Thursday, January 24, 2019

My thoughts on the 2019 Disney Half


Last week Mrs. RockStar and I walked the 2019 Disney Half Marathon. It was her first half mary. I've done a few. The takeaways were:

  1. Our time was a lot slower (4:03:04)than my past halfs. In fact, it was my slowest ever.
  2. We knew it was going to be slow since that was how we trained. We executed our race exactly inline per our training.
  3. We were concerned about the balloon ladies who are supposed to run/walk 16:00 miles. If they pass you, you may be asked to get on the "bus of shame." We did not go on the bus! We finished the race.
  4. I was hurting after the race. It took me longer to recover than I expected. I missed out on my post Disney Shula Steakhouse tradition.
  5. I view this race overall as a success. 9 months ago walking was an issue. We've come a long way.
  6. We did it with Team in Training. Don't know if we'll do it again but we helped a good cause
  7. My next time at Disney will be 2021. Join me!


Saturday, January 5, 2019

Making myself smarter - the 2019 reading experiment.

One of my goals for this year (and probably appropriate for the rest of my life) is to continue to get smarter. Either a derivative of this goal or perhaps a complement to this goal - I don't know which because I'm not that smart - is to not get dumber. Either way I look at it, I've got to do something to make this happen. It won't happen automagically.

So, I've decided to read. I've set a goal is to read a book a week, at least 52 for the year. Luckily I got some good book recommendations from a Facebook post where I asked for help. I also got a bunch of books as gifts for Christmas.  So, I have a queue of quality reading material to get through. Once I get through the queue I'll either buy some, get others from the library, and some I'll borrow.

Very few will be electronic books. I read old school bound words on paper. I am somewhat flexible in hardcover vs. softcover but a side effect of this goal is that I'll be looking at my phone less than before. Reading should expose me to more diverse thought as compared to reading the same stuff over and over on the phone.

I'll update this post with every book that I read. Here is the completed list:

1) The Autobiography of Malcolm X - as told to Alex Haley. Completed 1/2
2) Dick Vitale's Mount rushmore of College Basketball. Completed
3) Grateful American: A journey from self to service - Gary Sinese completed 2/18
4) The stranger in the woods - Michael Finkel. Completed 2/
5) The princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherford
6) Traffic - Tom Vanderbilt.
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