Author: davecriswell

NH transplant living in CO. Husband, Dad, cyclist, Ironman triathlete, runner, Digital Marketing Director for @Avid4Adventure. Dark chocolate is my weakness.
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Sport specific training

The more years I’ve spent in triathlon the better I’ve come to understand the importance of sport specific training.  It’s critical that you put the hours and mileage into swimming, biking and running in order to perform your best on race day.

Last night I was brutally reminded of the importance of sport specific training.
I played basketball in high school  and would consider myself an average to above average player.  Every year my alma mater has alumni game in which the “old timers” (those who graduate more than 5 years ago – I just had my 20th HS reunion) play the Junior Varsity team.  I’ve played off and on over the years depending on which of my friends were also in town.
This year’s game was last night and even though none of my high school buddies were in town, I decided to go play.  I just did the Green Mountain marathon the beginning of last month and I’ve been running, biking and swimming pretty regularly since the race.  What I’m saying is that I’m in pretty good shape and figured I would be able to run circles around those 14 and 15 year old JV players.
The harsh reality of my sport specific training up to this point is that I was not prepared for the short sprints and starting/stopping nature of playing basketball.  To say nothing of the fact that I hadn’t picked up a basketball in several months (which also showed dramatically!).
If I go to play at next year’s game, I’m going to make sure that I get a little sport specific training in before game day!

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Thanks @comcastcares

I’ve been on Twitter for a little while now and have used it primarily to connect with others who have similar interests – triathlon, social media, sales profession, etc.  During my time on Twitter I have also read about businesses utilizing Twitter in creative and unique ways, though most of those business have been of the small and nimble kind.

It was a rare find when one could find big business taking hold of social tools and using them in an effective way.  So rare in fact that I co-authored a post on the Hubspot blog with Peter Caputa on the subject. Tonight I was able to see how Comcast is ahead of the curve is using social media to connect with their customers.

After experiencing several power blips throughout the day, I returned home to find no Internet.  So I gotComcast on the phone to help me figure out the problem.  While I was on hold I sent a tweet that I was on hold with Comcast.  Soon thereafter I see an @reply from @comcast cares on Twitter asking if I needed any help!

It turns out that I the tech was able to help me out and I didn’t need the assist of @comcastcares, but Comcast just gained huge points in my book by proactively reaching out to me.  In the big picture, social media is in it’s infancy but I think it is companies like Comcast, who are jumping into the game early, that will create a deeper connection with the customer and yield the greatest returns from their early adoption.

Any time I felt like my business really mattered to a company it has been from a small company and never with a company the size of Comcast. Thanks @comcastcares.

What other big companies are early adopters of social media?

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Can I Please Interrupt you?

Last week I co-authored a post on the Hubspot blog that discussed the mistakes that Fortune 500 companies are making around social medial marketing and sales, and how small business can take advantage of it.  It wasn’t hard to find examples of mistakes that big companies were making in their heavy use of interruption based marketing.

I was recently watching a clip from The Office, the parody show on office life brought over from the BBC.  At the end of the video clip was a great message that takes interruption based marketing to a new level!

After ad blocking software blocked the interruption ad, they took it a step further by asking me (politely of course) to turn off this softwre so they could interrupt me with a message I most likely had no interest in seeing!

Originally I found the clip on one of the sales blogs that I read and it is a pretty funny sales role play.  If you are so inclined I’ve included a link to the video at the bottom of this post.

The office role play clip

[clearspring_widget title=”The Office – Customer Survey” wid=”4727a250e66f9723″ pid=”4929bd705f6f74ad” width=”384″ height=”283″ domain=”widgets.nbc.com”]

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Life lessons

I often think while I’m training the value I find in the planning, discipline and execution of preparing for an event.  I’d love to put it all down in this blog but unfortunately no one pays me to write this and I have to balance my desire to write about my experiences with my desire to have an income.

An old high school friend (thanks Diana!) turned me on to an blog posting that does a great job summarizing the life lessons one triathlete learned while training for his triathlon.  It’s worth a read:

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Drink up

Bicycling.com put out an article today discussing a study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology. The study came to the conclusion that recovery can be aided by caffeine. The trick – you have to drink ALOT of it.

I try to keep up on the latest nutritional news and have a pretty disciplined diet. So, I appreciate the studies that are done around endurance sports and nutrition.  When I do read these studies I try to apply a reasonableness test to the articles.  You know…does it make sense?
The caffeine study didn’t make sense.  Here’s why.  The amount of caffeine used in the study was eight grams per kg of body weight. So for a 165 pound cyclist that would be about 600 mg of caffeine.  How much is that?  As Bicycling.com points out, it would be eight (yes that says eight) cans of Red Bull, four Monster Energy Drinks or two Starbucks Grande coffees.
If you are going to do a study it would make sense to me to do it using a dosage that is reasonable.  Drinking eight cans of Red Bull after a workout by no means seems reasonable!
I enjoy a periodic cup of coffee every once in a while but typically not during my peak racing season.  Caffeine has diuretic properties which can lead to decreased hydration levels.  That’s one of the reasons I tend to stay away from coffee while training.
So, while there may be some positive benefit to taking in caffeine, I have to believe that any benefit to drinking 8 cans of Red Bull would be offset by the negative effects of such high caffeine levels.
I won’t be testing out this particular study. If you do, I’d be very curious to know how it works out for you.