.  I certainly have the technical know-how but at the time I didn’t have the energy.

While I was at the hospital keeping Tassy company one of the nurses mentioned CaringBridge (found online at caringbridge.org).  Being the geek that I am I pretty much always travel with at least one smartphone with a laptop not too far away.  I figured I’d check it out and see what it was all about.

What I found was that CaringBridge is a site where you can set up your site where you can add your story, a journal (think of it as a blog/update spot), a guestbook where people can leave comments and encouragement, and a photo gallery where you can post pictures.  There are three levels of privacy: You can set it up as a public site where it’s generally available on the internet, as a semi-private site where where everyone uses a login and password, and a fully-private site where everyone has a login and password and they must be on an approved list.  This seems to cover the bases privacy wise.  I opted for a public site, and decided that if this became an issue I would change the privacy settings after-the-fact.  CaringBridge is based on a donation model, so it’s completely free to setup a site.

The signup phase was very easy, it took about ten minutes, and I was then able to update everyone at once.  I made one last email out to my list, posted it to both of our Facebook feeds, and that was the last time I really had to worry about trying to remember everyone.  Whenever anyone emailed or called to ask what was going on I would give a quick update and would mention or send the link to CaringBridge site.  I was able to read the comments from the guestbook to her when she couldn’t read or was just too tired, and she was able to view and edit the site herself when she was feeling better.

Yes, there’s an app for that. They also have an iPhone app where you can view various sites in addition to updating your site right from your phone.  It’s a great application and does exactly what you’d expect.  The only thing you really can’t do from the app is create a new site and that’s hardly a knock on an otherwise excellent and very functional app.  The one thing I didn’t like was that when I was trying to upload a photo I ran into a size issue which ultimately prevented me from uploading any pictures from my iPhone.  I’m not seeing an Android app, but since I don’t have an Android phone I’m not entirely sure if it appears in the Android Marketplace.  They do have a very functional mobile website at m.caringbridge.org.

Overall, if you or a loved one is dealing with a medical issue, military deployment, or have a need for a journal, guestbook and photo gallery I suggest checking out CaringBridge.  Also, if you’re able, consider donating.

I’ve covered most of the commonly available outsourcing options for small business in my previous posts, but what happens when you think you need to bring the resource In-House?  

There are a couple of easy scenarios where bringing someone in-house makes pretty clear sense.  The most obvious one is that if you can bring a person (or people) in-house full time for less than you spend on outsourcing. The other is that if you have a relatively complicated network (things like render farms and web server farms come to mind) where outsourcing isn’t all that practical. The other main reason why bringing your support in house is if you want someone on staff fully dedicated to only working on the IT for your business. 

If you have a smaller network whose primary users are essentially standard office users you really should be looking to see if outsourcing is a better fit.  When working as a consultant as both as a Sole Proprietor and as part of a break-fix consultancy I could support networks with 50 users relatively easily – especially when I had other technicians I could count on for assistance.  I think that a qualified in-house tech can likely support at least 100 users in a relatively ‘normal’ environment where a bulk of the users work primarily Microsoft Office and a couple of other line of business applications. 

It really comes down to cost vs. complexity vs. availability.  If you don’t mind spending $50k (and likely more) per year on a full time tech, if you have a large number users, or need someone every single day bringing someone in house might be for your business.  If not – go find a good MSP.  They’ll likely save you some money and should be able to take good care of your network.

My previous two posts talked about some of the IT Outsourcing options available for your small business.  In my first Outsourcing post I talked about the Sole Proprietor and in my second I talked about the Break-Fix Model.  Much like the break-fix, a sole proprietor could operate under either a break fix model under the managed services model.  Scale again is the main difference in why I spent a whole post on Sole Proprietors.

Who your managed services provider is

Generally speaking, your managed services provider (MSP) is a pro-active IT support organization. Instead of simply reacting to every issue that arises they setup both their and your environments to try to put out the fires before they even have a chance to spark.  Through the use of monitoring tools and a pro-active thought process the goal of a managed services provider is to completely manage your IT infrastructure and minimize any downtime as much as possible. The big idea is that by keeping your staff more productive with reduced downtime they can be more efficient.

Most managed service providers have a standardized infrastructure that they roll-out to customers when they sign the contract.  Servers are updated or replaced, the network is documented, networking equipment upgraded when necessary, and monitoring tools are deployed.  Depending on the provider they may centralize things like domain names, Microsoft Exchange, firewalls, and/or your internet provider.  The goal with this model is to completely take over your IT so they can deal with any and all issues without having to reinvent the wheel every time.

Why managed services is a good fit

If you have a larger number of users (15-20+) and a couple of servers this is a model that should be investigated fully.  This model works very well if you are comfortable with having a static (or nearly static) charge for IT every month.  Under most plans there is a per user and/or per computer charge as well as other charges depending on what other services are being provided.  The benefit here is that nearly every computer problem you will run into will be covered so you won’t have the up and down cost.  In addition, it’s in the MSP’s best interest to reduce calls and outages as much as possible to conserve costs. This is where the strong infrastructure is vital.

Why managed services isn’t a good fit

Managed services will look more expensive on paper in many cases.  In fact, it might cost more dollars on the bottom line which can easily send decision makers running in the other direction.  If your network is under 10 users it might be a stretch, and certainly if you have fewer than five users.  It might be worth checking out but don’t be surprised to have some sticker shock.  Also, one of the biggest drawbacks of this model is that some MSPs integrate their network so tightly with the customer network it would be a major cost to switch IT providers should the relationship ever go south.  My concern with this is that it might become cost prohibitive to leave the MSP. There is a tough balance here as the MSP can make the argument that they need to tightly integrate the networks together so they can provide better service.  In many cases this is true but there is definitely a double edged feel to it.  Just make sure you know what you’re getting into.

A couple of other points

There are many shops that call themselves Managed Service Provders but they’re really Break-Fixers calling themselves MSPs.  Some will give you a certain number of support hours per month, but won’t necessarily monitor your servers and overall network health.  Some might not upgrade your infrastructure to conserve their costs even though it may need it badly.  Make sure that you understand what the MSP will be doing to integrate your network into their management solution.

It is also a good idea to pick a MSP that only does MSP work rather than a shop that does Break-Fix and dabbles in MSP.  One of the trends in the Small Business IT space has been to migrate customers from the break-fix model to the MSP model. In most cases it makes good business sense for both the IT provider and for most of their customers.  The problem that some IT providers don’t finish this process by firing their customers that won’t switch models. I’ve seen it where the IT provider has one foot on each side of the line as a permanent way of doing business which makes it hard to turn away from the extra hours from the BF clients.  It’s tough to balance being pro-active with a subset of clients and completely reactive to a different subset.  The clients with the biggest issues make the most noise and most likely will get more immediate attention when issues arise.  I’ll let you decide on who is likely to make the most noise. . .  The exception here is that if your provider is switching their existing client base over and will eventually get rid of ALL OF the remaining BF clients that refuse to switch models.

My Recommendation

If the cost is the primary concern and you previously used a provider that used the break-fix model try this: Take what you spent last year on your IT support.  Then assume you’ll have either a small-mid sized project or outage that requires 20 additional hours from your IT provider.  Also, account for lost productivity and/or loss of data if you have a major outage. Add those numbers together and see how it matches up.

It’s vital that you learn as much about your IT provider as possible when you’re making your decision.  Picking the wrong option could prove very costly.  As a business decision maker you need to understand your IT needs from your business requirements and make sure your IT provider can address your concerns.  Ideally they’d bring some additional information and reasonable recommendations in your discovery/prospecting meetings.  It’s not your job to know the technology, but it is your job to protect your business and make sure that you’re making the right choice.