April
This month I ran Istria100 ultra-trail race in Croatia. I wasn’t feeling 100% the week before, mostly due to stomach issues where I didn’t feel well after consuming literally anything. Luckyli, everything got better day before the race and I felt strong coming to the start line.
The race went exceptionally well. At 30km my quads showed a little sign of cramps and tear that quickly went away. At Kullamannen half a year ago this is where they started to hurt and didn’t stop until the end of the race. The focus was first to reach the 45km aid station feeling well (did so), then to reach the 80th kilometer in a reasonable shape and time (this also worked out) after which the rest of the race was flat or downhill. I learned my lesson in previous races and spent more time on the aid stations, mostly stuffing myself with salty things - from crackers to soup. My dumb self a year ago didn’t want to believe that cheese and bacon are reasonable snacks to have during an ultra trail run but damn, do they help to calm down the stomach otherwise full of isotonic drinks and carbohydrate gels.
I finished race in 13:59:29 on 40th place out of 387 with the final stats showing 110km and 4200m of elevation gain. I am beyond satisfied, now back to training for Ironman Hamburg and Ultratrail Val d’Aran.
Lifeclub is a wonderful learning website for life skills, the skills they won’t teach you at school yet can improve your life tremendously - effective communication, emotional intelligence, resilience, self-knowledge, people management, money management, and more.
Reading
- The Gambler Who Beat Roulett - long form article about mathematicians that beat the rulet by exploiting imperfections of the spinning wheel and the ball.
- Grid World
- The age of average
- Carl Braun on Communicating Like a Grown-Up
- Bicycle by Bartosz Ciechanowski
- The Kids are Not Okay
- Be a thermostat, not a thermometer
This month I learned
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The need for cognition (NFC), in psychology, is a personality variable reflecting the extent to which individuals are inclined towards effortful cognitive activities.
Need for cognition has been variously defined as “a need to structure relevant situations in meaningful, integrated ways” and “a need to understand and make reasonable the experiential world”. Higher NFC is associated with increased appreciation of debate, idea evaluation, and problem solving. Those with a high need for cognition may be inclined towards high elaboration. Those with a lower need for cognition may display opposite tendencies, and may process information more heuristically, often through low elaboration.