OneHandedBlogger

On Life with One Hand by Keiron McCammon

  • Work
  • Triathlon
  • Media
  • About

What Does it Take?

March 11, 2020 by keiron Leave a Comment

When people find out that I’m training for an Ironman the conversation invariably steers towards the training that it takes to be able to complete a 140.6-mile race.

Now, while I’m not “mister speedy” out there, I thought I’d share a little of my preparation for the Ironman World Championship this October in Kona, Hawaii.

Things kicked off in October last year as I started to get back into training with my coach Paul Kinney (Kinney Multisport).

Paul has been my coach since I started doing triathlons in 2008. Having a coach is critical to me. The accountability keeps me honest, and I don’t have to think about my training, I just have to do it.

My overall training regime consists of swimming three times a week, biking three times a week, and running three times a week.

I also add in yoga three times a week as I find it helps keep me injury-free.

So that’s twelve workouts crammed into six days (Mondays are nominally a recovery day, though, I still do yoga), with longer distance workouts at the weekend.

The duration, distance, or intensity of each workout builds week-over-week for three weeks and then the fourth week is a recovery week with lighter intensity workouts.

This four-week cycle repeats month-after-month, ad-nauseam, until race day (twelve months for me this time, though typically it’d be more like nine months).

To make everything a little more concrete, here’s my training schedule from last week (my first race of the season is five weeks away, Ironman Florida 70.3, and I’ve just finished my penultimate four-week cycle before the race):

WorkoutDurationDistance
MondayRest Day
Yoga1:00:00
TuesdayBike1:00:1519 miles
Run0:10:431.12 miles
WednesdayYoga1:00:00
Swim0:44:022,000 yards
ThursdayBike1:00:1518.4 miles
Run0:55:385.82 miles
FridayYoga1:00:00
Swim0:44:142,000 yards
SaturdayBike3:26:1055 miles
Run0:46:044.7 miles
SundaySwim0:47:492200 yards
Run1:50:0711 miles
14:25:17119 miles

Over fourteen hours and nearly one hundred and twenty miles, and that’s for a Half Ironman.

As it gets closer to October most of the above times and distances will increase, (particularly the weekend workouts), as I build towards being ready for the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, and 26.2-mile run in Kona. By then I’ll be training over twenty hours and covering closer to two hundred miles a week.

You may be thinking, “wow, there’s no way I could do that.”

That’s certainly what I said to myself when I first started doing triathlons and saw these “crazies” who were training for their first Ironman.

“Why would they want to do that?” I’d exclaim to anyone willing to listen.

And yet here I am…as with many things in life, it’s a gradual progression that starts with an incredulous first step.


Thank you to everyone who has donated to date to help me reach my goal of raising $50,000 for the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF) by my 50th birthday next February.

I’m up to $17,524 already!

A big shout out to Alex, Julian, R2, Cynthia, Bob, Brian, Claire & Sean, Patricia, Stefan, Seph, Lynne, James, Jordan, Victor, Hershy, Christine, Kat, Chris, and Marla, thank you for your support.

Can you help? Kerry and I will match you dollar for dollar.

You can donate online here:
http://support.challengedathletes.org/goto/kona-2020

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Fifty @ Fifty

February 2, 2020 by keiron Leave a Comment

It has been a while since I last wrote. Maybe it’s age, but it’s astounding how easily a year or two can slip by, and believe me it’s been a busy couple of years.

When last I wrote it was June 2017 and I had completed my third Ironman at Lake Placid, putting in a personal best at age 46.

Fast forward a year to August 11th, 2018 and Kerry and I were renewing our vows, celebrating 18 years of marriage with friends & family in Kerry’s hometown in England. Her Dad finally getting to walk his only child down the aisle.

Then, come August 2019, we were both racing at Ironman 70.3 Boulder before heading off on a month-long Safari in Africa, traveling through Namibia and Botswana.

Now, it’s 2020 and the beginning of a new decade, and it has been a decade since I completed my first Ironman and set out to be a shining example of the power of the human mind, body, and spirit, inspiring others to overcome that which stops them from reaching their highest potential.

This year, thanks to my wonderful wife, I get to compete at the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii – the birthplace of Ironman triathlon – fulfill a dream I’ve had since completing my first 140.6 mile Ironman in Cozumel.

To commemorate this grand challenge, and to give me the encouragement not to quit, I’d love to raise $50,000 for the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF) by my 50th birthday a year from today.

Can you help me? To donate online, click here.

Kerry and I will match you dollar for dollar.

And should your company have a donation matching program, then we’ll also match their match…so every dollar you donate could equate to four times that going to CAF.

Why do I support CAF (aside from my personal connection as an upper limb amputee)?

  • 21 million people live with a physical disability in the USA
  • 50% of adults with a disability get no aerobic exercise
  • Children with disabilities have a 38% higher obesity rate

Most insurance companies do not cover adaptive sports equipment, which many individuals with physical challenges simply cannot afford alone.

This is where CAF steps in and offers support through grants, camps & clinics, and mentorship to individuals with physical challenges who want to get involved in sports and be active.

Since CAF was founded in 1994, it has:

  • Raised over $112,000,000
  • Provided 26,000+ grants
  • For 103 different sports
  • In all 50 states across the US
  • And in 70 countries worldwide
  • Reaching an estimated 20,000,000 people with their message of hope and inspiration

On April 19th I’ll be competing at my first race of the season, Ironman 70.3 Florida and will be sure to post a race update!

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Why Write?

August 28, 2017 by keiron Leave a Comment

“What are you writing about?” The common response I hear upon telling someone, “I’m working on a book.”

When confronted by a blank page, “what am I going to write?” Is the foremost thought in my mind. What? What indeed.

In persistently asking “what” is it at all possible I’m grasping at the wrong end of the stick?

In Simon Sinek’s TED talk titled “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”, he expounds that people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.

And while buy in this context relates to marketing and sales, I believe the message has broader applicability. He explains how most businesses or brands focus on communicating their value based on what they do, as he says, “we make cars that are faster than anyone else,” or, “…are more fuel efficient…”, or, “…can fit more people.” He continues, explaining that some brands in an attempt to differentiate themselves, tell how they do it. Very few, though, are clear about why they do it. The purpose, cause or belief that underlies their existence. Those brands that do, however, are the brands with the cult-like followings; the raving fan customers that queue for days to purchase or experience the latest new thing.

Take Apple, a brand Sinek uses as an exemplar, imagine if Apple marketed like this:

“We make great computers, they are beautifully designed, simple to use and are user-friendly, want to buy one?”

Nothing unusual with this message, as he says, it’s the way most of us would communicate. It starts with what they do and works inwards.

Apple, though, does not market like this; instead, their message is:

“With everything we do we believe in challenging the status quo, in thinking differently, our products are beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly, we just happen to make great computers, want to buy one?”

What a difference starting with why makes. Sinek states that Apple “consistently thinks, acts and communicates from the inside out.” They start with why, and as consumers, we feel it. Just compare the brand appeal of Apple to someone like Dell, who also happens to make computers and other consumer electronics.

I believe, there is something akin to Sinek’s why when it comes to writing. On the outside is what we write: fiction or nonfiction; books or plays; poems or sonnets; essays or articles. The topics we enjoy, the stories we like to tell, the genres to which we gravitate.
Some may know who it is they are writing for: children; teenagers; or adults. Those in love, those not. Those who enjoy science fiction, those who read romance, those that enjoy thrillers or are in need of a laugh.

How many though, know why they write?

“Because it’s my job,” doesn’t count and doing it for fame and fortune is perhaps a little hopeful.

Why is hard. It’s fuzzy. What we do is so much simpler, more concrete, easier for us to verbalize. Digging deep into our psyche to uproot our seemingly unconscious motivations and desires is effortful. It doesn’t come naturally to most. But, what if, before putting pen to paper, instead of asking, “what am I going to write?” You ask instead, “why is it I write?” How different would that be?

What is it that drives you, that compels you? What sustains you as you sit staring at the blank page or pound away tirelessly to shape a paragraph, rewrite a sentence or change a word for the umpteenth time?

Are you writing to right a wrong, to set the record straight? To make a difference in the world—leave a dent in the universe, as Steve Jobs would say? To share a story that is burning up inside of you. To educate, to entertain, to inspire, to shock, to elicit a smile or cause a tear to shed. To be the best damn writer, poet, playwright the world has ever seen.

“Enough already!”, I hear you scream, “it’s because it’s who I am.”

Now that’s a powerful statement. There is no more powerful a driver of human action than our beliefs about who we are. When your why becomes part of that, part of your identity, there is no challenge or obstacle, or blank page or recalcitrant phrase or awkward word that can stand in your way.

I’d posit that the Greats knew why they wrote. Shakespeare knew why he wrote. I couldn’t image the great bard explaining prosaically to someone that he’d just met in a pub in Elizabethan England:

“I mostly write plays, in them, I capture the essence of the human condition, want to see one?”

No, he would say:

“I am the chronicler of my time; I see the truth of what it is to be human, endlessly interesting and impossible to reduce to a simple formula, my plays capture the essence of the human condition, want to see one?”

Perhaps what makes great writing is not what is written, but why it was written. Is it not our passion, our drive, our purpose that brings life to the page, that seeps into every word we choose, the phrases we construct and paragraphs we write, grabbing the reader by the scruff of the neck and shouting, “read on, read on, I wrote this just for you!”

Writing is an arduous task, as the saying goes, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it; but if you have a powerful enough why anything is possible. It’s not what you write; it’s why you write that matters.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Don’t Quit The Day Job (Just Yet)

August 28, 2017 by keiron Leave a Comment

…or how to go from idea to founding team before you do.

Much has been written about how important “team” is to the success of a startup and surely no team is more important than the founding team. If true, then why is it that so many entrepreneurs look to blind luck or happenstance as they go about building one? I know that I have been guilty of spending more time interviewing and vetting a potential employee than I did a co-founder.

Courtesy of https://bradyenterpriseassociation.com/

I’ve been fortunate to be part of the founding teams for three startups in Silicon Valley, with my third landing me in New York (post-acquisition) three years ago. Since then I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many New York entrepreneurs embarking on their first entrepreneurial journeys. All of them, without fail, have an idea they are passionate about. Some may have already quit their day job to chase their dream. A few might have raised some seed funding to help finance it. What I find most surprising though, is that rarely is there an established founding team. Invariably, I meet solo entrepreneurs looking to build a team. If this is you read on.

Thanks to Steve Blank and Eric Ries of Lean Startup fame, there is plenty to read on how to develop your business or product. But how should you approach developing a founding team? There is little doubt that going it alone stacks the odds against you. Based on a survey of 650 companies, the 2012 Startup Genome Report identified that “solo founders take 3.6x longer to reach scale stage compared to a founding team of 2 and they are 2.3x less likely to pivot” (the latter being of particular relevance given the report also identified that “startups that pivot once or twice raise 2.5x more money, have 3.6x better user growth and are 52% less likely to scale prematurely than startups that pivot more than 2 times or not at all”).

The best time to start building a founding team is long before you quit your day job and a great way to start is with a Kitchen Cabinet. No, not that kind of cabinet. The term Kitchen Cabinet was coined in the 1800’s during Andrew Jackson’s presidency of the United States. It was used to describe a collection of unofficial advisers he consulted (to the chagrin of some) in parallel to the United States Cabinet. As you search for like-minded individuals that might have an interest in your idea, instead of asking them to quit their well-paying jobs at Google or Facebook to join you as a co-founder and work for no salary until you can (hopefully) raise some funding, instead pitch them your idea and see if they’d be willing to dedicate a few hours a week to kick the tires on it.

You’re looking for people with complementary skills or experience to your own. People with differing perspectives that can act as a sounding board and question your beliefs and assumptions, all in the name of honing your idea into a well-formulated business opportunity. To be clear, this isn’t someone you have to pay. A software development partner or consultant willing to build your product for cash and/or equity doesn’t qualify, they come with their own agenda. And you should be upfront with everyone that there is no guarantee that anything will come of their efforts. They aren’t committing to joining you should you start something and you aren’t committing that they would be part of it, even if you did. Of course, the whole point of the exercise is to be on the lookout for a potential co-founder or early hire, but that bridge could be six or nine months away. Your Kitchen Cabinet will force you to get your idea out of your head and subject it to the critical thinking of others while the risks are still low; after all, no one has given up their day job yet. And you’ll get a chance to work with people you may later wish to partner with (or not as the case may be).

I first got exposed to the concept of a Kitchen Cabinet in 2004 thanks to Manish Chandra, (currently Founder/CEO of Poshmark). He had an idea for a collaborative bookmarking site, yet as a first-time entrepreneur faced the challenge of how to build a founding team around it. Over a period of nine months or more he invited over a dozen individuals, people he’d worked with, friends, and friends of friends, to meet at his house on Saturday mornings to discuss, conceptualize and prototype what ultimately became Kaboodle (acquired by Hearst Corporation in 2007). I was one of those individuals who gave up their Saturday mornings to refine the idea and many months later took a leap of faith and gave up my day job to start Kaboodle with Manish and Chetan (another Kitchen Cabinet member). By then we’d all had a chance to work together vetting the idea, researching solutions and building prototypes. Manish got to observe who was committed, who contributed beyond a few hours at the weekend and who might fit culturally. And, there was an added bonus, since there’s nothing quite like a bit of co-creation to bind a founding team together. I’ve used the Kitchen Cabinet multiple times to good effect. My only regret is the one time I didn’t.

But, what if you aren’t able to find anyone to join your Kitchen Cabinet? Well, either your idea isn’t very compelling, or you aren’t very compelling I’m afraid. Either way, you should stop and reevaluate what you are doing. If you can’t even get a couple of people to give up a few hours a week to work on your idea what makes you think you could successfully attract investors, employees or customers later on?

And no-one is going to steal your idea. I hate to break the bad news, but ideas are two-a-penny. What matters is execution. Taking the acorn of an idea and growing it into an oak tree is indescribably hard and any thoughts you share today will evolve so much between now and your ultimate success, that the risk of someone stealing your idea and getting it right is comparatively low compared to the risk of keeping it to yourself and going it alone. And, once you’ve incorporated, you can protect your company’s intellectual property by making anyone who contributed to its early development an advisor; in exchange for advisory shares, they assign all intellectual property over. A just reward for those in the Kitchen Cabinet that helped get the company started, yet, for whatever reason, wasn’t able to jump on board.

I share my Kitchen Cabinet story with entrepreneurs, usually, after they have told me how great their idea is and, with an expectant look, continue on to say that they just need to find a great CTO to join them as a co-founder. Sell me on your idea. Enlist me in your cause. Invite me to join your Kitchen Cabinet by all means. Just don’t ask me to be your co-founder the first time we meet. That’s like asking someone to marry you on a first date.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
« Previous Page
Next Page »
Keiron McCammon

Get Updates

Archives

  • January 2023
  • October 2022
  • June 2021
  • October 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • July 2016
  • January 2016
  • October 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • May 2015
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • August 2014
  • May 2014
  • February 2014
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • May 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • November 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • March 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006

Copyright © 2006–2023 · Keiron McCammon

 

Loading Comments...