Pre-run

I started with what has become my standard pre-run/bike breakfast. Basically, if I have a good size serving of yogurt, fruit and granola with a small orange juice at least two hours pre-run, I never run into gastro problems and always feel like I’m starting well fuelled.

The weather for Alice Lake wasn’t nearly as nice as it had been for Golden Ears a few weeks earlier. When I got up yesterday the forecast for Vancouver was mixed, while it was calling for rain in Squamish. As such, I didn’t know what to pack, so my shorts and post-run change of clothes was accompanied by four possible race shirt combos. As it felt very cool at the car up in Squamish, I opted to use a long-sleeve compression liner and t-shirt. I turned out to be too much as I was a touch warm and pretty sweaty throughout the race.

Connie and I headed out the door around 7:45am and got up to the parking lot at the 99 highway and the turnoff to Alice Lake around 9am. As a lot of people were waiting for the van shuttle to take them the less than 1km to the start/finish, we opted to just hike in. We’d done a solid round of cleaning out at home and in Squamish, so our pre-race potty needs were minimal and bib/swag pick up was quick. Note though, between my 2011 series running and Connie and I both doing Alice Lake this year, we now have three spiffy black and orange 5 Peaks day bags.

We met up with several running peeps, pre-race, including Karl, Greg, Rob and Steve. It was nice to meet Rob’s wife Christine and to see Steve’s wife Leah, again. I also ran into old ultimate teammate Francine, and we had a nice catch-up chat before the run.

The run

While you’ll see a couple photos of other people sprinkled below, none were captured of me, and I’m fine with that. I really hate having my picture taken.

In addition to the aforementioned overshirting issue, the only other thing I played with was doing the run sans-hand bottle. I used one for Golden Ears and, comparing the two events, I think I’ll stick with carrying one. Even though the events are fairly short and one doesn’t need a lot of fluid or fuel during it, I got one tiny cup of water on the whole course. As the water station was a little too early for my liking, I didn’t get to take my gel at all. I wanted the gel for a little kick going up the heavier climbing in the second half of the run and a hand bottle would have allowed this. I also just like being able to get a little extra sugar and hydration when I want while running, so I’ll stick to running with one for the other three 5 Peaks events this year and any other trail events I may do.

Click on the image for the Garmin activity.

The course is a lot different than Golden Ears and, even though there’s (officially and by Garmin standards) less elevation gain and the course is 2.5-3km shorter, it feels a little tougher to me. This may be because the climbing happens a little later in the race and goes from quite steep to fairly steep/rolling and lasts longer. Whatever the reason, my pace per km was 10 seconds slower than Golden Ears, but I placed better overall and in my AG.

The early part of the course rolls a fair bit, while gaining about 100 meters with a really nice combo of single track and wider straight gravel trail over the first half of the course. Lots of fun, and while there was a sprinkle now and then, the forecast rain never materialized. Between 5 and 6k, the course hits a solid 250 meter elevation drop over the next 2km or so. I didn’t bomb down this all that much, as it’s sprinkled with a lot of fun switchbacks, so I was being somewhat cautious picking my lines. Particularly since I was a little more aggressive than I should’ve been on the downhills at Golden Ears and nearly face-planted at least three times, I didn’t want a repeat. I’m happy to say I never even came close to a wipeout or fall all day at Alice Lake (I guess you could take that to mean I wasn’t pushing hard enough).

“6 seconds? I thought you had me!!” Steve’s response on Twitter, though he began about 2 seconds ahead of me and finished about 10 seconds ahead of me, after I’d been 20 feet ahead of him in the middle of the race. We ran within probably 30 feet of each other the whole way.

Steve on the planks.

Somewhere a little past 7k, the course goes back up and regains the 250 meter drop, but does so over less distance and is quite steep at times. Unsurprisingly, it was this stretch where I lost some time (moreso than I would have expected), particularly as in the second part of this climb, my back and calves got a little tight on me and needed a bit of stretching.

At roughly the 9k mark, we got spit out to a wide gravelly/bouldery 100 meter drop over less than half a kilometer. After grinding to a slow hike in the previous 2k, once my hips and legs adjusted to heading back downhill, I was as aggressive as I could be on this section and hit a 3:51 split on this km of the race. The final sprint to finish is pancake flat and rounds the east side of Alice Lake.

I’m not looking for huge gains race to race this year, but just some slow progress back to paces I’m happy with. On pure pace, I wouldn’t say this was much of a step forward, but the only real gauge I can use is placement. At Golden Ears, I was 68/158 overall and 18/30 in my AG, while Alice Lake saw me place 71/221 overall and 14/35 in my AG. These aren’t exactly scary numbers, but placing well in the top 1/3 overall and getting close to top 1/3 in my AG means I made some strides since Golden Ears.

A few other pics

Greg

The ‘Silver Fox’ Greg Burnham is pictured to the left, while 9th men’s overall finisher, Karl Woll and Rob Kirkpatrick are left and right respectively, below.

Karl

Rob

Post-run and next steps

Connie, focused on the sport course.

I waited for a short time for Connie to come in. I know she had a good time on the sport course . We chatted with the running peeps for a few minutes, but were cooling off rapidly and grabbed the shuttle to the truck quite quickly after Connie finished. We tried to meeting up with Steve and Leah for coffee, but ended up going to the two different Starbucks’ locations in Squamish and never quite got it together. A venti long Americano and breakfast panini later and we were off to Vancouver. I’d decided I wanted closer to 20k for the day, so I banged off another easy, flat 7+km in the afternoon at home for 18 on the day – easy being a relative term.

There are two possible events over the next two weeks that I may consider. I’m unsure if I want to do the Longest Day 5 or 10k this coming Friday, since I haven’t got a lot of speed on my legs yet, but I’m seriously considering the Scotiabank Half on June 23 (or maybe even another jaunt up the Sea-to-Sky to do the 25k Comfortably Numb trail race) to see if there’s been any improvement since the BMO Half in early May. Of course I can just settle in and get six weeks of solid training done while I ramp up my cycling distances, waiting until the next 5 Peaks run at Cypress, though I’m sure something will look appealing in early July even if I don’t do another race in June.

I’d already come to the conclusion that ultimate was no longer a good idea due to a minor tear of my left medial meniscus about three years ago, and was really thinking I’d be almost completely focused on cycling for my endorphin fix. The problem with that is that I just love running. I like cycling well enough, but in my heart I am a runner. It’s cheap, easy and I feel better when I’m on a good run than I do at almost any other time. Whether I’m chasing people and a plastic disc in cleats, hitting the trails or pavement or ramping up for speedwork or hills, running gives me a fix like no other exercise.

Things felt pretty bleak. Bleak, that is until late last year. I’d spent a good chunk of the year getting injections for my neuromas and purchasing all manner of arch support, metartarsal pad and shoe to find the right combination that would mitigate my symptoms. I’d try doing a little running, have one or more problems, back off and so on, for what seemed like an eternity. As I finally found a good podiatrist, made my way through seven sclerosing alcohol injections and settled on a small foam metatarsal pad and latex toe separator on my runs, my symptoms calmed down bit by bit. By December, while I was still experimenting with various orthotics I was starting to tolerate slightly more regular runs and had ventured toward 10k on the weekends. This seems absolutely paltry compared with my past running, but 2-3 runs for about 20k a week was trending in the right direction. And, I was feeling very little discomfort on the runs by Christmas.

Needing some goals

You can never really tell if you’re getting better until you begin increasing overall volume and intensity, and the duration of individual runs. Since I hadn’t done a race since 2011, as 2013 hit, I figured I needed some goals to ensure I ramped up. As opposed to focusing on time, I just wanted a few targets to shoot at whereby I’d have to run more in preparation. Just before the price increase at midnight on New Year’s Eve, I registered for the BMO Vancouver Half and sometime shortly thereafter I registered for the 5 Peaks BC trail series. Nothing heavy, just enough that I could ramp up and see how my foot held up.

Settling on shoes

Newton Motions

After trying Hoka One One, Columbia, Salomon (and other) shoes over the past year and not finding what I needed, my shoe testing continued into 2013 and I discovered Newton Running shoes earlier this year. I loved running in the Newtons and still use them for some shorter mid-week runs. Ultimately, however, the way the Newton gets to a zero heel-to-toe drop is by putting rubber lugs under the forefoot of the shoe, and effectively pushing it off the ground and forcing the foot into more of a flex position. It would appear that placing my foot in this position put too much stress on my calf muscles. It took a few weeks to figure it out, but basically any run over about 8km in the Newtons and my calves were aching for a day or two afterward. Multiple runs per week simply exacerbated the problem, with no amount of rolling, pressure or stretching providing any relief.

Back to New Balance

NB 890V3

Since the injections and orthotic adjustments had killed the symptoms which stopped me running completely in April 2012, what I was really dealing with now was determining whether I could run more and longer and not see a return of my painful toe and forefoot symptoms. As New Balance has been my shoe of record for the most part, I decided to take a stab at returning to the fold. I have an old pair of 1400s that I began using again for some of my mid-week shorties, just to see if I could even run in a flexible forefoot again, and I passed the test repeatedly. I decided to take a look at the 890V3s since I really liked the V1s from a couple years back. Since I have also generally found I now need a wide toe box and stiffer forefoot I picked up a pair of Kintec composite inserts, but ultimately they were too stiff and I’ve found the 890V3s are working out very well on their own. I’ve been using them from April onward, including the BMO Vancouver Half about 10 days ago, and have been very happy so far.

NB 1210 Leadvilles

Since I hadn’t really been trail running since the 2011 5 Peaks series, and needed something for the 2013 edition, New Balance seemed like a good choice. Last week I picked up a pair of the new 1210 Leadvilles and only got one short urban trail run under my belt as a test prior to Golden Ears this past weekend. I have to say that I absolutely love them. They’ve got a naturally stiff forefoot and an 8mm drop, which is exactly the same as the drop in my 890V3s. They seem to have just the right balance of structure and flexibility and my foot felt great in last week’s Golden Ears enduro.

Training, events and frisbees

I made a very conscious decision to not ramp up heavily in advance of the half marathon on May 5th, only to get my long runs up to a couple 20k’s with a couple short, slightly higher paced mid-week jaunts prior to race day. Plus, in addition to having to ease off for a few weeks of Newton-induced calf problems, I lost almost three whole weeks in late March and early April due to a bad cold which turned into a lovely sinus infection. This happened right when I should have been tuning my legs in the race prep phase of my half marathon training cycle. This was the only place I really planned on doing a few weeks of shorter interval training. As such, I don’t feel too bad about still managing 10 runs/85k a month between January 1st and April 30th.

I haven’t run big volume yet, but considering what I lost, I probably averaged 25-30k per week during the times I ran. The most important thing to me was that I haven’t really experienced any of my prior symptoms in 2013 yet. I do have a tiny little numb spot on the tip of my big toe, but it comes and goes. Compared to the painful arches, big swollen nerve lumps and explosive toe jolts I had with every run about a year ago, the difference now is nothing short of remarkable to me.

BMO Vancouver Marathon Half

My Marathonfoto pics

This is a purposely tiny race report, because well, I didn’t race it. Just wanting to ramp up to a half distance after a long time off, there was no hill, speed or power work in preparation for this event. In short, everything went just about as well as could be expected. Other than the training gaps mentioned above, I slowly got myself up through some 16-20k long runs in the weeks before the event and was feeling good in the days leading up to the race.

The weather was beautiful and warm. I had no issues on the run and that’s all I wanted. It was probably just about my slowest half marathon ever and I was absolutely fine with that. I now know I can comfortably do a half without foot issues right now. This was also my first run on the new (as of 2012) course and I generally liked it a lot. I did find some of the downtown twists and turns to hit all the key neighbourhoods reduced the flow for me, but that’s a very small issue. A net downhill run was perfect for my situation.

All in all, my chip time of 1:37:47 put me in the top 7% for my AG (32/454) and the top 9% of my gender (341/3998) overall. At this point I have no plans for road races longer than a half, but it makes total sense to do the work to get back to a pace at which I’m happier running. Sub-1:30 again, maybe?

5 Peaks Golden Ears

Heading back to Alouette Lake – click the pic for the 5 Peaks photo stream on Flickr

The week following the BMO Half was the first of the 2013 5 Peaks BC trail runs. These events are great for where I am right now. Enough distance and climbing for a challenge, but short enough that you’re done in 1-2 hours and on with your day. I’m not as strong on the trails as I am on the road, and that was certainly no exception with this event.

The course only gets intense around the 6k point – click for the Garmin event

It was another beautiful day, bookending a week of incredible weather that began just before the marathon the Sunday before. Arriving at Alouette Lake with Greg and Rob around 8:30, this was another happily uneventful day for me.

Edit – You can see Greg’s fine (and far more detailed than mine) 5 Peaks Golden Ears race report here. We ended up within about 25 meters of each other for probably the first 10k of the run. I think his GPS is even wonkier than mine though, since he measured the 14k race at just over 12 and my Garmin said 13.3

I seeded myself a little further back than I normally would have, expecting the moderate run I would ultimately have. The only things worth mentioning for me are the gnarly little climb up Incline and my insistence on catching my right toe repeatedly on a stump or boulder and nearly face-planting on the trail. Incline was tough as expected, and probably slower than when I did it two years earlier. As the elevation pic above shows, you gain about 200 meters over 1k of the course, so it’s pretty steep and feels longer than it is. As I kept stubbing my right foot, at least I managed to catch myself with my left foot before breaking my face, so that’s a good thing.

As opposed to how I typically place in most road races, I’m usually around the middle of the pack in trail events. This is likely an outcome of very little hilly trail running in general. Since I had absolutely zero of either prior to the event, my expectations were suitably moderate. My time of 1:24:56 was good enough for 68/158 overall, and 18/30 in my AG. I don’t necessarily expect to be as strong on trails as the road, but top 1/3 in all categories is a decent goal for races this year. Given that, with just as little event-specific training in 2011, I ran 1:20:18 on the same course, it’s clear I’ve got a little work to do before the Squamish event in June.

Chasing plastic

Despite my earlier assertions that I was done with ultimate due to my minor medial meniscus damage (permanent, but not bad enough for surgery), the knee has felt almost perfect for quite some time, well before my foot problems actually. I really love playing ultimate, but it’s become a young, fast person’s game and I’m no longer that. However, since my wife is still playing a couple times a week, I decided to give it one more shot and play Monday single headers. One game to 17 is much easier on the joints than double-headers to 13, so I figured I’d play and see how things feel.

I’m happy to report after two weeks, I’m moving quite well and not as slowly as I expected. My hands aren’t as rusty as I expected either, so all in all it’s going well. I’ve promised myself that, should my knee begin giving me the slightest problem, I will drop the ultimate. I don’t want it to cause any issues for my running or cycling, both of which are higher priorities. Plus, if for some reason I do need to drop it, this is absolutely my last kick at the can and I’ll be hanging my cleats up permanently. Continuing to play will be a year-by-year decision, but the next time I do stop will be my last.

What’s next?

As of right now, I’m only registered for the 5 Peaks series, since I like getting the extra swag and I wanted a reason to get to the trails more often. At the very least I’ll do a late season half marathon to measure my progress, probably Victoria in October. I could easily register for a bunch of races – Iron Knee next week, do the next 5 Peaks on June 8th, the Longest Day 10k on June 14th, and the Scotiabank Half the week after that, just to name a few. I’m thinking I’d like a few weeks just to begin getting my speed work and hills regularized. Since I already know I’m running Squamish in 3.5 weeks I’m seriously considering doing the Scotia Half a couple weeks after that to gauge my progress. That would give me four races for May and June, and I should hopefully see some small improvements in my running over that time.

I’ll likely pick a few well-spaced additional running events this year to keep focus, but nothing really ambitious. I’ve also got to narrow down things and pick two or three longer cycling events. At present I’m looking at the 145k Canada Day Populaire, with the 160k Valley Granfondo a possibility three weeks later, and the 140k Tour de Victoria in September. The Victoria ride is well-spaced between the last two 5 Peaks events of the season, and a full month before the Victoria Marathon half.

In particular, 5 Peaks Cypress is the day before the Valley Granfondo in July, so I have to consider how much I want to load up on one weekend before committing to the Fondo. I can always consider the RBC Whistler Granfondo too, but that would put two fondos in September and I really want to do the Victoria ride. August is looking a little empty right now, except for 5 Peaks Whistler Blackcomb, so I may consider another trail or road running event and focus on tuning my riding for September.

I just love being able to think like this, picking target events and planning training, instead of figuring out when my next injection is going to be.

This kind of misstep is more noticeable when the registration and the email follow in such rapid succession, but nonetheless, it demonstrates very poor attention to detail with regard to email marketing and, by extension, creates a poor customer experience. Just prior to this, I’d been pretty impressed when I noticed they’d implemented a responsive design on their main web site. Doing so indicates that they at least recognize that their customers access their site on several different devices with different viewports, and that they’re trying to create a good customer experience. As such, the poorly timed marketing email kind of killed the good will the responsive web site had instilled in me.

As well, since I understand that the world of email marketing tells its practitioners to send out big, visual messages, I won’t get into critiquing the design of their 600×2100 pixel template (click image to the left to enlarge – still only to half size). With the exception, that is, that a design fixed to these behemoth dimensions while actually only containing two paragraphs and a bullet list of copy, is the exact opposite of either a good customer experience or responsive design. Reading this thing on your phone would chew up data to download the images and force the user to scroll all over the place.

In the grand scheme of things, getting this email isn’t a big deal. However, it is extremely easy to not only fix to turn into a good experience, but to further customize it and make it a stellar customer experience. The marathon folks are really missing an opportunity connect with their customers in ways that are meaningful to them.

Timing is everything

It’s not like the marathon organization sends out a ton of email marketing, but one can probably assume their New Year’s blast was timed to capitalize on resolutions and pudgy midriffs. The screenshot above really only encourages registration in its big, graphically intense way. I’ve been subscribed to their newsletters for quite some time and, if memory serves, this is now the beginning of what will be increasingly frequent calls to action for me to register.

Don’t just ask why; let me change my mind.

However, since I had just registered prior to getting this, I viewed it akin to spam and, being the email curmudgeon I am, I unsubscribed. It really made me wonder just how on the ball the marathon marketing folks are. After all, don’t they track email addresses of registrants versus prospects and treat them differently? Apparently not. I found the links in the email footer to either unsubscribe from emails or update my profile. There’s apparently only one mailing list, because it gave me no choices AND didn’t even ask me to confirm. Clicking unsubscribe meant I was immediately unsubscribed, though it did allow me to provide feedback as to why. Updating my profile allowed me to change personal information, with the additional option of unsubscribing, but again, no email preferences nor different mailing list interests.

Interestingly, as of this writing, I’ve sent them direct feedback by email, tweeted and re-tweeted feedback to them and provided reasons for unsubscribing and I’ve heard nothing back yet. I wonder if/when I will.

The basic fixes

Any well designed experience takes a little effort, but there are some really simple things the marathon folks can do to fix and improve this for their customers:

1. Proof-read ALL your content ruthlessly

   One thing I forgot to mention is that there had also been some contradictions in their published dates for the early bird discount expiration. The main website indicated that the prices would be going up by $30 and $40 for the half and full, respectively, on January 1st, whereas the registration site said they’d be going up two days later.

   As it turned out, January 3rd was the actual date, so from the marathon’s marketing perspective, the timing of this email was a last-minute marketing push for registration. For those of us who thought the early bird fee had expired, the email was no longer a push, rather just a poorly timed spammy annoyance.

   Fix #1 – Ensure messaging consistency to avoid customer confusion and frustration.

2. Get your timing right

   In addition to the botched messaging, there are a couple glaring problems with their email approach. First, while it’s understandable to send out a call to action like this at New Year’s, doing so when many of your customers have just registered because your falsely advertised early bird fee has just expired is very poor execution.

   Fix #2 – Give enough lead time between marketing pushes and milestones such as fee deadlines, that contradictory messaging/glitches don’t come back to bite you.

3. Manage email addresses, based on customer profile

   Second, and perhaps my most important point, run your registrant email addresses against your mailing list email addresses and eliminate the duplicates. Particularly in light of the fact that they only apparently have one mailing list and know nothing about targeted email marketing, they should NEVER send calls to register to those who already have. However, given what data is available via the profile management link, they’re not showing me much on which they could customize my messaging.

   Fix #3 – Don’t spam customers who’ve already given you their money for the very thing you’re advertising.

4. Confirm your customer’s choices before making them final

   It may seem like a small thing, but if you’ll recall when I unsubscribed from the email, I indicated that clicking the link in the footer automatically unsubscribed me, the only option being to provide them feedback as to why. At least if there was an option to retain my subscription, I never saw it. This is a big mistake. What if I clicked it by mistake or wanted to keep my subscription after all? The only option I have is to go re-subscribe manually and that’s a hassle. This effectively ensures they’ve lost a marketing conduit whether I really wanted to unsubscribe or not.

   Fix #4 – No matter what you’re doing with customers online, when you ask them to make a decision, provide them a confirmation message and allow them to change their mind.

Beyond basic fixes to better customer experiences

My final point is not really a fix so much as a suggestion. It is simple conceptually, but takes a little more work. However, I expect it would deliver them better results and less customer frustration. While it’s certainly better to remove paying customer email addresses completely from what ends up being spam lists (subscribed to or not), better still would be to tailor how you’re talking to these customers, broaden your relationship with them and give them more convenient control. This would also have the added benefit of making the customer feel like you’re paying attention to them. Frankly, even if they merged my previous race registration data with what I’ve provided in my mailing list subscription, they’d begin building really useful profiles.

What if, instead of asking me to register when I’ve already just done so, I received an email thanking me for the registration, offering me tips to make the most of my race experience (which could still be soft upsell opportunities), and linking to sponsor products, training programs and marathon clinics? It could even ask me if I was still interested in receiving these registrant-specific messages. After the marathon passed, the registered and non-registered customer lists could be merged back into one leading up to next year’s race. Or, at the very least have registered and non-registered customer templates, then they could automatically change which one they send me by setting a purchase flag in their list. This way they tailor the message and they don’t even need to manage two lists.

Further, the footer link to unsubcribe and the other link to update my profile should just be merged into just one link to a subscription preferences panel. Clearly word the link and only send me to one place; one that allows me to choose from a number of custom mailing lists and to edit my contact information. This way I could choose which of the targeted mailing lists I wanted to receive. I’m just using two examples above, but there are probably more tailored mailing lists the marathon could develop; basic marketing, sponsor offers, the causes you’re asked to donate to when you register, etc. If you add the data from previous races and allow me to tell you what I want you to keep, you really begin to respect me as a customer.

At the end of the day, email marketing should respect the customer, the money they give you, and provide them fine-grained control about how you communicate with them and what kind of data you keep about them.

A recap

So that you don’t need to click the link above, should you be interested in such things, my situation thus far in a few simple bullet points:

• I began experiencing toe tingles and weird symptoms in the summer of 2011, which progressed to downright painful toe jolts.
• It took two attempts at a podiatrist to find one I could trust by early spring 2012.
• I was diagnosed with one neuroma between toes 3 and 4, with a slightly less clear problem between toe 1 and 2.
• I had begun sclerosing alcohol injections, in an attempt to decrease/kill the toe symptoms.

Since spring

I guess you have to celebrate any successes you have with a situation like this, so I’m somewhat happy to report that the sclerosing injections were a minor success. Seven treatments were able to kill the intense jolting that was occurring while running and uncomfortable tingling that was occurring pretty much any time I stepped hard through the ball of my foot. This would include, but was not limited to, running, going up or down stairs and any kind of jumping and landing. So, as of the beginning of June, at least something had gone right.

I never was able to pinpoint a cause of, nor get any useful medical opinion on a nerve tingling/numbness I’d often get emanating from the arch of my foot and running up the medial side of my big toe. With reduced running I don’t get that much right now, but even more inexplicably, I’m left with a very tiny numb spot at the medial tip of my big toe that can temporarily get bigger with excessive running. It seems to be the result of compressing a nerve, and there is a type of neuroma – the name of which escapes me at the moment – that is specific to this area.

Additionally, what had originally felt like perhaps up to three separate issues in my foot have become somewhat clearer in that I now have two very distinct zones with lumps – the original 3rd interspace (foot lingo for between the 3rd and 4th toes) and the 1st interspace (foot lingo for between the 1st and 2nd toes). Since the initial symptoms had been partially resolved, a few appointments with my podiatrist over July and August were focused on better understanding these lump symptoms that remained, operating under the assumption that one is a neuroma, and the other may be a combination of a few things, and trying to determine if they could be treated with custom orthotics or would benefit from surgery.

Finally, with the jolts and intense tingles a thing of the past, I’ve been able to cycle unimpeded (as my Ride2Survive in June will attest to) and have resumed a moderate level of running. I say moderate because I’ve only pushed it to about 13k as my longest run and been wildly up and down in my volumes. I’ve stayed away from intense hills or speedwork and when my weekly mileage starts inching much above about 25k, it’s accompanied by more foot discomfort, as my lumps become more noticeable and achey overall. While I never revisited trail running this past year because of these distance and volume related issues, I’ve begun to think trails might be a better option because of the variety and the generally slower paces and power hikes trail running necessitates.

Diagnosis gaps abound

As I wrote in part one, my podiatrist suspects that my slightly longer 2nd toe, and my propensity for rolling my left foot inward (overpronation) may have caused some general metatarsalgia (a very broad condition that essentially means irritated toe), but I’ve had a long 2nd toe all my life, so why a sudden problem in the past two years after running for the better part of 20 years? Plus, the symptom is not directly related to the 2nd metatarsal head and bone, which would be the case if I was suffering from metatarsalgia of the 2nd toe. I’ve largely discounted this theory.

Sesamoiditis

Nonetheless, I have indeterminate lumpy discomfort around my big toe, which may be caused by a long toe bone, my foot rolling inward, a neuroma – or some combination of these things. Since x-rays can’t show soft tissue problems, I had an ultrasound of my entire forefoot in July, which was also largely inconclusive. And then, an additional wrinkle – since the 1st interspace is a very uncommon place for a neuroma, metatarsalgia seems unlikely and, since my lump sensation is almost tucked right down beside/underneath the big toe, my podiatrist became suspicious that it may actually be sesamoiditis. Sesamoids are two small pea-sized bones (picture left or above, depending on how you’re viewing this) that sit underneath the big toe bone and act as pullies for the tendon that runs from there along the bottom of the foot. If the tendon was inflamed, it would fit with some other sensations I’ve had on the underside of my foot (other nerve/tingles running along the arch and almost a tight/thick feeling along this area). This theory seems to make more sense, but the exact area of the lump doesn’t really correspond to the positioning of the inner sesamoid bone.

It’s at this point I’ve begun to think I need to get a second opinion. My current podiatrist recommended in August that I should get an MRI to try to determine whether I was dealing with sesamoiditis, but in most research I’ve done and other medical advice I’ve received, you’d use a bone scan if anything to diagnose this. Plus, with what ended up a 7 month wait (currently booked for January, but presently at risk due to health sector job action), wouldn’t the weird symptoms have made him consider an MRI much earlier in my then year-long odyssey? Plus, from what I’ve also read of sesamoiditis, unless the bones are actually fractured, treatment is really limited to conservative options. Ice the area until the symptoms reduce and orthotics to both cushion the area and off-load pressure. With this such a long-term condition, icing inflammation isn’t appropriate (though I do sometimes do so after a run) and I’m already playing with a number of orthotic things which I detail below.

But I digress …

Are you doing the math? An uncomfortable lump with potentially four causes and no clear treatment yet. I can run, but not nearly as much or as hard as I want (so training for running races is completely out of the question), but I’ve only been able to do even that much in part due to my own experimentation. While the aforementioned injections got rid of the most intense symptoms, I’ve done a few things on my own that have definitely contributed to my being able to cycle and run a little.

Self-treating

Since we haven’t yet arrived at the point where surgery has been decided upon and/or custom orthotics can be designed, I’ve done some experimentation out of necessity. Conservative treatments for neuromas pretty much consist of corticosteroid injections (useless in my case), sclerosing alcohol injections (partially useful in my case), footwear selection and orthotics. There are even fewer options to treat sesamoid problems, if I even have them to begin with.

While the toe tingling and jolts are now a thing of the past, my problem is hardly solved. I’ve got two lumps in my forefoot, which both generally become a bigger problem the longer or more intensely I run. As a result, the activity I most enjoy with clothes on has been altered dramatically, and I needed to do as much as I can to tip the scales back toward the middle. Medical practitioners can help, but as they say, “Physician, heal thyself.” Below then, are the processes I’ve gone through and some of the solutions I’ve arrived at. If you are struggling with symptoms similar to mine, you can probably get at least some measure of relief from one or more of these things.

Orthotics

Arch supports – Going as far back as the fall of 2011, my physio at the time recommended Sole arch supports, as he suspected my biomechanical foot issue (overpronation) was at least partly to blame for other imbalances I’ve experienced for a long time. He’s probably right. Unfortunately, though, if I use an (even remotely rigid or stiff) arch support for any length of time I begin to develop aching arches and will also typically irritate the big toe’s medial tingling and numbness. We’re not talking small aches either. Cringe-inducing, walk and run ending, “my foot needs a masseuse” arch aches. For some time in 2011 and earlier this year, I valiantly tried a wide variety of levels of support, all to no avail. I just can’t tolerate them and function properly. A further complication is that I really don’t overpronate on my right side, so when using arch supports on both feet as one should, my right leg very quickly develops IT (iliotibial) band pain, since I’m effectively rolling that foot out too far.

One other arch support issue I should mention … proponents of barefoot and minimalist footwear are steadfastly against artificial arch support. Their logic suggests that it’s better to wear more natural footwear and let your arch muscles re-gain some strength. While I don’t fully subscribe to the barefoot/minimal mindset, I do think there’s some valuable information to use (read about my use of toe separators a little further along). There are exercises you can do, including simply being mindful about your stride and rolling out to a more neutral position when you walk and run.

Metatarsal pads – This is a pretty standard tool in the war against forefoot pain and something both podiatrists I’ve seen so far recommended. There are literally a ton of variations on the shelves of sports-med and medical supply stores. Plus, you can easily make your own. Essentially, a small, flexible moderately thick pad is used to lift the middle of the foot and create a small space between the metatarsal heads and the shoe insert. It gives you a little space and reduces pressure as your foot rolls through the stepping motion and forefoot push off.

Powersteps

Podiatrists tend to be very conservative testing metatarsal pads, for good reason. If they are too big or poorly placed, they’ll cause more pain, but if you get the sizing and positioning just right, they can really be a blessing. I’ve also found the material is really important. Podiatrists like to test pads with various thicknesses of felt and then affix them to your foot with taping. That’s great for one day, but re-taping your foot properly is difficult if not impossible, and the felt becomes too thin quickly for re-use. Once you know that the pads work, though, just experiment until you get it right. After many brands and homemade attempts I found the thickness and stiffness of Powersteps just right. I cut them a little so I can use both right or left for my left foot and place them on the underside of my shoe insert. Of all individual things I’ve done, this has made the biggest difference to both running and walking.

Toe separators – These often get no mention from podiatrists, but in my own research, I’ve come to the conclusion that a lifetime of footwear does our feet a lot of damage. I believe if we were raised barefoot or in minimal shoes, we’d have much less foot pain. One of the outcomes of a barefoot life is properly aligned toes, instead of metatarsals that are crunched together (possibly being a cause for conditions such as neuromas). As such, on my own, I’ve tried several different kinds of these. Many spread your toes so far, they are too painful and won’t fit in most shoes.

Correct Toes

I came close with a product called Correct Toes. They are fairly unobtrusive to wear for walking, but despite being more comfortable than some of the larger more painful contraptions, they are still too hard to wear when running. Regardless, they caused the skin on the toes to pinch and rub quite badly for me. Even cutting and playing with them couldn’t make them work, so overall, no solution for anything.

Gel toe separators

Often the simplest solution is the best. I ended up settling on individual soft silicone gel toe separators. They’re really soft, create just enough separation to straighten the toes and reduce pressure between the metatarsals, and they come in two sizes. I use a larger one beside the big toe and two smaller ones, on each foot. Coupling these with a metatarsal pad on my left foot has really helped. I wear both pretty much all the time when in shoes.

Shoes

Pretty much any podiatrist or treatment recommendation you’ll read will suggest wearing shoes with stiff forefoots. Some mention big ugly rocker shoes. While I could never bring myself to wear those, once I’d tested walking in a shoe with little to no flex in the forefoot I was hooked. If I wasn’t dealing with these symptoms, I’d have a strong preference for flexible, minimal shoes. However, the reality is that at present, I need to reduce my forefoot flexion through push-off – for walking and running.

Hoka One One Stinsons

I tackled running shoes first and found that, in general, there aren’t a lot of road running shoes with really stiff forefoots, let alone ones with wide toe boxes (to avoid compressing the toes together and to allow for toe separators). After a lot of looking around, I narrowed things down to the Mizuno Wave Prophecy and Hoka One Ones. Without doubt, the Hoka’s have the stiffest forefoot I’ve ever seen – they simply don’t flex. And, despite an extremely thick but very light sole, they also have reasonably minimal drop. As I wanted something I could run road and a little trail in, I opted for the Stinsons. It’s a different feeling to running when you have almost no flex in the forefoot, but I managed to adjust fairly quickly. A stiff forefoot makes little difference to shorties of 5k and under, but the longer I go the more valuable the reduced forefoot flex becomes to keeping my symptoms at bay. However, I’ve found the excessive cushioning not really to my liking and they’re so thick that I tend to drag the rear outsole, creating non-typical wear patterns for me. Their width makes them stable in spite of their height, but they just don’t feel right on my feet. I’ve still got some miles in them, but while I use those up, the search is on for a stiff forefoot, with a little more minimal/normal shoe profile.

Patagonia Scree Shields

I also wanted to find a ‘go-to’ walking shoe and looked extensively without much luck. Then, I happened upon some Patagonia Scree Shield hikers at MEC. Test wearing them, I could tell they’d be great for my lumpy forefoot as the toe box is virtually inflexible through the push off, with a wide roomy toe box for my toes to roam free. I wear them almost daily and they’re very comfortable.

Columbia Peak Freaks

As I said, this year I’ve stayed away from the trails. Up until about a month ago, the only off-road kicks I had were Salomon Speed Cross trail racing shoes. They’re awesome, but probably have some of the biggest forefoot flex I’ve ever seen, coupled with a pretty tight toe box – not really the best combo for me. I still bang around in them from time to time, but they aren’t ideal for my situation. A few weeks ago I just happened to stumble upon some Columbia Peak Freaks (at Winners of all places, when I wasn’t really looking) and found them to have great forefoot stiffness. They’re super lightweight and have a wide toe box. Ideal all around. They were also cheap, so I assumed I was just buying a pair of hikers that I could bang around in. When I got them home and researched them, I found out I’d paid less than half their MSRP and they get solid reviews as a combo approach shoe and trail runner. They’re also rated as nearly waterproof, and a five hour day in the rain a couple weeks ago verifies this.

Summary and looking forward

Dealing with the kind of condition I have is challenging. It has drastically altered my lifestyle and requires a level of patience to get to some kind of end-game that’s not natural for me. I’ve managed to get to a place where my symptoms are almost non-existent for walking and fairly manageable for cycling and short running – probably about as good as I can make things until I have the results of my MRI, and an idea of next steps after another appointment with my podiatrist (and perhaps a second opinion to be safe) sometime around the end of January. I am aware that the MRI may not shed much light on my situation and could very well get cancelled, at which point a custom orthotic could be as good as it gets. As such, I have found a few simple things that seem to have helped a fair bit, to keep me at least doing some running. If you’re in a similar boat to me, and assuming you’re seeing a specialist who knows the foot, of all the recommendations you’ll hear and read out there, my suggested combo is:

• eschew rigid arch supports in favour of shoes that more gently correct your biomechanical problems, while being more mindful about your stride
• ensuring you get the placement and size correct, metatarsal pads can really help reduce the pressure on your forefoot and toes
• consider gentle toe alignment correction, but be sure what you use can be comfortably worn walking and running
• absolutely move to shoes with more rigid forefoots and wider toe boxes

Beyond what the injections and my own adjustments have done for me to this point, it’s now a waiting game. I intend to keep working at easing my mileage and intensity up over the next few months, and still harbour a hope to get back to even the half marathon and/or 25k enduro trail distance. I’ll consider it a major success if I do. In fact, until a recent hamstring pull sidelined me for a few weeks, I was doing just that and feeling as good as I have in the past year. I’m prepared for whatever an MRI and another podiatrist appointment or two in the new year may indicate. Everything from neuroma excision surgery to only a custom orthotic is possible. It’s also possible that by continuing my own conservative treatment that, over time, the symptoms will continue to lessen and that this might also allow me to gradually run more.

Whatever the case, I expect I’ll have a final installment of this story perhaps by the spring.

On first blush, Do-it-yourself User Testing, Adaptable Information Architecture and Designing with Agile may all seem like quite separate things (except, of course, they’re all components of user experience design), but for me a river definitely runs through it, so to speak. They really are core pieces of what I do, so doing all three did seem pretty ideal.

The Gladstone ballroom

A small note on the venue for the three days, The Gladstone Hotel, on Queen Street West in Toronto. I liked very much the old architecture and funky nature of the building itself, but found the space a little lacking. Particularly on the first day there was a lot of street noise (hydraulic tailgates off-loading beer, sirens, etc) in the morning and music spill-through from the lobby in the afternoon. It wasn’t as pronounced on subsequent days, but I always found it a minor distraction. Hotel wi-fi was decent when we arrived in the morning, but well before noon it was very slow, as IP addresses got used and/or bandwidth was gobbled up. None of these was a killer, as the material was solid, but if they bring these workshops back, I’d recommend a slightly quieter venue with a faster, more stable data connection. Better yet? Bring other ones to Vancouver … yes, Vancouver.

I originally had my thoughts on each of these workshops included below, but it ended up being one absolutely gargantuan piece of writing that I figured no one would make it through, so I’ve simply included an intro to each below and a link to follow if you’d like to read more.

DIY Usability Testing

Steve Krug is a usability consultant, and has written two well-received books about the topic, Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability and Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems. This workshop was based entirely upon the second book and dealt with making usability testing as simple as possible and weaving it into your monthly design operational cycle. In fact, the book is really the script for the workshop/course that Steve does. In the workshop, Steve does a great job of demystifying simple, practical usability testing that anyone can do.

Read my whole review »

Adaptable Information Architecture

Lou Rosenfeld is a well-known information architect for many years, with a strong and varied consulting background. Back in the 90′s he wrote what is still likely considered THE bible on IA (and a must read for anyone who does this stuff). This workshop really focused on the topic of Lou’s latest book, Search Analytics for Your Site, and gave me some great insights into things I can do almost immediately, to not only improve my practice, but to hopefully have a positive impact on our main web property in a more rapid and iterative fashion. There really are some very significant things you can do, armed with only raw search log data and an Excel spreadsheet.

Read my whole review »

Designing with Agile

Anders Ramsay was really the unknown entity for me. Like the other two workshops, this one was based on his yet-to-be-published book of the same name. The nice thing about Anders’ workshop is that, where the other two focused on ways of improving existing designs or those in progress, Designing with Agile was really about turning traditional initial design approaches on their collective heads. While putting everything in his approach to work in my present environment would be virtually impossible, I made several small discoveries that I can begin to use in future projects. Using some of these techniques, I don’t doubt anyone could use to produce early stage design faster, and with a greater sense of ownership by all project stakeholders.

Read my whole review »

Where I go from here

All-in-all, the last week or so has been pretty kick-ass, well, except for the killer cold I brought back from Toronto. As a professional development opportunity, these three workshops were great and very complementary to one another, while the books really fleshed out what was covered in the workshops. I think it’s just happenstance that they fit like a glove with my skillset and what I typically do. With agile and lean floating around as buzzwords in the industry at present, it was nice to take really useful workshops from experienced pros. These workshops took those concepts and made them very real in ways I can actually use now.

It’s more the way the three topics fit together for me that makes so much sense. For example:

• While I don’t know if I could ever make my current work environment fully adopt Agile, I can see definite ways I can apply Agile UX principles to early stage design, prototyping and coding work for our projects. It isn’t too much of a stretch (since I do like facilitating anyway) to see myself turning the UX work I do into collaborative sessions involving all key stakeholders, with solutions arrived at earlier, and a lot more rough sketching before a pixel is ever moved around. Even the PM in me got a few tidbits of food for thought.
• I see site search analytics as a bigger part of my future. And, while I’m not sure about group capacity to change large problems, I’d like to think that I’ve got some new tools to more quickly identify small problems, and with which to design improved experiences. Particularly, as we know of some significant data that we can’t get our hands on, there may be ways to tune our design to better deal with that problem and give users a clue as to why and how to get help.
• Finally whether designing something new or identifying problems on our existing site, I have a renewed interest in quicker and more frequent user testing. It may be that I will end up doing so via remote, as opposed to, in-person methodologies. However, getting things in front of real users frequently will simply allow me to design better things. This will helpful to not only understand why problems we’ve found are actually a problem, but also to determine if solutions we’re creating work, or if designs we’re in the midst of are going in the right direction.

While I’m excited by the prospects these workshops have created in my mind, I’m also a realist. I know that integrating new approaches takes time and persistence and I’ve got to promise myself to accept that any changes are good ones, even if they seem small at the time. This is even more the case in large, bureaucratic organizations like mine. If nothing else, I had some solid perspective altering experiences this past week, and that’s always a good thing.

While putting everything in his approach to work in my present environment would be virtually impossible, I made several small discoveries that I think I can begin to use in future projects. I say making our process completely agile would be impossible because, a) going there has to be a team sport, with everyone on board, and; b) it needs some level of top-down support and drive to happen. Each time I build a new large requirements document for a new application, I vow I will move from needs analysis more directly to sussing functional specs out of a more rapid, iterative prototyping process. However, it simply doesn’t seem to happen, in part as some team members have a strong penchant for overly detailed requirements before they begin doing anything, and in part because the rest of the business often can’t take the time to go through multiple, rapid group sessions to collaboratively design features. But I digress, and I know I can begin doing some of my UX work using some of the techniques from this workshop.

As with Lou’s session, I’ll include a presentation below – the exact one Anders used, in fact – that demonstrates what we covered, then I’ll outline a few things that were key for me from the day.

The Agile Manifesto

Written some time ago (the date escapes me) by several software developers, the Agile Manifesto has four key points:

• individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• working software over comprehensive documentation
• customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• responding to change over following a plan

Whereas most of us still produce software and web designs via a standard waterfall approach, Agile says you need to become more collaborative, where regular and meaningful communication lead to product iterations much more quickly. Make the documentation appropriate for the project – nothing more, nothing less. I guess my take on this is to try to inject it where I can (for example, using brainstorming and design studio techniques very early, to create UX elements more rapidly), but that completely changing how we develop by expecting programmers to do many, many more refined alpha cuts earlier and without comprehensive documentation, is a much longer sales pitch. I’ll keep making it though, because I personally find constantly revising a large requirements document from the earliest stages of a project to be a complete waste of time, and largely a Cover-Your-Ass (CYA) exercise. It pretty much never gets used later, and it’s just as easy to use a solid prototype with a good interaction spec to determine if, for example, user testing demonstrates it’s meeting client and user needs.

Relay race versus rugby scrums

I think the comparisons between relay running and waterfall, versus a rugby game and agile, were very apt for me. A relay team works together, but each member still does their own work in isolation and most communication happens via the handoff (baton OR documentation). Whereas, in a rugby scrum it’s intensive, continuous and direct and you cross the finish line more frequently together (points OR iterations), until you eventually win the game.

Lean versus Agile

Three UX’s?

I often tire of hearing the terms Lean and Agile used interchangeably, but in all honesty I’ve had a hard time myself, separating one from the other. This probably comes from the fact that in normal language, they can mean largely the same thing. If you’re like me, you immediately think quick and slim. It now makes more sense to me to think of Lean UX as the kind of design approach a startup will take, where they move much more quickly to get a somewhat imperfect product to market – it’s a necessity to prove a concept. Agile UX, then, is more a paradigm shifting concept. In a nutshell, Lean asks if we’re making the right thing, whereas Agile is about how we make it, and becoming more collaborative to deliver better products more quickly. In both cases, if you’re doing it right, you’ll develop less documentation (but the right documentation for the situation) and become more productive.

Group exercises

We ended up doing more collaborative group exercises in this workshop than the other two, in fact once we discussed definition of Agile and relative advantages over more traditional processes, the day played out with mostly group work. I guess that’s to be expected given the subject. However, I also thought the workshop might have benefited from a deeper dive into one or two exercises, with a little more digestion space. Any one of these could, and perhaps should, take several hours, as opposed to the 15-30 minutes we gave them. Throughout the paragraphs below, I’ve bolded and italicized the naming conventions for the various Agile design techniques we used.

While the exercises did give me the flavour of doing some key Agile UX group work, they felt a little hurried, and I sensed most of us had a little information overload. And overall, trying to cram as much as we did into the day, meant the Q&A session at the end took a bit of a hit. We couldn’t explore whether the workshop answered the questions we all wrote down about Agile UX (and dotvoted into key groupings) at the beginning of the day. I thought doing this was a great exercise and glossing over it at the end diminished its value IMHO.

After discussing collaborative project chartering briefly, we jumped into persona development. Personas begat user stories (again, covered at a very quick pace), which then begat storymapping. I liked the way this process flowed, and again, just wish we could have delved a bit more deeply into storymapping, as it’s a valuable group exercise. I loved writing as many features/stories as we could in a three minute timebox and then moving into a card chunking exercise to begin shaping them into a story. Once we had various stories mapped, we used dotvoting to refine them into one agreed upon storymap.

As we moved our storymapping into a UI exploration exercise, I was a little relieved to hear Anders talk about the fact that these kinds of rapidly developed design concepts really aren’t dev-ready. If you’ll recall my earlier point that expecting developers to move into rapid alpha app builds and embrace Agile, then you’ll know I believe they also need a more developed piece of documentation to hang their hats on. It’s essentially a process that goes from extremely low fidelity feature stories to medium fidelity UI explorations, through to higher res developer stories.

While I still don’t think the process would satisfy some devs I know (though, Anders does admit getting everyone to embrace this approach is a broader org shift), we used a design studio technique to refine the storymapping exercise into an application flow with rudimentary layout and interaction approach. I found this worked remarkably well. Essentially you decide on an area of focus and begin to iterate, with everyone sketching out interfaces in short timeboxes, perhaps for an assigned part, then voting, then repeating. While a little bit longer exercise would have been a joy, it was easy to see how quickly you could obtain pretty good design results by using a design studio approach. This may be one of the key things I try on my next larger project. The key to getting developer buy-in, from my perspective, is that they are sitting around the table as one of the key stakeholders and are doing this activity with you.

Effectively, you do most of the design activities in fairly rapid iterations, with everyone contributing and use dotvoting or a similar technique to continually refine. Once you’ve done so enough, you can do a storymap refresh and you’ll eventually get to a point where a developer can use what’s been produced to begin building early alpha apps.

Who (or what) is your MVP

While it may indeed be your Most Valuable Player in an Agile UX design approach, in this case we’re talking about Minimum Viable Product. This is another concept that comes up continually at work as we often try to deliver the core element the client wants, without building all the stuff they’d like but don’t really need. My own example is a project I’m currently working on that began life as a somewhat bloated mini-CRM application. To enable us to build it, we’ve scaled it back to what has effectively become a mailing list subscription notification system. It’s removed all the management features to become automated and still do the core thing the client wanted.

However, as opposed to long development cycles, once you’ve gone through the UX crowdsourcing I’ve outlined above, you need to go through a relatively brief prototyping and coding exercise to get something usable out the door. It can be hard to get your head around this, when your normal approach is to get something as close to perfect as you can before delivering, as this is about getting a basic thing that works in the hands of users as quickly as possible – a Minimum Viable Product. You’re not necessarily finished for some time, because as with the design process, you’re likely going to iterate this into ever-more complete applications.

Anders spoke through a number of Agile approaches, including Painkillers (killing big pain points with the least amount of effort – well connected to the other two workshops), Fast Money (removing features the client isn’t paying for to kill bloat), Turk It (using manual backend processes that appear automated to users), Go Ugly Early (functional but hardly pretty), and Fake It ’til You Make It (typical start-up approach to appearing to have launched and gauging interest/feature desire while still developing). He also briefly covered the lifecycle surrounding sprints, but the core point of the workshop was how to use Agile processes in UX design, so these points were very high level, and more about project management than design.

I took this workshop with two others, which I also reviewed. Adaptable Information Architecture and Do-it-yourself Usability Testing. I also have an overview page here.

While I have used both open and closed card sorts, and other tools such as personas and basic web analytics to good effect, I’ve always felt my IA toolkit to be a little weak. This workshop really focused on the topic of Lou’s latest book, Search Analytics for Your Site, and gave me some great insights into things I can do almost immediately, to not only improve my practice, but to hopefully have a positive impact on our main web property in a more rapid and iterative fashion.

As with Steve’s workshop the day before, the main suggestion here was to eschew major redesigns in favour of finding ways to make smaller improvements more frequently to net bigger rewards. As with the book, Lou’s workshop used Michigan State University as a major case study for the day. Using a higher ed site was really a plus for me, since I experience many of the same issues in my work. And, as with user testing, my main issue is that I spend so much time doing project-specific work, that finding cycles to actually do iterative, regular operational-type design improvements to our main site is a major challenge.

The main arguments against major redesigns are that the moving target variables of users, content and organizational context, make it impossible to get redesigns right, that the word redesign itself is meaningless, because it is a different thing to everyone, and that silos and internal competition (a major problem in higher education) makes it almost impossible to do a good redesign. Instead of a redesign, then, we should consider the following:

• Prioritize: identify important problems regularly and cyclically.
• Tune: address those problems regularly.
• Be opportunistic: look for low-hanging fruit (again with the fruit).

I don’t want to rewrite tons from the workshop/book here, as that would be pretty unreadable for anyone who might bother looking at this. I write this after also reading Lou’s book on the plane home and I’d strongly recommend it to anyone who has any hand in designing, and particularly maintaining, large websites. The following presentation is a good overview of the main points from Lou’s workshop and book, suggesting you use Site Search Analytics (SSA) to improve your site’s user experience.

group work: sharing content models

In addition to covering much of what the slide deck above contains, we did a couple of group exercises focused on content modelling and analyzing search queries to determine content types (which would be modelled into, for example, new or improved paths through your site). There are many different aspects to using site search data to improve your site’s user experience. While the workshop had an interesting flow, I found the book laid things out in a little more linear fashion (and I’m kind of a linear guy at times).

How to put SSA to work in real terms

Your search data can show you all sorts of patterns around tone, time, questions & answers, and other elements of user intention. Intention is an important concept, and one which makes SSA so powerful. While matching queries with results and session data can tell you what’s happening on your site, it can also show you where your site is failing. Which queries are returning zero, or poor, results? What about searches that lead to users immediately exiting from your site? It can often tell you enough to help you segment your audience by geographic location, visit frequency, conversion frequency, visit timing, and in other ways. I say ‘often’ because conversion measurement is a big sticking point for my main work site. I won’t go into detail here, but getting metrics for course purchases (a black hole of a system) and then tying them to our session data that leads to those conversions is pretty much an impossibility.

These types of analyses can then be used to fix all sorts of things. You can plug content gaps for popular queries, design best bets or suggestions of likely best content based on query analysis, while search results can quite easily be improved based on both the specialized content you have on your site and specialized queries your users are inputting. Site index (A to Z and similar) pages can actually be used experimentally to test new site hierarchies. As well, you can tune your metadata (particularly if you don’t manually have to manage it, page by page), purge never-accessed content and improve the relevancy of your more valuable content. Most of these fixes come down to designing and connecting content types and fairly simple changes you can make at the page and navigation level of your site. All good stuff.

The truth is, between the book and workshop, there’s just so much stuff here to dig into, I can’t possibly do it justice here. As with more frequent user-testing, my goal will be to begin playing with a few simple concepts in my work. The problem, though, will be getting some collective attention on it with so many other things on our plates.

I took this workshop with two others, which I also reviewed. Do-it-yourself Usability Testing and Designing with Agile. I also have an overview page here.

As my work straddles being a UX designer and project lead, I spend my time in bits and pieces of both without doing either as well or thoroughly as I’d like. My experience leading usability tests has typically been to bring in several users at once and conduct them with at least one observer in the same room. I haven’t typically used screen capture software, but used a combination of observer notes and audio recording, strongly encouraging participants to use think aloud to provide feedback as they complete tasks from the test script.

What the workshop really did for me was three-fold:

• It showed the real advantage of getting both audio and desktop video, providing a much richer data set for the research,
• it made me realize that moving from basic task completion to more fully fleshed out scenarios, allows you to connect the test more closely with your own goals and personas (assuming you have gone beyond audience segmentation and actually have them), and;
• it helped me understand why doing this as regularly as possible is so helpful.

I found the rapid sample user testing on a real website extremely valuable and the key piece of the workshop. As I often find when doing any kind of research, my own biggest challenge is keeping my mouth shut and avoiding introducing bias to the test. I had the same issue when doing my MA thesis interviews in 2009. A nice little addition is some handy downloads for running usability tests, available here.

If I had two suggestions for this workshop, it would be to include Steve’s book with the fee (particularly since Lou’s workshop the next day did) and for Steve to stray a little more into other aspects of usability testing and do a couple of varied exercises. Since I’ve done some of this work on a few occasions now, I found the workshop parroted the book’s content a little too closely. However, I also recognize that designing a workshop for diverse experience levels and awareness is a real challenge, and the book is a very useful guide to weaving user testing into your normal cycles.

Steve’s 6 maxims for usability testing

My takeaway will be to try figure out a way to introduce more of this at work. Particularly in an environment where overall design changes happen infrequently, and you begin to take the relationship between your site and your users for granted, it can be difficult to step back and spend time on operational design work. I know it won’t happen a day per month as Steve suggests, but certainly some usability testing on the lowest hanging fruit on our main public web property on, perhaps, a quarterly basis would be very useful (giving us enough time in between to actually fix some of the findings). And, like pretty much every large website with multiple audience segments, we have lots of low hanging fruit. I’ve talked often about just that – routine quarterly testing for iterative improvements. Since I was also lucky enough to snag Remote Research as a draw prize at the day three workshop, I expect my user testing to be done more remotely. My hope is that the convenience of remote testing might give me a fighting chance to actually set up a quarterly user testing process.

I took this workshop with two others, which I also reviewed. Adaptable Information Architecture and Designing with Agile. I also have an overview page here.

Lance Armstrong

There’s little value in re-hashing the doping history of Lance Armstrong; at least the history as reported in USADA’s Reasoned Decision, published last week. Depending on primarily witness testimony, it is a detailed and thoroughly documented indictment of the cyclist. For years before the report, suspicion of Armstrong’s doping was rampant. The sheer volume and nature of the evidence is overwhelming enough that, as of this writing, all Armstrong’s major sponsors have terminated their contracts, the UCI has officially stripped him of his Tour de France (TdF) victories and banned him from cycling for life, he’s had to resign as Chair of The Lance Armstrong Foundation, and both ASO and SCA Promotions are expecting over $10 million to come back their way. As far as I know Mike Anderson and Floyd Landis also have pending lawsuits involving Armstrong, and I’d expect more to come out of the woodwork as parties defrauded look to get back money out of which they were cheated.

I’ll say it outright. I don’t like, nor do I respect, anything about the guy. I used to be a big fan a few years ago and bought the hero hype, pretty much hook, line and sinker. In the past couple years though, it’s become clear to me that he’s not a hero, nor really nearly as decent as most people. He’s a good cyclist, but there are lots of those. My reasoning for feeling this way in the points below is largely drawn from the USADA decision, with other supporting links/references where appropriate.

A cheat; the least of his sins

That Lance doped didn’t come as a big surprise to me, particularly with Tyler Hamilton’s admissions and recently published book, The Secret Race. In an era where most of his competitors were also doping (and admitting or being caught over time), it stretched credulity to the limits to think that he was not only not doping, but slaughtering a field of riders who were. Again, though, it’s hardly worth rehashing those details, as you’d need to be living under a rock to not be aware of the gist of the case.

I don’t detest Lance for doping in an era when most riders were. I have immense respect for those who didn’t dope in cycling’s dark era, and paid dearly as a result, with few podium finishes and fewer still dollars from sponsorships that went to the dominant riders – the ones who cheated. The landscape doesn’t excuse the doping, but in light of those circumstances, I understand why it happened. I disrespect Lance a great deal for doping, but that’s not what made this guy despicable. If he had doped, been caught and paid the resultant penalties, he’d be a big story still, but there’s so much more to this that’s so much worse to me than a dominant athlete caught doping.

It’s not just the cheating by way of blood doping and manipulation that’s the problem. If you believe his former mechanic/personal assistant, Mike Anderson, Armstrong cheated him on a business deal, owes him a lot of money, and ruined the guy’s life. Armstrong’s lawyers responded to the accusations in the same publication. Anderson’s story might be dismissed as one-off sour grapes if it wasn’t for the fact that, in his story, his special access to Armstrong provides the type of information consistent with many other former close associates and their stories about the guy. More on this a little later.

In general, though, I ask myself whether a cheat is not only worthy of hero worship, but whether at a more basic level, I like or even respect the person. The answer is no.

A cancer profiteer?

Is Livestrong a ‘cancer shield’ for Armstrong?

Despite what he’s gained and lost in the last 15 years, no one can ever take away his recovery from advanced cancer. In Armstrong’s case, it started with testicular cancer, was beaten once and returned as brain and lung cancer. As a result of not only surviving, but returning to competitive cycling, the story goes that Lance began the Lance Armstrong Foundation to help people living with cancer. Re-branded LIVESTRONG, the foundation became a perfect vehicle for Armstrong and Nike to both benefit handsomely. A lot of funds were raised for the cause, Armstrong became a hero to millions of people for so much more than his cycling accomplishments and Nike’s association with the brand has given them a wonderful corporate philanthropy image.

I can only judge the charity’s actual work by what I read, as I have no firsthand experience with it. Like most of us, for a long time I assumed it was doing a lot in the fight against cancer. In truth, Livestrong seems to be something different:

If Lance Armstrong went to jail and Livestrong went away, that would be a huge setback in our war against cancer, right? Not exactly, because the ­famous nonprofit donates almost ­nothing to scientific research.
Outside Magazine

You’d be forgiven if, like me, you thought donating to Livestrong was donating to cancer research. It’s a blurry line and one that the foundation seemingly likes that way. I won’t go into any more detail about this here, but I’d encourage you to give the linked article above a good read. It’s a bit long, but you may just come away from it wondering what the foundation has become and whether, in fact, as time has gone on, its primary function has been to act as personal spin factory for Armstrong and allow him to rack up personal sponsorships and speaking engagements (at $150k a pop) that have made him a very wealthy man. Has he profited handsomely by being the face of cancer survival? Should he be able to?

Further, the Outside article above was one of the first major looks into Livestrong, which wasn’t shut down before it ever got published. For the record, it doesn’t say anything specific is wrong with the Lance Armstrong Foundation, just that people may have the wrong idea about where their money goes and how Armstrong may or may not benefit from it. This piece on Fraudbytes goes into more detail about the article itself and the approaches that Lance and his legal team take to threaten journos and publications, ‘raising the cancer shield’ and playing the hero card, to deflect criticisms or suspicions about Armstrong.

I guess we all have to make our own decision on his charity’s purpose and how altruistic it actually is, but the whole thing simply feels wrong to me, as someone who’s been personally touched by the disease more than once.

A manipulative bully

Lance Armstrong – manipulative bully?

Where to start … Bullying, coercive and manipulative behaviour seems to be the very fabric of Armstrong’s being. As I wrote earlier, for me it wasn’t really that Lance doped, rather what he did to hide the doping and to protect his money-machine. In the USADA report, Lance was not only a user, but the primary driving force behind the doping program of the USPS and Discovery cycling teams. The USADA report calls the USPS/Discovery doping programs “the most sophisticated in the history of sport.” Given that the history of sport includes 70′s era eastern block Olympic weightlifting, football and baseball, to name just three, that’s some illustrious company.

Returning to Mike Anderson for a moment, his issues are not merely that he was cheated by Armstrong – and in truth he has no paper trail, nor even email evidence – rather that he witnessed and grew uncomfortable with Armstrong’s bullying tactics toward others (and himself in the end):

Do I think he cheated? Yep. But my real problem is something that diehard fans seem unable to grasp: the vengeful tactics he uses against people who tell the truth about him, on and off the bike.
Outside Magazine

Whether orchestrating an elaborate system to exploit poor testing practices as outlined in USADA’s decision, convincing new riders to use the doping program and threatening them if they didn’t, accosting and threatening those who testified in the federal case against him, in public places – and IN the peloton, or shaming and discrediting USADA witnesses and former associates long before the report, he has a long history of manipulative, bullying behaviour. His now legendary state of denial and claims of no failed tests, coupled with an almost gleeful taunting of everyone to prove otherwise, smacks of a sense of invincibility and ego that is finally coming back to bite him, completely and inexorably.

This is not a pattern of behaviour worthy of a hero, nor frankly a decent human being.

Dishonest from the beginning

It would be easy to say that Lance started out with the best of intentions; that this was a passionate cyclist who survived cancer, started a foundation to help those stricken with the disease and then just fell in with the wrong people in the pursuit of winning. The truth, though, would appear to be that Armstrong may have been doping from his earliest competitive days and simply continued to do so after beating the disease. Further, that as the cult of Lance as cancer hero grew, he had to go to ever greater and more dishonest methods to avoid getting caught. In fact, while not explored heavily, the source in the next paragraph and others make the connection that steroid use has been linked to cancer. Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony if the drug use actually played a role in Armstrong originally contracting cancer and, further, that he might never have had the opportunity to build the LIVESTRONG image for himself had this not happened in the first place?

In some of the best writing about Armstrong that I’ve read, Adrian Smith has plenty of opinions about the cyclist and cycling on his blog, Balls, Wheels, Doping. In particular, in a post from about a month ago, Smith goes into detail about Armstrong’s history, going back as early as 1990 and how he hooked up with Chris Carmichael and, more importantly, Dr. Michele Ferrari. I’ve decided to include a few quotes from the post below, but I’d strongly encourage you to read the whole thing (linked above). I am only highlighting passages related to his pre-TdF days, as I have already touched on his behaviour from 1998 onward above.

It started early …

Lance Armstrong was 18 when he first met Chris Carmichael, in 1990 … Carmichael was named and sued by two other cyclists also training with him at this time, Greg Strock and Erich Keiter, for doping them with cortisone, steroids, and other various products during the 1990 season. Carmichael settled this case out of court in 2001, but the evidence was damning – there was systemic doping and corruption in the US coaching system during Carmichael’s time there … Armstrong would go on to work with Carmichael for the rest of his sporting career.

As far back as 1992 …

Steve Swart, team-mate of Armstrong’s on Motorola, said that Armstrong was the central figure in encouraging riders to dope. His claims were published in two books, and Armstrong sued after their publication … But where the books were published, in France, Armstrong never had a case – it was not proven the books were lying.

Mixed results before cancer …

Armstrong’s career continued with sporadic wins, until he … began working with Italian doctor, Michele Ferrari in 1996. Michele Ferrari has been implicated in evidence from a number of athletes, and banned for life by the Italian Olympic Committee. No Italian athlete is permitted to work with him, and breaches are punishable with bans.

During cancer treatment …

As part of (cancer) treatment, Armstrong, scared and with nobody with knowledge to consult about his condition, was asked in hospital whether he’d ever used any performance-enhancing drugs(PEDs). His response, as detailed by npr, and in evidence given by Betsy Andreu, was to list off a reel of drugs which he’d taken.

Cancer-free, back to doping …

Armstrong found it difficult to find a team after recovering, and ended up on the US Postal team, which from 1999 onward would have its management under the direction of former ONCE rider, Johan Bruyneel. ONCE were a Spanish cycling team heavily implicated in EPO usage in investigations following the 1998 Tour de France … In 1997, Armstrong’s agent, Bill Stapleton, became an official of the US Olympic Committee. Sports Illustrated would report years down the track that Armstrong, in three tests the 90s, produced samples that indicated doping with testosterone … With Armstrong’s return to the bike in 1998 came the return to working with Michele Ferrari. Armstrong would later state to Floyd Landis, a team-mate on the USPS team, that Michele Ferrari was paranoid that he’d helped cause the cancer through his providing the drugs Armstrong was using in 1996.

Cycling takes note …

Ferrari immediately got Armstrong back into an intensive program of drug use. The net result was Armstrong, cancer-free and drug-boosted, beginning to suddenly make the cycling world sit up and take notice with increased endurance, producing performances in stage races. Make no bones about it: Cancer does not cause this. It doesn’t transform an athlete into a super-athlete. This has never happened before, or since. That’s because it doesn’t happen.

Putting it all together

As I wrote previously, if Lance Armstrong was just a good cyclist doping during a dark period in the sport, who was caught and paid an appropriate penalty, that would be one thing. It’s not. This is a guy who:

• was implicated in doping from his earliest days in competitive sport
• quite possibly may have, in part, caused his cancer by doping
• profited handsomely by posing as a cancer fighting crusader
• purposely sought and worked with proponents of doping throughout his career, particularly a doctor with a lifetime ban in his native Italy
• wielded his power to coerce teammates into doping, largely to support his own goals of cycling domination, financial gain and celebrity
• went to extraordinary lengths to cover up his cheating for 15+ years
• has threatened and intimidated virtually anyone who crossed him throughout his career

I know not everyone agrees with my feelings, but I feel they’re justified and grounded in reality. If anyone asks me why I detest Lance Armstrong, I’ll point them here and then be glad to debate them on the merits or lack thereof of my position.

Months of preparation

It’s a mix of pride and melancholy when something you’ve been preparing for months for is finally done and that’s certainly the case with this. I’d never heard of Ride2Survive last year when I stumbled upon it while Googling alternatives to the Ride to Conquer Cancer. I wanted to find something big, challenging and sweaty that I could do to help in the fight against cancer. My wife is a six-year breast cancer survivor, captaining a Run for the Cure team for a couple years and raising a fair bit of dough along the way. Cancer research and treatment is very important to us for obvious reasons – after this experience, even more so.

What made this ride all the more special for me, is that it really became a family affair. My wife Connie volunteered to be a ride day crew member, as did my 19 year old son Tyler. My eldest son Malcolm wasn’t sure he could make it up to Kelowna, so he moved back home for a couple days, holding down the fort and dogsitting. Both my kids donated money, too. The whole thing really warmed my heart.

When I found Ride2Survive, the idea of grinding out nearly 400k on the bike with a lot of climbing (in one day), and fundraising for cancer research sounded ideal for me. The fact that not a penny of the money raised went to administrative and marketing costs was the clincher. I signed up last fall, paying the $200 rider fee and preparing myself for meeting the $1500 personal fundraising target. I’m not a natural fundraiser, so when the goalposts were suddenly upped by $1000 to accommodate the lofty $400,000 target this year, I viewed raising $2500 to be a bigger challenge than training for and completing a 390k one day bike ride. I’m happy to report that with many emails sent, the help of my beautiful wife, and our attendance at one of the mall fundraisers, we were able to bring in $3225 for the cause. For those of you who donated and are reading this, I thank you again from the bottom of my heart. You were simply amazing.

I won’t rehash the training here, except for a few quick stats. I keep a fairly solid base of cycling, so it wasn’t like starting from scratch for me. It would have been easy to ride 4000 or more kilometers since February in prep for this, as that’s when the training rides begin formally. I’ve also been dealing with some significant nerve problems in my left foot, and finally, I had to finish leading a 10k Sun Run clinic through April 15th, so I couldn’t get out for the early Sunday training rides. I began building my own ride-specific base in early April and began joining the R2S training rides in late April. In the past 10 weeks or so, including the ride itself yesterday, I’ve done 35 rides for a total of nearly 2500 km, including 95 hours in the saddle, 50,000+ calories burned and nearly 23 kilometers of climbing.

Kelowna

Tyler looking thrilled on the bus in Delta

As of Thursday, all the emails, fundraising and training rides were in the past for the most part. It was time to pack up, buck up and get up to Kelowna. While you’re doing all the fundraising and training, as a first time rider you still haven’t connected all the dots of this thing. Yes, you know you’re going to do a big ride. Yes, you know you’ve been raising funds for cancer research, and yes, you’ve met some cool people who are doing the same things as you are. You’ve still got lots of questions about ride day logistics and, in my wife’s and son’s case, how all the crewing will play itself out. The “Potty 1″ crew assignment did cause them some initial apprehension, but in truth, all crew ends up pitching in on pretty much everything at the stops. While all those niggling little remaining questions get answered in due course, what you don’t realize is that you’re about to be hit square between the eyes with what this event is really all about.

After the bus ride up, checking into the hotel, getting stickers affixed to everything, last minute bike checks, bottles, electrolyte prep, chain lubing, fender attachment and ride bag preparation, there’s a final supper at Mainland Community Church. The church volunteers who do the meal (and apparently have for the whole 8 years so far) – as with all volunteers for this event – are amazing, but that’s still not what really gets you. There’s a final full meeting of all crew and riders after dinner. One by one, everyone stands. Some speak for no more than ten seconds, while others have five minute stories – each one documenting why they’re doing this, who they’re doing it for and what it means to them. I am not given to much emotional sentimentality, but listening to the stories I was in tears many times, in awe, dumbfounded in fact, at the profound sense of hope in the room, despite some of the most difficult experiences I’ve ever listened to people talk about. People who’ve held friends or family members as they succumbed to cancer, or who’ve watched love ones fight, sometimes winning, sometimes not. Those who’ve lost people counting in the double digits, or babies who aren’t out of diapers. The joy when someone beats this disease. Within two hours, you know exactly why you’re doing this and what it means and, at least for me, I really didn’t until that meeting. At the outset, Tyler was wondering why we needed a last big meeting. Within two hours the family (and I dare say the rest of the room) was completely blown away.

Whatever motivates, the common thread that bound the riders and crew in that room was as real as a physical chain. No one wants anyone else to see what they’ve seen and feel what they’ve felt; that when someone else gets cancer it won’t generate the initial, “Oh Fuck” moment that turns lives upside down and makes people wonder if they’ll see their next birthday. When I extend the experiences of a couple hundred people to its logical conclusion over history and the broader population, the impact of this disease is mind-numbing; absolutely incalculable and it must be defeated. This group is about finding a cure. One will be found through research and research takes money. As of this writing, that initial $400,000 2012 goal? Shattered. $410,000 and counting. Donations can still be accepted at any time by going here, picking a rider and pulling out your credit card.

Ride Day

10 minutes to go time at the church

We got back to the hotel after some further fueling, around 10:00pm. No one much sleeps the night before, but if there’s any chance for some shuteye, I posited that it would come in a hotel room and not in a sleeping bag on the church basement floor. I guess three hours is about as good as it gets. I think Connie got a bit more, but Tyler and I got to sleep around 11-11:15 and woke up to the alarm clock at the luxuriously late hour of 2am. We were eating oatmeal at the church by 3am and, save for choosing what to wear in the abnormally balmy 17 degree celcius temps, 110 riders pushed off from Kelowna at 3:30 am.

Support

The first key issue for me was support, which, on this ride, was second-to-none. Volunteers hold your bike, bring you a plate of food, fill your bottles with water or e-load, clean up your road rash, help you change riding clothes, let you lean on them, help you up and down the potty trailer stairs … Get the idea? I’m not just saying this because their ranks included my son and wife. Amazing. The food was sensational. The spread we had at our Merritt lunch and Hope dinner was killer. Every stop included fruit, gels, bars, e-load, water, baked treats and all sorts of odds and ends. I don’t sense anyone was ever not fueled enough (unless due to their own lack of planning ) Bocconcini, tomato and Balsamic at Britton Creek rest stop? Are you kidding me? Mechanical support, too – out of this world. If you got a flat (which I thankfully didn’t), all you had to do was let a ride captain know and pull over. That information was then radio’d to the mechanical truck who would stop, swap your wheel provided there was a fit, and you’d be on your way in 20 seconds. The flat would be fixed and your own wheel would be back on your bike at the next rest stop. Did I mention a traveling lane closure police escort courtesy of Delta Police and the RCMP due to an affiliation with Cops for Cancer? For the entire day. Amazing.

In fact, other than the police escort support, we had this kind of support through pretty much all training rides, too. My heart is overflowing with appreciation for every aspect of support this ride had, due to the great R2S supporting organizations and incredible volunteers. Riders had to think about nothing but what they needed at the next rest stop and just getting it done.

The combination of the unusually warm starting temperature, the eery quiet of the roads at that time (except for the occasional police escort intersection siren and the glowing chain of red blinky bicycle lights on the road ahead of me) made the start to the ride surreal. The first stop at Johnson Bentley Memorial Aquatic Centre in Westbank is only notable for me as it was the first of many glimpses I got of Connie and Tyler in action. AC/DC loudly blasting into the Okanagan air at 4:15am was kind of cool too. Every single stop for the rest of the day ended with me high-fiving my son (and many other volunteers) and kissing my wife. Near perfect context for a near perfect day.

Pennask

A typical rest stop – a foggy Pennask chain up area

Tyler enjoying the potty gig

Happy to help, Connie at Pennask chain up

However, I got a much better look at them, snapping a pic or two at the Pennask chain up area around 5:30am. The climb up Pennask was certainly long, but whether it was just due to it being early in the ride or total fog, it didn’t feellike a heavy climb. The course profile below verifies that it was solid, so I have no idea what effect was at work for my legs. In fact, as I polish this two days post-event, I remain stupefied at how good my legs feel.

While all volunteers made my day, it was a real blessing to see Tyler and Connie’s happy faces every time I wheeled into a rest stop. As I’ll describe shortly, having my family there may well have avoided me having to pull out of the ride earlier than Mission. Approaching Pennask summit sometime around 7am, the sun had broken through the clouds and things were great. Unfortunately, this was the genesis of the aforementioned injury.

R2S elevation – the first (Pennask) climb is a good one

At some point just before the Pennask summit rest stop, I had to suddenly veer to avoid crossing wheels with the rider in front of me. I guess I veered just a bit too sharply and I was on the pavement before I knew it. I was back on my bike and riding within about 15 seconds, but unfortunately I broke my fall directly with the palm of my hand. I pulled into the stop minus a nickel sized patch of skin on my right knee and a pretty sore right wrist. Connie cleaned up my knee for me, I refilled my bottles and spent some time flexing and stretching out my wrist and fingers. I sensed that my wrist might complain more as the ride went on, but it was nothing that was going to cause me to pull out at this point, and nothing that a little Alleve and Tylenol 1 wouldn’t hold at bay. As I started riding again, the right hand was stiff, but I could still shift and brake and the palm of my right hand was able to take pressure as I rested it on the handlebar and hood. This may well have been the adrenaline talking, but I was able to ride. Most important of all, of course, upon detailed inspection, my bike was absolutely fine. Cut my hand off if you need to but my carbon frame better not have a crack in it.

I referred to this injury in positive terms in the opening paragraph, not because it really was an enjoyable and worthwhile injury in and of itself, but because it happened in the course of this event. If I had to take one for the team (and not cause someone else to crash), then taking a little sprain for this team was absolutely no problem. Despite the fact that this injury progressively got worse and did force me to cut my ride short at Mission, it never dampened my spirit one bit all day. Plus, I did all the major climbing and got about 85% of the ride done – a success by any measure except completeness.

Merritt and Coquihalla

The wrist was pretty good through the rolling stuff past Pennask and I managed the big downhill to Merritt pretty well, though as you can see below, I stayed a little more upright than I typically like to when descending. Emilio was pumping my tires about my hand and I was still braking and shifting decently, though I did notice that hitting bumps on the road (particularly while cruising downhill at high speed) was causing significant discomfort to my wrist. Our 10am ‘lunch’ break at Merritt was rushed for me, since I had to eat, change kits and get my road rash cleaned and arm bandaged by paramedics. I was pretty proud of my family, with Connie ensuring I was fed and Tyler getting my bottles filled and getting me to my ride bag quickly. At this point I could still dress myself. The first major food spread was beyond awesome, too.

A little too upright, but managing the descent fine, thank you very much

The rolling overall climb through Larson Hill up to Britton Creek on the Coquihalla was somewhat uneventful for me. The legs were feeling great – freakishly great in fact – and while it was getting harder to use my hand, I could still brake and shift enough that I expected to complete the ride. Timewise, Britton Creek is getting close to the halfway point of the ride with most of the climbing also under our belt. However, the difficulty I was beginning to have in using my hand was my grip strength. By this time I’d already had to switch to using my left hand for drinking and I couldn’t open gels or bar packs while riding any more. The motor skills for package tearing just weren’t there. Continuing our climb to and past the Coquihalla summit didn’t provide any more problems. We still hadn’t seen any significant moisture to this point in the ride, though the 17 degrees we’d had in Kelowna nine hours earlier had dropped to single digits in the mountains. Nothing approaching cold, though.

I was riding alongside Al Jenkins and chatting about my wrist just before we were to descend westward toward Hope. He sensed the symptoms suggested I might have a Scaphoid bone fracture. As of this writing, most of the remaining tightness is in my high wrist on the back side, with upward flexion proving the most difficult – almost like more of a forearm strain or bone bruise. I will see how it progresses and possibly get an x-ray this week, but the improvement I’ve seen in less than two days since the ride ended, and where the discomfort remains, suggests it’s not the Scaphoid. Since I kicked his Coke over at Merritt, I figured I better listen to him, though.

The long westward descent from the Coquihalla summit wasn’t fun for me. It should have been. Normally I’d be looking to hit some nice high speeds, only braking when necessary to maintain control. As we came around to the windy and wet side of the pass, true to its reputation, we hit the tail end of our first torrential rain and water was running across the road in sheets. My grip was just beginning to fail me at this point, too. Moving my first and second fingers medially to shift was really difficult and pulling the brake lever was not very fluid, requiring focus more akin to surgery than cycling. Resting on the handlebar was a bit achy in general, but going over bumps was producing significant discomfort; much like small electrical jolts through my forearm. In other words heading downhill on a 9% grade at high speed on very wet roads on essentially one brake, was a white knuckle ride and a half. I never let myself go really fast and probably didn’t go above 65km/hr for fear of being a danger to myself and those around me. As the pack turned off the Coquihalla at exit 183 and rolled into Hope, the short climbs were also producing some significant discomfort in my right arm. Settling into my saddle and granny gear and grinding hills is something of a favourite of mine – I love ‘em. Pulling on the handlebar to get up the hill wasn’t the usual enjoyable experience. As we rolled into town for our 3:30-ish dinner break, it was the first time I seriously considered pulling out of the ride.

Hope and Deroche

I don’t know if it was the killer veggie lasagna and perogy feedbag, more Alleve and Tylenol 1, three gels and a pack of clif bloks, or the beautiful sun and 20-something temps, but after struggling through a change of kit and getting the big team photo taken, I just wasn’t ready to quit riding at the end of the Hope rest stop. Maybe it was that 5-6 hours in the SAG just felt wrong to me; just not sure. This change of clothes was pretty difficult, too, as I was forced to do the whole thing with my left hand. In keeping with what this is all about, I considered the wrist to be just one more struggle and nothing I couldn’t endure. I rationalized that since there weren’t any major descents left I could keep my shifting to a smaller range of gears and mitigate the safety issue my hand was seeming to become.

As we headed toward Aggasiz on the 7 it seemed like I was on the right track. We got a semi-rotating pace line going for a bit in the sun and, while a building headwind was making holding the pace line difficult, I was able to tolerate the wrist, though it was definitely what I’d call persistently painful by this time. Perhaps the Hells Angels whizzing by was an omen, but it clouded over quickly and the skies to the west could only be described as ominous – blackened with those telltale strings of rain hanging like angry tears on the horizon.

Within half an hour or so of leaving Hope trees began to lean nearly sideways, rain started spitting and we stopped the rotating paceline. Oddly enough I found myself riding right at the front of the pack behind the pace vehicle, paired with Al Jenkins again, 2 up and chatting with Pam et al inside the truck. Spitting begat showers, showers begat rain, rain begat a torrential flood of Biblical proportions, and the wind remained strong and gusty; just shy of sandblasting strength. I recall Chad enjoying this stretch immensely directly behind me. During our banter, Al and I recognized how lucky we were to be drafting a little off the truck and getting the wind broken for us. We hoped to stay there as long as we could and did so straight through to the Deroche rest stop.

It was during this little stretch of banter with the truck folks that they relayed to me that cancer warrior and all-around nice guy Rob had just tweeted the following wishes:

Stay dry-ish James! #rain @jameswanless @Ride2Survive

— Rob (@needsexample) June 24, 2012

Sopping wet, me tweet-pic’d by the pace truck

Pam asked (well, yelled through the rear truck window, really) if they could snap a pic and tweet it back to Rob. The likelihood of me being right there as they read that tweet was so low that I couldn’t possibly refuse. The result to the left (or above, depending on how you’re viewing this) doesn’t really show how wet we were at this point.

If there was one good thing about the rain and wind, it’s that it was so intense that for an hour or so, I pretty much completely forgot about my wrist. That temporary solace was utterly shattered when I left the Deroche rest stop and went up that tiny. little. HILL.

Just below you can see a different pic – from the wonderful R2S 2012 Flickr stream – that demonstrates a little more clearly how completely unpleasant riding conditions were at this point.

Riding in full-on nastiness behind the pace truck

Deroche to Mission

As we rolled into the Deroche stop, gas heaters were fired up, sugar and soup were flowing and everyone was soaked to the bone. This is when my son Tyler really stepped up to the plate. I was wet, but not cold yet, however, I really couldn’t use my hand at all to grab and pull; essential functions for dressing oneself. I needed a complete clothing change right down to shorts and socks. There have to be few things in this world that a 19 year old guy relishes less than dressing his old man, but he rocked. I’m sure other volunteers would have stepped up to the plate if necessary, but that he would do this for me meant more than I can say. My hand was near useless and I had to make the decision to skip the hill and start riding again at Mission, stop riding altogether, or suck it up and save the decision for later.

While the last hills before Hope hadn’t been pleasant, climbing wouldn’t force me to brake and control my speed and I still had a couple tepid shifts left in the right hand, so it was back on the bike for me. Besides, getting into the SAG and skipping the hill didn’t seem to honour Tyler’s effort – a scene perhaps never to be repeated in our lives again. As well, since I didn’t know what things would look like from Mission on, I knew that riding the Deroche hill would be a gnarly, but blessedly short, climb and then roll a bit and flatten out to Mission.

While it was indeed short, at the roughly 300k point of the ride, an 11% climb is none too pleasant, even with the recent dump of rain and gale force winds finally subsiding. Unable to put significant weight on my right wrist meant I had no option to stand during the climb and take a bit of the stress off my hips; an essential comfort strategy for small portions of steep climbs. Grade-wise, this one is in the same category as Cypress and Seymour. I should note here that, even in the discomfort I was experiencing, I was in awe of how the group tackled and conquered this little dose of late stage hill love. As I sat and began grinding up Deroche, my wrist told me clearly and unequivocally that it wasn’t going to do any more climbing. Every pull on the handle bars was causing my arm to jolt in muscular revolt; the whole thing being a complete wince-fest. The pack regrouped at the top of the hill before rolling on toward Mission through the Lougheed Highway portion of the old H2H relay course. I’d run into Brett a couple times leading up to this point and I think he was surprised to see me still riding as we rolled toward the Mission turn-off. My chats with various riders, such as Chad, Ryan, Nick and Kacem, were full of good thoughts and encouragement, but for the first time in the ride, I was pretty sure I’d be packing it in at Mission.

The only hope I had for remaining in the ride until the end, was if absolutely everything from Mission to Delta was pancake flat and well lit. I knew I simply couldn’t descend or climb one more hill of any size, lest I be a real danger to myself or other riders. As I queried those who’d done this before and remembered that we’d be doing the Golden Ears crossing and at least some climbing and descending around Maple Ridge and near the very end around Scott Road, I was also told that some of the roads leading into Delta were pitch black and in very poor condition. Climbing, descending, bumps, holes and pitch black roads were simply not on with that wrist.

At the Mission rest stop, with roughly 60k of riding left, I made the disappointing, but entirely appropriate, decision to end my ride. The bike was loaded into the truck, I wished several riders luck for the remaining distance, my carbs and fluids were replenished and I jumped into SAG 5 for the rest of the journey. We cheered along the way, hit Planet Ice in Maple Ridge for the final rest stop and, after dropping Charles off so that he could ride the final 3k when the pack regrouped at 64th and Scott Road, ended up at the finish about 45 minutes before the riders came in. Charles tried to get me to join – and I wanted to – but the wrist wouldn’t have any of it. Plus, my helmet and cycling shoes were in a bag in the Potty 1 truck and I had no way to get them.

The end of the journey at Cap’s South Shore in Delta was very cool. With the pipe band blaring and people lining the street, 200 odd cancer fighting rock stars ended their epic ride or crewing shortly after 11pm. I really couldn’t stay, as my arm was in need of ice and pain relievers in the worst way. Proud, elated and wiped, the three of us headed home to Vancouver.

In closing

My decision to stop riding was disappointing only in the sense of not completing the distance, but I’m completely proud of the nearly 330k I did ride and of the fact that I somehow managed to ride about 250k on an injured wrist. Given how my legs felt when I stopped, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind about my ability to be strong through the whole 390k. I spent a day riding my bike to kick cancer’s ass with many other cool people doing exactly the same thing. I’m unbelievably proud of what these people managed to accomplish together; every dime of $410,000+ raised for cancer research and an amazing endurance effort that makes most peoples’ jaws drop when you tell them about it. I made several new friends and now have a perspective on people and teamwork that I never had before. Something significant changed for me over about 30 hours, from 6pm Friday to midnight Saturday. On a completely personal note, this was just one more example of how my wife and sons absolutely rock.

Key links

• ride details on Garmin Connect
• ride details on Strava
• Ride2Survive web site (and donation link)