Once or twice a year, somebody posts to the biking list I follow asking how one learns to do long climbs such as Page Mill Road, the 2,000 foot vertical climb up to Skyline Blvd. And they are always disappointed to hear the answer is “You just do it.” There isn’t a secret or a […]
Category: sports
2015 Year in Review
After 2013 was the Year of Yes and 2014 was the Year of More, the theme of 2015 was Pushing the Limits. 2015 was about a combination of great physical exertion but also deep introspection, and I’m in a pretty happy spot as I enter 2016. Sports: Let’s start with the most obvious focus of […]
The Leadville experience
[This is a long post with my experience in riding the Leadville 100 mountain bike race. If you want to just look at pretty pictures instead, go here.] “You are better than you think you are, and you can do more than you think you can.” – Ken Chlouber, creator of the Leadville race series […]
Raising money for World Bicycle Relief
As my last post makes clear, I have been getting more into biking over the past couple years, and I now want to share my goal for 2015: finishing the Leadville 100 mountain bike century. I first heard of Leadville through the bike blogger, Elden Nelson (aka Fat Cyclist) as he has finished Leadville 17 […]
I love my bike
I’ve been riding my bike more to start training for the Death Ride in July (and because the weather is ludicrously nice in California – it got into the 80s this week). And I was thinking this morning that I love my bike. From 2011 to 2014, my main bike was a Surly Long Haul […]
2014 Year in Review
After 2013 was the Year of Yes for me, I would characterize 2014 as the Year of More. I didn’t start any new activities in 2014, and instead did a lot more of what I was already doing. Job: I am still in the same job as last year (Chief of Staff to Product VP […]
The Rise of Superman, by Steven Kotler
Amazon link Book website This book examines the extreme limits of human performance, delving into the world of action-adventure athletes who are redefining what is possible. It tells of big wave surfing, extreme free skiing, skateboarding, free solo rock climbing, base jumping, kayaking impossible rivers, etc. Kotler also examines the neuroscience behind the state of […]
Wear your damn helmet!
I’ve been seeing several references on Facebook and email recently to this site or similar sites, which makes the claim that it is safer to ride a bicycle without a helmet. This is ridiculous nonsense to me, and I finally snapped and wrote a long email rant in response, and decided to post a version […]
Expertise as exception handling
A few months ago, I wrote a post claiming that expertise was doing difficult tasks consistently and Rif challenged me on that. And I’ve been thinking about it over the past few months and have another model I’m going to throw out there: expertise as exception handling. One example of this is my experience as […]
Consistency
As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve gotten back into playing volleyball this summer at Google, and have been really enjoying it. The sand court on Google’s main campus is in regular use, and I’ll occasionally stop by and watch to pick up some pointers. One Wednesday at lunch, I was watching the really […]
