Jorg's Brain Log

After 7 weeks of intense running, tuning technique and stamina, I finally found the problem of my running pain. Or so I hope.

Few months back I got myself a brand new pair of running shoes; Brooks Beast. This is a special shoe for heavy runners and I’ve used the same model for already over 8 years or so. I was always pleased with it and it worked well for the small runs.

Now that I’m running on a regular basis for longer runs and preparing for competition and even a marathon, everything has to be right. So I noticed in the first weeks of running in the summer that I had some blister problems that occurred after running for more then 25 minutes. I decided to start all over and fix my not so pretty running technique.

It took a lot of time and effort to find the problem, but in the end after some weeks of tuning I found it. Now that I’ve fixed my posture it’s clear that my left foot especially needs a little bit more on the left side to be stable. To compensate for this little angle in my running I always put more stress on the left foot on the left side, and therefore created pain in my lower back and pain in my left foot and calve.

Today I visited a specialized running store. It’s been a while since that I had my running analyzed and videotaped. It’s reassuring to hear from a pro that I now have a good running technique and despite my weight run very light, which he was very surprised by. He confirmed my analyzes about the left foot and told me I was using the wrong shoe. Damn, there goes the money for the Brooks Beast I just spend.

Even worse. He told me that in all these years I have used the wrong shoe size! I have size 43,5, that’s US9,5 for normal shoes. He told me that a running shoe has to be at least one size bigger and for me and my weight even more! So he gave me a new Brooks Addiction (version shoe, size 45 (US11) and we did some testing. It was amazing! It was like running on a cloud! So soft, so easy. At the same time I felt my left foot really being corrected by the new sole.

I was sold! To compensate for my loss on the other shoes he gave me 10% discount and some from running socks from x-socks. Tomorrow night I will go out and test them. I’m so curious how they will hold with a 30 minute run on concrete.

Week 7 is over. It was a pretty productive week, also too much time was spend behind the laptop. Had some website work to do and I’m still not finished. So, what was on schedule?

Basic schedule for week 43 (October 19 - October 25)

• Rest: Workdays get up at 6am and go to bed at midnight or a maximum of 6 hours of rest.
• Running: 3 times in the morning. 2×15 minute runs with 1 minute rest in between.
• Freediving: Pool session on Thursday. Do a dry walk or static on 5 other days.
• Food: Start eating regularly 3 times a day on workdays. Not yet paleo style but no snacks after dinner! Soda light no problem.
• Mental: Read some books and start writing regularly again.

I’m at an easy 6 hours per night at the moment, no real problems with it, besides that I’m going to bed way too late and therefor getting up to load. Of course this way I make sure I don’t sleep more then 6 hours and have to really get up in the morning.

Running goes great. Did 3 running sessions this week and more importantly, I’ve pinpointed were my running pains come from. On Monday I will visit a running store to fix the problem. More in this later. One week to go before my first running competition.

Dry freediving was a no no this week. Didn’t make time for it and I’m wondering if I should. The great thing is that my monofin training went really really well. Read more about it here.

Food intake is so so, while I keep myself to the 3 meals per day, it’s by no means always the right food. Have to fix this next  month. For now I keep to the 3 meals per day and a small snack in the evening.

Mental part is going great. I’m really beating the procrastination enemy. I’m writing, I’m working, I’m getting things done! So that’s great. Problem is that when you are in a creating flow, information intake is less. So only read half a book last week. No problem at the moment, because the new features in Google Reader brings me more than enough new knowledge.

On to week 8. What’s on the agenda?

Basic schedule for week 44 (October 26 – November 1)

• Rest: Workdays get up at 6am and go to bed at midnight or a maximum of 6 hours of rest.
• Running: 3 times in the morning. 30 minute runs.
• Freediving: Pool session on Thursday. Do a dry walk or static on 5 other days.
• Food: Start eating regularly 3 times a day on workdays. Not yet paleo style but no snacks after dinner! Soda light no problem.
• Mental: Read some books and start writing regularly again.

On November 1 I’ll do my first running competition. So most of my preparation is going into that direction. Excited!

Everything has to be now. Not in an hour, not even in 5 minutes. Just now! So when I publish another post on one of my blogs it usually takes some time before it appears on Google Reader.

Today I activated pingshot in Feedburner, the free Google service that handles all my RSS feeds. Together with that I installed on all my WordPress blogs the PubSubHubBub wordpress plugin. This way every new post should be ‘pushed’ to Friendfeed immediately, which forwards it immediately to Google Reader.

So, this is the first test, to see how it goes. What better place then Jorg’s Brain to start with. I’ll update this post with the time it took from pushing the publish button until I see the item in Google Reader. Let’s Go!

Update: Wow, I’m impressed! As soon as I clicked published I switched windows to feedburner and refresh the RSS page. It was immediately there. It took around 3 seconds to do that. After that I switched to Google Reader and clicked refresh several times and after 38 seconds my post was there. Amazing!  So expect breaking news faster in your RSS reader!

My creativity is found, among others, in writing. I have a habit to plan my days and to say that I’m going to write between 15:00 and 17:00. In the last months I have experimented a lot with these kind of things, trying to figure out if I could train my creativity muscle in such a way that I can turn it on when I want too.

This on demand creativity muscle is for sure not trained enough yet. In the last weeks while designing two new websites it became clear that small tasks like a 500 word article is no problem whatsoever. But big creativity doesn’t come with an on/off button.

I’ve spend a total of 3 days trying to find the right design for our new Shark Sports website and just couldn’t find it. I was getting more and more frustrated. Until on day 3 I accepted I couldn’t find a good design. So I stopped searching for it and went on to relax, sport and watch a movie for the rest of the day.

The next morning I was inspired again  and built the whole website in one day. It’s strange to see how such a big shift can occur and while I have a pretty good control on creativity on small stuff like a blog post, I still have to train harder on extensive articles and for example my book (2000 words burst or more).

So in the mean time I’m going to plan 3 creativity half days per week . They will be 9:00 to 12:00 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I will plan what I will write and have to deliver beforehand and see how far I will come.

And of course in the mean time I will still keep use of my creativity outburst when I just have to sit and write stuff down, even when it’s two in the morning.

Good news! I’ve got a new part-time job, because otherwise I’ve nothing to do and get bored. I’m now working as an analyst and writer for The Next Web. My work starts at the Appetite blog of The Next Web by delivering interesting news about mobile, web and desktop applications.

Of course I will continue writing in Dutch on my own tech blog, because I’m writing there about much more then applications  alone. All in all it’s nice to be recognized and I’m proud to be part of The Next Web family of analists and writers who work there.

I just published my first post over there. So go take a look and leave a comment.

Because I had a lot of website work to do in the last few weeks, I found myself working with a lot of CMS systems and testing stuff out. I was looking for a good blogging, social CMS system that I could use for a Shark Sports. After many hours of testing Typo3, Joomla, Drupal and WordPress, it’s again clear to me that WordPress is the winner.

I have now installed on my own domain jorgjansen.com WordPress MU. That’s the multi user version of wordpress. With a click on a button I can now create a new blog or update everything at once. In total I had to manage 9 wordpress blogs and I already brought this  numbe back to 4 by putting a lot of them in my jorgjansen.com wordpress MU version.

At the same time I made some small changes to the directory structure of my different blogs. Instead of using folders for each different blog, I’ve now put them on subdomains (automatic with the help of wordpress, wow). I’ve even done this  in a correct way by setting a 301  redirect so people who are stilll linking to the old adresses are automatically transfered to the correct address.

Here in short a small llist of the new addresses:

• http://jorgjansen.com – main page
• http://brain.jorgjansen.com – Jorg’s Brain Log
• http://i.jorgjansen.com – Dutch tech blog
• http://skills.jorgjansen.com – Dutch life skills blog
• http://dyrion.com – My personal company
• http://sotelli.com – Mario and mine ICT management company
• http://shark.nu – Mario and mine Sports Event company
• http://shark-freediving.com – freediving news website
• http://shark-bait.com – Team Sharkbait website

It’s back! Shark.nu is live and presenting our new company Shark Sports. Shark Sports specializes in sport activities and events. To bring together supply and demand from different levels.

Together with co-entrepreneur Mario Verhagen, I started this company to do something with our passion for sports and organizing. Shark.nu will become a full sports portal that will make it possible through some smart automated processes to organize sport events with a click of button.

And we start big with a freediving competition in December and a big big Zumba New Year Party in Januari. Not only that but we will start with regular lessons, courses and trainings as well. So take a look at the site and keep an eye on it! Lots of exciting stuff will happen.

This week really was over like it was only 2 days long. Really amazing.  It’s a good thing that I keep a small diary where all my time is being spend on. So what was on plan last week?

Basic schedule for week 42 (October 12 - October 18)

• Rest: Workdays get up at 6am and go to bed at midnight or a maximum of 6 hours of rest.
• Running: 3 times in the morning. 3×10 minute runs with 1 minute rest in between.
• Freediving: Pool session on Thursday. Do a dry walk or static on 5 other days.
• Food: Start eating regularly 3 times a day on workdays. Not yet paleo style but no snacks after dinner! Soda light no problem.
• Mental: Read some books and start writing regularly again.

Rest did not go so well. I had a few long sleeps and a few very short ones ranging from 10 hours to only 2 hours a night. Don’t know exactly why, but it had something to do with the activity in my brain and being in a working flow. I didn’t get up at 6am even once this week. Don’t know why, but I really have to start doing it again soon, otherwise the habit will be lost and nothing  better then to start the day with a run or a creative piece of writing.

Speaking about running: Did three run of 3×10 minutes this week. Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. I’m not using tape anymore on my feet to keep the blisters away and it felt good. The only thing left to fix is my left foot which is apparently hitting the floor with a small angle to the left. I’m going to test this with a running shop who can measure and see what is going wrong. Really need to fix this problem!

Freediving was fun. Did a dry static on Monday and went to 2:40 minutes without contractions and still having fun doing it. Nothing dry for the rest of the week. Thursday pool session was great as you can read on our sharkbait blog here.

Food is going okay but not fantastic. I eat what I want all day long in three meals, but still take some snacks in the evening. I really have to make a commitment again for this, otherwise nothing will happen.

Because of all the work, I only read 1 book this week. Really have to pick up the pace again. Writing is going great again. After a small one month dip I’m back at full force. Creativity doesn’t happen every week on Monday in the afternoon, but just when it wants to for itself. So I have to keep track with that as well.

For the following week, this is on schedule:

Basic schedule for week 43 (October 19 - October 25)

• Rest: Workdays get up at 6am and go to bed at midnight or a maximum of 6 hours of rest.
• Running: 3 times in the morning. 2×15 minute runs with 1 minute rest in between.
• Freediving: Pool session on Thursday. Do a dry walk or static on 5 other days.
• Food: Start eating regularly 3 times a day on workdays. Not yet paleo style but no snacks after dinner! Soda light no problem.
• Mental: Read some books and start writing regularly again.

One key element in my life is music. I was raised with a lot of music around me and I was fortunate enough to have parent who saw the importance of it and put me on music school when I was 6. I learned to play, at a very basic level, all kind of instruments in the first two years and started to understand how they all worked.

Around the age of 8 I started with harmonica with two other guys and we did a lot of competitions and were quite successful.  More importantly it was a lot of fun. Around the age of 14 I think I started with guitar lessons and was working towards conservatory, but in the end I somehow ended up doing an ICT study. Don’t ask me why…

While I don’t take lessons anymore, I still play a  few times a week. Mostly at the times I looking for energy and creativity. Playing a few tunes on the guitar or harmonica. Or even a few small songs on the keyboard. It’s just relaxing and energizing to do.

My son got his second keyboard lesson yesterday. He’s thankfully making use of Sanne’s keyboard that Sanne borrowed to him for a few months. Now that he started getting lessons and is so enthousiastic about it, it’s time to look for one of his own. (thanks for the borrowing, Sanne!)

So now Rody has started doing something with music, I hope he sees and gets the same benefits I got from it. I see it as an important building block in his ongoing education. The same I got, and the same I want to give to my children.

Did a lot of reading today. Some motivational pieces as well. At one point I read a piece from a guy who summed up some rules he had. Rule number 1 was to never give up.

I thought a little about that and it came to mind how many are saying this. So many people believe that if they won’t quit with something that everything will turn allright.

Well, I’m here to bring the bad news: never giving up is just plain stupid and dumb! Smart people know when to quit! They quit before the energy drain is starting.

Smart people keep to their believes and core values but are very open for criticism and want to improve as much as they can. Smart people are honest and tell things like they are and tell IT when it matters, even when the message sucks.

Sometimes it’s hard to accept the truth, but if things are not going to work, they’re not going to work. Simple as that! You can’t roll with square wheels.

Know when to quit and know when to hold on! Don’t be afraid to make a mistake now and then and accept it. And if you’re the guy who never makes a mistake with this, then please tell me the secret!