May 2021 Review

My first month in Atlanta has been a blast: I drove across the country, competed in my first races in 15 months, met some friends in person for the first time in a long time, and am writing this from Charleston where I’m spending Memorial Day!

I’m definitely enjoying the change of environment and pace; hopefully it’s not just a honeymoon period.

Goal Tracking

• 🟡 Get 1% faster. I ran a FAT PR of 10.92 in my first race back, then 10.93 two weeks later. Unfortunately, it looks like Freelap times don’t translate to FAT+0.15: the difference seems more like 0.35 seconds. That said, those PRs were set after hard training weeks: I think I have a lot of headroom with a good peaking cycle and some minor technical cleanup.
• 🔴 50% less discretionary spending. I expected to go red this month, and did. We’re buying lots of furniture, spending time in fancy hotels, and generally making our first month in Atlanta a month to remember. My spending this month was 215% of my average spending from last year.
• 🟡 One hour of solitary free time a day. I’m still not doing a great job of tracking this, but my work-life balance has significantly improved since moving to Atlanta. I don’t start my workday until around 11AM, and I’ve managed to keep a strict end-of-work time of 7PM. That gives me plenty of time to myself on Tuesdays an Thursdays (when I’m not doubling up at the track and gym).
• 🟡 Twice-weekly live conversations with friends. I haven’t really been focusing on this goal. Even so, I managed to hit it every week but this past one. Next month, I’ll pay more attention and get this back into the green!

Track & Fitness

• I ran in three meets! Despite my times not being as fast as I’d hoped for, I’m grateful to be competing again.
• My peak meet will be in late July, so I only have a month or so to get stronger before starting my extended taper.
• It’s been weird to be in a gym with other people again. This one, the Forum Athletic Club, is really close to my apartment and has almost everything I need. Unfortunately, their hex bar only supports 405lbs, so I’ve had to swap out heavy hex bar deadlifts for squats and traditional deadlifting.

Writing

• Listen More
• Meet Report: TFCUSA Club National Championships
• Two Meet Reports
• Measuring Bundle Sizes with Next.js and GitHub Actions—Part 2
• Some Notes on Solo Training
• Why Atlanta?

Reading

• The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
• The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef
• Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
• Range by David Epstein

Links & Quotes

Software Engineering, Startups, & Tech

• Above Avalon: Apple Has a Decade-long Lead in Wearables
• Common data model mistakes made by startups
• You Probably Shouldn’t Work at a Startup - Napkin Math
• App Store Arguments
• The data model behind Notion’s flexibility
• We need to talk about your Q3 roadmap

Track, Health & Fitness

• The End IS Near. No, Seriously… All epidemics end, even the Black Death…
• Does coffee raise blood sugar?
• International society of sports nutrition position stand: caffeine and exercise performance
• Training the Hip Flexors for Resiliency and Explosive Performance

Politics & Media

• The media’s lab leak fiasco
• Why do people hate inflation?
• Book Review: Charles Murray’s Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class
• The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars
• On Incels, Dead Bedrooms and The Hard Problems of Loneliness
• Rural Americans Are Much Less Likely to Get a Vaccine

Other

• From Culinary Dud To Stud: How Dutch Plant Breeders Built Our Brussels Sprouts Boom
• The Animal is Tired
• The Ultimate Guide to Inflation
• Prospectus On Próspera
• The Midwits Will Rise Again
• The Story of One Whale Who Tried to Bridge the Linguistic Divide Between Animals and Humans
• What Oxford taught me about posh people