Million Girls Moonshot

The PC Is at the Heart of All Our Experiences — Steve Long’s Thoughts on Health & Fitness

By David Allison

Steve Long, Corporate Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Intel, is an affable guy. He is the sort of person who puts you at ease yet is quick on his feet and will respectfully challenge your ideas. Steve is the sort of guy you want to have alongside you on a 10-mile trail run, have a beer with after work, go out and catch a ballgame with, or even have a healthy debate about existential questions; but somehow, I imagine Steve having a perpetual wry smile and a chipper attitude through these heavy discussions.

Steve is a former collegiate athlete in volleyball at Tulane University. As he states, “Sports have been near and dear to how I just maintain balance…for me balance, mental health, and physical health are all intertwined.”

He continued a little later in our interview, “It [sports] brought discipline and rigor into just how I was brought up…There was an expectation that you were doing something physical, active during the day…It taught me the importance of that time.”

Fast forward to today, where Mr. Long has been with Intel for over the two decades and has a demanding career that causes him to travel over 70% of the year (pre-pandemic).

Mr. Long feels exercise is a great way to balance one’s body — physically and emotionally, especially for him because he is such a high-energy individual. And because of this exercise habit he has had since a child, his need for exercise first thing in the morning is more of a physiological necessity than a simple desire. In fact, he bristles a bit when he finds out he has a 7 a.m. meeting the next morning because to him these early waking hours are sacred. This is the time of day when he can get off on the right foot for the hectic day ahead by releasing some endorphins, getting a good sweat in, and finding some mental balance.

When asked what was is favorite form of exercise before the pandemic when he was on the road regularly, he lit up like a little boy finding the plastic Easter Egg with a $5 bill inside, “Easiest thing to do is put a pair of shoes in your bag and you’re out…Discovering Rome at six in the morning with a pair of tennis shoes…or run Las Vegas at 5:30 in the morning…it’s quite an interesting cast of learnings that you get early in the morning when you’re a runner on the road.”

Since the pandemic, Steve has not traveled as much and has found other avenues for his physical fitness jones. He has partaken in yoga and OrangeTheory Fitness classes over the past several months, both of which he has enjoyed.

Don’t Short-Change the Experience

When I think about sports and fitness pre-1990s, I remember when weight training was only for football players, body builders, and maybe wrestlers. Not many athletes really thought about their diets too much other than if they were trying to gain or lose weight. Yoga was for hippies and cross-training was not even a thing, really. But in the past two decades, we both as humans and as athletes have learned so much more about our bodies regarding proper nutrition, better sleep patterns, weight training, cross-training, oxygen-levels, and our access to more and more data every day to help us reach our maximum physical potential.

The overall experience of becoming a healthy individual, both physically and mentally, has changed. Today we have reems of data and scientific evidence on what an individual needs to do to become faster, leaner, stronger, happier, and calmer. It is almost universally understood today that the mental and physical damage an athlete can do his or her body by trying to play through a serious injury is not worth the risk for the individual’s long-term athletic success or sustaining a high-level of exuberance for the sport the in which the athlete is participating. This does not mean there are no longer challenging and taxing workouts for athletes today or that coaches do not still try to balance on the precipice of benefit and breaking point; but understanding all the components (physical strength, speed, endurance, caloric intake, proper diet, emotional balance, amount of daily rest, and body elasticity) of what makes a high-level collegiate, professional, or Olympic athlete, plays a much larger role in today’s training methodology than it did in the 20th century. For example, some common idioms of the 20th century that were meant to illustrate a person’s toughness or lack thereof were:

• No pain, no gain.
• Rub some dirt on it, you’ll be fine.
• Suck it up, buttercup.

And while the idea behind these idioms was to have athletes be more tough-minded and push themselves further than they maybe thought they could, we know today that there is a greater risk to an athlete’s overall well-being if he or she blindly tries to push his or her body to the limit in each and every workout.

What we need to start doing is looking at

• What is the experience we are trying to create for the athlete?
• What is the goal of being on this team?
• How much importance should we be placing on winning at a certain age?
• Is this sport your profession or just a hobby?
• Are there more ways to participate in this sport other than playing/competing”?
• What importance are we putting on emotional health? When is training too much? What constitutes training?

Although maybe not created specifically for athletes, the Intel® Evo™ platform was created to give the end-user an overall uplifting experience based on extensive research and data collected over the years.

The reason behind PCs with the Intel® Evo™ badge is making a connection between how people interact with their computers today; and according to Steve Long, “The place where people go to contribute to the world — drive their purpose in this world is on a client — a PC.”

And if you think about it, at no time in our human history has this been truer. While we can still argue about the idea of the Singularity, one surely has not missed that everything from dating, fixing a leak in your kitchen, diagnosing a disease, to analyzing your last 30-day marathon running training cycle can and is usually done via a computer, or at the very least information found on a computer.

As Mr. Long sums up the importance of PCs in our world today:

This is the place where the experience needs to be the best. Where people can bring together all their data sets, whether it’s through their exercise routines or their work habits or whether it’s through accessing information, which helps them spiritually, or help them find their joy…The PC is at the heart of it.

Million Girls Moonshot

Beginning Q3'2021, reading Intel Tech stories with the kicker Million Girls Moonshot will generate donations for the Million Girls Moonshot. Intel will donate $1 per unique views of stories with the Kicker Million Girls Moonshot until Dec 31, 2021. We will announce the funds raised in Q1'2022 post. Don’t forget to show your support for these kids and clap.¹

Notices and Disclaimers:

¹ Start dates for this Intel tech program may change without notice. All product plans and roadmaps are subject to change without notice.

© 2021 Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.