Thoughts of Shane Kenny

After 8 weeks of training I ran the ING Georgia Half Marathon today.  In case you didn’t know, 13.1 miles is a long way!  My goal was under 2 hours.  Here are the mile splits:

My official time was 2:00:24.  I was not happy to say the least.  To miss the goal is one thing.  To miss it by only 25 seconds after 2 hours of running is another.  It is a PR though, with my previous half marathon time being 2:06:54.  My running goals for this year were to run 600 miles, and to PR the 5k, 10k, half, and full marathon distances.  I am at nearly 300 miles so far this year and have a PR in the half marathon.  Not too shabby with 9 months to go.

Unless you live on some other planet you have the same 24 hours each day to eat, sleep, work, spend time with family, pursue hobbies, etc as I do.  This means that the time I have allotted to each of these activities needs to managed as best as I possibly can.

I recently came to the realization that in today’s Internet-connected world it is possible to be too connected.  Sure, those 25 Google Alerts that fed me information on my company’s market each day sometimes provided great information, but most of the time are just a waste of time.  The same held true when I reviewed the “news” that I was following in Google Reader each day.  Sure, lolcats are funny, but does that really help me grow my company or provide any real value other than some humor?  Do I really care what the competition is doing since I already know they are doing it wrong anyway?  And, we all know that Jimmie Johnson will win his 5th NASCAR championship this year so is there any point in reading about it every week?

This past Monday I starting removing the things that waste my time and divert my focus away from what really matters.  Almost all of my Google Alerts are gone, and I am down to reading just the blogs that really add value to my life.

If you were to step back and look at your day, what things are you wasting valuable time on each day?  What “simple” things could you remove that would be a huge productivity improvement?

Paper towel dispenser in a Burger King men’s restroom.

This past weekend I ran my first official 5k of 2010.  (I had actually signed up for the 10k at the same event but had a bit of a cold and decided to not push things with my half marathon only a few weeks away.)  While I was not super-pleased with my time of 27:26 (9:00 pace) I had to remind myself that I was sick and that a 9:00 pace is what my target is for the half marathon.

Also running in this event was my friend Ron.  His goal was under 30:00 and I got to watch him “sprint” the finish to get a 29:52 time.  Now he is talking about the Peachtree Road Race in July here in Atlanta which is a fun race that I am also planning to do this year.

I’d really like to PR the 5k, 10k, and half marathon distances this year.  The 10k and half will be easier to achieve than that 5k where my PR is 24:55 which is good enough to place me in the top 3 in my age group for most of our local races.  There is still plenty of year left though so I still have plenty of time to pull this off.