Thursday, January 3, 2013

A Podcast, a Website, and an App: 3 Great Recommendations

While traveling half-way across the country and back between D.C. and Nebraska during the holidays, I had to find some way to occupy the time during the 2-day drive on each end.  As much as I love music, even that gets old after awhile.  And audio books put me to sleep (not a good combo at 75 mph on the interstate).

So I started listening to some podcasts on iTunes and found one I really like.  Plus, over the last few weeks I've been turned on to an awesome website and a cool new app.  So let me share these new finds...

The Age Grouper Triathlon Podcast:  I probably listened to ten of these on the road.  Podcast by other people can be mind-numbingly boring, stupid, or just plain weird.  But The Age Grouper is put out by two, guys (Jeff and Eric) who live in the Chicagoland area and have jobs and families just like us regular Joes.  They are sometimes joined by another guy, Dean, and all seem to have between 15-20 years experience doing triathlons.

The thing I like about them is that while they are very experienced and very fast, they're not arrogant and they're funny as hell.  They share their triathlon and daily life experiences, with helpful tips and hilarious anecdotes.  Their most recent podcast "Sh#t Triathletes Say," was one I rewound several times because their rapid-fire triathlon expressions had me crackin' up in the car.  If you're looking for an informative, funny, and relatable podcast about triathlons, this is it.

Athlinks website.  I have to give credit to my friend Laura for turning me onto this. Athlinks is a website where you can look up virtually every race you've done over the past several years.  I've found dozens of races dating back to 2002.  Once you sign up and fill out your information, Athlinks searches for races with your matching information.  The results give you overall time, pace, age group rankings, and overall rankings.  Plus, you can hook up with friends to compare races!  It's a great way to track all your race results.

Charity Miles smartphone app.  This is a new app that I just found and that overall has good reviews.  Charity Miles let you earn money for selected charities by walking, running, or biking.  For running and walking, you raise 25 cents/mile, and for biking you raise 10 cents/mile.  The best part is, the donations are made by corporations - not you!  You essentially become sponsored by a corporation who makes the charitable contribution to the designated charity on your behalf.


The one catch with Charity Miles is that you have to sign up with your Facebook account, so if you don't have one or don't want them accessing your info, then you're SOL.  The reason for this is that the corporate sponsors obviously want the free advertising via your Facebook posts in exchange for their contributions...a fair trade in my opinion.  Plus, it spreads the word and gets other people to sign up, which raises even more money for the charities.

The designated charities from which you can choose are:

  • RED
  • Stand Up To Cancer
  • Feeding America
  • Every Mother Counts
  • Autism Speaks
  • The Michael J. Fox Foundation
  • World Food Programme
  • Wounded Warriors Project
  • ASPCA
  • Habitat for Humanity
  • The Ironman Foundation
  • The Nature Conservancy
  • Achilles International
  • Pencils of Promise
  • Do Something.Org
The only drawback is that you have to take your smartphone with you on your walk, run, or bike so that it can track your miles...But don't most of us take our phones anyway?  So if you're going to workout, why not raise some charitable donations in the process?  At the end of the year it'd be great to see how much money you raised through your sweat!

Have you stumbled on any good media recommendations lately?

4 comments:

Jen said...

I've been spending time on youtube and using wordswithfrieds lately, but that's about it. I'm going to check out that podcast. Thanks!

Life Through Endurance said...

Lemme know what you think!

Jen said...

I enjoyed it! Got several chuckles out of it. Thanks!

Hey - did you ever hear from the guy who won the MCM entry? Was he able to make it to the start line? I hope he enjoyed the experience of training and running it.

Life Through Endurance said...

Nope I didn't hear from him....