Hi All,
Here is your weekly guide of things I’m enjoying, consuming, using and loving. Enjoy.
Activity I’m Getting Back Into
Rock Climbing
I haven’t gone rock climbing in a long time, and admittedly, watching Free Solo inspired me. Coincidentally, I live really close to a few good rock climbing places that I’ve been wanting to check out for a while. My girlfriend and I took a day off work and went to The Cliffs in LIC. After a few minutes of orientation to make sure we didn’t kill ourselves, we took to the rope walls. I don’t know if this was always the case, but these places now have automatic “belays,” or rope dispensors that you click into rather than having an employee be in charge of you. You can just strap in wherever you’d like and climb by yourself, unattended. Which is much better than the pressure of the lady yelling out at you “Yellow block! Left foot!” while your hands are sweating and she has your life in her hands.
We had so much fun. I think Bouldering was my favorite part. Bouldering, if you’re not familiar, is when you climb a smaller rock face with no rope or harness. It’s typically a 15-20 foot wall rather than the 40-60 foot, roped-in wall. The sequences you climb are called “problems,” rather than the “routes” on a traditional rope climbing wall.
Rock climbing is such a good change up to the typical work out routine. It can get monotonous doing the same things every week – whether it’s yoga, weightlifting, or going on runs. Rock climbing forces you to use a ton of otherwise unused muscle groups. Not only that but it also works out your brain with complex problem solving in a stressful situation. Definitely going to be doing more of this in the next few months.
Book I’m Reading
The Power of Moments – Chip Heath & Dan Heath
My brother gifted me this book and I’m glad he did. I probably wouldn’t have picked it out myself. It’s essentially about how “moments” define our lives. We tend to remember the best or worst moment of an experience, as well as the last moment, and forget the rest. Think about your last vacation – what were the most memorable parts? Probably had some fun peak moments, maybe one memorable bad thing happened, and then you remember the last thing you did pretty vividly, right?
Most people, if you were to ask them what the best moments of their life were, occured from the ages of 15-30 (high school prom, graduating college, getting married, first child, etc). But in this book, the authors Chip & Dan Heath define how we can design our life to have more of these moments. What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember 20 years later? The Power of Moments shows us how to be the authors of the richer experiences in our lives
What I’m Researching
Running – Marathons and the “Minimum Effective Dose”
I recently got accepted into the 2019 TCS New York City Marathon. It’s always been on my bucket list to complete a marathon, but at the same time, I have absolutely no desire to do it. Not only am I afraid of injury (statistically, you’re almost guaranteed to get injured if you run consistently for a full year), but I also loathe running. Yes, I’ve done triathlons, but I never had to run more than 6 miles in the Olympic distance races. And I don’t train a ton in running – I usually just rely on my somewhat athletic past to carry me through the runs – which works in short distances…
26.2 miles, however, is a different beast. I have no idea how I want to tackle it, but I’d love to try to do it with the least amount of “jogging” possible. My knees are surgically repaired and achey as is, so I can’t imagine running 20 miles/week for several months would be very good on my joints.
I know I’ll have to at least practice with one or two 18-20 mile runs, and of course I’ll run multiple time a week, but my goal is to cross-train as much as possible. HIIT exercising, yoga, swimming, sauna, cycling, soccer, and basketball to keep my cardiovascular fitness in top shape. But what I’m really interested in is the “minimum effective dose” so I’ll be doing a ton of research a la Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Body and Mark Sisson’s Primal Endurance.
Crossing my fingers…
Song I Can’t Stop Listening To
Bohemian Rhapsody
Rami Malek’s Oscar for Best Actor was definitely well-deserved – his performance in Bohemian Rhapsody was remarkable. I’ve been listening to Queen since I was 6 years old but never knew anything about Freddie Mercury’s personal life, so this movie was an awesome insight into his life and music. I actually had no idea that Queen was a English band, so that was pretty embarrassing. The movie was really, really good. I also appreciated how many Queen songs they fit into the two hour movie – that can be tough to do. As expected, I’ve been listening to Queen on a loop for the past three days. Freddie Mercury’s voice may be the eighth wonder of the world.
Free chills below
Cool Things Across the Internet
- A Better Way to Tax the Rich: To be honest, I don’t know enough about my own political beliefs to start spewing shit about who or what to tax. But this video about taxing the super-rich makes a whole lot of sense to me
- What Really Extends Lifespan? According to this visual chart by David McCandless, you should be a married, happy-go-lucky, outdoors-loving, sex-mad, hippy party-girl in senior management with a cat. Yea, no thanks. I’ll take death at 60 over owning a cat.
- Home Run Dugout: Think Topgolf, but for baseball. Equipped with real batting cages, Home Run Dugout also features an augmented reality experience that allows users to see their projected swings in any MLB stadium all while having dinner and drinks – via @frntofficesport
Most important update this week :: new Black Keys song
-KB