Running4Cause

First of all thank you for all of you who have donated over $500 to the $1000 dollar Fund Raising Goal (See Last Week’s Post).

Today is T-7 (7 days before the 20 Mile Race) and I went for the Dry Run, which is the Practice, Rehearsal or Trial Run of what the Race (Live Day) will be like next week!

Running: As most Athletes know “How you train is how you Win!“; it is in this mindset that the week before any race (certainly no more then 2 weeks); I have made it a religious practice to have a Dry Run, which will mirror the Race Day. The night before, I ate the same meal (pasta); go to bed at same time (9:30pm) & wake up at the time of race day (5:15am) to start my running at 7:00am. During the Dry Run, I wear the same clothing and shoes that I will use on Race Day and run the exact same Running Route that I will run on Race Day (minus 5 miles). This is important because I want to make sure that my Plan is Tested and attain Lesson’s Learned to apply to my actual Run during Race Day and thereby increasing my chances to achieving my Goal!

Technology: As an IT Professional, a Dry Run is as equally importartant to the success of your Deployment/Implementation or Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (BCP/DR) Plan. “An Untested Plan is a Failed Plan”. The Dry Run in IT/Risk Management, must consist of a Change Management & Go No Go meetings with all the stakeholders including the execution team testing the critical steps of their plan on a Non-Production environment to assure success. The omission to execute this basic principle of a “Dry Run” in technology will increase the likely hood of failure and will potentially cause negative impact to your business. What if plans fail during the Dry Run? This is great, better to fix the issues during the Dry Runs then during Live Day.

LIFE: As a Christian, I have also realized that God often operates in my life with “Dry Runs”. He will often allow me to go through situations where I will be tested and some (if not many) of the times I fail. I have seen this in my walk as Christian, during my Marriage, my Parenting, my Career and frankly all the other areas of my life. I have also learned that God is full of Grace and Patience, allowing me to build my memory bank with “Lesson’s Learned” for the next Live Day. This is reinforced in the scriptures:

Philippians 3:12, ESV: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

Just like Running and Technology; Life is full of opportunities to succeed; so the next time you fail consider it a “Dry Run” & Press On for your next SUCCESS!

CSoC