Training progress, spring 2019

Following the structure and guidance in Scott Johnston & Steve House’s books Training for the New Alpinism and Training for the Uphill Athlete, I’ve focused over the past year on consistently accruing hours of work below my aerobic threshold (AeT). The past six months, I’ve averaged just about five hours per week, with more regularity than in prior years. Overall, my workload is at a 250 hours per year pace.

These hours have been very skewed towards low-intensity aerobic. Excluding strength training, I’ve spent 97% of my training time over the past year at or below my aerobic threshold (AeT). [1]

Simplify, simplify, simplify

I read Tomasz Tunguz’s writeup on his website rewrite, and took some inspiration. After a long run yesterday, it seemed like a fun little project to sit down with a cup of decaf and re-examine this website. Ended up being a bit more than a one-morning project, but mostly fit within a weekend.

2017 Book Shorts

It’s typical for me to have a half-dozen books going at once, so I took advantage of a relaxed holiday week to finish up a handful (and start some new ones!). In no particular order:

Originals by Adam Grant

A quick read, and an interesting collection of “anecdata” regarding the traits and habits of some successful individuals. I appreciated that the stories Grant told tended to be backed up by (or at least explainable in the context of) academic research, although I was left with questions about the validity of that research given the past few years’ of upheaval in the social sciences. Cf. Andrew Gelman’s Garden of Forking Paths, Amy Cuddy - NYTimes. But Grant succeeds in providing an actionable source of inspiration and self-confidence for voicing one’s views and pushing organizations in the right direction.