I Live in Iowa: Week 13

The week started off as most of my weeks start with a long run on the Heritage Trail followed by the working portion of the week. I worked over 43 hours this week which is actually the most I have worked thus far. I am enjoying the 40 hour work week. It feels like I am on vacation. After the hours that I put in during college, 40 hours a week seems so short. Although, I do think that my productivity is higher on a per hour basis. Meaning that during 80 hours of school work I achieved say 65 units of productivity but during 40 hours I achieve 35 units of productivity. It is the diminishing return principle. In other words, engineers scribbling on the back of a napkin after dinner get say 60% of the way there. After all, it took me three minutes to sketch my ice axe the first time I thought of it, but it was 100+ hours before I could actually hold it even though the sketch and actual ice axe were nearly the same.

I started working on a new project this week. I am quickly becoming the "expert" on the few things I have worked. I say that in quotes because I recently had a discussion about what it means to be an expert, which I will inevitably flesh out my thoughts through an article here. It is interesting because we have basically two competitors and I am sure they each have my counterpart, so basically there are probably only three people in the world that deal with the specific implements I do. A skilled engineer could be brought up to speed in under a day, yet I still feel unique.

I ran about 44 miles this week and biked about 120, I think. That includes the duathlon Saturday. I was pretty run down during the middle of the week. My hip muscle knot flared up because I've been neglecting the 30-60 minutes a week for core and hip stability exercises. However, it worked out alright because I did my duathlon well.

Winning is often the goal of racing, but winning because the leader misses a corner and runs 150 meters farther than me is not my preferred method of winning. When we both were back on course and together I considered taking it easy and letting him win. I decided that there was no guarantee I would beat him on the run anyway so I ran my race. Had neither one of us run extra, he probably would have beat me, but I was closing on him fast on mile two and I did the last 1k faster, so I might still have won. It's like Baldini in Athens in 2004. Had the leader not been tackled by a former priest Baldini might not have won. It is what it is and we can't go back in time and redo it. Also, there was no prize money at stake or international team berth and we were both given the same medals so really it was not a terrible race to make a mistake.

For bicycling I was dropped on Wednesday night riding with the local racers. That has never happened before. They were not even going that fast. As far as athletic training is concerned the duathlon changed my whole immediate perspective. I was just messing around more or less but now I am motivated to get serious and run fast. I am planning on the fast half marathons in September and October and a December marathon.

What else did I do? Laundry, blog, listen and watch the Tour
De France, eat, and sleep.