But, if you can, get some extra sleep two nights prior. Rest is an edge, and once you’ve put in the work preparing to compete, you’d be foolish to give up such an easy advantage.

On Sunday, after two nights’ sleep, I’ll jump into San Francisco Bay to race in the 2009 edition of the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon. My training this year has been better documented than in the past, but I’ve made different choices, too, so not sure about comparables.

In 2005, my only previous Alcatraz race, I finished 181st among the amateurs, with a time of 2:52:45. The links in that old post are dead, sadly, but I have a printout of the 2005 results. 49:52 for the swim, 6:51 for the first transition (which includes a run of a half-mile or so), 56:29 for the 18 mile bike ride, 1:41 for the second transition, and 57:56 for the 8 mile run, including the sand steps/ladder in 2:17.

Thinking ahead to Sunday, I don’t expect much better for the swim, which put me in 655th place then. Again this year, I did enough in the pool to know I can finish it…but not much more. Realistically, I’ll come out of the water with plenty of people to chase.

I’ve been racing on the bike this year, which is new to me. Consider my 2005 words:

I wonder what’s it like to just race on the bike… it was fun to pour on the pedals with the streets closed to cars.

That’s what led to my starting bike racing last year, actually.

I commute on my road bike over much of the bike course quite regularly, so I have no excuses not to have a great ride, and I expect to. Still, not sure how much more time I can gain over my 2005 split, which was 63rd among amateurs that year.

I’ve been running a bit less, with fewer dedicated hill repeats this year. Several of my tempo runs have been excellent, though, so I’m hoping to gain a little time there, too. Not sure I can better my 115th place run from four years ago, but the pace is doable.

I was conservative in my 2005 predictions. I don’t think I’m being too aggressive now in saying I believe I can do better than last time, but Sunday will tell the story.

Klein is a science journalist who’s found success in taking on big topics with catchy titles. I haven’t read The Science of Happiness or All by Chance, but The Secret Pulse of Time read like a Malcolm Gladwell book, with a few differences.

Klein covers his topic more broadly and often deeper than Gladwell’s investigations. That’s not always positive — Klein’s book lacks Gladwell’s sense of narrative and purpose. Where Gladwell’s books at times feel like the extended, but focused, magazine articles they often are, Klein forces a bundle of research on his reader. Fortunately, I embraced this topic, so the tidbits and esoterica rewarded my perseverance. I looked forward to this book (a Christmas gift), but I didn’t fly through it. It’s a reference book, not a story. It may reward skimming in the future.

Below are some tidbits I marked along the way.

Increasing the volume of a uniformly ticking sound makes the listeners think the beat is accelerating, too. Klein calls this the Bolero affect. (p. 39)

Goethe complained about the undue focus on speed, and the increasing pace of communication…in 1825. (pp. 151-152)

“When Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction classic 2001 – A Space Odyssey was released in 1968, the movie’s boldly rapid cuts pushed the viewing habits of moviegoers to their limits. Today, we tend to lose patience with those same shots of spaceships gliding slowly through the universe to classical music, which move far too slowly for our current pace.” (pp. 152-153)

“Multitasking is a trap.” (p. 183)

“A lack of control distresses people far more than having a great deal demanded of them, as countless studies have shown. … ” (p. 204)

“Having small children in the house means living with endearing egocentrics who are not willing to delay their needs for a single moment, thus fragmenting their parents’ routine to an extreme. This also explains why many mothers and fathers feel rushed, although they theoretically have plenty of time to get things done.” (p. 205)

“Feeling rushed is decidedly unpleasant. You are obliged to do something, such as to take care of the children, but you don’t feel like doing it. This lack of motivation constitutes the third member of a trio of debilitating time wasters, along with the inability to concentrate and the feeling of being overwhelmed by stress.” (p. 219)

“Our everyday language is revealing: In describing time, we use words from the world of finance. We have and save and invest and waste it.” (p. 264)

I’m glad to say that my birthday mile has not. Yet.

5:22 for the 4 loops (1:20 / 1:22 / 1:21 / 1:18) around Kezar is a second faster than 2008 and 2007.

I know it’s only a holding pattern in a “race” I’m going to lose, but still feels good.

Past birthday blog posts: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, and 2003.

It’s nice to think that you can be your own person, true and accountable to no one but yourself, but I don’t think life works that way. We are what other people allow us to be.

Read the rest. Not sure I agree entirely, but there’s something I treasure in the collaboration of building a life. Selfish as I’d like to be (or am), seeing my actions reflected in the eyes of people I care about helps keep me on track.

What a great team and a great product. I first met Dick via Spyonit at a conference at the W Hotel in San Francisco back in 1999 (?). When the “fantastic four” (Dick, Steve, Eric, and Matt) re-emerged from their post-Spyonit-acquisition-induced-purgatory with FeedBurner, I was interested. I’m ashamed all we worked out for CNET was the Mobile Feed Reader (now gone), but so it goes. First blog post for FeedBurner: February 23, 2004. I’m not sure when the FB team would start the clock, but that’s 1194 days from first blog post to acquisition announcement (or 3 years, 3 months, 9 days).

Google looks pretty smart here, whatever the price. Congrats to all of FeedBurner.

Each chapter follows a theme. My favorite was Chapter 5, Securing, considering insurance. That may not scream exciting. But weighing the odds isn’t simply a requirement for gamblers. It’s a necessity for commerce on any scale beyond the village. Sharing and distributing risk, even catastrophe, doesn’t depend on good will, but math. Like the other themes, the story of insurance through history reminds us that there are no certainties, just better calculations of probabilities.

I’m mildly curious whether Michael and Ellen are brother and sister or something else, since they are not husband and wife.

First, I use nine cups of water instead of ten. The resulting brew is a tad bit sharper, which I like, and I don’t lose any trying to squeeze the end product into a too-small pitcher.

Second, I found the right pot for the process: an asparagus cooking pot. Tall and thin, with a strainer built to fit. Boil the water in the pot, then put the chopped ginger in the strainer, and slide the strainer right in. After the steeping, pull the strainer out. Easy clean-up, and easy pouring from the asparagus pot into the pitcher. Two separate problems solved at once, so now I’m likely to make this delicious concoction more often.

Aren’t you glad you know now?

I started the day in darkness with a mile run on the Kezar track, as I’ve done occasionally in past years. 5:23 left me convinced that I haven’t slowed down too much, although I can’t find records of past years (which is why I’m blogging this). Staying under six minutes is the general point.

clock hits a milestone today, too. I started this blog four years ago. Three years ago, I was still blogging heavily. Two years ago, the posts were slowing down. One year ago, little had changed. This year has been pretty light, but this is still post number 1224.

The next month at work is going to be hectic, but fun because we will be sharing cool stuff that’s been under development for a while. Eight months in, and we hit 100 billion DNS requests today. Lots more to come!