Sunday, October 13, 2019

"Between stimulus and response there is a space where we choose our response." - Stephen Covey.

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Just so you know going in, this is a rant. Feel free to skip to the next section (if there is one).

Eliud Kipchoge, if the press is to be believed (ahem) ran a marathon in under 2 hours, setting a new world record. That is crazy, stupid fast. In my "prime" I could not run one mile in the pace he maintained for 26.2 miles to accomplish that feat. If you do the math that works out to about 4:40 minutes per mile.
Except he didn't set a new record for the marathon in my opinion. To my mind he almost cheated.
This was a total one-off. It wasn't a race, it was a staged event designed by sponsors, including the mega-corp Ineos, to get Kipchoge the record and their companies attention.
He had a series of pacing runners who ran with him at the required record-breaking pace, and an electric car driving in front of him doing the same thing. A laser pointer showed him the fastest route through every corner on the course - laid out just for this run because it was optimal for a record.
The marathon is not a distance, it is to most of us a race. If I go out and run 6.2 miles I can say I ran 10k. But when I say "I ran a 10k" most people will think I ran a race with other runners/competitors, not a staged event where I was the only real participant.
I'm not saying his accomplishment was anything less than mind-boggling. It just isn't what most people think when they read the headline saying Kipchoge ran a sub-two hour marathon.
Will a sub-2 hour marathon happen someday in a real event? Probably. Times have been dropping for years. But the guy who does it will go into the record books as the first to do it. (Kipchoge will not because the record book is maintained by the international agency that oversees marathons.) And that guy will have done it in less than ideal conditions, with other competitors jostling him at the starting line, adverse weather and course conditions, no cars to pace him.....
Eliud Kipchoge's sub-2 was more akin to reality TV than a marathon.

There. I have that off my chest.

I baked cinnamon rolls last night and tried something different. I used brown instead of white sugar and added Marion berries to the roll. I haven't decided. They're definitely sweet.
I made too much frosting. Now what??
A: more cinnamon rolls. I may try blueberries and go back to white sugar.
It's interesting to have reached the stage where I'll try experimenting as I bake. Seems like some kind of forward progress.

I got the tach working! I want to redo some of the connections (solder) so they're more secure than the temporary "does this fix it?" wiring setup I have now, but that's just finding the time to do it.

I also want to find more time to work on my Portuguese. I spent about 45 minutes this morning making a list of words I want to add to my vocab via flash cards - mostly nouns, adverbs, and adjectives.
"I feel ______."
Everyday objects: paper, pen, tableware items... I thought about the things I come in contact with on a typical day.
And things I do in a day. OK, not everything I do.

Turns out besteira is not a swear word in Portuguese. But they have a lot of politicians there which might have something to do with it.

Time to walk Buddy, feed critters, and have supper. Then maybe some Portuguese before bed. This is going to be a busy week.

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