Author: Chris Russell

What’s the Keyword for “Qualifying for the Boston Marathon”?

What are you searching for?

I was interested to see who searched on what to find out how to qualify for Boston. It’s a tricky thing, an inexact science, because there isn’t one word to search for. If you searched on something more general like “how to train for a marathon” you’d get a much higher volume of traffic.
Here’s what I found using the keyword tool in Google Adwords. I plugged in the phrase “How to qualify for the Boston Marathon” and then filtered to only those phrases that contained “Boston”.
This is the list and the traffic is surprisingly low. Even with all the popularity and history of this great event it’s a niche activity.
Keyword Avg. Monthly Searches (exact match only)
how to qualify for the boston marathon 590
boston qualifying times 5400
how to qualify for boston marathon 1300
qualifying time for boston marathon 880
qualifying for boston marathon 720
qualifying times for boston marathon 720
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boston marathon qualifying standards 70
boston marathon qualifying pace 70
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qualifying times for the boston marathon 70
qualifying time for the boston marathon 50
how do i qualify for the boston marathon 50
qualifying times boston marathon 50
time needed to qualify for boston marathon 40
pace to qualify for boston marathon 20
training to qualify for boston 30
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boston marathon qualify times 30
boston marathon qualifying times pace 30
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to qualify for boston marathon 20
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boston marathon qualifier times 20
boston marathon qualifier time 20
training for boston 10
bq boston 10
Interesting?
Chris,

Honor and respect and helping people

boston-finishHere’s a great short framework I heard on the Accidental Creative podcast this weekend while shoveling.  I like it because it is a brief but effective scorecard of any creative project.

Excellence Defined:

Product:

  • Are we proud to put our names on this?
  • Did we create a qualify end product that solves the problem?

Process:

  • Did it honor the people involved?
  • Was the process to produce the results an excellent process?
  • Did the process honor the people involved in the work?

Did it honor the mission?

  • Did we honor the overall mission of the organization?
  • Does it support the foundational ‘why?’ of the organization?

I think I followed my mission on the MarathonBQ project.  I think we had a quality process that created a quality product.

I think we honored the mission.  I’m proud to put my name on it.

Chris,

 

 

Well now…

Crazy Day!

snowicwIt was -11 deg F when I got up yesterday so I took my long run to the gym yesterday afternoon and did 3+ hours on the treadmill.  I’m getting soft!  It snowed all night with zero-degree temps and high winds.  When I got up this morning the snow was drifted like crazy.  I shoveled and snow-blowed for 4+ hours and I’ll probably have to do it again at some point because the wind keeps moving it around.

The snow banks are higher than the snowblower can throw it and it just rolls back down.

The book hit Amazon last night.  It was very exciting.  🙂

A friend of mine posted the announcement on her timeline in FaceBook.   Immediately people started putting negative comments.  About how it was another example of our quick-fix mindset, grammar correcting the title, and just being negative in general.

It’s an awful testament on us when we are so quick to criticize.  It’s such an attitude of scarcity.  What are people afraid of?  How does me writing a book about how I used to train for Boston make them unhappy?

I offered to send them copies! Because I believe in abundance, not scarcity.  I guess that also makes me the kind of guy that would push himself to qualify for Boston for no good reason other than  thinking it’s a worthy goal.

I guess it also makes me the kind of guy who gets up in the morning to write a book instead of trolling Facebook looking for others to practice a weird inverse Schadenfreude where it’s good to hate on others achievements?

It’s a book about how I successfully qualified for Boston many times using a difficult but simple training process.  It’s a book about the way I train.  The medals are mine.  I worked for them.  The book is mine.  I worked for it.

I hope you’ll give it a read and I hope you like it.   I sincerely hope you get your own medals and write your own books that change people’s lives.

Happy Snow Day!

Cheers,

Chris,

 

In the old days…

coldMore often than not I find myself using this phrase…”In the old days…” followed by something that was better or faster or easier.

This morning it was ‘in the old days…I would have done my long run in this cold weather.’  I would have.  We used to routinely throw ourselves at these 0 Degree F days and enjoy the heck out of it.  It’s -11 at my house this morning and I just can’t bring myself to put on 7-8 layers of clothing to go run with Brian for 3+ hours.

I’m an old dog.  Gray of muzzle.  Curled up by the fire with my legs twitching in dream pursuit of some long ago finish line.

Instead I’ve got some errands to run this morning before the next big storm rolls in.  Then I’ll hit the treadmill at the gym and see if I can’t practice moving meditation for 3 hours or so.  Yikes.

By the way – the book is still in review by the Amazon robots.

C-,

The Birth Canal…

VDSpent the day reading through – scanning really – the latest copy of the book.  Made some corrections to the PDF pre-release copy (where did those typos come from?  Ann and I both read it 10 times!) Got the Mobi file from my guy in Sri Lanka… Yeah, that’s right, I use VA’s from all over the world for this stuff.  (because they do great work and I can afford them).

I just up loaded it to Kindle direct publishing.   It was fairly easy because I already have two books in the KDP bookshelf.

That’s it.  Dust off the coveralls and wipe the soil from your hands the book ‘MarathonBQ’ is in the kind and prosperous hands of Amazon.com. Their drones and robots tell me it will be in review for 12 hours or so.  Then it will burst forth into the light sometime tomorrow.

Sigh…I’ve got a bit of that post-coital ennui (metaphorically of course, even though it is Valentines Day, my sweetheart is in a different geography right now spending my frequent flyer points).

I guess it’s time to start on the next one.  I think I’ll take another crack at that zombie apocalypse novel that I’ve been writing since I was in college!  Zombies are all the rage these days!

It was a dark and stormy night…

Cheers,

Chris,

 

 

Making a book.

I guess I decided to capture this process of the MarathonBQ for you because it was such an important period of my life and I didn’t want to lose it to neglect.   When I started to write it down in September it flowed, well distilled and fully formed from my brain quickly and easily.  Apparently this book was ready to escape the confines of my mind.

80% of it was written in a couple weeks.  The last few bits of editing and dicking around with formatting, etc., have taken forever in comparison.  I’d like to thank my friend Ann for helping me go through the first few edits.  It’s hard as the creator of a work to reread it again and again looking for flaws.  It takes a bit of objectivity that the author doesn’t possess.  You can than k Ann for a few chapters that are here and a few that (thankfully) are not!

For now I’m going to get it up on Kindle so the world can have it if they want it.  I’m going to make the rounds on the social networks and talk about it.  I don’t imagine there is anything controversial in the content – but I suppose these days anything has the ability to hack someone off.  That’s fine.  I welcome the criticism and debate and conversation because that is how we as a species learn.

Let me know what you think.

Cheers.

Chris,

 

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