May

On 8th May I ran my second Marathon after 2 years. I went into it with simple goal of finishing under 3 hours, not very confidently to be honest, and I managed to do so by the margin of 10 seconds. It was hard, and long, but most importantly hard. First 30k went smoothly but every easy kilometer made me more afraid of what is to come in the last 12k where everything is decided. Last 11k were the hardest and last 6k I my quads were in cramps.

The best decision was slowing down in the initial kilometers when the pacer for 3:00:00 time ran at higher pace around 4:05 min/km. And it paid off over the course of the Marathon when many people started slowly fading out while I kept my steady pace. I am very happy with the result, although I probably won’t aim for anything faster anytime soon. (with Berlin marathon in September I am sure I will change my mind though).

Special thanks goes to Dominik who supported me during the Marathon and made this whole thing work.

Second week of May we had Hack Week with SumUp in Portugal. Initially, I was hesitant to come but now I am very glad I did. It was incredible. We had awesome team and worked on the SumUp for Developers project trying to bring our public API to better shape. I met a lot of people that I knew until this point by just their Slack handles and everyone, without exceptions, was friendly and fun to talk with.¹

Week of socializing was more than I did cumulatively over last 2 years. Little step outside the comfort zone but I learned a lot of intersting life stories of colleagues, something we wouldn’t usually talk about during our daily interactions. I build respect and admiration for many of the people I met and it left we contemplating: what do I want to do with my life?

If you are drinking Jägerbombs at your wedding you are too young to be getting married. …

On 21st and 22nd we raced the Run Labe Run race. 377.5 km relay along the Labe river in team of 9 people. Everyone had 4 segments of varying length from short easy segments at around 7km, to hilly long segments of 14km+. We placed 9th out of 83 teams which is incredbile and we had a lot of fun. I managed to run my 5k and 10k PB at 18:57 and 38:57. The race was tough, I ran most of the segments at >163 BPM and managed to get 2:30 hours of sleep during the weekend. On the positive note it was a great leg-check before the Val d’Aran which now seems harder than ever, but hopefully doable.

Reading

• What is a depressing truth you have made peace with?
• A Simple Explanation of How Money Moves Around the Banking System
• The Rich Are Not Who We Think They Are. And Happiness Is Not What We Think It Is, Either.
• Not My Job. I will need to set a reminder to read this every once and then as I feel like our team is taking on a lot of work that could be delegated or rised higher.
• Grandpa’s Basement House
• Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

Loneliness. We don’t have meaningful social connections anymore like our parents or their parents geeration had. We are so scattered, that I am unsure how many of my friends are actually friends and how many are just professional contacts. Everytime I switch job, almost 70% of my friends suddenly fall out of contact. Heck, I don’t even know the people who live in next apartments both left, right, up and down on the same building. Socializing with my friends mean, setting up an appointment weeks ahead to see if we can align on a free-slot and this often involves all of us commuting to somewhere and disbanding by 22:00 hours because family, work next morning, chores to do, doctor appointment and other human things.

• Food Security and the Coming Storm

Watching

• Ironman World Championship St. George was fun and motivated me before the marathon I had next day.
• Don’t chase happiness. Become antifragile | Tal Ben-Shahar | Big Think
• Love, Death & Robots. After not-so-good 2nd season Love, Death & Robots earned my respect again. The third season is dark, fabulous, and original. My favorites were Bad Travelling, The Very Pulse of the Machine, Mason’s Rats, and Jibaro. Although, Zima Blue is still the overall winner.

This week I learned

• Bosnian War, which was quite heavy read. I am not sure whether we skipped this topic during our history lessons in highschool or I just wasn’t paying attention.
• jet-setter - a rich, fashionable person who travels a lot
• Apple’s hidden flight tracker app

Listening

Can’t belive I am admitting it but I am now listening to techno DJ set by a colleague of mine on repeat: dunkeltudeln with hrmny @ VidaMar in Portugal.

Other than that I enjoyed following songs this month:

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