FISTFULAYEN

Last week’s Internet-wide SOPA/PIPA protests divided the Internet between content owners looking for stronger anti-piracy tools and technologists who believed the proposed legislation was an overreach. Those opposed said SOPA/PIPA opened the door to content companies taking down sites such as Tumblr and WordPress based on infringement by even one of the sites’ millions of users. Though I was at AOL/Nullsoft when Gnutella was created I am not pro-piracy by any stretch — half of what our company, Topspin, sells is easily-pirated digital audio and video (it could certainly be argued Topspin stands to benefit from SOPA-style legislation) and our raison d’être is helping artists leverage their creativity to build a fan base and earn a living. But I found myself on the side of the technologists in this debate; based on my read the legislation didn’t solve the problems it aimed to and created a number of unintended problems instead. I voiced my opposition to SOPA/PIPA in a letter on Topspin’s homepage last Wednesday, archived on Topspin’s blog for posterity.

Given many of SOPA’s proponents are people I count as both friends and business partners I found myself in frequent debates on the topic in person, over email, on Facebook, and in Twitter exchanges. In these debates I tried to convince this wasn’t an question of “is piracy good or bad?” but more of a mouthful: “what is the practical way to support an ecosystem where copyright holders have options and control without breaking the openness and innovation which makes the Internet valuable?” This is not a question of pro or anti piracy, it’s a question of how to put the controls of pricing and access into the hands of the person who owns the copyright while allowing innovation on the Internet as a platform for discovery and consumption.

More than one person turned the question back on me: “If SOPA/PIPA aren’t the answer, then what is?”

The first question that needs answered is: Do we need a legislative solution beyond what’s available today? Via previous legislation (DMCA, PRO IP) we already have a laws for protecting copyright online, as evidenced by the innumerable take-down notices issued to sites like YouTube every day and US government shut down and arrests of Megaupload and the company’s officers. But these take-down notices are exactly the problem, opponents will tell you. I spoke to a lawyer representing music publishers who described the cat/mouse game he plays with illegal lyrics sites every day. He can only practically issue so many take-down notices and can’t make a dent in the hundreds of thousands of pages these sites have up. Meanwhile legitimate sites which share ad revenue with the artists, or even artist pages who want to give their lyrics away for free online in the context of their own site, are pushed to search-results-page-two or further back. Similar are the complaints about torrents of MP3s or lossless files in search results, linking to .torrent files on transient off-shore servers and bundles of albums at sites like Megaupload, Rapidshare, and others who have plenty of legit purposes right alongside the illegal sharing of copy written material. Prior to this SOPA debate I would have told you further legislation wasn’t the answer or needed. Now that we’ve seen some very scary legislation introduced I would prefer to err on the side of proactivity from the technology camp. If we’re headed toward more legislation, let’s help craft the solution rather than complaining about the byproduct of lobbyist pressure. If there *is* something we can do to improve the cat/mouse game for content owners while maintaining an open and innovative Internet, let’s be a proactive part of that solution.

Also, as you are imaging what the Internet looks like once your solution is implemented, please keep in mind an increasing number of artists are releasing their content outside of the traditional models, in many cases for free. Take a look at the top 50 albums of 2011 on Pitchfork, 4 were given away as free downloads instead of sale (The Weeknd, Clams Casino, Danny Brown, and Frank Ocean). Read this incredible case study on how Pretty Lights went to #1 on Pirate Bay and reached millions of people as a result. Free is a price point many creative people will intentionally release their content at. Any legislation must be about giving artists control of how they release and charge for their creative work, not dictating a business model or price point to them.

There is a solution which curbs piracy, grows the industry overall, gives equal opportunity to all content holders, and allows for exponentially more innovation in the digital media space than we’ve seen in the past fifteen years. My proposal:

In brief:
A content registry where copyright holders can express the rules governing the use of their content and a legislative requirement sites dealing in media respect the rules expressed by the rights-holder in the registry.

In more detail:
A central organization or consortium would construct a content registry software solution and service. Copyright holders would place their media along with all the rules governing the use of said media, in the registry. These machine-readable rules would contain the prices for various uses of the content, from download and streaming to inclusion in subscription or other services. Any application creators willing to abide by the registry’s rules would be welcome to utilize the content, though rights holders could still opt in/out of specific services via the registry, too.

If you are building a sites with legitimate uses which could also be leveraged for piracy then you use the registry for a different reason, testing to see if the content uploaded by a user is available for the use in question. For example, if I upload a file to Rapidshare for free download, Rapidshare does an Audible Magic-style identification on the file then checks the registry to see if this content is available for free download. If so, awesome. If not, kick it back to the user. This is a non-trivial development challenge with many questions about who would build and maintain it, but it’s not science fiction. The technology exists. YouTube has very sophisticated recognition and rights management technology today. Similar systems have been built by countless companies over the years. Look under the hood of services such as MediaNet, 7digital, Rhapsody, and many others and you’ll find independently-developed versions of such a registry managing rights, paying rights-owners based on varying kinds of usage, etc. This solution would make a similar registry and technology available in a non-proprietary way.

An industry-wide content registry is not a new idea. In fact when Rob Lord and I started Medicode in 2001 the notion of a “digital packing slip” respected by all members of the digital value chain was a key part of our vision. I pitched this idea at Yahoo! when they purchased Mediacode in 2004 but couldn’t make it stick. VEVO CEO Rio Caraeff worked on something similar at Universal Music Group several years ago but wasn’t able to make progress there, either.

Today, if you want to start a music service, you start by visiting the major labels, sharing your idea and asking for a license to use their content in your service. Assuming you can get the meeting and general approval of your particular use, they ask for an advance payment (a steep barrier for most any startup technology company which immediately whittles the field down to relatively few players) and dictate the terms of an agreement. That’s just for the four (soon to be three) major labels. Once you’ve cleared that hurdle you need to find a way to cut a deal with thousands of independent labels to build a catalog of music. Also, this is just music which is easily organized by label, distributor, artist, album, track, and genre — other forms of art (movies, images, etc) are even messier. No wonder piracy reigns supreme. Building successful consumer-facing businesses on content is a nearly insurmountable challenge. Few, if any, technology companies have historically made it to positive cash-flow on this model in the past 15 years. It’s a high stakes game (evidence: the more than $100M Spotify has raised thus far) and the road is littered with the bodies of those who have attempted to run this gauntlet (recent evidence: Beyond Oblivion, a $40M smoking crater where $20M was spent on music licensing before a product even existed). For more on how this model works read Michael Robertson’s pessimistic piece re: Spotify.

But what if there existed this registry of all content, one where any developer was able to use your music to develop a service, so long as he respected your wishes. You, the content owner, could set the rules and the prices. Which tracks are available for free download? Available for streaming? How long a streaming sample allowed? High definition? At what price points? The market could decide if the price you’re asking is fair: “My service only supports downloads with a wholesale price of $0.70.” “My service is only interested in free downloads.” “My service is only interested in content which is available for subscription streaming.” The content owners could opt in/out simply by setting the rules. The upside to the industry as a whole is massive, developers willing to play by the rules can integrate media into their apps (and pay for the rights to do so) simply, and a true digital marketplace for content governed by market forces, not gatekeepers of large catalogs of content. I strongly believe the net of this will be more money to content owners more quickly than the current course we’re on today. We keep hearing “digital music needs to get to scale quickly for the music industry to succeed”; why wait for one player to scale when you could scale an industry of players?

Until this SOPA/PIPA debate I hadn’t thought of adding a legislative component to this idea of a content registry. Thinking on it over the past two weeks the “enforcement” component here strikes me as a reasonable pill to swallow. Oh there’s still something about it that makes me queasy and I reserve the right to change my tune based on the specific implementation but I think the quid pro quo here can be net positive for both sides. It would allow is a way for good actors to reasonably stop illegal uses on their sites while letting the many legal uses sail through without scary threats. You would effectively be drawing a bright line between white and black hats in the content services game, a line Safe Harbor works against today. This would be useful to both content sites who want to proactively respect copyright so long as the cost of becoming a white hat is not overly burdensome.

MPAA and RIAA: What do you say? Shall we work together to build an industry-wide technical solution to curb piracy and grow the overall pie? Embracing the above solution would show you aren’t simply interested in regaining yesterday’s control but are truly interested in seeing innovative content applications so long as your copyright is respected. Count me on board if you want to tackle this together.

Thanks for reading. I share this here to get feedback on the idea. If it resonates I can follow the thread. If it doesn’t I can refine my position. If it’s confusing I could devote an episode of This Week In Music to talking about it. Feel free to poke holes, comment, and share.

ian

ps – Dumb question:

In order to find a solution you have to identify exactly what you’re trying to solve. I found myself asking this question repeatedly and getting blank stares: “What, exactly, are you hoping SOPA/PIPA stops?” I’d ask. (Incredulous) “Piracy! Of course!” Arrrrrrr and avast ye! Unfortunately many don’t appreciate piracy is far from the only factor which has caused the traditional recorded music business to shrink in the past 12 years. What, specifically, are you hoping SOPA/PIPA eradicate? Limewire? (It’s dead) Torrents? File share sites? Sneaker Net? File transfer via AIM? Something else? When discussing a legislative solution to a technological problem, an “I know piracy when I see it” argument won’t pass muster. In order to propose a workable solution you have to first enumerate the specific situations you’re looking to overcome. What people told me they were trying to stop:

• Upload and share of copy written material to download sites (Megaupload, Rapidshare, etc), particularly when these sites are hosted on non-US soil and domains
• Search engines linking to Torrent sites
• Illegal lyrics sites

Anything else? Please be specific. I’d love to see a comprehensive list of the piracy outlets folks want to see stopped. For what it’s worth, these are all quite difficult because they’re general activities that have legitimate non-infringing uses, too, so any solution to these is by definition non-trivial.

[Reminder: I'm attempting to blog weekly as a put one foot in front of the other en route to the LA Marathon in March. Thanks to readers like you I've raised nearly $900 thus far. My goal is $2012. If you're reading this I'd appreciate you giving anything you can afford to Pablove. Thanks!]

After ten days of travel, I came home from LAX on Thursday evening in time to kiss my five year-old goodnight. Around 8pm she complained of a tummy ache. Around midnight she started throwing up, and didn’t stop until about 7pm the following evening. Last night around 10pm the bug took out my wife, Julie, who was up all night back/forth between the bed and the porcelain god. I woke up this morning feeling a less than perfect in the tummy department myself, but knowing I had 14 miles to run today to keep with my training. I was pretty sure I was next in line for the flu bug and heard the clock ticking. I thought maybe I could outrun it, literally, getting the run done before I went down for the count.

I laced up, put Lucinda in the stroller, and headed out the door. The first three or four miles were uncomfortable but not unmanageably so. Around mile five I knew I was toast, though. I was only two miles from the turn-around, but I knew I wasn’t going to make it. I was starting to get the hot flashes of the flu. Ugh.

Maybe I’ll get the 10 in, I decided. So I turned around at 5 miles and started running home. It started to become pointless. My GI distress was severe enough that every step was a challenge. I decided to call it, and walked the final mile plus to the Hotel Erwin, where I folded up the stroller and spent $10 on a cab ride home. Once home I succumbed to the flu bug myself and I’ve spent the day in/out of consciousness and the bathroom. I think I may have had the easiest of the family, though, I’m already feeling much better, sitting upright, and drinking some water. I have Accelerade popsicles freezing right now, ready for my breakfast tomorrow.

I’m definitely bummed to not have completed an important day in my training program. It’s ironic that I managed to make it through all my key runs traveling from home to NYC to Nashville to SF to Vegas (including a hungover tempo run on the Vegas strip Thursday morning) but didn’t manage to get through a long run right here at home on an excellent night’s sleep. There’s no accounting for illness, as they say. Hal Higdon talks about people who get anal retentive about their program, wondering if they will finish the marathon if they miss one session. I’m not that guy, but I would like to see how the plan works when applied. Since I did nearly 7 today I’m going to swap this out for Tuesdays run and try to do my 14 miler when recovered on Tuesday. I’ll let you know how that goes.

[UPDATE: I put the 14 miler behind me this morning (Tuesday, as planned). Felt good. Telemetry can be found in my RunKeeper account right here. Special thanks to my stroller-riding running companion, five year-old Lucinda, for her patience. Lucinda's playlist from today can be found right here.]

Brad Barrish sent me this link from Outside Magazine tonight: The 10 Biggest Fitness Myths. Here’s my response. I’m curious to hear how y’all feel about these myths and my responses:

1. Stretching. Agreed. I *never* stretched until recently and it treated me well. I’m stretching more now, seeing if it might help with soreness as I add miles. My right IT band is tightening as it’s been known to do in the past. Still, I find the foam roller more effective than stretching. More important than stretching is likely increasing mileage slowly. Stretching and yoga definitely *feels* good, though!
2. Barefoot. What they report there matches my personal experience with barefoot running. I have stopped barefoot running for the time being due to a weird little injury in my foot, a swelling under my right ankle which seems to be irritated by barefoot running (I keep meaning to have it looked at but just haven’t had time). Still, barefoot runing did really improve my form and my time, I’d like to go back to it on the short runs again soon and will do it as soon as I’m sure it won’t jeopardize my training program.
3. Core strength. The “myth” they’re pointing to here seems like unhelpful bullshit to me. I believe my improvements in form and speed are directly related to weight-training. There’s just no question that solid foundational fitness allows you to hold better form for longer amounting to better performance with less fatigue.
4. I don’t know anyone who thinks guzzling before running prevents cramps. Is this really a myth? More on my hydration experimentations below.
5. Re: Ibuprofen. Makes sense. I’ve never heard any science around this and like the above I never read any sports nutritionists who recommend this. Eating a good meal of whole foods post-run probably speeds recovery more than anything. Hardcore dudes do things like spray magnesium on their legs and wear compression tights. But that’s only after something gnar gnar like a marathon or ironman.
6. Their comment re: dehydration is directly related to the post last week where Dr. Noakes debunks the hydration myth. Based on my personal experience, I would have to agree. I don’t take any liquid on runs less than one hour. On a run of an hour or more I would take a small amount of water (12 oz per hour) and some gel packs. Based on what I know hitting “The Wall” comes from running out of glycogen stores in your liver, not a lack of water or salt. I’ll let you know if that changes based on my experimentation over the course of this training.
7. I have no experience with ice baths so I can’t comment here. Sounds fuckin cold and unpleasant, so if it’s a placebo I’ll skip it, thanks.
8. I’ve heard the same research they note here, that the fastest way to burn calories is with high-intensity interval training. Sounds like you can get just as much cal-burn benefit from very short workout, based on the research. It also sounds really un-fun. I only get the one day of interval training in per week on this marathon program so I’m likely spending my time all wrong, plodding along for hours on these long runs. Heh. Maybe this will be my next experiment…
9. They’re claiming fructose is good for you when training and can in fact make you faster. Not sure I buy this one, it’s counter to other research I’ve heard. Carbs in fructose are difficult to access. I call bullshit. Get your fructose from whole fruits, not high-fructose corn syrup.
10. It’s funny, I’ve read a ton on supplements and everyone says basically the same thing: no conclusive evidence of anything here that improves performance. I take a whole food multi vitamin, a vitamin D, and some fish oil. For the rest? Eat good whole foods, lots of fruits and veggies.

See you next week.

ian

Week 4 in my marathon training lead-up! Truth is I’m just looking for a reason to blog every week to remind people I’m raising money for Pablove while training for the 2012 LA Marathon. I’m over $700 from three blog posts with about 12 weeks to go. Any help getting to my goal of $2012 is appreciated. Click here to donate any amount.

Hopefully there will be some tidbits in these blog posts that help you with your training of any kind or length. I know I’ve already got a ton of value from the feedback people have left in the comments. If you have something to share please don’t be shy.

Hello from a plane home from Nashville, TN. This morning’s run was INCREDIBLE, probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever had the pleasure of running, but more on that later…

Thanks to a comment Mike Hughes left here on the blog I’ve just discovered Ben Greenfield’s podcast and have been catching up on lots of episodes over the past couple of weeks. Some are definitely better than others but there’s a ton of great info there, particularly from Ben himself who I find to be more knowledgeable than most of his guests. This morning was an exception to that rule, though. I listened to a great interview with the man who wrote what is widely referred to as the definitive (and certainly heaviest) book about running, South African Dr. Tim Noakes, author of The Lore of Running. I commonly use Tim’s book as a free-weight/sleep-aid and pick it up whenever I want to fall asleep quickly. Not that it’s boring, it’s not, it’s just DENSE, more a physiology text than a “how to run” book.

On Ben’s show this morning Dr. Noakes was giving a preview of a new book he has coming out next year where he uses science to dispel the (he says) Gatorade-created myth that we need many liters of sugary, salty sports drink during exercise. He says the science doesn’t point to the need to hydrate ahead of being thirsty nor does it point to a need for more salt as you sweat. His advice: drink to thirst, no more, no less, and water is fine (he also says if your body is used to a salty sports drink you shouldn’t go cold turkey, wean). This typically amounts to 12-18oz of liquid per hour, not the 40oz the Gatorade Science Foundation recommends. Shocking.

You can listen to the entire podcast here.

Tim also mentioned that at 62 he’s running as fast as he was in his early 40s, a turnaround he attributes to adopting the Paleo Diet.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, this past week was a marathon travel week, from home in Los Angeles to New York City to SF to home to Nashville. Each stop was full of meetings and on top of it we had a crazy end-of-year crush of a work week. I still had to cover approximately 35 miles on foot over that time to keep up with training. It wasn’t easy to fit it in, but thanks to some help from friends I got it done and enjoyed every minute of it.

Monday and Tuesday: New York City

I stayed mid-town near 30th and Madison. I landed around midnight and by the time I collected my bag and headed into the city it was after 2am ET before I got to sleep. Still, I set the alarm for 6am ET (3am PT — OUCH) to get an easy 3 miler in. I headed east in the dark, searching for the path along the eastern coastline. It wasn’t easy to get all the way there but eventually I found the entrance along 25th street. Not exactly scenic, especially in the dark. But, three miles done: check.

The crazy thing was noting how easy it is to get in way more steps in NYC than I get back home. I went from meeting to meeting all day, walking when I had time instead of taking the subway. At the end of the day I’d logged more than 25,000 steps. On a non-run day in LA I come in more around 5,000, daily goal is 10,000 and even on a run day in LA I’m only around 15,000. It was a good reminder a walking commute is plenty to get a minimum level of physical activity and burn 500 or so calories.

Day two called for a seven mile run so I headed to the West Side Highway for what is by all accounts a much nicer run path. Tis true. Not only is it a better run but I finally got a peek at the skate park at Chelesa Piers. Looks damn fun. Only problem, the weather went from no rain to light rain to steady rain while I was out. Not terrible, though. Fine run. Check.

Wednesday, Northern California

I woke up Wednesday morning in Northern California and headed out for a short 3-miler. The hotel recommended a running path and I found it but also found it was pitch black at 6am. I ran along it for a bit but it really didn’t seem like the smartest place to be all alone in the dark so I bailed and ran along a street instead. Funny part was it was colder in Northern California than it was in NYC this early December.

Thursday, Santa Monica, CA

Thursday morning I was back home and since the Higdon program I chose for this training plan called for hill training I ran to the beach then hit my favorite hill in Santa Monica (Pearl Street between Lincoln and 12th in Santa Monica) for some uphill sprints.

Thankfully Friday was a rest day because I was up all night Thursday working with Topspin pals Bob, Paul, Shamal, and Brian (I love you mans) and only managed a couple hour nap rather than a night’s sleep.

Saturday and Sunday, Nashille, TN

Saturday called for six miles at marathon pace which I did from where I was staying with friends (thanks for hosting, Shelly, Jeff, and Emmylou!) in East Nashville into a gorgeous park called Shelby Bottoms.

Sunday was long run day (13 miles) so at sun-up I retraced my steps into Shelby Bottoms and just kept on going. Around mile four I found a foot bridge heading east over the river. The view from the bridge was stunning. The sun was just peeking over the horizon and the river was filled with fog while the sky was otherwise clear. So here floating in a river lined with tall trees on each side were wispy billows of fluffy beautifulness. It was an incredible run worthy of a photo and a two page spread in some running magazine. Also, just like in NYC, I managed a run past the local skate park which looks fun and worthy of a visit. The only downside: it was *cold* in Nashville this weekend, particularly at dawn, in the high 20s F. My hands froze on Saturday’s run so I hit a running store and picked up some two-layer mittens from Saucony. I fared much better during the hour and forty-five minutes I was on the trail this morning but still came back with frozen fingers.

Now I’m doing the opposite of stretching, sitting in a seat on a plane, headed for home. Tonight is Kid Rock at The Malibu Inn (!) and tomorrow I’m on a 6am flight again… Are the holidays here yet?

Reminder: You can follow along with my training at RunKeeper here and donate to my Pablove fundraising page here.

Question of the day: How am I going to get my running workouts in when I head to Mammoth between Xmas and NYE? Bundle up and hit the streets or find a treadmill? I’m wondering how my speed training will fare at altitude…

In the Nashville spirit I offer you this great short documentary of the esteemed Johnny Corndawg marathon training on tour (thanks Jeff Colvin for turning me on to both Johnny and this video):

Oh one more thing. I finally looked up the results of the 10-miler I ran in Nashville a month ago. Results here. Note that while I won the 35-39 age group I wouldn’t have won either 40-44 or 45-49! That was a fun and beautiful local race competing directly with a huge Rock N Roll Half Marathon on the same day. I’d highly recommend it.

Thanks for reading and supporting. See you on the road.

ian

Two new episodes of This Week In Music are ready for your viewing and educational pleasure at ThisWeekIn.com, YouTube, and iTunes:

We celebrated Black Friday with the head of the music industry’s retail trade group, NARM, Jim Donio. Jim educated us on the history of music retail, which didn’t start out as I’d imagined.

To commemorate the week of release of Jay Frank’s latest book, Hack Your Hit, we aired our previously-recorded interview with Jay where he told us all about leaving CMT/Viacom to start a digital singles-only label in addition to his two “how to make a hit” books. A must for anyone interested in the anatomy of hit-making.

Enjoy, and don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes and YouTube and follow This Week In Music on Twitter and Facebook.

Thanks!

ian

For those just tuning in, I’m training for the March 2012 LA Marathon and attempting to take some time each week to share progress and thoughts here. Hopefully a few people will enjoy them enough to contribute to my Pablove fundraising page in support. Thanks to everyone who has contributed thus far. I’ve raised more than $500 with just two blog posts. Hopefully I can keep it moving, and DJ Strictnine and Paranorm once said…

Week three complete! It was an easy week overall, just one speed session and a step back from 11 to 8 miles on the long run. The speed session wasn’t easy but I got it done and my time wasn’t terrible (better than Higdon recommended, not quite as good as where I wanted to be according to Daniel’s Running Formula). There are two things I’m finding challenging:

1. Getting enough sleep.
   I used to think sleeping less was a desired characteristic of alpha dudeness, but the science nerd in me has soundly trumped my alpha dude with facts. Scientists don’t fully understand *why* we need sleep but they know conclusively we do, especially when exercising hard. Lack of sleep leaves your body unable to recover from intense workouts and headed for injury. Not to mention the fact that lack of sleep has been linked to all the symptoms of aging; as we get older we get less and less deep sleep as our body slowly enters the cool-down phase of life.
   I’ve been tracking my sleep with my Fitbit and the trend this week was bad, starting at six hours and change and steadily decreasing night after night for one reason or another (travel, work, holiday party madness, etc). On Saturday night I finally recharged for a full eight hours and Fitbit tells me that’s the first eight-hour stint I’ve had in many weeks. Not good. Aim: 8 hours of sleep on more nights.
2. Keeping the workouts going while traveling.
   I travel a lot for work (this week it’s NYC->SF->LA->Nashville) and making time/place to run isn’t trivial. Tonight for example I’m landing in NYC after midnight, probably won’t be in my hotel room until nearly two a.m., and will need to be up at six or seven a.m. to get tomorrow’s workout in before a full day/night of meetings. Ouch. So much for #1 above (tonight at least).
   But I’m making it a priority and have the week mapped out. I’m opting out of seeing The Black Keys late tomorrow night in NYC so I can get up early on Tuesday and get my long mid-week run in. I made sure the cheapo startup-budget hotels I’m staying at in both NYC and SF have a treadmill in case of crappy weather. I’m traveling solo with my five year-old to Nashville so I need to be sure I can plan a way to get my Saturday and Sunday runs in either with a borrowed stroller or someone to be around while she sleeps in (she’ll stay on Pacific time and sleep til nine a.m. CT) while I get the race pace and long runs in early.
   It might seem like a hassle or a distraction but I actually dig it. Without the morning run I’m way more likely to eat wrong and drink too much alcohol while traveling. It’s helpful for me to have another outlet to fixate on.

If you have any tips/tricks for getting more sleep or keeping up with your exercise while traveling, please leave ‘em in the comments below.

Also, I wanted to thank my friend Mike Hughes for turning me on to Ben Greenfield’s podcast in the comments of last week’s blog post. I hadn’t heard of Ben before but I’ve been listening to him as much as possible since last week. Ben is an incredible resource. He’s knowledgeable and clearly works hard to steer away from hyperbole and stick with the science of fitness. Very worth listening to if you’re interested in fitness and the science of the body.

Speaking of science, both Runner’s World (Dec) and Running Times (Nov) had some interesting stats roundups in their recent issues showing trends in running. A few things I learned:

• If you think running is for affluent dudes, you’re half right. 96% of the responders to Runner’s World’s survey were college educated, but the male/female split was even steven, 50/50. What’s interesting is how recent a phenomenon that is. The Running Times article reports 25% of 4.7M road race finishers were female in 1990 but 53% of the 13M were in 2010. Also, note the more than 2x growth in total finishers over the same 20 years. Wow. Marathon finishers are slightly less female at 41% in 2010, but that’s up from 10% in 1980 and 19% in 1990.
• We’re damn close to the ceiling on what elite runners can do with the human body. Despite huge gains in knowledge over the past 25 years, the 1st place finisher time at the NY Marathon has only increased 3 min 20 seconds between 1985 and 2010 from 2:11:34 to 2:08:14. Have superior body mechanics and running economy, move to altitude, run in snowshoes, pile on 140 miles/week, and you too could stand a chance of beating that by a second or two.
• As the population of marathon runners more than tripled from 143K to 507K between 1980 and 2010, the median time got slowly worse through 2005 (from 3:32 to 4:20 for men) but improved slightly between 2005 and 2010 (to 4:16). So perhaps there are now enough people in marathoning to know the median time it takes a human to cover 26 miles?
• I thought this stat was funny: While 96% of the Runner’s World respondents were college educated only 82% were employed. The 18% unemployment rate is 2x our current scary national average and probably 4x the average for the college educated population at-large. Running must be popular among stay-at-home parents. I know if I had my dream gig (Mr. Mom) I’d try to work my way up to elite status.

Please think of me running along the east side of NYC at 4am PT tomorrow morning. If that doesn’t make you contribute to my fundraising page at Pablove, what will? Feel free to drop a challenge in the comments.

Oh! One more thing: Since they don’t make running shirts with the Misfits skull or Slayer logo I want to put my own designs on running shirts. I’m surprised Zazzle or Cafe Press don’t offer some decent Dri Fit shirts. Anyone know how to do this on a one-off basis? I found some spots with 20 shirt minimums but I don’t see how that’s going to work unless I find a batch of folks as idiotic as I am. Maybe I should try to get Isac Walter involved…

ian