February 2022

What’s on my mind this month:

• I’ve been plagued by hamstring and SI joint issues for quite some time. They never really stop me from training but they do make it harder at times. If you are plagued with lower back pain, it may in fact not be your spine but the sacroiliac (SI) joint. This video and this video will give you some tips if you’ve been trying to understand or correct lower back pain.

• You knew being overweight was bad for you. Did you know it’s bad for your children - even if you are a man? This blew my mind: if a boy is overweight in adolescence, his future children are more likely to be asthmatic. So don’t let your children be fat if you want healthy grandkids.

• I’ve skied at Palisades Tahoe (formerly known as Squaw Valley) a number of times and it’s been a place of many family memories. I did not know about the controversy over proposed development plans that would bring Las Vegas style entertainment to the valley. This documentary covers the topic, and this article discusses the (unrelated) name change. There is so much beauty and natural entertainment in that region, I can’t imagine putting in a water park. What a ridiculous idea.

• I’ve been trying to work more statistical thinking & reading into my work lately, this book list looks useful.

  • This paper covers Bland Altman analysis in particular. “In a contemporary clinical laboratory it is very common to have to assess the agreement between two quantitative methods of measurement….The B&A plot method only defines the intervals of agreements, it does not say whether those limits are acceptable or not. Acceptable limits must be defined a priori, based on clinical necessity, biological considerations or other goals.”

• If you rely on your Garmin for VO2max assessments, it’s within about 5% of what you’d measure in a lab according to this paper. This aligns with what I’ve seen in earlier data.

• Speaking of reading, this is on my coffee table at the moment. My day job is essentially managing a small professional services firm and so far this book is providing some good frameworks for thinking about how to grow it.

• When you were a baby you squatted a lot. You should still be able to do it. I try to do this at least several times a day.

• “Capillary blood samples collected from the finger tip consistently showed higher values in lactate concentration than those obtained, at the same time, from the ear lobe.”

Old La Honda, one of the classic climbs in the Bay area.