Now I’m ready to fly:

Today was a big day for running. At the 115th running of the Boston Marathon Geoffry Mutai of Kenya not only shattered the course record for the Boston marathon by almost 3 minutes he also set a new WR (technically due to the wind and net downhill it is with an *).

Mutai ran an unheard of 2:03:02 marathon through Boston and its notoriously tough hills, (including heartbreak hill) which is a 4:42 min mile pace.  If you are not a runner think about this like a perfect game to win the world series, a hole-in-one to win the masters or some other mind-blowing event.

How did  he do it?  Besides the obvious freaky genetic gift, he trained like hell, stayed mentally tough and he capitalized on a big tail wind.  In other words, he acted just like any entrepreneur should.  But it got me thinking- my take away is this: if you want to set a WR you need to leverage your tail wind.  To be sure, all runners today had the tail wind, but what is the tail wind for your business?

Let’s take it as a given that you are mentally tough, working as hard as you can and doing all the right things for your start up.  Great- welcome to the club.  It took a lot to get here, and you deserve some credit for that, but you are not alone; in fact there are lots and lots of folks running just as hard as you are (maybe even harder).  So- how are you going to out kick them and win it all?  You have to find your own tail wind and run with it.

A tail wind technically aids all runners the same (ignore reverse drafting).  But it is more than “chance favors the prepared mind” it is how the right team, product discipline and market segmentation can allow you to run faster with the same wind.  A tad of liberal interpretation please.

Examples of business tail winds:

1. Free or ultra low cost customer acquisition.  Think Website Grader for HubSpot, (or at my company Quibblo for SnapApp), high ranking in the iTunes store or huge organic SEO.  These “level playing fields” but some are winning a lot more than others.

2. Self-perpetuating customer models. Building your product to inherently increase customer spend and distribution so that as your grow your rate of growth accelerates too (logarithmic growth).  Think DropBox (the more you use the more you invite friends to get more space or pay to upgrade), Facebook (scale matters- at some point you “have to” join), Groupon (national deals fuel more customers fuels bigger revenue days) or Twitter.  I like the Twitter example the best, actually- when Iran (or Egypt) went into full protest mode all news site and social media networks were in the same position- but it was Twitter who was catapulted onto the world stage.

3. Culture.  This can be a big tail wind- but it can also be a huge head wind.  People drive innovation, people drive growth and most of all people drive profit.  Get your culture aligned and the right people in the right seats and you have an unfair advantage.  Everyone has a corporate culture- some just stink.

4. Bigger Moats.  The more you can build moats around your money machine, as Bill Gurley describes, the more you can lock in value.  Other moats are your data in SalesForce.com, your photos in Flickr, your connections on LinkedIn.  They lock you in and inhibit change.  Everyone has data- how are you using yours?


What is not a business tail wind:

1. Your foosball table / game room / free soda

2. A big growing market- a rising tide lifts all boats, but  your tail wind should lift your boat more/faster.

3. Lots of cash in the bank.

Nothing is forever- the winds may change but if you can find and leverage your business tail wind you might set a world record, at the very least you’ll set a personal record.

I’ve been inspired by Born to Run, a great book by Christopher McDougall about ultra distance runners and the evolution of man. Setting aside for a moment whether or not one of the fundamental premises of the book is accurate or not (that man evolved for endurance running, not speed) there is a fantastic story about how humans can actually run an antelope to death. Summary: man can breathe faster and dissipate heat better than most mammals and therefore certain animals (antelope) can be chased until they collapse from exhaustion, despite being considerably faster in short spurts then humans. Apparently some of the Bushmen of the Kalahari in the most remote sections still (or recently use to) retain this ability and knowledge known as Persistence Hunting.


My humble suggestion: let’s give it a try- with the help of some modern technology. I suggest more than a hunt, almost and expedition. So, here is a proposed outline for a modern day “run hunt”:


1. Teamwork. I think for this to be effective (and fun) a decent sized group would be needed to chase and coral the target. Specifically as well we need a largish team to make sure we have enough of a quorum push to the “finish” at the end of what might be a very long hot run. Therefore, I also suggest a buddy system for the hunt whereby each runner runs with a buddy for company, support and fun.


2. Speed Requirements. I am guessing that the minimum fitness requirements for the run (more analysis to be done) is probably the ability to run 20 miles at 7:30-8ish minute miles over uneven trails/terrain. Item 3 below will help guide overall fitness requirements.


3. Deer Analysis. I assume that different deer are easier or harder quarry and some work should be done to figure out what the actual easiest animal would be to run down. As well terrain plays a role, it would be much better to be out in the open and on plains than in some dense forest or rocky gorge, so natural habitat will also weigh in. IF one wanted to actually run an antelope down (apparently antelope are only native to Africa) I suppose a stocked exotic ranch in Texas would be the place to go, though somehow I think the risk of getting shot seems high.


4. Location & Local Guide. Once a location and species have selected we need a local guide. Someone who can actually FIND the animal for us, knows the terrain etc. The local guide presumably will help guide the whole expedition toward success and can coordinate many of the logistics in advance. The guide could also take care of euthanizing the animal when it collapses and cleaning it.


5. Tagging & Target. Even with a local guide I doubt we could ever track a deer with the kind of accuracy and efficiency needed to run to actually succeed. So, I suggest a little bit of modern technology be employed. Once a target quarry is identified the guide will actually shoot it with a small GPS tracking device and possibly a dart/tag marker of some sort to make it easier to both quickly identify the quarry if he heads into a herd and also to find him should visual contact be lost for too long.


6. Backup Support. I suggest several ATVs trail the group at some moderate distance (1 mile?) and maintain contact with walkie talkies. The support team would haul gear for the crew including medical supplies, water, food, clothing etc. As well, They could bring tents, sleeping bags and cooking supplies to camp out after the hunt or at least provide some comfort. The support team would maintain contact with the group as well as monitor the GPS device and give guidance to the team. It could give a lift to stragglers and bring them back up with the pack if they fall back or need a rest and ensure that we don’t end up spread out over 10 miles.


7. Permits. Based on a very cursory review of a couple mid-western states it does not appear that a permit would be needed since we would not be “hunting” with: a firearm, archery or muzzleloader, though we probably would need to secure landowner permission and access for an area. It might also be beneficial to try and find an area either devoid of other hunters or even try and reserve an area if possible in advance.


Perhaps I’m crazy, but this seems not only doable, but like a totally fun activity. If you like to run, love adventure and had a good group, what a great way to spend a couple days.

In an effort to determine just how accurate my Nike+ iPod is and how it compares to GPS based mobile applications I decided to test both of them out in a very controlled environment.  I ran with both devices the same distance- exactly one mile around a track.  Then I compared the results of each device- and both were off, but the GPS was off by a lot.

First off, note that I have my Nike+ calibrated to my stride already (which I used a track to set) and I ran a comfortable pace for the mile so I was not pushing it too hard or too little, a standard stride in other words.

The Nike+ showed that I ran .97 of a mile, so off by 3%, which seems like a very reasonable margin of error.  I suspect that this has to do with the placement of the chip which I tuck under my laces, I do not run in Nike shoes with the special slot.  See the graph below:

It is interesting to note that the speeds vary dramatically as reported by the data- as fast as 6:19 per mile and as slow as a 7:53 per mile pace.  I think this range is much too large for a 4 laps on a track at an even pace, though I am unsure why the variance would be so large. As a side note I mapped this track with a couple different online tools like MapMyRun and Runstoppable and both accurately measured the track.

However, using WorkSmart Lab’s CardioTrainer for my Android based phone was much less accurate (I have a Motorola Droid on Verizon).  I set the GPS ping time to 1 second and wore it in a clear sleeve on my arm.  The track I ran had no tree coverage or other interference for a clear satellite signal.  As you can see from the image below it’s very off from the track (which I ran the inside most lap). Also of note is that I ran 4 laps on the track- the app was consistently off in the same way much of the time. There doesn’t seem to be any conclusion to draw about which movements are hardest to track (longitude vs latitude).

As well you can see from the image below for whatever reason the elevation is very off (this is a flat track) and the speed variance is very large as well.

So the summary conclusion is that Nike+ iPod is the most accurate for total distance even with a number of oddities to the data (I hear calibration is key) and WorkSmart Lab’s Cardio Trainer is not very accurate at all, but if you are running somewhere new or someplace you don’t know (like trails) it can be a great way to find out where you went.  It’s a nifty app for sure, but I wouldn’t rely on it for data that is more than directionally correct and would certainly never run splits or time trials with it.

Next on the list to check:
*Nike+ on a treadmill
*Other GPS Android run apps to see if it is CarioTrainer or phone hardware.

List of top Android Apps for the Droid

We have an ongoing wager pool in the office where pretty much anything is fair game. Usually it $1-$5 bets. What is it about putting money on an outcome that makes it more interesting– it can’t be the actual cash. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t say fantasy football leagues (betting) makes watching football more fun. CBS sure things so, it is such a big business for them they are suing the players union to make sure we can keep our $10 ffl pools alive with them. Anyway, I got $1 that says you read this.

Why *exactly* do we need an olympic AND world record? Seems to me that a world record should suffice as the high water mark. Enough with the obsessive stats, you are either “the fastest” or you are “the fastest on Wednesdays in eastern Europe when the moon is full”.