Viet’s Blog

Race Summary: The goal was sub 4 hours. The actual time was 5:26. Obviously not what I had in mind when I started. Here's what happened: Background:   I didn’t know if we were traveling in the fall, so once I knew for sure I’d be local in October, I signed up for PDX Marathon. Training had been put together with duct tape. I maintained about 40km/week of volume, peaking at 60km. My longest run was 16 miles. I had planned a 20 miler the week after the 16 miler but due to some smoke due to forest fires nearby, I figured it'd hurt my lungs more than help if I were to be outside for 3 hours in terrible air. Instead I did a 20 mile row session inside.  The following week I did 13 miler, tapering down to 10k for the last week, then finally some random 3-4k dog walk/runs and a 5k shakeout the Saturday before the race. Still, I felt like I could rely on the conditioning I had built for Eugene in April-- I hoped I could at least maintain it during the summer. I felt more conditioned fo...

  This past training block has been kept together with duct tape. From cross training for almost a month to heal a minor injury, to the medium-hard-effort-turned Death March that was Hood to Coast, to even the timing of the race itself — I didn’t know if we were going to be out of town that weekend! When it turned out that Oct 2 was available, I signed up the Marathon somewhat late in the game.  Nonetheless, the training has already been baked in and I’ll have to go into the race with my current fitness.  I feel that I was better conditioned for Eugene, but for Portland I’m going to go into this with a better strategy.  On the eve of the race, I’ve written a pre-mortem— things that could talk me on race day and what I’m going to do to prevent them.  let’s get into it: My expectations The first thing I’m doing is setting my expectations and goals. I’m gunning for a sub 4 hour marathon so that means I have to really control my pace right from the first mile. Doing...

    Its a wrap! Another Hood to Coast in the books. These things always tend to sneak up on me and every year, the race finds a way to make things interesting. For those unfamiliar, its basically a 200 mile relay race starting from Timberline Lodge at Mt Hood, all the way down to the beach in Seaside, Oregon. There are 12 runners divided into two vans and for next ~36 continuous hours, there is a team member on the road making their way down to the coast. When one van finishes 6 legs, they find a spot to rest/sleep then meet up with the other van 6 legs later, continuing the process until both vans are at the beach. In recent years I've been taking running much more seriously -- putting in the requisite amount of miles in order to improve, strength training, educating myself on the different modes of running that gives me the most bang for my buck, improvements wise. (I can get into those modalities in a separate post.) Conversely, I've also been putting Hood to Coast on the b...

 Its been a minute. Not here for a long time, just wanted to do an "all killer, no filler" update. After a stint with projects and friends, I'm going to go back to basics and use a generic blogger blog. Its got no frills. Its simple. I'm old now. I want to worry about random wordpress plugins and updates and etc. etc. etc.   without the high concept techie stuff it might be easier for me to sit down and write about stuff, or at least post content that's too long form for social media. We'll see what happens!    

The Truth about Hedge Fund Managers and Wall Street The financial services industry is built on two forces: greed and fear. On one hand, its not surprising to see people appear to make millions overnight with a series of smart trades.  There's always that one guy at work who brags about how he made a killing because he got into Tesla or Google or something early on and made 10x on his investment. The appeal is understandable-- it seems easy , and in hindsight, you should have known better. I'm so confused On the other hand, doing any kind of rudimentary research will get you lost in sea of crazy technical jargon and charts with squiggly lines. The price is going up, that's good right? The trend is your friend. Or wait, what about the whole "buy low, sell high" deal? So if the price is going down, that's also good? This is where the fear sets in. Instead of jumping in, you may go to one of the big investment banks where they can explain all of this to ...

Netflix is region locked in many parts of the world. Fortunately, there is a very simple way to get your media without too much trouble. Say hola to the world of VPNs.

Junk mail is horrible. People have visceral reactions whenever their email is solicited from stores like Best Buy per their their return policy. Despite being free, a lot of websites (e.g newsletters), require you that you register with your email or your Facebook account order to access their content. A lot of smartphone apps also require you to register your email address in order to start an account.