Run Kristin Run!

Now this is an interesting blog by our new intern Kristin Ferrell who is becoming a long-distance runner, training for her first half-marathon!

Follow her trials and tribulations, plus she is quickly becoming the Reigning Queen of Energy Drinks. She's trying them all and gives you the lowdown on each.

Plus she wears cute running clothes and I'm hopeful she can help me update my own running fashions. Now that I have one less daughter to buy athletic gear and clothing for, perhaps I can buy myself some new tops and jogbras!

http://runblogrun.drupalgardens.com/content/i-dont-feel-running

Weird Resume is Right

The path to entrepreneurship often covers exactly the right ground, in ways we could never predict. Interests and experience that seem to be unrelated eventually turn out to be precisely the preparation a specific new venture requires.

Marilou McFarlane, for example, has recently launched Vivo Girls Sports, an online community for athletic girls aged 13-22. If she had known when she was a kid that this was the company she’d start at age 48, she could not have plotted a more useful resume of stepping stones to this moment.

Sure, Marilou played sports as a girl. Soccer and track and tennis and more. She also grew up around college sports, since her father, Jim Heavner, announced many of the Tarheel games forWCHL, the radio station he started in Chapel Hill. (Being the daughter of an entrepreneur also helps pave the way for starting your own gig later.) After college, she worked for Turner, back when Ted still owned it all, so that gave her some good experience in media, as well as a chance to work for another entrepreneur who thinks big. Later, in San Francisco, she was a media rep for KCBS for many years, before she started her own company, McFarlane Marketing. She had two daughters, both athletic, and was involved in season after season of their sports. For two years, she served as president of their soccer league, a full-time volunteer position she handled while continuing to build her marketing company. She also started an offshoot of her marketing company that targeted colleges specifically. And now her oldest daughter, Kelly, will be playing for the Tarheels in Chapel Hill starting next year — on their very impressive women’s soccer team.

Marilou knows sports and she knows marketing. She understands teenagers and college students. She has a deep affinity for the issues that girls in those age brackets are facing. She’s savvy to the incredible buying power of this group and its appeal to marketers. And she’s not afraid to start something new.

Starting a company is not just a way to make a living. Sometimes it’s how we reconcile and integrate everything we are.

(Photo of Marilou running hurdles for Chapel Hill High School)

Blog post by Elizabeth Baskin, renowned author and creative director. This woman knows great ideas and I'm happy she likes mine!

http://www.life-sizedbusiness.com/2009/11/09/the-weird-resumes-that-lead-to-successful-entrepreneurs/

So many of them are leaving for college...

I ran with my goddaughter Jamie last weekend. She texted me at the Danville Mustang Stampede soccer tournament, where goddaughter Galen and I were watching my Darcy and her Marin FC team tear it up. She asked if I could run the Dipsea trail with her to discuss her impending journey to UPenn to join their cross-country and track program. So many miles, too many miles, these young women think they need to run to be successful.

Truth is, Jamie's mile times rock and she is going to be competitive if she stays healthy, sharp, and doesn't burn out. We talked a lot about the pure joy of running. Run for that and you'll be fine. Yes, eat right, get your sleep, listen to your body, push hard, dig to another level, but remember the pure joy you felt when you ran your first mile.

Just asked the girls on our Facebook fan page how they feel when they play their favorite sport, in 3 words. Here are a few highlights, just now in the last 23 minutes with 28 comments and 10 likes:

I am unstoppable

I LOOOOOVE IT!

Invincible, proud, myself

Happy as hekk !

BEAST, invincible, free

powerful, happy, concentrated

Unbreakable, amazing, sooooooooooooo HAPPY!! I looooove soccer!

Relaxed. Happy. Free.

Myself. Amazing. Unstoppable.

Aggressive. Ready. Focused.

Can Accomplish Anything

YES INDEED.

Being a teenager is stressful enough without your sport adding to it. Your sport is what grounds you and helps you keep in perspective all the crap that goes with the transition from middle school to high school to college to life beyond. Your sport will be the common denominator. Your teammates will be your friends for life. Keep playing.

Maddie goes to USC next week, entering their music program where songwriters and performers like her will have the coaching and the exposure they need to grow to the next level. She's the next Sheryl Crow, mark my words.

(And keep running, Maddie! Our run on the beach over spring break in Hilton Head was memorable and I am sure that you will handle all the pressures of college with this time you give your head to clear, letting new thoughts in. New songs and melodies. New ways of looking at life.)

The girls who inspire vivoGS are like solar power. I'm so proud of all of them.

My Big Girl goes to College

So, last weekend was the big weekend. You always think about the day your kid leaves for college, and you actually leave her there, and this was it.

Craig and I left her with her new freshmen teammates at the University of North Carolina in the soccer team locker room to sleep on air mattresses for two weeks, until the dorms open. Apparently, this is the tradition since the first freshman class that did this won 3 out of 4 national championships. Hey, I'm in full support of good luck and good juju.

I managed to keep it together until the car door closed. She had that same smile on her face that she did the first day I left her in her new kindergarten class in Mill Valley.

Bravery, courage, commitment.

She inspires me now, as I channel these same qualities to usher vivoGS to its higher level.