Umair Yasin

If someone were to tell you that by taking a pill or a couple of lessons, you would become an accomplished concert violinist or a black-belt Aikido Sensei, would you believe him? -Luigi Fontana [1] This one resonated with me for a couple of reasons. For one, I studied Aikido for a few years back in my forties. After a few hundred hours of practice, I felt like I was an advanced beginner. The gap between where I was and mastery was still immense. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/jarena/20181130/2073021/ Then there is a story about the great violinist Itzhak Perlman. After a concert, a fan came up to him and said “that was wonderful, I’d give my life to be able to play like you”. He replied “Madam, I did”. Itzhak Perlman from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/2Pm7kd2 via IFTTT

Today was a longer easier day. I hadn’t been to Harvey Bear County Park in a while and thought it would be pretty with the hills green. I rode my bike there, then pushed it up to the top of the Willow Springs trail. View at the top of the Willow Springs Trail. The oaks are nice and green now too On the way back down. San Martin in the foreground, with Morgan Hill further off. I love how El Toro, which dominates the view where I live, looks like a molehill from here This was good practice uphill walking, the Willow springs trail gets pretty steep in spots. I’m not much of a mountain biker, so riding back down the trail was challenging for me, but fun. from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/3w9dX2Z via IFTTT

I mentioned Rich Roll’s Podcast in a recent post and promised to write about him. I found out about him through his book Finding Ultra . I love this kind of comeback story. Alcoholism destroyed Rich’s career as an elite swimmer at Stanford. After some hard years, he recovered from that and was a successful entertainment lawyer in LA, with a wonderful wife and family. His second wake-up call, after maintaining sobriety for years, was when he had trouble climbing the stairs of his house after yet another night bingeing on crappy food. He had visions of not being there to see his young daughter grow up. So now he cleaned up his diet, becoming whole-food plant based after some experimentation, and also started getting back into shape. He discovered triathlon, of which he was already talented at the swimming leg. Wanting a bigger challenge he skipped right past the Ironman distance to Ultraman, double the Ironman distance. This is a very serious challenge indeed, but after that his fri...

Today was another longer adventure day, so I rode (standup pedaling) North to Bernal road in San Jose. I then briskly walked up the Bernal hill (AKA the IBM hill because this road also leads up to IBM’s Almaden research center). I then road home, mostly seated. This was a great 3 1/2 hour workout. My training and cleaner diet have started to have an effect, I’m only a few pounds away from what I consider “fighting trim” (165 lbs. or 75 kg). Nice view from up high from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/31eRC5U via IFTTT