Schrödinger’s competition

July 22nd, 2010 @ 1:17 pm

For the body fat bet, up until the actual weigh in, one could feel like one had both won and lost.  I felt that actually.  Makes one pretty anxious and bi-polar.  It wasn’t until the actual measurements were done and shared did one truly know whether one had won or lost.

When talking to Ben about this biking bet, I was thinking at the start, that about 200 miles would win.  Maybe 250.  I was thinking 10+ miles a day.  I shared that with him.  With the notion that if Shawn knew that was my number, then the number might change.  We eventually included Ben running with a 3x multiplier for his miles into the bet.  He felt that 66 was a good number for him to run in 20 days and that would make him competitive.

Except that those estimates were for the case where we didn’t share numbers.

Now that we share numbers, the competition is way out of whack.  He’s close to 60 miles and we’re just halfway through and he’s barely in the lead.  The daily (almost minute-by-minute for some) reveal of stats has driven the competition into overdrive.

It’s out of control, waiting for someone to tap out.  The jockeying over IM, trying to size up if someone’s going to run/bike tonight…and if so how far…and if they share the number, will they actually keep their word about that or not.  If not, was it a bluff or was it sandbagging?

It’s no longer a physical feat wager…or maybe it never was.

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The internet motivates.

July 13th, 2010 @ 11:12 pm

There’s no way Shawn and I could have said “Hey, wanna go ride bikes for a couple hours every night after the kids go to sleep?” and have the other guy say “Sure!”

But make it a bet of who can ride more during the rest of the month and throw in some sudo-realtime tracking of each other on the internet, and all of a sudden we’re riding bikes for a couple of hours a night.  Separately. Sizing each other up via cyber-sleuthing.

He told me today he could track me and was upset last night when he saw me turn away from my house instead of going towards it.

Tonight, after I put in 15 miles, I saw he was 8 miles into his, and still riding away from home.  I pictured him being pretty satisfied with himself thinking about how shocked I would be when I woke up and saw his 20 miles logged.

So then I got back on my bike to do another 5 miles, cause I preferred the picture of me laughing at the picture of him frustrated that he just rode his butt off for 20 miles and didn’t make up any of the gap between us.

It’s like Rocky vs the Russian – “He’s a machine!”

You know who’s Rocky and who’s the Robinson, right?

I SMS’d him right before I went out for my 2nd ride.  He replied.  Said it was scary and he ran over something that didn’t sound good.  He’s crazy – riding out in some trail on the creek or something. Scariest thing I saw in my Tour de Birdland and Cupertino was the dude by the high school following “Haley” who was a young blonde with aftermarket parts.

Anyway, I’d share the links to follow us realtime each night, except then I think someone might use that info to hit on our wives. Actually it looks like Shawn is heading by my house right now – I might as well go meet him on the bike now…and log a few more miles while I’m at it.

12:30am update: Found him.  Bought him an In-n-Out burger while we laughed at ourselves.  Still, we were each trying to figure out how soon the other will be riding again.

I rode 30.11 tonight.  He rode 25.88 last night…with another 4.5 yesterday morning.  Pretty even.

Next day update: Turns out this story as a lot of opportunities to practice math with Sal.  He likes that after my 15 miles, with Uncle Shawn was 8 miles away from home, meaning he had to do 8 miles to get back home, which would lead to 16 miles total, that I had to go out riding again.  He understood that I couldn’t goto sleep with 1 less mile.   So I went to 20.  Then Shawn went to 22 (he finally started heading home at 11 miles or so).  The leapfrogging of totals had him cracking up – and he also sees that we’re in an endless loop till someone wants to give up and lose.  He’s also got a guess as to whom that might be.

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Just 3 hours in…

July 12th, 2010 @ 11:22 pm

…and the kids are saying this is the best class ever.

After lunch, they’re talking trash about the “history of film making class” versus our class.  ”They’re learning films and we’re making robots!”. In my head, they’re more sophisticated and I hear them saying “They’re learning history and we’re making history!”

Still, it makes me wonder, how just a few comments here and there by me is enough to make it their favorite class.  I know, it’s all the kit.  So spend $300 on a kit or spend $2k to send them off for a week.  It’s the kit and someone willing to play with it with them.  Me.  The other kids in the class. A lot of little things coming together nicely to encourage their creativity and thought processes.  This stuff just continues to remind me how it doesn’t take much to maintain the thirst for knowledge.   A little support goes a very long way.

Not sure why I need to be reminded of this though…

By the way, Sal’s having a fantastic time at camp.  Relatively.  I picked him up for the first time today (his mother usually does it) and I can hear a kid yelling as I come around the corner.  When I can make out what he’s saying, I hear “I hate this camp!  Okay, yeah. I don’t hate this camp. I hate the people at this camp!”  I was glad to see it wasn’t Sal making the scene.  He says he doesn’t really like camp, but that’s more to avoid having to leave the house in the morning.  By the time we get to camp, he’s happy to run off on his own.

I find Sal and we go to check out.  An awkward dad cuts in line to check out.  I’m in no rush, so sure, let him do it.  Maybe he’s got something more important to do or maybe he’s got a quick question, cause he doesn’t have a kid with him.  Turns out, he’s the dad of the kid that was yelling and his kid is in the car ready to go.  But, they need to sign out the wrist bands so he’s gotta go get his kid.  This his kid comes in yelling again, about how he hates the place and such.  When he’s done, the counselor says that he’s got a note in his file for today.  Apparently, he was spitting on other kids at camp.

“I was not. You are lying.  That’s why I hate this place.  Everyone lies!  Erase that from my file!”

At this point, I look at Sal who’s kind of shocked.  I know the dude doesn’t like yelling. I pick him up and ask him what’s the story with that kid.  ”He’s been unhappy all day.”  Sal tells me.  Then we talk about how we need to bring his bike helmet tomorrow so he can drive the bathtub racers.  Sal didn’t even seem phased.  I’d like to see Sal do the bathtub racers, but I don’t think it fits in with my class schedule.  Though I will have time to have lunch with him I think.

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The kid’s got some insight.

July 11th, 2010 @ 3:22 pm

We’re riding bikes home from breakfast this morning.  Taking a slightly longer route, since my distance means something now.  Mom isn’t having as much fun as Sal, mostly because her bike isn’t attached to mine, like his is.

Dad, to mom: “Do you like running better than biking?”

Mom doesn’t really reply.

Salvador: “Mom, do you even run?”

Mom: “I do.”

Salvador: “I mean, not when you were a little kid.”

I knew then we needed to pick up the pace to stay out of her reach…

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If there’s one thing to learn from Lindsay Lohan…

July 10th, 2010 @ 9:02 pm

…or any of these other struggling stars, is that lifestyle changes don’t last a lifetime.  They sound like they might, life-style and life-time, but they don’t necessarily last a lifetime.

So, given that the goal of the last body fat percentage weight bet was to make a lifestyle change, we shouldn’t have been shocked to find that 3 months after the bet, the body fat percentage has been creeping the wrong way.  That is, if we were any smarter than Lindsay.

I’ve wanted a lifetime body fat percentage bet.  But have struggled to find people that want in.  It’d basically be split up into teams (reshuffled every so often) and each year, the teams would get body fat weighed and for every individual, you’d get their delta from “athletic” for their gender and age range.  And the team that scores the most below “athletic” for the year wins something. Teams are to allow competition with support groups. Lots of stuff TBD, but first participants need to be TBD.  Let me know if you want in.

Given that that isn’t happening, Shawn wanted a new bet today.  I thought 9 months would be good and we could bet on the next fitness challenge.  He was thinking something in the week timeframe.  Lots of different ideas were thrown around, lots of different concerns were thrown around.

Finally, we settled on a nice, low impact, good for my knee, can do after the kids are asleep challenge that can have a short time frame.

Most miles biked during the rest of July.

We both have mountain bikes.  We’ll be using RunKeeper on the iPhone.  We’ll share our maps with each other so that questionable “rides” can be pointed out. And all rides need to be in loops, by themselves or with an adjacent ride in the system (to avoid having Kari drive Shawn to Tahoe so he can ride down the mountain).

Of course, during this whole conversation, Catherine was constantly impressed with how many King’s Eggrolls I was able to roll through.  Impressed might be stating it too nicely.  But let’s call this new number, a nice, round Cris dozen.

So, nutrition isn’t part of this bet.  We’ll see how that effects things. The sharing of the numbers will be interesting. Each of us will know the other’s number daily…will that motivate or discourage?  We’ll find out.  There are a few reasons why I think Shawn will win and there are a few things going my way.  It’ll be close.  And I think, it’ll be repeatable.  I wouldn’t bet against a repeat bet in August. Or September.

Well, I guess it depends on Shawn’s mood.  I’d be up for it though.

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Sports YQL – MLB to start with.

July 6th, 2010 @ 10:52 pm

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