Reason to Run Spring Events Preview Run

Reason to Run is leading a free "preview" run of the Spring Burst 5k and Spring Rush 10k courses on Wednesday, April 1st with the Road Runner Sports training group.

We will meet in Cook Park in the east parking lot (directions) at 6 pm to explore the course trails.

Come with us to see what you will run on April 11th or simply join us for a Wednesday night training run to meet some new people. As well please invite your friends who are still thinking about doing the event or just want to come out and do a fun bit of exercise on the trails.

RSVP to info@reasontorun.com if you are planning to attend (just showing up is fine as well).

I plan to check on the progression of the Trilliums and cherry blossoms that our family enjoyed finding on the course this past weekend.
See you Wednesday!

EclipseCon Exercise Day 3: Right instead of Left

Great turnout this morning with 17 people joining the group. I just know that tomorrow we will break through and have more than 20 people. With all the out of office emails I received from the reminder I mailed yesterday I now have lots of emergency cell phone numbers to dial to get the crowd out :-)

We broke new trail today for EclipseCon exercise. We did a radical switch and turned right on the creek trail instead of the traditional left. Mixing things up is good and it provided a nice change in scenery and even a few more hills.

At the conference yesterday, I really enjoyed the content of the sessions starting with the keynote "The Social Mind: Designing Like Groups Matter" by Clay Shirky and Jeff Atwood. A deep dive on the nuances of success and failure in the social software space from both a research perspective and practical experience as shown by stackoverflow.com

Some of the key points I gleaned from the talk:

• Life is the world's biggest MMORPH - embrace the game-like aspects of your career
• Only resource that scales with your users is your users
• Bad stuff happens - that is OK as long as the community can deal with it
• Need to achieve that it is easier to defend the system than to attack it
• Start small and good and then grow. Big and bad will not improve over time
  

The talk was especially fitting with today being the 14th birthday of Ward's Wiki

I then sat in on Erich Gamma and Jean-Michel Lemiuex 's talk on Jazz. I enjoy seeing demos of products I work on and this did not disappoint. I think we can all agree that creating and delivering software is a complicated and difficult process. A great quote from Phillipe Mulet (fomer Eclipse PMC lead) : Shipping software on time: It is like a duck quietly advancing on the pond but no one realizes that he is paddling like crazy underwater.
Jazz was built to provide tooling to help address some of the common challenges we have seen in the years of developing Eclipse as a globally distributed team:

• customization of team process
• team growth over time
  
• malleable and live plans
• isolation and then integration of component work
• the end game...when are we done and good as gold
  

Make sure to check Jazz out with a free download from jazz.net Call Erich if you have any issues with installation :-)

Then it was e4 time. Lots has been happening in this space since last year and I cannot do it justice here. Improved resource model, styling and work to overcome Eclipse structural limitations, allow mutation of the Eclipse platform into a service provider, and then the promise/curse of Bespin. All with the goal of ensuring Eclipse stays relevant and interesting to its current user base but at the same time allowing entirely new usecases for the technology to emerge with the additional flair and flexibility. Everyone should keep their eye on the e4 space as things are really starting to pick up speed.

I hit other talks and BOFs to fill up the day and even squeezed in a evening run.
Overall a great day of learning and networking.

EclipseCon Exercise Day 2: Back in the light

A beautiful morning out on the trail greeted the EclipseCon runners this morning. Almost 20 people rolled out of bed to join the group to start the day off right. Good exercise and it was a great way to review the day one of EclipseCon. A few even stuck to the 6am start time and were done before we started (not sure on purpose though)!

Everyone seemed to have had good experiences with their tutorials on Monday with a common theme being that the 4 hour length was just about right for the hands on learning.

The conversation was so good today that one group of runners went what I believe may be the longest session for EclipseCon exercise....about 10km. Not 4 hours of running but still very NICE! I think this may have been partly fueled by the excesses of the Eclipse Community awards and following reception on Monday evening :-)

7 am Wednesday will be the real test...hardest day to get out of bed. Be strong and come join us. I guarantee you will enjoy the day 7ammore...look at how excited these guys are to take on the day :-)

EclipseCon Exercise Day 1: Cold Clear Start

An early morning start today with even now the sun just peaking up over the mountains. Cold and clear in California...almost seemed like running in Canada!

We had a good group show up for the early start today to run in the dark and cold...no really it was fun :-)
11 people in total and I think everyone had a good time and had anopportunity to meet some new people and fellow conference attendees.

Again this year we had everyone from first time EclipseCon attenders and presenters all the way to people, such as myself, who have been to each and every EclipseCon. We had beginning runners to people training for marathons and ultra-marathons. A great mix. In all we did somewhere between 4.5-5 miles on the paved trails heading towards the bay.

I apologize to anyone who came to run at 7 am this morning....we will be there tomorrow :-)

So please come join us at any of the other mornings for great conversation and exercise:
On Tuesday - 7am
On Wednesday - 7am
On Thursday - 7am

All meeting in the Hyatt Conference Hotel lobby.

Now the conference can officially begin :-)

EclipseCon 2009 - Recession Proof Running

I have always heard that exercise and entertainment were the two industries that were recession proof. I know this is a completely artificial sample but the attendees of EclipseCon 2009 are bearing this out.

We currently have 129 people signed up to head out on the trails to start their mornings off correctly for the four day extravaganza that is EclipseCon.

From previous years, I know that most of these people will not make all of the four days of running...actually a good percentage will not show up at all. But that is not important.

The cool part is that for approximately one hour each day we will get out of the conference center and breath fresh, non air conditioned oxygen. We will have a great chance to clear some of the cobwebs out of our brains to make us that much more productive and absorptive for the rest of the day. We will also meet new people, make new friends and likely improve the Eclipse community by creating new cross links between separate areas of concern that otherwise would have never connected but really can benefit from a personal and professional relationship.

We also can get to ask people about something OTHER than Eclipse. Their families, their other hobbies and their passions away from a computer. Where they come from and where they live. A great way to make the conference more personal. This is a reason to run for me: running with someone is the fastest and easiest way I know to get to know each other.

Do you think I am exaggerating what can happen from our four little runs or walks in the morning? I guess you will have to come out, join us and find out for yourself ;-)

We will meet each morning in the lobby of the host hotel of the conference.
Monday we meet at 6 am to accommodate the earlier start of the tutorials.
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we start at 7 am.
We will be running something similar to the route here. Any questions just email me. There is a Facebook event as well.
Hope to see you in the morning!

Reason to Run 2009 Shirt Artwork

Reason to Run #127: After a good hard run you get a really cool shirt that you can exercise in but often don't because you want to wear the shirt out on the town!

Hot from the creative genius that is Tyson Mangelsdorf we have the graphic designs that will the artwork for the Reason to Run shirts for the Spring Burst 5k and Rush 10k in Cook Park, Tigard, Oregon.

The first image is for the women's shirt and will be on a sky blue "silky smooth" technical shirt for the April reasons to run.

This is men's graphic and will be on a manly navy blue technical shirt
Everyone who registers for our 5k or 10k will get one of these shirts. If you want extra shirts or crave to share these designs with others...stay tuned. We plan to be offering the shirts for sale on www.reasontorun.com soon.

Getting the Kids Moving....Run for Fun!

Trisha (Reason to Run head runner) and Chris (Reason to Run friend) have started a cool new endeavor at a local Tigard school.

At Mary Woodward elementary Trisha and Chris will be offering an after school running program. From the club flyer:

This low pressure running club is perfect for everyone! Runners and walkers are welcome. We encourage parents to join us free of charge for a fun filled work out. We will meet Mondays and Thursdays under the covered area on the playground. One day will be dedicated to conditioning on campus and the other day we will run to Summer Lake Park. Please come dressed in sweats or shorts and tennis shoes. Make sure to bring a water bottle. We will meet for 8 weeks and finish the session with a “Fun Run” to celebrate our training!

Click on the runner logo to above to see the full after school program flyer.

This aligns with one our of core beliefs that everyone can benefit from being active. One easy way to be active is to run or walk.

Trisha and Chris will help the kids see the benefits of running and most importantly, show that exercise can be fun.

We know this program will be a great success and start another generation of active healthy people.

With one month until the Reason to Run spring events, we also look forward to many families coming out to the April 11th events: Spring Burst 5k, Spring Rush 10k and 1/2 mile kids run. Kids are more than welcom at our events whether running, walking or egging on their parents from the jogging stroller.

Life on the Run in Tigard

Reason to Run got amazing front page press in the latest Tigard / Tualatin / Sherwood Times.

We think the article captures the essence of our reasons to run and as to why we have created a race hosting company.

Click on the image at left to read the "Life on the Run in Tigard" article for yourself.

We hope it kindles in you a desire to get out for a run or walk today and to register to join us for our Spring Burst 5k and Rush 10k April 11, 2009 events in Cook Park, Tigard.

Thanks to Stover E Harger III and Jaime Valdez from the Times for the article and the pictures.

By the way, Darin is still happily working for IBM (not Intel).

Be a Friend of Reason to Run

Reason to Run (Trisha and I) would like to enlist your help in spreading the word for our upcoming Spring events. If you are planning to attend or would just like to show you are a fan of the April 11, 2009 events in Cook Park,Tigard we would ask that you consider putting a "friend" of Reason To Run logo on your web page to spread the word.

HTML Code to use:

<a href="http://www.reasontorun.com/springRaces"><img border="0"

src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPM8y3GMyi3_DK_FLukXB3gy23kgQYx40dFRQ5cB-6ANAb8mfV4rQGPF0hbt_AEoQJRoN0OeSFh2cLrUAH5g4ZQgjKrFQvpOSFf6KInZVVEZPksiqneSVyYqSE8oj7-WZU8UpY7yXamR_N/s200/friend.png"

 height="100" width="130" alt="I am running the Reason to Run Spring Events"/></a>

What it will look like:

Reason to Run Updates

We have been happily busy finalizing the details of the Reason To Run spring events in our post Hagg Lake trail race glow.

Today we had the pleasure of doing a photo shoot for an upcoming Tigard / Tualatin Times article on the history behind Reason To Run and our passion for running.
We headed to Cook park (the site of our first events) to meet up with the newspaper photographer. The photo shoot was a ton of fun and we felt like rock stars / models running on the trails for action shots.
We had lots of good laughs while the pictures were snapped. Can't wait to see the results with the article slated to hit the stands this Thursday.

Today we got a preview of the race shirt logo design from local artist Tyson Mangelsdorf. Just plain COOOL: retro grunge, yet stylistically current (does that make it sound like I know what I am talking about artistically?? :-) ). Running, nature, trails, beauty and wildness all rolled into one graphic. As soon as the design is finalized we will get it up on the webpage.

We also got listed today as a training run for the Eugene marathon. With our race date 3 weeks out from the Eugene marathon, we know we offer a great opportunity for Eugene marathon participants to have a checkpoint in their training and to test out marathon race day strategy and page.

So make sure to take advantage of all our hard work, kick in your training and register for either the Burst 5k or Rush 10k run in Tigard's scenic Cook park.
A course preview via pictures is available here.

Whether signing up for your first organized run or your hundredth, we know you will love our events as much as we have loved putting them together.