Month: August 2016

My Thinking On Various Topics

Passing My Athletic Peak

In a few months I will turn 30 and while that number has no particular significance to me, I started to realize while watching the Olympics that, physically speaking, I am hitting my peak. While competing at Rio earlier this month, Michel Phelps described himself as a ‘mature athlete’ and commentators made note of how much effort it took for him to climb out of the pool after one of his races, describing it as ‘gingerly’. He announced his retirement this year. After 16 years of racing at the Olympic level, he is ending his career. He is 31 years old. 30 30 tends to be when people stop being able to compete at their athletic peak. There is some variance per athlete, but the trend is pretty consistent. Here are some data I grabbed from the Association of Road Racing Statisticians (my new favorite association) that shows the fastest

Career in Tech

Product Management and Collective Action Problems

Bringing a new product to life, either as a product manager or co-founder, ultimately amounts to solving a collective action problem. That is a problem that often occurs when a group of people is trying to accomplish something that is in their collective best interest but that none can accomplish alone. Encyclopedia Britannica has the following to say about this type of problem: “However, it has long been recognized that individuals often fail to work together to achieve some group goal or common good. The origin of that problem is the fact that, while each individual in any given group may share common interests with every other member, each also has conflicting interests. If taking part in a collective action is costly, then people would sooner not have to take part.” The result is a set of decisions by individuals to participate or not. If everyone acts then the result can ultimately

Yearly Focus

2016 Focus: Mid Year Update

With the start of a new year, I take the time to set my focus for the coming year. Now that the year is half way through (maybe a bit more) I want to check in on how things are going. 2016 Focus At a macro level I am doing ok so far, probably as well as I will do. I have realized that I spread myself a bit too thin with these items this year though. Introducing a new one certainly exacerbated that. Having four items of focus is simply too many. Some of them have overlap, such as running & health – but others take me in a completely different direction. One of the things I’ve learned and will change for my focus next year is to have the theme be a central item that the goal, challenge & exemplar all tie back to. For example if health

Poetry

Two Steps

It took two steps to get to the top of the podium. To wear my medal. To hear my song. It took 29,808 steps to get to the finish line. Each becoming more grueling than the last. It required everything of me. It took 1.98 million steps to get to the start line. Logging miles after long days. Early mornings running repeats up the hill. Sacrifices of time and comfort. Everyone dreams of the podium. Some people know what it takes to race. Only those that sacrifice to put in the work before the start line can truly understand those two steps.

Yearly Focus

Race Report: Jack & Jill Marathon 2016

On July 31, 2016 I raced my first marathon. I finished in a time of 2:42:23, taking first place in the race. Here is the race report. Compared to the Ironman I did in 2014, this race was relatively quick and not quite as grueling – but it was much more intense and there was far less margin for error. To put numbers to that – during my Ironman my average heart rate was 137 BMP or about 74% of my maximum. For this marathon it was 166 BPM or 90% of my maximum. My goal, which I had set at the beginning of the year before I started my training regimen, was to break 2:37. I missed by about six minutes. If you don’t fail once in a while, you aren’t trying hard enough. This was an intentionally aggressive goal that was set without context months earlier. That said, I think