Thread by @seanharr11

I’ve spent 7 years leveraging software & data to quantify & optimize athlete performance

• 4 as Dir. of Software Eng. for the NE Patriots
• 3 as Founder @ Notemeal

Here are 13 ways that I’m turning 7 years of experience into a 7-min pace running the ‘22 #BostonMarathon 🏃🏽‍♂️🧵

⛽️ Fueling: I’m eating my own dog food, joining 10,000 other elite athletes and optimizing my fueling with @Notemeals . @BethMiller_7, RD, CSSD, will be turning my logs into meal plans, and ensuring adequate energy availability. #DontFearTheCarbs

💪 Body Composition: I am aiming for weekly InBody tests, and monthly DEXA scans to measure changes in lean mass, fat mass and visceral fat. I'll also be comparing my own data to aggregated and anonymized data in Notemeal.

🦵Body Asymmetries, Flexibility and Movement: My wife has her Doctorate of Physical Therapy - she is my secret weapon. We’re going to quantify hamstring/quad strength differences (left-to-right), flexibility and overall ability to move functionally.

👩‍⚕️Physical Therapy: Chances are, I’ll need some corrective exercises to fix the above, or some needles stuck into my muscles to relieve some tension. We will explore modalities that my wife uses with amateur, collegiate and pro athletes.

📈 Blood Glucose: I will be continuously monitoring how my blood glucose responds to food and exercise using Levels, particularly during long runs. As a fellow entrepreneur, I admire @SamCorcos and his Team’s mission to solve the metabolic health crisis.

🩸Blood Markers: I was first introduced to InsideTracker while working on #phytebyte. @gblander1 has brought blood biomarkers direct to consumer. I want to know what happens to inflammatory markers when I run really far repeatedly.

🏋️‍♂️HIIT and Strength Coaching: The plan is to continue building leg strength to make it up #HeartbreakHill. @rmandal and team have built the best S&C Coaching app (and service) I’ve ever used in @futurefitapp, and I know Coach @Gregurich has me covered.

💓 Heart Rate: The Apple Watch (series 4) will be used to track avg. and max heart rate during exercise, and at rest throughout the day. Cold temps and loose fit can produce inaccurate data.

⏱️ Distance and Time: Ditto. I ran a half-marathon back in October at a 7:23 pace. Apple watch results were consistent with RFID tracked time as I crossed the finish line.

💤 Sleep: I’m just looking for the time I spend in bed (1) sleeping, and (2) awake. There is literature supporting that the 🍎⌚️ accelerometer does a great job in capturing this data.

🫀VO2 max is a proxy for overall cardiovascular fitness, and is “validated” by an Apple-sponsored 🤔research study. Nevertheless, we’re having fun.

💕 HRV: Heart rate variability is a measure of variation in time interval between heartbeats. Counterintuitively, the higher, the better. Many professionals smarter than me have cited a lack of literature supporting most consumer devices. BUT, we’re having fun here...

🙏 I am running to raise money supporting research into nutrition’s impact on healthy aging, obesity and cancer for @TuftsNutrition You can support the cause here: givengain.com/ap/sean-harrin…

👈 Follow me for detailed threads on each of the above topics as I train for the '22 BOS marathon, including expert advice from colleagues (not me!!) credentialed in the space.

Learning: once a week, I run between 10-20 miles. During the 1-2hr run in the cold morning, I soak up the @hubermanlab podcast. With @StanfordFball and @ZornNutrition on #notemeal, I wonder if we can collab on some performance nutrition research at Stanford 🧐