Author Archives: specialk

Week 3 – 20m down, 3980 to go

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turbulence

When you read about swimming free style, there is a lot of discussion about smoothness and balance. When I swim free style the water looks anything but smooth.

My body is flopping around, my arms creating drag and interference at every possible moment.

And I keep reading this whole smooth and balance thing and all I can think is – damn. It’s like runners high. There is no such thing as smooth swimming. Until I see this dude and…

And I feel worse. It’s like watching someone who can dance, dance just after you think it’s impossible. It feels like Luke Skywalker being schooled by Yoda in Dagobah after he fails to use the force to free his star ship from the swamp.

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And I am thinking, this, this kind of beautiful swimming is so far out of my reach it might as well be from another species.

But once you see something is possible, there is this bit that flips, and you think – okay there is something there that I can strive for. So back to the pool, back to doing the work. And I start doing research on the perfect stroke, on the concept of weightless arms, of rotation and of using your chest as a buoy…

And then for about 20 meters, I am able to get all of this to work. My head is in the right position, my arms move in the right way, my hips rotate and it feels different. I mean, it actually feels like a different body is swimming through water, and then the turbulence takes over.

So it’s like riding a bike. It takes a while to get all of the pieces in place, and then you just have to build on it.

Obviously, I don’t have the physical strength and technique to swim 3980 meters perfectly, but I do have the strength to do 20m – not perfectly but at least with less turbulence. So we have a start. And that start, at this moment is all that matters…

 

Week 2 – Thank God for Rest Days.

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rest-day

A few days late, well into week 3, but I did want to capture one aspect of my second week.

ouch.

I mean, by Friday morning, I was exhausted. My legs were dragging, my body was dragging, I was feeling like a wreck. And I still had a “long run” to do (1h30min). I was in meetings where I was more like a zombie than a strategic thinker. In fact, for most of the day it was like being enveloped in some kind of intellectual fog.

My Facebook status was: Feeling like 40.

After I finished my run, all 1h30min, I felt a lot better. Surprisingly. My wife and I projected a miserable painful horrible soul crushing 1h30min. If Polly had come with me, we assumed, she would have had this look of: When are we running? Are we running yet? Is this running?

But it actually went well. When I woke up on Saturday, though, all I could think of was “Thank God, Thank God Almighty, It’s my rest day”. If it had been Sunday, I would have gone to Church to pray for thanks for my rest day…

Sunday was my “long” bike ride. You know I used to bike a lot. I did the death ride, I would go up Page Mill road two or three times a week. I mean I was a strong cyclists. I figured 1h45 minutes, can not possibly be a hard bad thing.

OMG. I mean OMG. OMG.

It was possibly the longest 1h45minutes of my life. First trying to keep a cadence of 90 is hard. It feels like sprinting, especially if your cadence is 70. Then just being on a bike for 1h45min is hard. My entire body felt like: WHAT ARE YOU DOING? ARE YOU SICK IN THE HEAD? STOP! STOP! DAMN, IT! STOP! STOP!

And then it was over, and I crawled out of the garage, and felt like a wreck.

Just in time for Monday’s swim…

 

Should I join Zynga?

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Someone asked the question of whether they should accept a job offer at Zynga, here’s my response.

Good question. I am biased. Very biased. I work at Zynga. Have worked at the place for 3+ years.

The first thing to realize is that the press is the press. When they love you, you can do nothing wrong, and when they hate you, you can do nothing right. Things are never as good or as bad as the press would like you to believe.

The press isn’t a good way to pick your next job.

What you should instead focus on is; what is the macro opportunity, who am I going to be working with, and what problems will I be working on?

In terms of your job after Zynga, what people will evaluate is not how successful your last company was (there are far more failures than successes in the world), but rather what did you do while you were there. I have hired a great many great people from companies that no longer exist.

I won’t speak to the macro business opportunity.

Let me just state something that is not obvious to many people. We ship 100+ releases a day, sometimes 1000 in a week. Each of these releases is a carefully designed shot on goal. Not everyone scores, but enough do. We ship many many games. And each game is an opportunity to revisit every element of our stack all over again. As a technologist, that should be exciting.

What I can speak to is the technology challenges we have. Our challenge isn’t where we invest our precious technology resources, but where we don’t. We have to innovate on all layers. From the core data center, to the infrastructure management, to database technologies, to API layers, to using client technology in new and novel ways, to core 3D. We have to innovate on mechanics (how people play games) and on channels (how we reach players).

We are, especially around games, a content company. As such we have to continue to navigate disruptive platform changes to continue to deliver the content our players want.

We have to continue to surf technology disruptions that break our plans. On the back-end when we started we built the world’s largest No-SQL database out of memcache, PHP and mysql. Then we helped build early versions of couchbase and now we are investing in our own versions of couchbase and we’re looking at scale SQL engines like memsql. On the front end we started with PHP and web games, became big users of flash for games and on mobile are looking at a wide variety of technology platforms. Each of these changes creates challenges and opportunities and I believe that although there exist great answers today, there are better ones out there.

One of the things I am most intensely proud of is that Farm 2 is possibly the biggest 3D game of all time. Having been associated with 3D graphics either directly or indirectly, the idea that eight million people everyday that are not hard core gamers would interact with a 3D interface is mind-blowing. It might be the most main-stream 3D app out-there…

So…

I know that if you want to work on back-end, scalable systems, at Zynga the future is bigger than the past. If you want to work on the bleeding edge of building games that are social and accessible this is also a great place to work.

So we have good hard problems to work on, and you will get a chance to work on them. But what about the near term future?

Nothing in life is guaranteed. I joined SGI in 1996, which was the last profitable quarter they had. I joined NetApp in 1999, and in 2000 we almost went out of business. Who would have guessed in 1999 when they were growing 100% year over year.

First of all we’re living in this disruptive world. In 2009 when folks had bugs on Safari we ignored them because nobody had a Mac. In 2013 we have OS-x+windows+tablet+mobile+ios+android+win8? Different platforms with different interaction patterns. That disruption creates opportunities and challenges.

When you look at other opportunities out there, ask yourself how many of them have an opportunity to become an internet treasure? Zynga is certainly on any short list. We have a large audience, we have games that people love to play and we have a great team.

If you living in a disruptive world you want to bet on the right team. Zynga, in my opinion, has a great team.

Hope this helped.

A coach and my first week of training

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I have a complicated life. I have a small child, a complex job, a great wife, and I love to watch hockey.

LOSTAnd as I was staring at the various do-it-yourself Ironman training programs I felt, well, overwhelmed. Half of them assumed I had already finished a half-Ironman, the other half that I was in super-duper shape and just need tweaking. The idea that a forty year old dude who just finished his first marathon would want to do something this insane did not fit into the assumed paradigm.

My wife recommended I get a coach. Now look the last time a coach and I interacted, I was 15 … And the results were not pretty. Being the fat slow geeky out-of-shape poorly coordinated kid trying to play team sports is not fun. My coach was charming in his willingness to tolerate my presence but it would have been better if I just played chess like the other dweebs… What became clear to me was that coaches were these dudes who knew a little bit more than you did, and that most of what they knew was useless. Furthermore they asked you to do things that you were clearly incapable of doing. More to the point they were interested in spending time on the good kids not the kids whose talents lied elsewhere…

So 25 years later, I am staring at this daunting exercise plan, and am thinking, what the heck do I do?

My first reaction is: I AM INVINCIBLE (cue-Golden Arrow) …

I’ll figure this out on my own. After all I just finished the Athens Marathon on my lonesome…

So.

Step 1 learn about swimming…

Do you ever hdinogorgon_923_600x450ave this reaction that you’re a dinosaur in an era of mammals? That’s what I felt like doing research on swimming. It seemed that everything I had been taught 25 years ago was wrong. I thought I knew how to swim… Apparently you’re supposed to rotate your body. Rotate? Rotating was the tool of the devil not the source of all goodness. And then there were these metrics: SWOLF and Laps and blah and bleh and meh… And I’m thinking what do I do here?

I felt like the 70’s were calling and they wanted their swimming technique back…

My first reaction is: not really relevant. But then I continue my research and realize that a significant chunk of finishing an Ironman is about efficiency. And efficiency is about technique and boy-oh-boy is my technique, well, dated…

So now what?

Despair, despondency, misery. Or I could find a coach who knows this material and can help me.

To the coach! But where do you find a coach? And how does a dude like me who has had this long history of working with coaches go find one or even evaluate one? Well I am big fan of matching services, and realizing that my first choice is about as likely to be wrong as it is going to be correct, I figure I’ll hire someone and in a few months know a lot about a coach is about and decide whether it works or doesn’t…

So I’m honest, use the trainingpeaks.com service and get a coaching recommendation. I look him up, and it seems like overkill.. I mean do I really need someone with that many achievements? And I am thinking: remember the plan you have no idea, so let’s go with it and see what works. And it is pricey.

So after a month of thinking through it, I pull the trigger.

First week, and already am seeing the value of having a coach, and especially one I can email every day with stupid questions…

First of all my wife doesn’t have to discuss my training with me. That’s what my coach is for. She’s much happier …

Secondly, I don’t have this gut wrenching fear that I am doing something wrong … I might be but I don’t have the fear.

Thirdly, it turns out that training has become a lot more sophisticated in 25 years – no shit Sherlock…

So what about the first week?

It’s funny; I thought training was about well… you know swimming, running and biking. How hard can it be?

Wrong

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This is a plane, right?

It’s about doing specific kinds of swims and specific kinds of runs and specific kinds of bicycle rides. I felt like I was this turbo-prop pilot being asked to fly a Boeing 787.

Sure both are planes, but really they are not…

My first week was a mess. First of all I had to do research to understand what the hell was being asked. Then during the exercise workout I forgot half the things I had to do. And then there is the open question of whether I was doing anything remotely accurate.

Despair. Despondency. But then I remembered I have a coach and he can help.

So week two is simpler. And I have this new plan. It’s called writing down the exercise program before I go out. And even better, I have this phone number and I’ll use it when I am at a loss as to what to do…

 

The plan

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Last year I finished my first marathon. And it was a disappointment. Disappointing because I wanted to experience the exhilaration of reaching the very hairy edge of what I was capable of. And I didn’t.

So now what?

Well, I could try and go faster, but going faster is about losing weight more than anything else. And going faster isn’t that interesting. I wanted to cross the finish line with nothing in the tank. I wanted to say: This is the limit.

So a Facebook friend of mine has been doing all of these posts about doing triathlons and ironmen, and I was thinking: This looks insane. This feels like pushing the edge.

So I have a new plan, I am going to do an Ironman next year.

So here are some things I need to do:

  1. Bike 112 miles averaging more than 15 miles an hour… I have only been able to sustain a greater than 15 mile pace once in my life and that was for 1 hour… Today I can’t bike 10 miles an hour the day after my long runs…
  2. Swim faster than I normally swim for longer than I have ever swam
  3. Re-learn how to swim … My swimming technique is about 20+ years out of date.
  4. Do a marathon after 1 and 2
  5. Fix my cadence.
  6. Lose a lot of weight because there is this calorie consumption problem…

This feels insane enough…

But there is more. To keep the year interesting, I intend to do an Olympic Triathlon this year in Santa Cruz, a marathon in Napa and go faster than 5 hours in Athens this year.

If I have any discipline I’ll keep posting updates on this blog…

How useful are algorithm questions in an interview?

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I wrote this answer on quora.com.
Hiring a programmer is an incredibly risky process. In less than 5 hours you are supposed to distill the experience, aptitude and team fit of an individual. Even better you’re supposed to project forward how that experience will jive with the uncertain future of the company.

The three most important abilities in a software engineer are

1) An ability to master multiple technologies
2) An ability to communicate effectively on complex topics
3) An ability to work on a team, and by implication do what is necessary for the team to succeed.

An interview that focuses exclusively on algorithms reveals a narrow slice on (1) and a very narrow slice on (2) and it tells you nothing about (3).

But how useful is a strong mastery of algorithms? The short answer is it depends.

For most jobs for most people at most companies…

If we’re talking about the basics, it’s very useful … except that most data structures these days are a hash-map. Knowing other data structures is useful in certain situations but most of the time it’s a little bit of arcana…

If we’re talking about more advanced data structures? Probably not at all. In practice most software systems have very simple algorithms.

For pushing the boundaries of what is possible… And those are rare jobs or rare moments within rare jobs…

It’s actually very useful to have a good and deep understanding of algorithms that apply to your problem space. It’s really useful to be able to read papers and results and understand how they apply to your problem domain. But no one ever asks those in an interview becaue of the absurdity of asking that question…

And there are classes of jobs where it turns out that understanding algorithms is the job. These are not very common jobs. But they exist. However, they are certainly not the average job at the average high-tech company.

In fact what is more useful and rarely asked in interviews is how do you approach learning a new system? Questions about how you learn about software. Probing questions about the depth of your understanding of the systems you understood and how well you understood it…

And then too little time is spent on leadership and how people worked with other people and how they dealt with conflict… And how folks deal with ambiguity etc…

It’s my belief that the fascination with algorithms is a residual side effect of the fact that too many people went to schools where math competitions and computer competitions were ways in which people measured ability.

In practice, it turns out that being good at math olympiads is not well correlated with being a great mathematician… Which makes me think that being great at algorithms is good but not sufficient to be great at your job in software.

At Zynga, where I work when I write this answer, we try and cover all three areas. We have people probe CS fundamentals, design, architecture, and cultural fit.  Having five people ask five different brain teasers is not considered the right way to interview a candidate.

Athens Classic Marathon: Race Report

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4:30 AM Wake up

After what was a remarkably easy night sleep – all of these race advisors kept telling me how I wasn’t going to get any sleep and I slept like a baby. Well actually given how poorly Nicholas slept, I slept like an adult.

Seriously, the kid would wake up every two-three hours, requiring someone to go soothe him. My wife, heroically, volunteered to do that so I could get some sleep.

Having prepared everything – I must have double checked my bags about 3 dozen times before I went to sleep and 3 dozen times before I got into the cab, I took this picture of myself:

Leaving home at 5am. ready to run. marathon starts at 9:15 am. Next checkin at 3:30pm Athens time or 6:30am PST. Thank you to all my FB friends for cheering me along. But super special shout out goes to my wife who will be running her first 10km!

I was soooo stressed at that point in time, and very excited. 1.5  years of preparation were about to be put to the test.

Seriously. 1.5 years almost to the day, I started running. First it was couch-to-5k, then bridge to 10k then a lot of running then a training for this marathon. Endless amounts of pasta, gu, and pain were about to be put to the test…

5:30 Bus Drive

The Athens Classic Marathon is superbly organized. The road to Marathon is closed. To get to Marathon, runners meet in down-town Athens at three pre-defined locations and then take one of 160 buses that were chartered for this purpose.

On the cab ride down, I chatted with the cabbie who was really inspired by my tale. In fact, he was so inspired that he asked: what did he have to do to train for a marathon? And I told him … As I got out of the car, the amount of positive energy he had for me was actually quite touching.

Onto the bus I went. I was first in line. Well maybe third in line for the first bus. And yes all of the people at the beginning of the queue were people doing it for the first time. There was this 20 something who was mildly irritating with his confidence to do the whole thing in less than 4 hours. And then there was the 50+ year old from Chania who was planning to power-walk the Marathon. He said he had started training just 2 months ago. I was like dude…

Sitting next to me was this charming man named Timotheos. Timotheos turns out to be an American from Ohio who is married to a local girl from Crete. Both starved for English speakers we chatted from down-town Athens all the way to Marathon.

Now let me point out that the bus actually went over our route. And boy-oh-boy did the uphill section look brutal. I kept reminding myself that it wasn’t. That it was just the speed and the angle of the car… Timotheos didn’t help the situation by remarking that he runs on much steeper grade…

About 5-8 km from Marathon, I suddenly turned to Timotheos and said: dude marathon is far away. And he said what is the best description of a marathon: It’ so far away that we had enough time to tell our life stories and we’re still not there…

A few minutes later we arrived and disembarked. Here’s they dropped us off:

This is what the starting line looked like at ~6:30 am

6:30 to 8:30

So what do you do for two hours? Well you try and control your nerves. And you walk around a lot. So, for the record, in addition to the 42km I ran, I must have walked another 4-5 that morning just trying to calm down.

Watching everyone go by was pretty damn cool.

And here’s the starting area before anyone had shown up:

While waiting around, I met someone from the bay area who works for a high tech company that has its HQ in Greece.

But for the most part the runners in this Marathon were Greek.

8:30

After two hours of trying to figure out how exactly am I supposed to just calm down, the organizers asked us to go to the starting blocks.

It was pretty funny for about 30 minutes. This dude on the mic was entertaining us with all sorts of random commentary. At one point in time he was like: I am about to do a very special warm up, and played syrtaki … We all kind of stared at each other like we’re really going to start dancing a few minutes before this marathon…

Here I am in my funny plastic bag waiting for the race to start:

While I was trying to adjust and re-adjust and re-re-adjust my running shoes I took this video:

 

It shows a lot of legs jittering as they try and stay warm and shake off the nerves…

9:00 AM and we are off…

And the race started promptly at 9. We started in waves, a block going every three minutes. I was in block 6, so I had to wait 18 minutes from the start to get my chance to go…

Here’s an unfortunately blurry picture of everyone – damn you Nokia Lumia 920

And here’s my wave about to start:

It’s about this moment where if there was a way for me to quit without losing face, I would have. But there wasn’t. I was like shit, shit, shit shit. What am I doing… and then I remember a friend of mine’s quote: You are about to do something to your body that very few people ever try… And instead of quitting on the spot… I got ready to run…

5km

The first 5km of the Marathon are always the most dangerous. Your full of adrenaline, full of energy and want to go fast. But you can blow out the entire event in the first 30 minutes (I am that slow). So I had to force myself to go at the pace I had planned out –12 minute miles.

According to the splits I was a little bit slower, but that’s okay … Better to be going too slow than too fast is my take.

At the 5km mark you run past the place where the bodies of the soldiers who fought at Marathon are buried. And all of a sudden this event became something more.

I had grown up with tales about this battle. This wasn’t just an event, it was a seminal event of my people. And here I was reliving it …

And while I was running past the tomb, I remembered my beloved Aunt Eleni who had passed away 20 + years ago. Eleni had no children. She had spent every summer I was in Greece making sure that I grew up being proud to be Greek and being proud to be an Athenian. And, I know it’s cheesy, but running this race brought me closer to her than I had been in many many years. In many ways, I think, her spirit and her stories inspired me to go on this incredible adventure.

Oh and there was this dude who weighed like 260 pounds was about my height and just blew past me… I mean he just motored past me. I was like damn….

5km-10km

And a word for our organizers. The organizers were fantastic. Everyone was helpful and supportive. Even for slow pokes like myself, the folks would cheer us on as we arrived for water. They were all smiles and trying to help us. Absolutely amazing organization and support.

This was pretty uneventful. Fairly flat terrain, my body was feeling good. My legs were feeling good. Most of the runners had blitzed passed me so I was running with my pace group. After I finished the Marathon I realized I was in the bottom 6% of the runners in my age group.

And dear Marathon organizers, I AM NOT YET 40. On December 10th I will be 40. No need to put me in the 40-44 age bracket!

While I was running I saw Pheidippides ghost:

So I ran with Vibram’s and I thought I was hardcore. This dude ran barefoot, with a bronze shield, and a bronze breastplate and a bronze helmet. Not sure when he finished. But I do remember catching up to him and getting caught by him.

Along the way there was this Polish couple that was running the Marathon. Rather the husband was running and the wife was being pushed along in her wheel chair. It was pretty cool thing to see. Periodically people would help them along. I tried to help them a little bit but the uphill hit and I was in position to help anyone but myself …

10km->15km

The Athens Marathon is notorious for it’s climb. Practically speaking you start climbing at 10km and stop at 32km. If you look at the course there are some up hills followed by down hills, but the down hills are very short and the up hills very long.

The really nice part about the section from 5km to 15 km is that we ran past a lot of areas where folks lived so there were a lot of people cheering us on.

As I was running it was kind of interesting to observe how much immigration was changing the face of Greece. There were a lot of folks who obviously came from outside of Greece. One moment I remember was this Muslim gentleman who had this permanent scowl on his face, and as I lumbered along I smiled at him. And I think he was surprised to see someone smile at him and I saw the most genuine smile I had seen in a while.

Also along the road were these children who would stick their hands out wanting us to high-five them. I suppose now that I am a dad I am more attuned to this. Every time I saw a kid with an outstretched palm I gave him or her a high-five.

One of the nicest things that folks on the road did was hand out olive branches. The olive branch is a powerful symbol in Greek sports – In the original Olympics and the Athens Olympics of 2004, a wreath of olive branches was put on the victors heads. It was very touching to have all of these runners running with a small olive branch stuck in their hats, pants or head…

This section went along pretty fast. There were people cheering, there was constantly changing scenery and it was just fun…

One memorable moment was this town we ran through where the locals were cooking meat. Oh my god, I was getting hungry and the smell of really well done meat was too much…

15km –> 30km

This was the most brutal part of the race. The sun was out. There were no more villagers to cheer you on (well there were some but it was far less frequent) and the relentless uphill was very relentless.

At this point in time it was about just remembering the training and moving forward.

To make this work a little bit better, I switched to Les Miserables as my music. So yes, during the Marathon, while the heat was beating down at me, I listened to “Look down, look down, the sun is hot as hell below” … Made me feel one and connected to the whole damn human race.

By now I had figured out how to use the water stations, and was drinking at every station. I decided to walk through each one so I would be able to drink. I just couldn’t for the life of me drink and run at the same time…

At the 20km, GU was handed out. And I used that opportunity to over GU. I started taking a GU every 20 or so minutes to ensure I had enough energy to make it over the peak of the climb.

Funny moment along the way.

At some point in time there was this German woman who was walking and I caught up with her. Then the road got steeper and I slowed down, but she kept walking at the same pace and passed me by. As I looked at her we both laughed at the absurdity of what was going on.

At some other point there was this kid who was trying to give runners a small flower. And his dad kept trying to get this small child to stick his hand out. I saw the kid, stopped, gave him one of my extra olive branches and took his little flower. I hope the kid had a good day…

30 KM

The 30KM mark in the Athens Marathon is really important because it’s just before the last nasty climb of the day. Make it past that and you have ~12 km of downhill … The race is yours.

As you start the nasty ass climb, there was this group of drummers beating a rhythm to give you the courage to make that last heroic effort.

So I made it to the top, and then my body just fell apart.

Originally I thought I had gone really slow on the first 30km, but after looking at my splits I was shocked. I did a personal best 4 hours on the 30k, and then took an astonishing 1h42 minutes to do 12 km of which 10 were downhill!

30->42 KM

This was the part that was supposed to be easy. I was supposed to go flying down this.

Nope.

Nada.

Never.

Instead it took a superhuman effort to run. My legs were like: NOOOOO. I couldn’t move them.

Part of me thinks that I tried to shift gears and the gear shifting fried the transmission. Part of me thinks I was just tired. 4 km from the end my body started to function again, so I am thinking it was the gear shift I attempted.

Oh well lesson learned. Don’t shift gears. And don’t assume you went too slow in the first 30km… Or more to the point get a damn Garmin watch so you can more accurately measure your progress!

The last 12 km were surreal. No one but the runners were on the roads. By the time I rolled in most fans had left. So all that remained were these closed off roads. And because it was a Sunday, and because Greece is in the middle of a great Depression, it was like some bad scifi movie. I was alone with some runners. And at some points in time it felt like I was all alone.

So 4km from the finish line my body starts to feel good and I start catching up with some people. One dude actually stopped to thank me for inspiring him to keep running. I was like: we big and tall guys need to stick together.

2km from the finish line I finally caught up to the dude who weight 260 pounds. I know, it’s a marginal achievement, but damnit I am keeping track of it.

As I was approaching the stadium, I started to freak out that the route was longer than I had thought it was. Feeling like I was as at the breaking point, I was like HOW AM I GOING TO FINISH THIS STUPID RACE!!!!

Yes with less than 1km to go, I finally freaked out and wanted to quit…

And then I turned left and rolled into the stadium. While running into the Stadium, I had the presence of mind to film a small video:

 

And that was the end of that!

At the Stadium were some of my cousins, my sister and my wife and mom. My son was at home with grandpa.

Here are some action shots as I run into the stadium…

This shot I refer to as: Kostadis Enters Triumphantly (notice the patriotic fervor with the Greek Flags behind me…)

This is the less serious Kostadis “Air Jordan” Roussos pose:

And here’s an awesome close up my sister took of me. Notice the pain…

Or this one:

And this is the picture a few moments after I was done… Notice the relief. That feeling of OMG I am done:

And here I am with my medal a few moments after I said: Chairete Nikomen and did not die 🙂

And here’s a picture with my wife. And so while I was feeling all super cool my super amazing wife told me she finished her 10km on 2 hours of sleep in 1h and 17min. And oh-by-the-way it was the first 10km she had ever run…

Final Thoughts

Running a marathon is an amazing experience. It’s in many ways this intense surreal moment in your life where a vast amount of training and effort is focused on a single action. It’s a really simple event. You just keep moving your feet. And yet it’s also an amazingly complex event with many subplots going through your head.

The Athens Marathon is special. You start at the battle of marathon and you finish in the same place the first modern marathon finished. That historical continuity makes the whole event feel more meaningful than it really should but it does…

Athens Classic Marathon Part II: Pasta Party

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Once the training is complete, the only thing left to do before the race is to carbo-load.

According to some dismal science I read, I had to eat 700grams of pasta the night before the race. That’s a shit-load of pasta.

In addition because eating large amounts of fats etc, could really upset your stomach – we will not explain how – it’s really bone dry pasta.

Some people can eat tomato sauce, but too much acidity causes me heart burns, so I had to be very cautious. Others can eat cheese, but well I am from the southern mediteranean so being lactose intolerant is a real downer.

But this is Greece, and this is my family and when we do food we don’t go half way.

Notice the massive bowl of pasta. In front of you, you’ll see the spring rolls. You can also see the meat sauce and tomato sauce to accommodate all possible pallets. You will also notice the salad. You do not see in the foreground the superb home made pizza  and cheese pies…

You’ll also notice that there are a lot of people there. In fact my cousin Maragarita whose husband Michalis inspired me to do the Marathon threw this soiree together. Her mom and dad were there, her sister and her entire family, her brother and her two sons and her maid of honor with her husband who was also running this marathon. It was really awesome to hang out with everyone.

The three marathon runners (Michalis – Margarita’s husband, Michalis –Sofia’s husband and I) had this look of terror on our faces. I, of course, full of bravado reassured them that since we had completed the training there was nothing to fear.

What was especially cool was that we also got to celebrate my Dad’s birthday, something I realized I hadn’t done in person in almost  20 years. My son got into the act and kept blowing out the candles. We had to light the candles half-a-dozen times because he kept wanting to blow them out.

At some point in time, Michalis who had completed the Athens Classic Marathon last year, brought out the finisher medal. The intent was to motivate me by showing how cool a reward I would get. I, of course, have deep suspicions about these things. You do not touch medals until you acquire them. If you touch them before hand bad, bad things happen. So there was this awkward moment where I looked at him with horror …

And in the background hidden from view is my son and his second cousins who were playing for hours like lunatics.

My only regret is that I was very stressed about the run the next day and could not just chill out and enjoy the family fun.

Marathon Part I: The Freak Out

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My family and I flew into Athens on Thursday November 8th. Miraculously the flight was without incident or calamity. Our departure, not so much. Our main sewer line was blocked, blocking all of our drainage. Thankfully it occurred just as we were leaving. All that meant was that we couldn’t take a shower on our return trip. This will become important in the last part of the Marathon. 

On November 15th we went to the Zappeion Megaro. 

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Here’s me and Nick standing in front of the building:

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The folks managing the Athens Classic Marathon (known by the cool kids in Greece as “To Klassiko”) did an excellent job managing the thousands of runners. There were 26000 registrants across the marathon, 10k and 5k and approximately 18000 folks who actually finished all races and at no point did you think that this was  country that couldn’t manage it’s finances.

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So we get there, within 10 minutes of our arrival collect our bib and information packet. The cool Klassiko marathon jersey was at the end of an Expo we had to schlep through. 

After picking everything up, we found a nice cafe right next to the Zappeion Megaro. There I opened the packet and saw the route for the first time.

Let me observe that I have spent many many years in Athens. Let me also observe that I had run at that point 20 miles in my training runs. So I wasn’t expecting to be surprised by anything.

But for the first time I realized the enormity of the challenge in front of me. 

As a pre-teen my grandfather Charalambos (my mom’s dad) would take me to Rafina to go swimming. Rafina in my mind was far far away. It was, in my mind, at the other end of the universe. And then I noticed that Marathon, the starting line was 15km away from Rafina. 

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Here’s my genuine reaction when I figured that out:

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It was at that moment that the enormity of the task  dawned on me. 

The Death Ride vs The Athens Classic Marathon

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On November 11th, I ran into the Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens finishing my first Marathon in 5 hours 42 minutes.

And almost immediately the first question that came to mind was: 

Was the Marathon harder than the death ride?

So to put things in perspective. 

The Athens Classic Marathon is one of the hardest marathons out there. The distance is standard, but there is a non-standard 20km up hill section with a total 800 foot elevation gain. 

The Death Ride on the other hand has 128 miles of biking (206km), an elevation gain of 15,287 feet (4660m) and is at an altitude of 5500 feet. 

Both of these are insane events for an amateur athlete to complete. 

They both require a lot of fitness and a level of pain tolerance that is almost inhuman. 

So the winner (or loser)? 

My vote is for the Death Ride. In the Athens Marathon there where several overweight fat guys were actually able to finish the run in less than 7 hours. On the other hand I was, literally, the fattest guy to finish the Death Ride. And by finish I mean cross over the fifth peak. I did not actually ride back down to the finish line because of a “torn/sprained/stretch badly” chest muscle that prevented me from breathing deeply. 

My wife, on the other hand, asks if the difference was related to the training regime. The Death Ride training regime was intense but it was less intense than the Athens Classic Marathon. For the Death Ride we biked three times a week. For the Marathon I ran four times a week and biked on Sundays. So it is possible that I was in better shape at the start of the Marathon than I was at the start of the Death Ride. 

I fear that what I am doing is becoming the start of a bad joke: a swimmer, a cyclist and a runner walk into a bar and argue over whose sport is harder… a few weeks later the ironman triathlon is born. 

But… 

What I remember about the Death Ride is at the beginning of the ride I was in the best shape of my life. At the end of the ride I was more broken than I have ever been. I crawled into a bed and slept for hours. For the next five days my brain was shut down as my body tried to recover from the exertion.

What I remember from the Marathon is that the night of the Marathon I went to a kid’s party with my son, the next day I went for a walk etc, etc. etc. 

Training or effort? 

Who knows… But I suppose I could start training for the death ride and find out….