July 2021 Review
July 31st, 2021July was busy: we hosted my parents and some friends in Montana for the first two weeks, I traveled to Des Moines for the USATF Masters Championships, and I’m writing this on the way to Chicago for a bachelor party. With Delta on the rise and lockdowns restarting, this might have been my last chance to see friends in person for a while—I’m glad that I got my travel in now.
Goal Tracking
- 🟢 Get 1% faster. I ran a personal best of 10.79 in the 100m, achieving my goal of being 1% faster on the year!
- 🔴 50% less discretionary spending. I spent 12% more on discretionary things than my 2020 average. A big chunk of that is two flights and hotel stays in Des Moines and Chicago, but then again, my 2020 average includes travel too.
- 🟡 One hour of solitary free time a day. My work-life balance continues to be fairly good, and I’ve been spending more of my free time enjoying the outdoors and reading.
- 🟢 Twice-weekly live conversations with friends. This was mostly facilitated by friends and family visiting us in Montana, and myself traveling to Iowa and Illinois. I suspect next month will be somewhat harder.
Track & Fitness
- My track season’s over after a PR of 10.79 in the 100m. I’m taking about a month off of the track to recuperate.
- I strained my hamstring in that 100m effort, so I’m currently religiously rehabbing it so that it doesn’t scar.
- Without track work, I’m focusing more on the weight room.
Writing
- Bitrot
- Super Spikes? New Balance FuelCell Sigma SD-X Impressions
- How Much Do Genetics Matter in Sprinting?
- Meet Report: 2021 USATF Masters Championships
Reading
- The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich
- Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson
- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
Links & Quotes
- Evolving Your Block Periodized Model
- (mis)Translating the Buddha
- We’d Rather Have the Iceberg Than the Ship — GS
- A 3°C world has no safe place | The Economist
- The Bitter Lesson
- How to gain more from your reading | Psyche Guides
- How To Learn Stuff Quickly
- JVM Thread Pools
- (PDF) Strength, Endocrine, and Body Composition Alterations across Four Blocks of Training in an Elite 400 m Sprinter
- What I learned from Software Engineering at Google | Swizec Teller
- Dan Pfaff on Tapering
- SPRINTING… Dietary Approaches to Optimize Training Adaptation and Performance in: International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism Volume 29 Issue 2 (2019)
- I no longer believe that it’s possible to achieve extremely high productivity sustained over long periods of time working on difficult projects alone, so now I spend the majority of my working time co-working with my friends over video in my virtual gather.town office - Alexey Guzey
- (PDF) Can we modify maximal speed running posture? Implications for performance and hamstring injuries management
- Runbooks for better incident management - by Ash Patel - Better Tech Work, NOW!
- Speed and Power Physiology, Tapering, and Performance with Andy Eggerth
- Delta Variant: Everything You Need to Know - by Tomas Pueyo - Uncharted Territories
- #14 What happens in an IPO? - A Beginner’s Guide (Part 1/2) - by Vivek Raju - Simplanations
- #15 What happens in an IPO? - A Beginner’s Guide (Part 2/2) - by Vivek Raju - Simplanations
- Questions to Ask in an Interview That Don’t Suck – Boring Startup Stuff
- Teaching Queues To Improve Sprinting Form | Sprinting Mechanics - YouTube
- Building a Vision of Life Without Work | Living a FI
- Give me /events, not webhooks - Sync Inc
- Peaking Workouts for 400 Meter Runners: A Proven 10-14 Showcase
- Tapering for Speed Events: Can it Help Peak Performance?
- The data team: a short story · Erik Bernhardsson
- We need a Butlerian Jihad against AI - by Erik Hoel - The Intrinsic Perspective
- Towards a more Elvish vision for Technology
- Lockdown Effectiveness: Much More Than You Wanted To Know - by Scott Alexander - Astral Codex Ten
- 14 Tapering Strategies to Bring Speed Athletes to Peak Cycle
- 2021.05 minutiae as a Bay Area teacher
- Dual N-Back FAQ · Gwern.net
- When Orcs were Real - by Tree of Woe - Contemplations on the Tree of Woe
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