• Shifting where we apply our TEE (Time, Effort & Energy)- from cyclic, toxic habits, to Heroik endeavors.
•  Take some time this week to Uncover who you are, where you came from, (your origin story) Where we desire to go and the challenges and limiting thoughts that keep us from becoming  the heroes we desire to be.

What makes a hero?

• Contrarians, people who don’t accept the limitations placed upon them by others and choose to do things differently, or their own way.
•  The brave, those who do things in the face of fear.
• Those who have principles, identities, and stand up for them.
•  The selfless – those who take action for the greatest good despite their own personal needs

What stops us from being Heroik?

• A lack of time-Where are you pouring your TEE (Time, Effort and Energy)?
• Lack of Money –We could always use more right?
• Fear (of failure, success, losing ourselves, etc.)
• A disconnect within ourselves and true identities and aspirations. How many people found it challenging to answer the question “Who are you?” and “What do you do?”
• Who ought you be? What ought you be doing?
• Societal expectation
• Family obligations & Expectations

The Importance of Uncovering Your Origin Story

• We all have a lot of baggage, if we’re going to climb mountains, we need to cut the dead weight and leave things that won’t serve us behind.
• That means exploring our origin story, identifying how we came to be for better or worse, dealing with the baggage involved, healing and letting go of it.
• On the positive side of things this means uncovering your strengths and putting the resilience to work for you.

 Identity- Authenticity- Know Yourself.

• Are you being real? Are you being the you, that you want? Are you pursuing your dreams and ideal self at all?
• Is what you’re doing, consuming, giving you energy? Does it excite you? Are you engaged by it? Would you do it for free?

How to discover the Hero within

1. Pursue authenticity.

• Assess your authenticity, in each moment, with every item, and relationship,
• Ask yourself, Does this serve you? If it does, do more of it. If it does not serve you, or doesn’t align with who you are or truly want to be, hit the eject button.

2. BYOB-Bring Your Own Bravery.

• Now is the time to be brave and take a step forward.  Aspire to be your own hero .
• Courage is the first step towards cultivating the other virtues. Courage is a choice.

3. Tackle time and money issues by using the 6 Heroik Principles.

• Speed –Pursue that which helps you move and do things faster
• Simplicity –The heart of efficiency is in simplicity.  Avoid complexity and look for simple solutions.
• Independence – Independence enables freedom. If you can do it on your own, it makes it that much easier to change your mind and define a new reality for yourself.
• Mobility – The ability to move freely,
• Control – Who is steering the boat in your life? Are you in control or are you playing victim?
•  Tactility (The ability to touch) – In any challenge you face, define which parts you can touch and affect. What people can you reach out to for help? How can you get your hands dirty to affect change now?

Productivity Tools to help you get started.

Dropbox – Cloud storage. Store and share files and folders across all of your computers and even your smartphone. Dropbox is free and platform independent.

Do.com - Social productivity, collaboration and project management. Read this article about Do.

Boomerang - an addin for Firefox and Gmail that allows you to schedule emails to be sent later, and if you don’t receive a response, you’ll get a reminder by having the email message ‘boomeranged’ back to you.

If you have any questions, or would like to join the Roseville, CA meetup group, contact Nicholas at nmcgill@getheroik.com

Below is the original documentation that Matt Spaccarelli used to win his case against AT&T in small claims court. This applies to bandwidth throttling for grandfathered “unlimited” data subscribers. Matt is now on board to help other customers stand against AT&T’s throttling practices and working with PublikDemand. Please give them a visit as well.

Taking on AT&T is indeed like attacking the death star…

“The target area is only two meters wide. It’s a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should destroy the station. Only a precise hit will set off a chain reaction. The shaft is ray-shielded, so you’ll have to use proton torpedoes.”
-General Dodonna in Star Wars

Matt has made it possible for others to do the same simply by sharing his case notes. AT&T has offered settlements to prevent him from sharing this information. They’ve even threatened him. He’s not interested. Read on and enjoy.

How to fight AT&T in small claims court and WIN

The numbers are in, and you may consider allocating some more marketing dollars to tend to your Google ranking after reading this. According to the recent PEW Internet Research Study:

1. 91% of online adults, use search engines to find information on the web.

2. On any given day 59% use search engines to find information.

3. When asked which search engine is used most often, Google dominates with a whopping 83%

4. 66% of Online Users think negatively of targeted advertising

Click here to learn about the most effective and affordable way get on page one of Google organic search results.

Click here to read the full February 2012 study.

Bringing gaming paradigms to the workplace is a growing market, especially in the digital space. The advantage to an individual is to rally excitement and add entertainment value around getting things done. Bombarding the brain with electronic visual stimuli is the latest form of positive reinforcement for mopping the floors, sending emails, paying the bills, dropping off the dry-cleaning and drinking more water or what have you.

Big Biz Wellness & Productivity – For businesses with an eye for saving money and fattening the bottom line, increasing buy-in & participation in wellness programs can significantly lower healthcare costs, boost productivity, and increase employee retention.

Big Biz Buy-In & Lower Labor Costs – Creating environments and experiences with built in game paradigms can be a real money maker and money saver. Essentially, with the right ingredients, a business can increase employee buy in, retention, and productivity while lowering labor costs simply by bringing in more of the elements you’d find in the floor of a casino, only tied to work tasks . What if your job were performance based and performance was measured at every step and task with a point value?

For many professional reasons and personal curiosity, we wanted to investigate how we could bring more of ‘The Game’ to life at home and at the workplace. Enter EpicWin- which is but one of many  Heroik case-studies and adventures in gamification.

Our Grand Experiment: Using EpicWin to Promote Change

As an experiment in gamification, over the course of a year, The Heroik Team explored some practical applications of EpicWin by testing it in 5 key areas:

1. Personal/Professional productivity at the individual level
2. Wellness Tool at the individual level (lose weight, eat better foods, drink more water, hit the gym, etc.)
3. Productivity/Wellness for teams, and medium to large businesses.
4. Incorporating a Management Approach- New Metrics, KPI’s (that’s biz speak for Key Performance Indicator) and Data Visualization
5. Long Term Effectiveness (Does it have staying power?)

Why choose EpicWin?

• It’s available now and dirt cheap. Scalable- Good for the goose and good for the gander, good for individuals, teams and the enterprise.
• It’s Social. Annoy friends and family by tweeting your epic conquests!
• This makes it a simple purchase that’s easy to implement. We like what’s using what’s handy and affordable. In a digital world, what would MacGyver do? Whip out the duct tape.
• You can do more than you think with the app. Apps that integrate with the social and work tools you use each day, on devices you take with you everywhere, present new opportunities. The challenge comes down to execution. It’s all how you use it.

Part 1-Personal Productivity and Health

At first, I used EpicWin to invite more fun into my day to day and maybe get a little bit more work done. My expectations were low. Buying new tools in hopes of saving ourselves from actual work seems like the American way. Let’s be honest, this was an impulse buy and latest attempt to live in denial of my workload/ and distract myself with a new, distracting lens to distort reality. Yet I found I enjoyed the witty character titles that came with each level up. I also noticed I was getting more done at home and work, hitting the gym more often, and drinking more water.  These were but a few of the tasks 2 Months of significant productivity gains were proof enough to bring it to the next level and invite the team to join in on the fun.

Part 2-Team Play & Getting Social

I invited some friends to join in on the fun and once they got involved, we all had an excuse to socially brag about our feats and accomplishments across the social-sphere of Facebook and Twitter. This got slightly annoying as we at first over-posted every piece of swag and loot we’d encounter on the game. Yet, seeing your friends and teams get it done and brag about their victories inspires you and everyone else to get their stuff done and stay on task.

Part 3-Corporate Wellness Programs

During a consultation with a company that provides and implements wellness programs, an opportunity to introduce EpicWin into the Enterprise presented itself. We began to discuss implementation and execution of using the app in an organization to promote wellness and productivity through social gaming. We used EpicWin as our proof of concept. Initially we wanted to round up the best wisdom in health and productivity to gather the power of 100 TOE’s (Tasks of Epicness). We could then schedule daily,weekly, and monthly regiments of tasks to steadily increase wellness and productivity. Check out the slideshow below to see our ideas in greater detail.

The game has its constraints.

We had limited access to the user data but this actually lead to important insights about how we think of managing wellness programs and how we measure their effectiveness. We could track character progress in the various attribute categories that the game provides: strength, spirit, social, intelligence, and endurance. The trick was developing a reliable formula for each category that would be an excellent indicator for real progress and improvements in health, wellness, and work performance.

Wellness programs have their constraints.

There were legal concerns too. During our initial discussions about the 100 ToE’s, (Tasks of Epicness), we had to scrap any task that was required entering biometric user data into any organizational database, as it could expose the company to litigation of all sorts. For example, we could not  assign a task telling users to enter their weight into some other database, but we could ask them to journal, review, reflect and map their own progress.  Ultimately its the healthy and productive habits and best practices we want to build and improve. These produce the results that shave dollars in healthcare costs and boost bottom lines with productivity.

Addressing Cheaters -Haters Wanna Hate.

Critics might be quick to point out the that a system like this might be easy to cheat. We addressed this in a few ways:

• We’re focused on micro-habits and shifting behaviors. Small activities that increase, energy, excitement and ultimately participation. The work sneaks up on you this way.
• Designing for the small percentage of non-participants/cheaters would amount to creating an authoritative environment that’s not enjoyable for anyone.
• The workplace is social. The social pressure to legitimately ‘play the game’ is all that is needed.

Organizations have their limitations…and expectations.

Organizations love data. Wait. Let me restate that. They may get an initial high off of any  bags data they can bury their noses in but what great organizations really love is data that they can understand quickly enough to affect and act upon. In many of the wellness tools cater to organizational data addiction by creating shitty user experiences that require users to enter every fart and snickers bar.  Ultimately, this leads to burn out, resentment, BS’ing, and total program failure.

Part 4-Data Visualization & Management

Challenge 1- It’s a matter of metrics. Companies don’t need to know employee calorie consumption, or how many steps were taken each day. It’s important to turn away from things that are easy to measure in order to determine how to measure things that are important. The former is an age-old bad habit for managers and personnel addicted to validation vs. true effectiveness. Ultimately, a successful program is one that gives measurable returns.

In order to do that we have to shift the business objectives and expectations to align with reality by defining the metrics that matter. It was fairly easy for us at Heroik to map these metrics and activities to business objectives that make sense for organizations. Such is the nature of our alchemy and it helps that we are an uber-active, bunch of team-building tough mudders. I’ll spare the details, family recipes and perhaps save them for another post.

Creating an Epic Formula and Delivery Vehicle for the Wellness program wasn’t good enough for us. We knew that ultimately, on the other end of this equation, there were managers and stake holders who needed to be able to assess and measure progress and validation. However, looking at data tables, reports and spreadsheets can be equally boring. So the challenge, we explored how we could make managing teams and reviewing the data more fun as well. In essence, we wanted to make some sexy data visualization mechanism.

According to Harvard Business Review, there is and will continue to be some big bucks in data visualization. One product in particular, Microsoft’s Pivot had captured my imagination throughout its development and various iterations. So we gave it a whirl and opened it up and let the horses run so to speak.

The challenging part was polling the application for the various character level data. The experience points, levels in the various categories had to be stored as meta-data or update in real time so that data in Pivot, could be updated in real-time. In English, we wanted managers and stake holders to see how the organization is doing, in an interactive environment where they could sort and view the data from different angles such as team, department , and various attributes built into the game.

Managers Get in on the Game/ In the Back End

For some unknown reason there is this either/or complex in project development. Apps are often either user-centric and provide a minimalist and crappy back-end reporting mechanism, or they provide a user experience akin to being herded by cattle and focusing on the management aspect. I believe they’re both important. Managers and stake holders need to have as much buy-in and excitement for the program throughout the experience just as the players do.

So what could a manager do with all these gamers and all this data?

Interacting with the data in a simple visual way, allows managers to make connections and correlations that can’t be easily found in a spreadsheet or bar graph. In real time, you can see which teams or individuals have more experience, or are excelling in one category over another.  Teams in the engineering department might have found streamlined ways to encourage participation in the realm of fitness and physical activity. While the marketing department can rally the troops to stay social.  Using tools like Pivot, identifying the leaders makes it easy to identify likely candidates to discuss how to boost everyone else’s rank in that particular attribute.

You can also shuffle the deck to see the non-performers and look at those relationships to help identify opportunities for improvement. This can all be done in mere seconds with data visualization software. Previously, you might pour over spreadsheets and reports for days or weeks to figure out what the information is telling you, let alone  how to leverage it.

Here’s the rub. Due to legal constraints, in the past, polling user health data was a scary notion and potential legal issue to clients. By creating a special formula of tasks for each character category (intellect, strength, endurance, spirit, and social), we could determine by measuring experience points and levels, the level of compliance and participation for those in the program with greater accuracy  without collecting biometric or other irrelevant data.

Yes, when it comes to the health and wellness aspect, the organization inherits more legal risk than benefit by aiming for the health/biometric data. However,  by supporting healthy habits at a micro behavioral level, while encouraging and measuring participation, can deliver stronger and more significant data. This has been avoided in the past programs because of a fatal mistake: they were measuring what was easy to measure vs. measuring what’s important. I know this is repetitive to say but it’s a mantra that more businesses and entreprenuers need to chant:

Measure what matters.

Part 5 Staying Power

An important aspect of this program, is figuring out just how long it is sustainable in one form, before change/expansion needs to be introduced. Upgrades and development can be costly, so defining the time to change things up is important. The answers very person to person or player to player if you like. This app can become an addictive habit, and it can also become mundane and boring as the tasks themselves. Some factors that affect this:

• Gaming Experience. This can also be a generational issue. An avid gen X or gen Y gamer may tire of the game at a faster rate than others. This is another reason why you see endless upgrades (all with price points) in online gaming.
• Gaming Preference- This is an RPG, but you may be praying somehow for a First Person Shooter.
• Gender- Men are easily amused with novelty.
• Supporting practices, policies, and activities of the wellness program. If it’s just the app and tasks, it’s probably not enough.
• Fatigue-Too much of a good thing can push you away from the experience.

However, if you do fall off the wagon after stepping away form the game, it’s easy to come back to when you need to invite more structure, fun and discipline into our lives. Just as soldiers rely and fall back on their training when in doubt, I’ve fallen back on these programs when needed.

Conclusions

Gamified environments in the work place can lead to  new exploitative relationships. Organizations can profit tremendously from leveraging virtual incentives, and getting teams to focus on company controlled metrics like points for example. It’s a mixed bag. At a personal level, use tools like these to empower your own productivity, health and wellness. Get Heroik. Inspire and invite others to give it a go as well.

There were many lessons learned from this project, and plenty of roller-coaster rides of burn-out and excitement. If you are working in this space and want some input- contact us at Heroik Media. info@heroikmedia.com or follow us on twitter @getheroik.

If you have your own gamification projects/experiences to share, please comment and share your insight.

Bored with the everyday approach to tasks and productivity? In need of more #winning moments? Consider adding EpicWin to your repertoire. EpicWin is a mobile task manager/role playing game for iOS that allows you to collect experience, loot and levels for doing chores and tasks. It’s game that requires you to get stuff done in real life and in return you see your character battle, progress and level up on the screen.

EpicWin integrates with Google calendars, allowing you to syncrhonize calendar items with Epic tasks. This feature really brings collaborative potential to the app and platform.

EpicWin Official Site

Be Sure to read our post: Using Gamification to Improve Wellness and Productivity

So, we’re all about simplicity, mobility, and productivity at Heroik, and so I must recommend this cool tool, with a great name and a go with you anywhere attitude. It’s called Do. If you want to save yourself some reading: Bottom Line: your team and/or biz should definitely Do the Do.

What is Do?

Do is a FREE (as in Braveheart FREEEDOOOMM! Free) online collaboration tool that can integrate with Google Apps. It also features mobile versions for the iPhone and Android. Do is based on the ManyMoon project (Google Apps users know what this is) but Do has a better work flow and functionality.

What Can I do With Do?

• Work on shared or private tasks, projects and notes
• Activity feeds and comments to track progress
• Real-time notifications
• Mobile – work from anywhere (phone, tablet or computer)
• Works with Google Apps – attach a Google Doc to your tasks, create a task from Gmail and login with your Google account
• Attach documents to tasks.
• Also works with SalesForce

What’s in a name?

Do entertains and motivates teams in it’s name alone. I didn’t have to lobby for buy-in. It was a snap to deploy and get the team to use the app. They were excited just by the name- and implications for office humor. It made it okay in the office/emails/conversations to say things like “Do me”,( meaning assign a task or share a project) or “I’ll Do you later about that”.  Don’t underestimate the value here. There are plenty of great collaboration apps out there, perhaps better ones but if you’ve ever had to rally a team around a new tool or software, you know it can be challenging.

Mobile Version -that’s actually almost as useful as the desktop version.

I love that the iPhone version synchronizes with the web- So I can use it offline. That’s important.  The interface and experience is extremely natural. The current iOS version of Do lacks the ability to create sections in projects, but aside from that, it is an amazing app. I am a critical power-user and user-centric app advocate and developer. I love this app.

Our Experience:

When I was fishing for an app to address this challenge, I knew in order for it to be successful, it had to fit the Heroik Lifestyle, always on the go, available anywhere and incredibly versatile.  Everyone on the Heroik Team wears multiple hats, cowls and capes. Collaborating via email and chat alone make it easy for tasks to get neglected and slip through the cracks. Do has increased our productivity by capturing and sharing important ideas, tasks,  and decreased stress and anxiety by giving the team a centralized platform synched to mobile counter-parts, we never run out of things to Do.

Sanity Boost

 The collaborative nature of do makes it easy to unplug when it’s time to take a break. The thoughts, tasks, projects, etc. are stored appropriately with teams, meaning there is no reason to juggle all the tasks in your RAM/head alone. In my experience, when only one person is aware/juggling all the key components of projects, strategies and efforts, that person likely to be the first to burn out; making constant changes by being out of synch with the rest of the team. Leaders, managers are crippled by a lack of awareness and communication. Do helps to establish an environment where teams can become aware of the bigger picture.  It’s still important to deploy best practices and integrate Do with your mantras and culture, but the app is a powerful tool .

Note: Do is owned by Salesforce  which I call out as an almost knock against it. Freemium Pricing model to be imposed soon but, for now, Do the Do.

I received the following email regarding my Unlimited data plan. Please bear in mind the following:

• I use an iPhone 4
• I’ve watched maybe 3 Netflix movies over a month using the AT&T network
• I occasionally remotely access a computer
• I log my runs via Nike+
• I watch a few youtube music videos, but less than most people that I know.
• AT&T considers these activities to put me in the top 5% of data users and threatens to throttle my bandwidth on my unlimited plan.

After complaining on Twitter about AT&T network congesting (5:23pm at the gym/ and Pandora just drops like a bad habit), a rep (@ATTTeamTatiana) spoke with me on the phone and tried to banish me to the 7 circles of customer support hell. In an effort to silence and deter me from sharing my experience, they literally want to send you on a 3 hour journey with no resolution in sight. At first they blamed my phone, now they finally reveal that their network can’t support their customer’s legitimate uses of the services they’ve contracted for.

AT&T is synonymous with failure and getting screwed. I will now and forever refer the feeling of getting ripped-off, mugged, and/or screwed over as getting AT&T’d. Don’t let this happen to you. Find a better carrier.

Below is the Best Advertisement to switch to Verizon that I’ve ever seen:

Subj: High Data Usage Alert
Dear NICHOLAS MCGILL,

Like other wireless companies, AT&T is taking steps to manage exploding demand for mobile data. We’re responding on many levels, including investing billions in our wireless network this year and working to acquire more network capacity.As mentioned on a previous bill, we’re also taking additional, more immediate steps to help address network congestion and improve reliability. One of these steps involves a change for some customers who use extraordinarily large amounts of data in a single billing period – about 12 times more data than the average smartphone user.For the current billing cycle, your data usage indicates you could be affected by this change.

Here’s how it works:Smartphone customers with unlimited data plans may experience reduced speeds once their usage in a billing cycle reaches the level that puts them among the top 5 percent of heaviest data users. These customers can still use unlimited data and their speeds will be restored with the start of the next billing cycle.We’re writing because you are in the top 5 percent of heaviest data users for this billing cycle. Because we recognize that data usage can change from month to month, you will not see reduced speeds this billing cycle.
Beginning with your next billing cycle, we’ll send you a text message if you are approaching the top 5 percent of heaviest data users. We’ll also send you a second text message if you cross into the top 5 percent of heaviest users, at which point you may see reduced speeds for the rest of the month.

Customers have several ways to manage extremely high data usage.

Wi-Fi offers great speeds and doesn’t add to your wireless data usage. Consider using Wi-Fi when possible for applications that use the highest amounts of data, such as streaming video apps, remote web camera apps, large data-file transfers (like video) and some online gaming.

You may also consider switching to a tiered data plan if speed is more important to you than having an unlimited data plan. Customers on tiered plans can pay for more data if they need it, and will not see reduced speeds.

To estimate how much data different activities use, and find out more about Wi-Fi or tiered data plans, visit https://www.att.com/dataplansor call Customer Care at 800-331-0500.

Kynan Matz is arguably the world’s most supportive husband.  What kind of guy opts to train for a marathon with his wife without any prior race experience? A Heroik one for certain. I’ve been lucky enough to know him and his wife Laura for years. We’ve shared many good times; camping and  racing together (and by that I mean racing with them way, way ahead of me). We’ve shared some emergent moments as well. Witnessing how  this Super Powered couple uses life’s curve balls and challenges as mere catalysts and opportunities to slingshot into new, epic endeavors is inspiring. How you get from scary days at the hospital to planning out and then running ultramarathons amazes me.  The event and challenge that started it all that would have been an epic story to itself  was but a thin, faint starting line. The real Heroik story eclipses the starting point. Together, over the past 2 years Kynan and Laura have logged over 3,000 miles running where ever their feet will carry them.

These days,  if you want to spend some quality time with this dynamic duo, you better be prepared for a ‘casual’ 10,12, or 16 mile run across trail and pavement. If you wake up early enough, you can catch mere glimpses of them stretching in a parking lot near any trail access. After, tracking him down, and with the help of some tranquilizer darts, I finally nabbed Kynan for an interview and asked him about his and his wife Laura’s Heroik start; how they went from being winded on half mile jaunts to running ultra marathons; how it’s changed their lives; and all the tips and thoughts throughout the journey. Read on and be inspired!

How did you get started?
“My wife suddenly started having seizures at age 22, and it took a long time to get her meds right. She went through months and months of severe fatigue, nausea, dizziness, and several other things to various degrees while we worked out the right med and dosage for her. When she finally reached a stable point, she really wanted to do something to reclaim her independence. She set her sights on her first marathon and I began training with her, partially to support her effort and partially to improve my health. I was a pretty healthy guy already but I wasn’t athletic, nor had I ever been.”

What originally motivated you?
“Well, originally it was primarily a support thing for me. I wanted to be there as my better half achieved this great thing she’d set her sights on. As I gained fitness, though, it began to feel like I was clearing out years of stagnation from my system. I was breathing more deeply, thinking more clearly, just generally feeling a hell of a lot better! This was a fantastic bonus!”

What was your first run?
“We began by going down to the soccer field at the end of our block. We jogged for 30 seconds and walked until we caught our breath. It’s hilarious to look back at how horrendously out of shape I was for a really skinny guy! My wife looked up a training plan for beginners and we just did it. If it was on the plan it’s what we did. Easy peasy. God it felt horrible at first!”

How did you build momentum?
“Yeesh, it was hard at first. If you’ve been pretty inactive for years (in my case, most of my life) it takes a while for the body to get used to being used. It took about a month to start to feel good. It’s kind of like starting a car motor for the first time. It takes a while for the engine to break in and everything to run smoothly. Unfortunately I got a bit too excited and aggressive with training. I ripped a meniscus in my left knee. In restrospect it was good to experience that because it forced me to balance current limitations with ambition when I returned to running.”

How did you continue to motivate yourself?
“At some point it becomes a routine, and the body misses it when you don’t run. It provides a release for frustrations and a constant source of confidence and fulfillment. Having races on the horizon is good to keep you going, but I’m not one of those runners who are all about the imminent thrill. It’s kind of a distant thing for me. I’ll plan one (or a few) up to nine months in advance and work out a training schedule. It’s much more about feeling the current mile pass underfoot, feeling the sun, tasting the air, etc, with an eventual goal floating out there. I also do most runs and races with my wife, so I look forward to every run I get to share with her.”

“I guess the main overt motivations are races and ambitions, but the underlying reason for it all is the love of it. It’s the most basic, primal, and pure way of experiencing the outside world that I’ve found, and I’m fortunate enough to share it with the person who’s closest to me, so the two are intertwined in my world. It’s my way of loving life.”

What distances are you running now?
“It goes through cycles. After big races I usually lay low for a while to let my body recover and solidify, keeping my mileage at about 35-40 miles a week. I try to work in some half marathons, marathons, and 50K’s into the schedule to stay used to the racing atmosphere, with the eventual goal being a 50 miler. Right now I’m trying to get to the point where I’m really comfortable with that distance before tackling anything longer. I’d absolutely love to do some 100 milers, but I’m pretty sure that’s at least a couple years away.”

How do you continue to motivate yourself?
“You can get caught up in gaining speed, beating others, being badass, or a host of other things, and that works for a lot of people, but it tends to leave me kind of empty. It just doesn’t work for me. If I get too wrapped up in, say, how fast I’m going to run so-and-so race, I have to pull my head out of my ass and remember that I do this because I love it, and if I don’t make it a point to love it in each moment I’m doing it, it will have lost its meaning for me.”

What are some things that keep you going?
“Curiosity. I don’t know how much I’m capable of, and I’m always looking forward to finding out.”

What are some small, silly but important things that you find helpful or encouraging?
“Running, especially training, is a brutally honest pursuit. In any team sport, you can personally perform badly and still end up a winner. You can also work your ass off and end up on the losing end. In running, if you put in the work you get the payback. If you don’t you crash and burn, which sometimes makes for awesomely entertaining stories but sucks to holy hell!I remember that I’m able to do what I’m doing because of millions of single steps before. A few more is nothing. Most of my races and longer training runs are out in the woods. Being immersed in beautiful scenery has a way of energizing me. Sometimes it’s very emotionally moving and forces me to keep perspective in life.”

I remember that I’m able to do what I’m doing because of millions of single steps before. A few more is nothing.

Any gizmos or gadgets that you find particularly helpful or enjoyable?
“A GPS watch is just great for keeping track of distance in the wild, where landmarks and street signs aren’t readily available. I also love a good hydration pack, which allows me to set out and be totally self-sufficient all day!”

Kynan recommends the Garmin Forerunner 405 GPS Watch and the Camelbak Octane 3L Hydration Pack.

What other aspects of your life have improved because of your efforts?
“I experience things more deeply. If you run long distance there will be times when you are broken down and miserable, and you have to rebuild yourself out there to keep going. It builds a sense of strength and confidence that you can overcome anything and find joy in any situation.”

Have you noticed an increase in wellness or productivity/energy levels?
“Hell yes! Endurance is a funny thing. It isn’t really visibly apparent, but it’s sure noticeable when everyone’s exhausted at the end of a work day and I’m able to happily enjoy life still. I almost feel guilty about the tradeoff: I enjoy hours of amazing views and great company putting in miles and miles, and in return I get even more time to enjoy those things!”

Where will you go from here?
“Who knows?! That’s half the fun!!!”

Kynan and Laura Matz live in Sacramento, CA, and while they may store food and gear at their house, we’re not entirely sure if they ever stop to rest and reside there. If you have questions or comments for Kynan or Laura, or maybe have your own Heroik story to tell, be sure to post a comment.

We all had our reasons; vindicate our training and tough talk, to remind ourselves that we’re brave and capable, to satisfy our thirst for epic adventure, to do a little team building, to demonstrate leadership, and perhaps most important- to have a good time and enjoy the adventure. Staring from the starting line, knowing what was in store, I was more excited than afraid. Doing the Tough Mudder after recently pulling a hamstring, I’ll admit, was an intimidating notion. I knew we’d survive. I knew we’d get it done. I trusted my team and I wasn’t going to allow myself to quit, come hell or compound fracture.

Joe Rohde (RohdeWarrior) lost 50lbs training for this race. Micah (aka Desert Rat) eats adventures for breakfast and I love running neck and neck with him. Dave  Burges or “Shirt” as all USAF  First Sergeants are known, was the team’s very own version of the Hulk. This was to be an epic moment spent with heroes, in support of heroes. A portion of the proceeds is donated to the Wounded Warrior project.  Wave after wave, mob after mob of fellow mudders, there was no way I’d let a bum leg stop me from enjoying this moment. We were ready Bringing our own bravery; delivering on what was stamped across the shirts for Team Heroik.

Running through the orange smoke to the tune of Scotland the brave played by a nearby bagpiper was an epic way to start. An uphill sprint and battle cry as we started, sprinted up the mountain; covered in woad (war paint) and sunscreen. instantly sucking the wind out of my lungs, left me begging for the first mud pit. Meanwhile, my smarter teammates, Joe and Micah, who trained longer at elevation ran ahead.

The Death March seemed to be the main theme. The Death March wasn’t just an obstacle, it was everything you did between the other obstacles.

Less than a mile into the course and my hamstring is screaming. An endless hike up the mountain to High Camp.

I think we were more intimidated the day prior than the day of the race. We saw a few survivors of Saturday’s events and heard tales of the effect of the ice pit. Buckets of ice loaded into pools by bulldozers, making a freezing bath that you’d have to swim through, duck under a plank, and push up through the ice that collects on the other side.

The stories haunted us the rest of the day. Once we pushed up through the foot of ice on the other side of the pool and pulled our numb, useless legs out of the ice bath, we knew we had it.

The Everest challenge was a great rush. People would create leaning human pyramids to reach the top of this quarter pipe. A mob of helpful racers cheers on the mudders and pulls people up through the obstacle. They dangle ropes and shirts and tell you to grab on so they can pull you up. Occasionally people would fall. There were some gnarly wrecks, but the comradery of the Tough Mudders was felt all over the place here. We saw people who weighed over 300 lbs get pulled up and over this and our own Hulk, Dave, was reeling them in here too. Helping out once we reached the top was far more fun than reaching the top.

Pulling up at the Funk Monkey obstacle, getting yelled at by the Marines, and I was lucky enough to know one of them; my best friend’s kid brother, now a marine, taunting me, “You better not fall in. I made it. You’d better.” And I did.

Seeing the Marines reminded us of yet another reason we were there, to honor our heroes, our service men and women, and spill some of our blood in the same mud, and support the Wounded Warrior project. Connecting with what even a fraction of what our military does in their work day through this experience was an honor, and the feeling never went away.

Micah demonstrates why you should always remember your game face.

Higher than High Camp-Going up in elevation, well beyond High Camp at Squaw Valley was a surprise. High Camp disappeared in the distance as we continued up and up, through the snow, through Devil’s Beard and beyond.

All the sunscreen had washed off with each dunking, and you feel the sun become a factor quickly.

In the drink again, after jumping a 20 ft platform into freezing water. The Underwater Tunnels require you to fight your instinct and submerge your head under the water, and on the other side, you want to pop up and get out as quickly as possible, but you might find out the hard way that there is barbed wire a few inches above you as you continue through the obstacle. This was a check in point. If you had a weak swimmer on your team, here is where you found out. We cheered each other through it though you could see a slight panic in a few of us.

We dried off and carried on to the Boa Constrictor. Big Deal- I thought- a muddy tunnel. What they don’t tell you is that the muddy tunnel is full of sharp rocks and debris. If you weren’t bleeding before you’re definitely scraped up here.

Another Day at the office. We eat mudders for breakfast.  Surviving the Boa, we started getting cocky at this point and were thirsty for more.

Mighty Joe, takes his time across the wobbly planks, thinking he’ll finesse his way across…

Everyone falls in the drink sometimes. Yet your team is there to pull you out and share a laugh.

I’m sure the rest of the team would agree their favorite moment was at Electro Shock Therapy, when I yelled “Let’s go!” as I proceeded to charge through and get hit with God knows how many thousands of volts of electricity. I dropped like a rock and all I hear behind me is my team laughing at the leader. The joke was on me, and they proceeded to sneak through the dangling wires and we all crossed the finish line together.

Orange Headbands and beers in hand, we held our trophies high. Hard work, team work, respect, helping out, and charging forward are but a few reasons that the Tough Mudder is a required course for the Heroik MBA. The Tough Mudder teaches you about teamwork, leadership, endurance, and once you’ve done it, you lose your fear and excuse privileges, as everything and anything becomes do-able.  Perhaps the underlying life lesson here to is that life is what you’re alive to. If your open to the challenge and welcome them into your life, you’ll find yourself a bonafied, Heroik bad-ass, capable of just about anything.

I spared some obstacles and will leave them to mystery. Want to know more? Sign up for the Tough Mudder in your town and find out first hand.

In our search for the best way to document our Heroik adventures, we need the toughest gear. Our gear will get dropped, dunked, and brought everywhere and anywhere there is adventure to be had. So we decided to torture test the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS3 and break it in by dragging it along on the Tough Mudder, in Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe, 2011. The results were epic. Our only complaint, it doesn’t have a little automatic windshield wiper to wipe the mud off the lens.

The Tough Mudder is the ultimate mud run and the best starting point to test our tough gear. If it can’t make it through the mudder, it sure as hell won’t survive one of our Heroik adventures…or misadventures for that matter. Mud Runs, unlike other racing events, are full of hilarious moments with friends covered in filth, straddling walls, and blood on barbed wire. Relying on 3rd party photography companies to care about getting that epic shot just right, is unreliable at best. If you need to survive the event with photographic proof, you need to carry a camera.

The Lumix DMC-TS3 ( TS3 for short) has a few notable features:

• 12.1-megapixel Hi-speed CCD
• Built in GPS- yes I said GPS – we don’t use it much- save to measure altitude.
• 2.7″ High Res LCD display- comes in handy.
• SD/SDHC/SDXC ( We’ve got a 32gig card in there that we’ve yet to fill up)
• Waterproof – read proof- not resistant to 40 feet. 40!!!!
• Freeze Proof- believe me- on the mudder- this gets tested.
• Shock Proof  for up to 2m drops- which is great because we’re not always graceful or nice to our gear.

It’s not perfect:

• Photos over-saturated at times
• Blurry shots in low light.

*Bear in mind- this is with shooting in auto mode without adjusting settings. You know, the way we all end up using our cameras. Who plays for 5 minutes finding night shot? In the hands of a semi-competent camera monkey, I’m sure the results are better.

Bottom line: Looking for a tough camera to take with you as you get down and dirty climbing, mudding, paddling, diving,  and where ever else you may roam? This is it.

The proof is in the shots- forgive the mud and chalk on the lens in the gallery below.

What can I say, we love to get dirty!