I’m fortunate to have a nice bike storage room at my office. Something happened there today that prompted the facilities manager to send us the list of prohibitions, which included this miscellaneous grouping at the end 😀
New bike 🚴
I knew going in that a first triathlon requires a lot of planning and gear, especially when you don’t have any equipment.
Given that the cycling component is the longest distance, it is important to have a good bike. Once I knew my size, the next step was to actually choose a bike. And, oh my, are there decisions to make.
As with most things, budget sets a pretty useful constraint. Within that, there’s finding the sweet spot between spending enough to get something good that you won’t regret compromising on later and spending so much that you’ve exceeded your fitness level and can’t capitalize any speed gains from the purchase.
Finished reading: Salvation Lost by Peter F. Hamilton is fun. Part 2 of the Salvation trilogy and a great humans fighting back against powerful aliens story📚
There’s been some shovelling today ❄️
Lucy is enjoying all this new snow ❄️
Finished reading: The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian is a fascinating and very well written overview of the current state of AI research. I was particularly struck by how much of the challenge with safe AI is based on our poor understanding of our own intelligence 📚
Bike sizing 🚴♂️
I’ll be spending many hours and a reasonable amount of money on a bicycle over the next few months. To be efficient, comfortable, and injury free, I want the bike to fit me closely. So, I sought the advice of Scott, a professional bike fitter.
Scott has an interesting contraption that is the various parts of a bike, each adjustable, with which he can recreate any frame geometry. He started out with a Trek Domane as a reference point and had me ride it for a few minutes. Then with an assortment of rulers, protractors, and lasers, he measured me, moved parts, measured again, and optimized the fit. Once the fit was established, he generated a detailed report for me of all the various lengths and angles that I can use to confirm the size of any bike that I find.
As a benchmark for upcoming training, my coach had me run a 5k time trial. This is also useful for determining my heart rate training zones. I started off too fast and paid for it near the end, but managed to hold a good pace from KMs 2 to 5 🏃♂️
Listening to Apple Music Activity Playlists for a week 🎶
As an experiment, I spent the past week listening only to the Activity Playlists in Apple Music. So, whatever I was doing, I picked the most closely related playlist.
Often these were straightforward. Cooking dinner with help from the kids: Cooking with Family; triaging the morning inbox of email: Checking Email; mind mapping a project: Brainstorming.
Other times it was more mood oriented. Reading by the fire when it is -20ºC: Winter; augmenting an early Wednesday morning coffee: Wake Me Up!.
My first swimming workout 🏊♂️
I’ve been in a pool with my Apple Watch before, though only either to splash around with the kids or with a beer at an all-inclusive resort. Today was the first time I’ve used it for an actual swimming workout. It has also been a long time since my high school swimming days back in the early 90s. So, an important day!
My coach gave me a straightforward workout:
- Warm up 2 x 50m and 4 x 25m
- Main set 10 x 50m with 20s rest and 10 x 25m with 20s rest
- 2 x 100m with 1 min rest
As expected, using the Apple Watch was simple. When you start up the workout, it asks for the length of the pool and then automatically figures out when you stop for a rest. This shows up in the “Auto Sets” in the screenshot below. Based on this, it looks like my rests were longer than planned, though I’m not entirely sure how precise these are and when it decides to start and stop. Something to keep an eye on next time.
Time to stop tracking my personal life ⏰
Through 2020, I built up an ornate system for tracking my time for both work and personal projects (like this one for reading). For most of 2021, I found this tracking really helpful.
I need to track my hours at work anyway, so using Timery and Shortcuts to automate much of this has been great. Having a strong sense of how long things take and ensuring good balance across projects are all benefits of time tracking.
Finished reading: The Stranger in the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom is a compelling, brief story about faith and redemption 📚
Finished reading: This seems to be the consensus, so I won’t belabour the point: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman is a powerful book. If you feel overwhelmed by busyness or slightly adrift, it is well worth a read. There are some tough messages in it, though, that require contemplation 📚
Lucy has resolved that 2022 will be the year of more food
