Eric Walker

Have any of you been a part of an Online Community? If so I would be curious about what it is, how it works, does it cost you anything and if you feel you have gained any value from it? Feel free to leave a comment below.

I have been a part of a couple over the years and today I want to talk about the Break the Twitch Member Community. I have been a member since the beginning and I will say it has definitely been worth the value I paid and continue to pay. Not only do I get to help keep the Break the Twitch website and Podcast ad-free but also get access to an amazing community of supporting individuals and other resources. In the community specifically, you will find both Anthony and his wife Amy who are active by either leading and/or contributing to discussions.

Now time to interrupt my normal style of writing with some questions and answering in order to fill in the blanks of why this post exists.

This is great why are you telling me this, is it a sales pitch? Are you going to get a commission on this?

NO and NO. This is not a sales pitch and I don’t get anything if you would happen to sign up. Well, I guess technically I get to have you in the community if you sign up so that is something. The real reason I am talking about the Break the Twitch Member Community is to get the word out there. I have been a part of the community for almost 2 years and figured it was time to give a little extra back as I realized that I have never talked about it or said I had joined.

So why did you join?

It seems like a fair place to start out. I have been part of communities before and the best communities are made better by the people in them. Each member (the creators are included in this one) is supporting each other along their own journey. Some of our journeys are the same but others are wildly different. That doesn’t matter though because the other members can help become your support system for you to do the tasks or things that matter most.

When I originally joined there were not many of us as it just launched. I didn’t hesitate as I have followed Break the Twitch for years and felt like this way one way for me to give back to a creator trying to create something to help people. Also, I believed in what Anthony was saying from the beginning. A little fun fact, I looked back in all of the posts I have had on this site and I have talked about Break the Twitch more times than I remembered (One Decision, Power of the Habit, Fall Clean up and Clean out).

I have been part of Communities before and they sometimes fizzle or conversations die out. How is the BTT Community and why would it be better?

I too have been part of other communities before and in fact, started one that I feel is in that dying out phase of life (more on that other time). By my own experiences in communities, I have found that the best communities need champions and that is where you have Anthony and Amy actively engaging with people in the community. Not to mention all of the other members have some motivation to be active as well because there was a reason we all joined, to begin with. Additionally, since everyone is paying something to be a part of it that brings an increased level of commitment on everyone’s part.

Sounds great but I don’t really want to be active in a community right now or what if I get busy and can’t be active in the community. Wouldn’t that mean I will not really be getting my value?

Another great question and to be honest I am that person a lot of the time. I will not lie I am not the best community contributor. I come in and out of discussions all of the time. It is not that I don’t find value in the discussion or monthly challenges they have. Trust me they are all great things, but for me, it comes down to my other priorities and which one fits for me at the given month/time. There is always value to be gained as the Break the Twitch Membership allows you access to a library of Audio courses that you have access to all the time. For someone that travels and spending a lot of time running around the streets, these courses are great to load on my phone and hit the road.

Didn’t you meet Anthony? Is that skewing your thoughts here?

Yes, and no. I did meet Anthony for the first time a couple of years back before the Membership community was open. As I said before I had been following Break the Twitch for some time and since we lived in the same area it made it easy to meet up. Meeting him in person confirmed what I had originally thought that he seemed like a super easy to talk to, down to earth, and overall really nice guy. I would have joined the membership community even if I had never met him. However, I will say the way he presents himself on the podcast, and in the Member Community group is how he is in real life.

Speaking of meeting with him, now granted you might not be able to meet him in person as I did, but after signing up you can take him up on the offer of a 20 min coaching call. Not to mention you can interact with him in the Community chat group.

Final Thoughts

Hope you enjoyed this different style of post today. It came about based on a discussion with someone about the community. In addition, I had just completed the longest run I have done in years and some of it is thanks to the Podcast going in my ears that kept pushing me along.

If you have any questions for me about the Community let me know in the comments below as I am more than happy to answer them. Otherwise, I would suggest you check out the Break the Twitch Community page as it has some FAQs at the bottom. Lastly, feel free to reach out to Anthony as you can find him on social media or his email at the bottom of the linked page above.

I have used my Fitbit since January 2014 after what I remember was a long time trying to decide if I really wanted one and if so which one. Thinking back it has served its purpose well and I will give it some credit for keeping me active over the past years.

Over the course of the timeline above, I used a handful of watches. Most I bought because I wanted GPS capabilities however I did own two that were only step counters. From the data above you are probably wondering why there is a big gap in 2014. Long story short after I decided on getting a Fitbit at the end of 2013, I went for the new Fitbit force since it could actually show the time as I thought it was silly to just have a tracker band on my wrist. Unfortunately for me, I had issues with that watch and had to return it. At that time they didn’t have a replacement as all of them were recalled so they just returned my money in Full.

Positives

Community

Due to the fact Fitbit was kind of a pioneer in the step tracking market, a lot of people jumped on board quickly. I don’t recall when they started their community to connect with people and have challenges but it has been for as long as I can remember. This is something they did well early on too as it encouraged people to do more in order to try to keep up with family or friends. I enjoyed looking at where people’s 7-day averages were and how well I did against them.

Customer Support

Hands down the one thing Fitbit has done (at least from my perspective) from day one is having great customer support. Put aside the question of quality as remember early on this was a new type of technology. I have purchased 5 different Fitbit devices for myself during the 5 year period.

• Fitbit Force (Step tracker with Time Display) - Recalled
• Fitbit Flex (Step Tracker ONLY) - Free replacement after it got water in it
• Fitbit Surge (GPS Watch) - Free replacement after the band broke as this version doesn’t have removable watch bands
• Fitbit Ionic (GPS Watch) - Free replacement after it just died and didn’t turn back on
• Fitbit Aria (Scale) - Still the original / never got a replacement

However, I have had 8 devices. The first one was a factory recall and I got my full purchase price back. For the other 3, I purchased I had issues after a year or more and they replaced the device free of charge. When you spend more than $150 on newer technology and you are frugal it is a relief knowing that they stand behind the product.

Main Issues

Reporting Data

This was never really an issue years ago but as my use of my Fitbit watch changed it became more apparent. After having my year of running 5K a day and wanting to look through the data and look back at things, I quickly realized that looking back at specific data in your Fitbit is near impossible. How can I find all of the “Runs” I completed in the previous year.

You can click on the activities tab but everything is an activity and there is no good way to sort by type of activity. In addition, I can’t even easily export the information to do anything else with it. The good thing is most of my runs are in Strava which makes it super simple to export and look back at specific types of Activities (e.g., Runs vs Bike Rides).

Unreliable GPS / Watch

This kind of goes with my gripe above with data, however, a GPS watch itself is only as good as when it is tracking. If I didn’t want to know where and how far I ran, then I would not have paid over $250 for my Fitbit Ionic and just bought a $30 Timex like I used to wear in High School.

No chance of this watch failing unless the battery ran out.

The Fitbit Surge was a good watch and my first GPS watch.

I really did like the Fitbit Ionic as it had a big clear display.

One of the times my Fitbit failed in the past year around 1 mile into my run. I thought that since you could swim with this watch on it would have been able to survive the rain I was running through.

However, since I did spend that money on a GPS watch that is what I want. Below are some great examples of when my Fitbit would just fail me in the middle of the run. I realized that the map makes it look like I stopped and just didn’t complete the loop back to my house. Just for reference though, I do not stop a half-mile from my house as I always make it all the way back to my starting point no matter how much further that makes me run.

Really! Come on Fitbit why did you have to die after 1.5 miles.

As I look at the GPS fails above, it is kind of interesting that each one seems to die after a little over 1.5 miles. Not sure if that is a coincidence or not.

Will I miss anything?

I will miss the Community and the data I already have out there. I have tried to pull over as much data as I can into my new system but not all data is created equal even when importing. As I noted before since all of my runs were in Strava that was easier to get and import all of those into a new system.

As for the community, I will miss that as well since two of my kids have Fitbits and it was always fun being able to quickly see how I ranked over them. Even with 3.1 mile runs every day my kids still beat me in steps, unless they didn’t wear their watch. However, as for other family and friends, they too have started to drift away from Fitbit.

My guess is most people got Apple watches and didn’t want to wear both. Or if they wanted more of a Runners / Workout watch they went to Garmin or Suunto. I have been connecting with runners on Strava and it seems most drift to Garmin.

Fall is one of my favorite times of the year. Mostly because the weather is cooler outside and I have been known to pretend I am allergic to heat and humidity. As a runner, the cooler weather is welcome but you have to live with the downside of running in the dark morning or night hours. However, fall is another time when you need to start thinking about cleaning up the yard of leaves or putting away the summer stuff, and finding all the winter gear.

Since we have younger kids we put up a pool in the summer and an ice rink in the winter. Both of those things require some infrastructure that needs to be stored in the off-seasons. I don’t mind having to put it away but when this happens it always becomes a day project as it gives me some time to really clean up the other clutter that has been accumulating during the other 3-6 months.

I have written before about how we have used House Projects to Help Declutter as well as using the Seasons to help clean up areas of our house as well. However, most of all of that energy in decluttering started after I read the book “The More of Less” by Joshua Becker. Not only did the book energize me to start some of those decluttering projects around my house but also the book gave me access to a course that connected me with a community of people who wanted to and were going through the same process.

Uncluttered was the course and it was great because it was only a 12-week course focusing on various aspects of becoming uncluttered. However, in reality, the underlying message was not to just trash everything and live in a house with nothing. No… because who would really want to do that. The course walked you through how to figure out what is important to you and helps challenge your thinking of what is important so in the end, you hopefully will know exactly what is important and lift the weight by removing the other “stuff” cluttering your life.

The best part about the course is that you get lifetime access. So for someone like me, I enjoy that because I have done the course a couple of different times. Not only as a refresher but also as a way to get motivated again. As I said at the beginning of this article, I have two big clean-up events every year due to the infrastructure of outside stuff I need to put away. I am approaching one right now and even though I would love to say I decluttered our house once and after that, all was well… Well, that is not the case, it is something you have to intentionally work at going forward because let’s face it everyone is busy and stuff can start to pile up again. So for me retaking this course that continues to inspire me is time and initial money well spent.

Ok, I need to make something clear because I do not want you to think I am trying to pull one over on you. I know the previous paragraph seemed a little sales pitchy. Note that is not my intention, I am only telling you things from my own experience and no one is paying me to write this article. I would not try to convince you that something is good if I have never used it before and given it a try.

You asked for it so let’s dive into the data! I knew this was going to be a follow-up post to the one I just wrote earlier this week about my 5K a day. Maybe it is because I am kind of a data nerd and you were shocked I didn’t publish any data or charts with my last article. Or maybe it is because you wanted to see when and how far, fast or what time of day I completed my runs. It could have been that you were not 100% sure you believed me in my last article and were waiting to see some proof.

The glow of the sunrise in the clouds and off the water is something that never gets old for me (April 2019, Eden Prairie, MN)

I didn’t put it in the other article because I had some real hesitations about posting it. Not because I am trying to hide anything, in fact, you can follow my Strava account if you are a runner and like doing that type of thing. The reason was that the data is not perfect and it took me some time putting it all together. I am not going to bore you with all of those details in this post as I might have to save those issues for another. However, all of the data in the charts came from Strava and Fitbit.

So without further ado, here are some fun charts to look at from the past year where I completed 1189.45 miles with a little color commentary.

When did you run?

This is one of the first questions I got after my previous post, When did I do most of my running? I have been asked this question by friends and family members before and without looking at the chart my answer was always the morning without a doubt. With 3 kids in activities, the morning was the one time I could really control what I did. If I didn’t do it first thing there was always a chance that plans could change and I would be doing it at midnight. However, it did get me thinking about how often I ran the rest of the day over the past 12 months.

As you can see morning took it by a landslide. Now that it is Fall again and almost time for Winter I was reminded that running in the dark is not my favorite as I have been spoiled for the last 3-4 months of the morning running with the sunrise. This morning I just cranked out 6 miles and it was all in darkness.

Always a win when I would find a new route that actually has some street lights (Septemeber 2018, Eden Prairie, MN)

Completed my annual self made “Turkey Trot” in the early morning hours while watching the sunrise (November 2018, Nevada, IA)

Now being the data nerd I am I was thinking the next best slice would be to see a number of runs/miles by the day of the week. I was interested to see that I ran fewer miles on the weekend than I did during the week.

Now here is where I am going to kind of skate over data quality because it might be more valuable in another post as I will probably rant quite a bit on that topic. However, I have some double runs during the middle of some weeks due to international flights. In addition, not to play down my commitment to running because there were a couple of times in the past year I ran twice a day by CHOICE! You read that right I chose to run not only in the morning but at night as well. Don’t worry I didn’t make a habit out of it and it only happened because as I said previously I sometimes had to plan a week out in advance. Obviously, since I mostly wanted to get my runs done early as a way to not forget, someone would message me mid-day seeing if I wanted to run that evening. I mean how could I say no?

Friday Mornings take the real WIN!

After looking at that last set of data I pondered if there was anything else I would like to see. That is when it hit me that it would be interesting to see based on the day of the week when did I typically run.

I was not really sure what to expect on this chart before pulling it together. The only thing I could think of was besides mornings probably being pretty spread out during a given week. I would have thought more evening runs as I would try to squeeze them in right after work or while at a kid’s activity. As you can see from the data below, that is not entirely what is being shown.

After looking over the chart below I came to two realizations:

• I am not sure how Strava categorizes Morning, Lunch, Afternoon, Evening or Night run. The biggest problem I see here is that there is a big gap between what I would consider Morning and Lunch. Then in the afternoon and evening, I am not sure what that fine line is to trip it from Lunch to Afternoon to evening. I spot checked a couple of specific days and it was counting afternoon as 5:50 PM. Not sure if that is where it should fall but then the data started to make more sense as in the winter months for sure I ran more in the early evening (or still Afternoon) while my son played basketball.
• I made a concerted effort to never run at night on Friday and in fact, it was the heaviest day of morning runs. I had never really thought of it but accept what the data says. Most of my Friday nights kids don’t have activities so with that in mind we are either doing something as a family at home or traveling somewhere for the weekend. Not to mention if you want to have a drink with the neighbor while grilling after work on a Friday it is best to get you run in early.

I also did a similar slice based on miles but as you can see it didn’t really tell me anything as the chart looks about the same since I was always hovering around 3.1 miles with very rare exceptions though most of and then at the end.

Pace

Finally, after I was pulling all this data together I was wondering what was my average pace over the course of these 12 months. The overall answer is 7:47 min miles. I decided to create some quick average charts by day and month. The day chart kind of puzzled me except when thinking about the other data above. I most likely got better rest before my Saturday run as I didn’t always have to do it at dawn.

When you look at the monthly chart this is even more interesting but I have a few ideas of why it might look like it does.

From when I started till about January I was on a steady decline. However, those runs were mostly solo in nature and a more consistent route due to darkness, and early snowfall. Don’t forget it got cold in January and I might have tried to run faster outside just to get the run done in the early morning.

Running with my daughter and the dog. Not a bad way to start the day as it is always filled with conversations. Not to mention more stops by both to see and listen to nature (March 2019, Eden Prairie, MN)

Frozen face run in -9.4°F (February 2019, Eden Prairie MN)

The Spring months I was running more with Lainey Lou the Doodle (our dog) which then slowed down my pace. In addition, I would run sometimes with my daughter who would like to bike along with me and sometimes she just wanted to stop. Finally, in the late April / May timeframe it was starting to get nicer out that I could do more trails around the area. In May especially, I was traveling and was running in the hills of Arizona, streets of China and a number of Treadmill runs due to the arrival of flights. I know that Treadmill run data was about the worst because I only have my watch data to go on and most of the time it never said I ran as far as the treadmill said I did.

So after all of my analysis above, I got to thinking I might be missing some data here that might be in addition to the chart above. The one above only gave average pace but I was more curious about what the min and max were as well. I think this chart helps answer some of those questions.

Looking at the chart above I think it further supports my hypothesis of running in different places and on the treadmill.

Fastest Times

I figured since I was sharing all of this data anyways I should probably share some Personal Bests during my year of running. I was thinking of doing a chart like some of the above but I realized I didn’t really have good data around this. Mostly because I didn’t always stop running right at 3.1 miles, so it would be hard with the data I have to give more meaning than overall bests.

Luckily, Strava has some overall personal bests that I could easily get and all of them except for the 10k came from a race I did in the summer. In looking at the data now, I wish I would have broken the 20 min mark but I can’t really complain as I was never shooting for a specific time. Also, I did well as I was in the top 15 overall and 2nd in my age group.

I actually did 2 races over the past year and surprised myself during both of them with good enough times considering I was running every day with no breaks. Running a 5k a day made me realize that running those 5K races were really nothing. I did them every day so it wasn’t a big deal, I knew I would finish it so then it was just a matter of at what point in the race should I pick up my pace or pass someone.

Conclusion

I never really set out to put any data together when I originally started running. In fact, I didn’t really think about it when I realized that I was actually going to be running for a year. To both of those facts, I might have been a little short-sided, as looking back I would have done things differently in order to make sure I had the data easily available. I would not have used it to change what happened on a day to day basis as my goal was never to run faster or even longer. I did use my Strava data and my Fitbit data to just look back at a given week or compare runs every now and then to see if there was any small progress. However, my ultimate goal was the consistency of doing it every day.

Found myself running along the EP Cross Country course this morning. Brings back memories of Saturday morning races… 🏃‍♂️