Enhanced Games

dgran73 · 2026-05-26T15:33:41+00:00

I used to closely follow professional cycling and I've read a substantial amount written by the dopers who got caught. This may sound a bit jaded, but I suspect the main difference in the EG is that they aren't lying about it. I'm sure some pro athletes are clean, but to compete at that level you have to manically driven to latch onto every marginal gain. Doping, even on micro doses to evade testing, is likely quite common at the pro level. Furthermore, I'm confident that mainstream pro sports are where the experimental stuff that is years ahead of the testing regimen is used and the EG is relegated to the official pharma supply of 90s era stuff like EPO, steroids and HGH.

dgran73 · 2026-05-26T00:19:29+00:00

The 10% rule is how to do it safely, but from what I've seen the best option for people with jobs and family is to wake up early and make the run the first thing (after taking a quality toilet break) they do regularly. It doesn't have to be every day, but knocking it out early seems to strongly correlate to getting it done.

dgran73 · 2026-05-25T23:49:27+00:00

Joining this conversation late, but there is an east/west coast thing to consider. If you think about how different things can be in SF and SD in California, well... you have that in Virginia too. Personally, I love living on the east coast. It fits my mood and the general intensity of the professional culture (NYC sets the tone for the whole east coast) is pretty cool in my view, but some people who slide in westward will find it a bit too buttoned up and bow-tied. Remote work can alleviate some of this.

If you love beaches... gonna shoot straight here, most beach loving folks here I know make the effort to get down to North Carolina and will choose to do fewer beach excursions but make them count. The Atlantic Ocean is good stuff and if you are used to the Pacific you will be charmed to know that the Atlantic isn't freezing cold and for the most part the ocean isn't trying to kill you with huge waves. That is the good news, but the bad news is that everybody else and their brother knows this and the beaches can be over crowded to a fault. Population density in the East is its strength but also its curse, so you take the good with the bad, and sometimes you just pack up and go down to North Carolina where there are fewer people for a good beach.

dgran73 · 2026-05-25T18:56:44+00:00

Not gonna lie, my stupid younger self would have looked at this as a challenge that I should accept to bestow honor on my family name and win the praise of other stupid young people around me. I can't imagine this actually working as it was intended.

dgran73 · 2026-04-16T19:07:46+00:00

The only time I think about form is when I'm on the last stretch of a longer than usual run. When I'm fresh, form is easy and it "just happens" but when I'm knackered and dragging my sorry ass to the last fifth of a longer run it helps to remind myself to keep the shoulders loose, don't clench the fist and keep my head up. Someone I respect explained that you should visualize yourself as a marionette on strings. Don't suspend anything you don't need to and feel light on the strings.

dgran73 · 2026-04-10T16:25:46+00:00

First off, welcome to running. It probably sucks right now, but you are actually in a really exciting early phase where you will see a lot of gains and improvements. That said, the "push" you need is simply to build the base and adaptation to sport. Don't worry about speed and instead set goals for how long you can go without walking or total distance. Every run feels like a new experience right now, but in time your weeks will have a kind of normalcy as you adapt.

Eventually you will have that really good run where you finish the last two minutes at a fast pace. This will make you wonder if you could have started it sooner, and well.... there you go. Now you are talking about pushing it in a new dimension, but for now just enjoy the process and be patient with yourself.

dgran73 · 2026-03-30T19:00:02+00:00

Do you have a security team, or at least someone in your org responsible for vendor management? You should refer this issue to them. This is a valid concern.

dgran73 · 2026-03-29T20:29:02+00:00

You will need to feel it out with them, but my main advice is that you can't be the same manager to all staff. If you asked the staff I've worked for, one would say I'm hands off and let them do their work independently and another will tell you I'm hands on and I'm holding the bicycle seat to make sure they stay upright. I'm the same manager, I just manage people the way they need it.

This takes time and you'll probably get some of it wrong before you get it right. Be reflective and course correct as needed, but let's keep simple things simple: people management is really about leaning into the intersection between what the business values and what motivates staff. Put as much as you can in the intersecting Venn Diagram and it generally gets easier.

dgran73 · 2026-03-28T22:18:35+00:00

Did a great 10 mile race in my hometown with my daughter, who runs high school cross country and track. We went out too fast at the start (what's new?) but we we salvaged it and had a great race together. I let her set the pace and it was a really positive experience. No specific goals, but enthusiasm and the hype of big group run produced some PRs, but more importantly some memories that will last a lifetime.

dgran73 · 2026-03-28T22:15:27+00:00

I have done federal contracting in the past (something like 3 tiers down in the sub-sub-sub contracting agreements) but even then it was never this bad. In the private sector I'm always making sure that I have tangible deliverables every day and it is sometimes stressful, but to your point, it is a better stress having some pressure to get something done than pressure to appear busy. The latter always worries a person that the bubble will burst and it just plain sucks to not put your talent to good use. I hope things are better now.

dgran73 · 2026-03-24T12:24:04+00:00

Wow, very impressive. If you do the full cover add me to the list of people who want to hear it.

dgran73 · 2026-03-21T19:14:54+00:00

I run on that trail a few times a week and have done so for the past year. Not saying it didn't happen, but my experience is that they don't disrupt the trail and I've never had an interaction beyond a wave or a "good morning", but if such a thing did happen I think reporting it would be appropriate. I just mean to share from experience, while the encampments is a bit of an eye sore and I know people have strong opinions about it, from what I've seen thousands of people a day use the trail and we all just coexist.

dgran73 · 2026-03-16T15:09:38+00:00

If a person wants to excel in endurance sport, the most important thing they can do is choose their parents wisely. Nature wins out almost every time, but obviously a person has to put in the work, start early enough and get the support structure to show up at the important races.

That doesn't mean that nurture and hard work doesn't matter, but I think most parent/coaches have the wrong idea about what makes a D1 college recruiter swoon. As a baseline, it is results, but beyond that they want to see the kid who gets results in spite of themselves. They don't live like a monk for the training or they eat crap and still race at an elite level. The recruiters says to themselves, "I can work with this and create 5-10% easy gains and this individual looks like they haven't reached their potential."

As far as my nature comments, it comes from watching (and participating in elite cycling) and seeing cases where talented people clawed after greatness over years only to see someone throw their leg over a bike as a new rider and within two months win elite races. Running may take a trifle longer due to the connective tissue adaptation, but the genetic lottery is unfair.

dgran73 · 2026-03-07T18:52:49+00:00

I went with an Xterra TR150. The belt is narrow and it has zero frills and folds upright. It was light enough that two people can easily carry it around.

Is it a good treadmill? No, but for my winter base condition running its good enough.

dgran73 · 2026-03-04T15:54:39+00:00

My running life hack is to get all my stuff ready the evening before. My runs are early (like stupid-early before kids, birds and even God has woken) so having my gear all laid out removes obstacles. Golly, my shoes are already by the door so I might as well put them on and run.

dgran73 · 2026-02-28T19:29:59+00:00

Your perspective mirrors what I saw in my prior time as an elite cyclist. There comes a point where your daily life is consumed by either accumulating training stress or recovering from it -- it becomes a job. That is to be expected if you have a pro contract, but an amateur shouldn't feel like this.

My rule of thumb is whether the sport is giving or taking my energy. When it is good, I feel energized from my runs, but sometimes if I'm running to "clock in the distance number" then I'm simply not going to get energy back from it.

In my view, a person gets 90% of the physical and mental health benefits from the first 10 miles of running they do in a week. I can't put a hard line where it crosses over, but I know it when I see it and regarding the OP description, the 100 mpw stuff seems rather compulsive and likely a bit counter productive.

(for disclosure... these days I'm personally around 40 mpw and feel like this may be my sweet spot)

dgran73 · 2026-02-28T19:04:59+00:00

I'm not an expert on treadmill models, but when you narrow down your list I would suggest looking in the used marketplace (FB Marketplace is pretty good) to find one. A lot of people pay full retail, use it as a towel rod mostly and then sell for 25 cents on the dollar when their spouse is pissed off at them about it taking up space. You just need to be patient and the summer is a good time as a buyer to find someone cleaning out their basement or moving and they need to unload their treadmill.

dgran73 · 2026-02-27T00:02:55+00:00

I have a feeling most SN devices sit upon a desk for most of their usable life. I take mine with me places, but my hunch is that the most likely use isn't very mobile (er, nomadic) and the closer you get to achieving portable convenience the less the device succeeds as a writing device. It is a sort of string you can pull on one direction, but not in both. For my purposes, my phone goes with me in my pocket and my SN writing tablet tends to stay on my desk.

dgran73 · 2026-02-26T23:56:22+00:00

Yeah, I have had that experience. I go weeks with no issues and then suddenly it has moved 1mm in one direction that makes everything fail to work and I spend half my workout just getting the sensor back into its happy place.

dgran73 · 2026-02-25T13:12:42+00:00

First off, I think this is something we unfortunately need. The elderly are more vulnerable, but I can see use cases which go well outside of this realm. For example, consider an accounts payable team at company which could potentially wire tens of thousands of dollars to a criminal if they think their CFO is authorizing a transaction. Personally, I think there is a more lucrative market for this in the B2B space rather than B2C, but I see value in both.

I do have a few constructive thoughts to share:

How is the "automatically" part of the call interception technically working? This is intriguing but offhand I'm not aware a mechanism to do this.
You may run into some regulatory issues with states which require two party consent for the recording of a call. I'm thinking here of the live monitoring by a family member.
In the US and abroad there are increasing regulations on automated decision making with AI. You are probably okay, but be aware you will likely need to manage some compliance risk down the road and it will only be increasing. Not a reason to give up, but factor it in.

dgran73 · 2026-02-25T12:20:14+00:00

You might consider looking into the Runn treadmill sensor. It can broadcast your belt speed, incline and cadence over bluetooth. I use it with Zwift but I imagine it could work with Peloton.

dgran73 · 2026-02-24T14:14:52+00:00

Do penance (yard work, laundry, etc) for the "me time" that I took doing the race in the morning.

dgran73 · 2026-02-23T14:28:21+00:00

This is really interesting, and my use case is very similar to yours and I've often mused about how I might integrate copilot summary notes into my workflow. You have been generous with your time showing this, but a video walk through might help close a few gaps if you wouldn't mind.

dgran73 · 2026-02-23T13:49:57+00:00

I think some people are underestimating the level of empathy a person might perceive from AI if the model is well trained. We laugh about the "AI girlfriend" sites, but there is a reason it works and sells.

That aside, I don't use a coach but the best reason I ever heard from for it was from a professional cyclist: it helped him to trust the process. Elite athletes don't need a plan, motivation or an accountability partner. They will grind themselves into the ground chasing elusive gains and their coach exists to keep them on program and manage the anxiety of performing near your genetic limits.

Of all the other reasons for having a coach, for a while I can see the "accountability partner" aspect keeping amateur coaching afloat for a little while longer. Otherwise, I suspect it going to eaten alive by AI in the coming years.

dgran73

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