Cristina Chipurici

aka Pyuric

All you need to know before you start running


I’m writing this article so I can directly send the link to everyone who’s asking me how to start running. tongue

As this year’s running season is about to end, city streets in big cities across the world will be closed and overtaken by thousands of runners who are competing in races.

Over half a million people finished a marathon (a 42 km long race) in 2016 in the US, out of a total of 56 million Americans who run. In Europe, 41,708 people crossed the finish line of the Paris marathon, 39,072 finished the London marathon, and 36,054 the one in Berlin (these are stats for 2016). The eleventh edition of the Bucharest marathon (the city where I’m based) will take place this Sunday (cc: future mad car drivers).

As this sport’s popularity is on a rise, I think it’s a safe bet to make that some of you will consider starting running in 2019. When this happens, you only need to remember that I wrote this article, to come back to it big grin and get these two things right before lacing your shoes and jumping out the door for your first run: Read more…

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Eliminating distractions: I’m killing Friday Read. 🐛

Ray Dalio’s words from Principles have been echoing in my mind lately:

“You can have virtually anything you want, but you cannot have everything.”

Today marks the 1 year anniversary since I publicly announced The CEO Library, the project I founded together with my friend and mentor Bobby Voicu. At the same time we started working on it, I launched Friday Read, my personal newsletter. In the past year, I divided my attention and tried to grow them both, fooling myself into believing that I’m capable. It became increasingly clear to me that I’m not. Read more…

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Facebook reach dropped even more in the past 18 months

Buffer (the most popular social media management platform) and BuzzSumo (top SEO and content marketing tool) teamed up for an interesting analysis regarding Facebook engagement. They looked at 43 million statuses posted by top 20,000 Facebook pages and published a study on what brands can do to succeed in 2018.

Two key takeaways:

1. Engagement dropped overall with more than 50% in the past 18 months (engagement = likes, reactions, shares or comments). Basically, it’s now so low that even the top Facebook pages perform worse than the lousy Facebook pages did two years ago.

2. Photos have the best engagement rate, not videos, as it was previously the case. However, keep in mind that photos interactions dropped as well.

This is a welcomed data-supported confirmation of something that, intuitively, we all already knew. As competition grows and businesses are screaming louder and louder in the pursuit of people’s attention, the social network somehow needs to filter what we do end up seeing in the newsfeeds. The same thing will happen with Instagram or any other social networks using this business model.

For more details, take a look over the study.

While I personally quit Facebook back in December, I’m still keeping up to date with its algorithmic changes, for business related purposes. With the risk of sounding like a broken record, here’s the advice I gave all brands that I worked with in the past decade: stop building houses on a rented land and instead focus on growing channels that are under your control – through your own websites, that is, and look at anything else as potential ways to capture people’s attention and bring them there.

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Don’t wait till January to subscribe: Fit Tales Newsletter

I recently made room in my inbox for a couple more newsletters that provide high value.

One of them is Carmen Albișteanu’s “Fit Tales newsletter“.

Carmen’s a dear old friend of mine, but also a certified food coach, excellent trail runner (the kind that wins competitions, not just complains about how hard it was tongue ), and a CRO strategist expert. I’ve been pressuring Carmen for a while now into building her own mailing list, and she finally took the leap.

She’ll use this bimonthly newsletter as a platform to share nutrition and sports related resources, with all sorts of articles, podcasts, and anything that she finds valuable and nonsense-free.

Subscribe now, don’t wait till January! happy

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Cristina’s Friday Read – thoughts & numbers after one year

One year ago I started a personal newsletter called “Friday Read” – yeah, I know, such a highly creative name happy I actually named it this way as a form to apply pressure on myself and turn it into a habit – I can’t really start a newsletter named Friday Read and not send it every Friday, now can I?

What you’ll find below are bits and pieces of my thoughts on why I started this newsletter, how it grew in the past year, together with a few stats and their context.

If you’re already subscribed, feel free to skip this article – these are just copy-pasted fragments of the emails sent recently.

P.S. the illustration from the beginning of this article was created by a reader as a one year anniversary gift – thanks, Cornel! If you’re using Instagram, send him your love. Read more…

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Special Friday Read – 1 year anniversary: making & breaking habits workshop

What you’ll read below is the complete and unedited email I sent almost two weeks ago, on July 27th, to those subscribed to my mailing list.

tl;dr: As a one year anniversary since I started the newsletter, I decided to organize a workshop for the subscribers, together with Andrei Roșca. The seats limit has been reached in the meantime, so you can’t sign up anymore. However, if you want to learn more about any other upcoming events, you can subscribe to Friday Read.

Thanks! Read more…

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Marathon 7500 race – thoughts, mistakes and readjustments

This past weekend I competed in Marathon 7500, a trail running race that takes you all over Bucegi mountains. It was an anniversary edition, celebrating 10 years since the first one, so a couple more races were added to the two traditional ones. All of them start and finish at Peștera (Moroeni), while taking you up and down Omu’ peak on different routes (at 2,505 m altitude, it’s the highest point in Bucegi mountains and 6th highest in Romania).

These are the four races and their routes:

– 8500: a new addition. you get to climb on Omu’ peak four times, on four different routes. It’s 100.5 km long, with 8500m+ altitude difference.
– 7500: the Elite race. you get to climb Omu’ three times. 90 km long, 7500m+.
– 3200: the one ran by my better half, also called “Hobby race”. he climbed Omu’ peak twice, on two different trails. 42 km long (the distance of a marathon), with 3200m+.
– 1600: also a new one. dubbed ‘Kiddies race’, this is the one I signed up for and ran on Saturday. I got to climb Omu’ peak once. Only 23 km long (so barely more than a half-marathon), with 1600m+ elevation. For those of you who prefer visual representation, here’s the map: Read more…

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Learning from awesome events across the globe: Chocolate Chip Cookie Off Charity Auction

I love what Sol Orwell is doing.

Almost two years ago, he started to organize charity food offs – events where all money go to charity. And you get to eat chocolate chip cookies made by professionals and then rank your top 5 fav cookies.

The first event, Chocolate Chip Cookie Off, was held at the beginning of January 2017 – he convinced 27 professional chefs and bakers around Toronto to make cookies and raised $2,500. Read more…

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The strategy behind a 300$-worth giveaway with books about learning

I’ll start with a disclaimer: I’m personally repulsed by online giveaways. I consider them shortcuts for lazy marketers. Yeah, sure, they work, but they can’t be your only strategy on the long term – as I’ve seen it happen with so many brands. Giveaways usually attract people that are irrelevant for your business, so are they really worth the energy? What’s more important: having 100 fans who really trust you and buy your products, or 10,000 fans who hit the like button just so they could win a prize, but don’t care about you and your mission?

That being said, at The CEO Library we really want to help the future generation of entrepreneurs. That’s why we thought of a giveaway that can provide real value and make a difference in the journey of those with an entrepreneurial mindset, who are always curious to learn more and improve themselves. Read more…

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