The Yips

Last Wednesday's lifting session was rough. I balked on the top weight in my deadlifts: a weight I'd easily lifted for 3 sets of 3 reps the week before wouldn't budge more than an inch from the floor. I tried to calm down and

Bursting Barkley and Bro-science Bubbles

Last Friday, Jasmin Paris became the first woman to finish the 2024 Barkley Marathons – it's an incredible achievement for anyone to finish the race which is designed to be unfair, if not impossible. The course, in Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee, varies from year to year, but

Verified: A Conversation about Science, Trust, and Pandemics with Mike Caulfield

Welcome to Episode 4 of the Second Breakfast podcast. At the outset I should apologize for the delay in getting this edited and out the door. Indeed, our guest today Mike Caulfield and I recorded this back in January. Mike has worked for the past few years at the University

Half Marathons, Hydration Stations, and Strava for Dogs

I spent much of last Sunday in Times Square, leading a group of 100 volunteers handing out water and Gatorade to the 27,000 runners in the NYC Half Marathon. We were stationed just beyond Mile 11, about ten blocks from Central Park – close to the finish, but – if you&

Un-Monitored: Some Final Thoughts about Heart Rates and Fitness Technology

I had a nice little editorial calendar pulled together, with a plan for what to write and when to publish, that would take me all the way through the end of April. But then I went and decided to lean fully into my Luddite tendencies, ditching my Garmin and upending

I Told You So

In 2012, in a Wired article on "The Stanford Education Experiment [that] Could Change Higher Education Forever," Sebastian Thrun – then still a Stanford professor and a Google engineer – pronounced that, in fifty years time, there would only be ten universities left in the world and that his online

What's For Breakfast?

I had something else planned for today – I have two podcast episodes recorded but unedited. So the key word in that first sentence is “planned,” and as things are still… not... great for me mentally right now, I did not manage to weave any straw into gold for you today.

F1, BowFlex, and Other Fitness Technology Failures

Happy Friday! What’s good? I’m back to running, although at a lower volume than usual, trying to slowly work my way back up to my normal mileage (without going back to wearing a watch, thank you very much). As it stands, I’m experiencing more cardiovascular struggle than

Un-watching, Un-tracking: Healing and Bad Data

On Saturday, I ran. On Sunday, I raced. (It wasn’t, as climbers would say, a “full send." “I ran in a race” is perhaps a more accurate phrasing.) It felt like a huge accomplishment to get out there, to be out there again. I was overjoyed to be

Competitive Cheer

Happy Friday! What's good? I am doing a bit better than last week, thanks for asking, although I haven't written anything and, more shockingly perhaps, haven't run all week. This is the first time since I started running (in 2022) that I have missed

Compassion, Compression, and Resisting Rest

Happy Friday. What's good? Not me. I am not good. Indeed, I almost wrote to you this morning to tell you there'd be no newsletter today or Monday. I'm having a very hard time with everything right now – that collision a few weeks ago

Heart Rate Variability and the Placebo/Nocebo Effect

Welcome to part 3 of my look at heart rate monitors — the history, the practices, the science, and the marketing of this aspect of fitness tracking. I decided to see a physical therapist last week as, a week after my "fall," I was still in pain. I wanted