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One of my favorite documentaries is Meru. It tells the story of Jimmy Chin, Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk as they attempt to climb the Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru. After a failed attempt in 2008, the story returns to the United States where the three climbers make sense of their motivations to climb the mountain again. During this time, Renan Ozturk has a major accident that puts his ability to walk again into question. This reality did not deter Renan’s desire to get health and strong enough to make another attempt on Meru with his two friends Jimmy and Conrad.
In their story, there was a pivotal decision that needed to be made by Jimmy and Conrad. They had to decide if they would feel comfortable making a summit attempt with Renan, even if he was able get back to normal strength. Would they ever be able to trust his abilities in the way they did prior to his accident?
There are those moments in life that you can look back on that appear to be clearly pivotal moments. When I look back on the past 37.95 years here are a few of those moments that I can identify with hindsight: (In chronological order)
1. Transferring to O’Neill Public High School my senior year of high school
2. Deciding to go to college, then attending the University of Nebraska - Lincoln (this was not always a given in my mind)
3. Choosing exercise science as my major (who knew studying exercise was a possibility?)
4. Moving to Kentucky to attend graduate school
5. Working as a health educator for Teller County Public Health and the Steps to a Healthier US program
6. Getting married
7. Deciding to move back to Kentucky and ultimately choosing to call Lexington our home
8. Making the decision to work full-time on Endurance Base Camp (although EBC name actually came later)
9. Joining Retrofit and not working on Endurance Base Camp
As I review the list, there are a few themes: education, location and work are important variables on the list. In this reflection, I am highlighting those events because of the adventures that I am getting ready to start. If I would make another list, I would include the many relationships and friendships that I have made. Meeting certain individuals and developing those relationships over the years would easily have a bigger impact on life than what education, job or place I have chosen.
But today I’m focused on education, occupation and location. Why? The answer is because this week is the beginning of my next adventure which will impact all three of these areas of my life.
Education:
Today I will meet the nine other individuals who are starting the Awesome Inc U’s Web Developer Bootcamp. Starting the bootcamp was a fairly large decision for me, as it is a 12 week full time commitment. I anticipate that for the duration of the program, things will be intense. The accelerated pace of learning is going to be both a challenge and exciting experience.
Occupation:
In 2001 I made my first attempt at starting a company that brought allied health services online. My vision at the time was to bring exercise, nutrition, athletic training and general health (nursing) professionals together, then offer those services to individuals who were looking to optimize their health. That experience was a total failure in every sense of the word. I realized that I did not understand nearly as much about business as I thought I did. I also discovered that it would be challenging to build businesses on the web if I did not understand how the web operated. That is when I started to learn various web development technologies. I learned the basics. Since that time I have played around with html, css and some php. Things were much different in 2001 then they are today. Today you can create well designed and beautiful websites without any programming knowledge.
The journey since that time has been a lot of fun. I have learned at every turn that being at the intersection between technology and an individual’s health, fitness and wellness goals is where I am the most happy. This is an exciting intersection to work and play.
When I take a look at the current state of this intersection, I get excited about the advancement in sensor, monitoring and diagnostic technologies and the corresponding data collection from those technologies. That data needs places to go, whether it’s your electronic health records or an app that shows the mapping of your last bike ride. Finally, that data needs to have a purpose. It needs to be able to inform your physician, improve your medical care, notify allied health professionals, allow you to optimize your own nutrition or fitness program, document baseline health metrics and monitor changes in health status over time. In reality, the uses of that data feels like an endless road of possibilities.
I try and live in the second and third stages of that process. I like to focus on where data goes and how to intelligently use that data to improve the individual’s health, fitness and performance.
Education + Occupation:
My goal in pursuing the education from the bootcamp is to improve my personal skill set so I can perform better. I would consider myself an expert in the areas of health, fitness and performance. I also believe I have an excellent sense for using data to optimize decision making, as it relates to those domains. What I hope to learn through this experience is how to more effectively store, manipulate and display that data. Having worked with others who were very talented and experienced in those areas the past 4.5 years at Retrofit, I realized that had a growing desire to develop those skills myself. While I have made progress over the past couple years, I am looking forward to the opportunity to focus on nothing but developing those skills for the next 12 weeks.
Location:
What does location have to do with this reflection? It was some time ago that I realized that I had become less engaged in the local community. The only real engagement I had with Lexington was through the run group I support each fall and spring. While that provided some sense of involvement, I had a strong desire to become more involved. To better understand how I could participate more in the local startup environment, I contacted Nick Such from AwesomeInc. That meeting lead to me joining the membership, which was effectively a weekly tutoring program for coding. It also lead me to participate in the Cherub Fund. At times, I would find myself at a 5 Across competition. AwesomeInc has been a major catalyst for individuals and companies that are interested in pursing high tech locally.
This past weekend, I was fortunate to join a group of local entrepreneurs and the folks from AwesomeInc on a retreat to the Smokey Mountains. It allowed me time to reflect on many of the thoughts I’ve shared here, but also confirmed my desire to grow my investment of time and energy into this community. At the moment, my passion projects to facilitate this is my new podcast Active Lexington and facilitating the Central Kentucky Grand Prix Series. By participating in the bootcamp, I will be investing in myself but also in the program AwesomeInc has made available and ultimately in Lexington.
Until the next summit attempt:
In Meru, the time that was spent by Jimmy Chin, Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk between their failed summit attempt in 2008 and their successful 2011 summit was not wasted time. It was time that each of the climbers needed to take to be fully prepared prior to making that second attempt. I am trying to take a similar perspective to the next 12 weeks. It is going to be intense, stressful, rewarding, satisfying and likely full of moments of failure. However, I know that the effort will be worthwhile, because the world of health, fitness, performance, data and technology only gets bigger each month - and I will be even more equipped to traverse those routes when I am finished.