This was a good week. I finished up my 100 mile challenge. I wrapped it up by running 3.5 miles on Monday, 5.5 miles on Tuesday, and 7.5 miles on Thursday. That pushed the monthly total up to 100.25 miles for the month. For good measure, I added 5 more miles on Saturday to close out the month with 105.25 miles. I learned that I could probably run a marathon from this challenge. Don’t get me wrong, it would be tough, but I know that I could do it if I signed up for one, or even just did it on my own. The difficulty is in the time commitment. It takes a lot of time to run 100 miles in a month. The training for a marathon would push the amount of training up to the next level. A marathon is something I’d like to do someday, possibly sooner than later. All in all, the challenge was a huge success. I’ll have to follow it up with a 150-mile month sometime.

How I Ran 100 Miles

On top of running, I did quite a bit of reading. I finished up Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts. It’s an interesting book that discussions decision making through the lens of poker. Duke, an accomplished poker player, blends stories from the real world and science together to show that the best we can do is make calculated bets on outcomes. Even if our bets have a high likelihood of paying off, that doesn’t mean they’re winners. Luck and chance make anything possible. The book reminded me a lot of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Both books talk about the two systems of thought, system 1 and system 2, and how the default mode leads us to irrational behavior. Knowing this allows us to make better decisions.

Finished

Pluralsight Course(s): Less: Getting Started

Book(s): Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts

Currents

Pluralsight Course(s): React 16 - The Complete Guide, GitHub Fundamentals

Book(s): Design It!: From Programmer to Software Architect

On the Next…

A new month is starting up, that means it’s time for a new challenge. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do yet. I’m thinking it will have something to do with learning and programming. I want to spend an hour or so each day on a side project and also learn.

From a learning standpoint, there are two subjects competing for my attention: CSS and Machine Learning. For CSS, I’m wanting to spend some time with TailwindCSS. There was a thread on HackerNews this week that discussed Tailwind and it’s got me interested in using it. I want to see if this is the style of writing CSS that will finally be the thing that makes it intuitive for me. On the Machine Learning side, Fast AI just released a new course, Introduction to Machine Learning for Coders, teaching the latest and greatest techniques for using ML in the real world. ML is all the rage right now and this looks like something worth checking out.