The book attempts to answer questions such as:

• How should I schedule my workouts?
• How is it best to train during the weeks of my most important races?
• How many miles do I need before starting speed work?
• Is it okay to ride on the same day that I lift?
• How long should my recovery rides be?
• What can I do to climb better?

Different experts would each have their different answers to these questions, because there is more than one way to solve each training problem. This book aims to present ideas and concepts such that why the answers are the way they are. I’ll attempt to summarize my learnings chapter by chapter. Each link will be updated as each summary becomes available.

• Part I – Mind and body
  • Chapter 1 – Mental performance
  • Chapter 2 – Physical performance
• Part II – Training fundamentals
  • Chapter 3 – Basic training concepts
  • Chapter 4 – Training intensity
• Part III – Purposeful training
  • Chapter 5 – Getting started
  • Chapter 6 – Preparing to race
• Part IV – Planning your season
  • Chapter 7 – Planning overview
  • Chapter 8 – Planning a week
  • Chapter 9 – Planning alternatives
• Part V – Stress and recovery
  • Chapter 10 – Training stress
  • Chapter 11 – Fatigue, recovery, and adaptation
• Part VI – The competitive edge
  • Chapter 12 – Muscular force training
  • Chapter 13 – Tapering to race
  • Chapter 14 – The training diary

On the banks of the Ganges in Haridwar, people congregate to bathe themselves in the holy water of the Ganges. There were even naked little children doing the same. Since my trip here somewhat coincided with Kanwar, there were people (the ones in orange) here collecting water for their pilgrimage.

I seriously question the cleanliness of the water with so many people swimming in it and the constant stream of garbage that the locals throw into the river (at one point, I saw a rat run across the street in front of me in broad daylight). Despite this, the water is still considered holy.

Upstream of the Ganges at Haridwar, and situated at the foothills of the Himalayas, Rishikesh is another holy place to Hindus and is famous around the world as the yoga capital of the world.

Here, a bridge connects the two sides of the river. Both sides of the river have many temples and yoga retreats where travellers from around the world come to learn yoga, and Ayurveda (tradition Indian medicine).

Check out these links to see more of my trip to Haridwar and Rishikesh!

The buildings look old and rundown compared to what people in the west are used to, but I’m told they all have Internet connections. Seeing people selling things in the street is a common sight.

My friend’s mom spoke of how she used to get taken to school on these buggies.

My friend reminisced about the times he and his cousins used to play around this well as children. He spoke about it with a light smile on his face, so one could tell how he missed those simpler times.

I got a lot of strange looks from people in the village – it was obvious to them I wasn’t from around there. How often do they ever see a foreigner around town? Probably never. On one occasion, the workers on my friend’s family’s farm asked his cousin what I was doing there. For the entire time I was on the farm, I constantly felt their gaze. They even made a comment saying how they had never seen a guy with a man-bun before.

Their family is quite hospitable and prepared a meal for us – according to my friend, his aunt is quite known within the family for being a fantastic cook. The dishes themselves were the typical ones like paneer, chickpeas, and lentils, but she really knew how to control the spices. She was so happy that we all enjoyed her cooking and for my friend, it was a taste of nostalgia.

Check out this link for more photos of this village

It was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his wife (and then later the emperor himself) and was built out of marble. The different colours on the building are purely a consequence of different varieties of marble from different parts of the world that have different colours. Artisans from all over were employed to do this work.

What’s also interesting, is that the minarets (the four tower structures) are tilted slightly outward to prevent them from crashing onto the dome in the event of an earthquake.

I’d seen pictures of Taj Mahal in the past, but I never really paid much attention to them – it was hard to tell that the building was built out of marble, so it just looked like a white structure to me. Upon seeing it in real life, I definitely had a much much greater appreciation for its beauty.

Links to photos here

1. Install Docker on your machine
2. Get a Docker image for a CS 1.6 server (I created this one, which is based off of an existing one. Mine has:
   • A lot of maps
   • Metamod
   • AMXModX (with high ping kicker, podbot control menu, round money, rock the vote, and admin all in one)
   • Podbot
3. Customise the server (e.g. editing the server.cfg, amxx.cfg, and other config files, etc.)
4. Start it up! (the README.md in the above linked Git repos has more info on this)

As far as ports go, I only needed to forward 27015 on my machine, but your mileage may vary. Others have reported that some more ports must also be forwarded on some machines.

Then optionally, if you’re running Ubuntu and you want this server to start up like a service via systemd, you’ll need this:

1. An executable script with path /usr/local/bin/hlds with contents (make sure the DIR variable matches your installation directory):

#!/bin/sh

# Do not change this path
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin

# The path to the game you want to host. example = /home/newuser/dod
DIR=/opt/cs-16-server/bin
DAEMON=./server

start()
{
    echo  -n "Starting HLDS"
    if [ -e $DIR ]; then
        cd $DIR
        $DAEMON start
    else
        echo "No such directory: $DIR!"
    fi
}

stop()
{
    echo -n "Stopping HLDS"
    if [ -e $DIR ]; then
        cd $DIR
        $DAEMON stop
    else
        echo "No such directory: $DIR!"
    fi
}

reload()
{
    echo -n "Restarting HLDS"
    stop
    sleep 1
    start
}

case "$1" in
    start|stop|reload)
        "$1"
        ;;
    *)
        echo  "Usage: $ 0 {start | stop | reload | status}"
        exit  1
        ;;
esac

exit  0

2. A script with path /etc/systemd/system/hlds.service with contents:

[Unit]
Description=HLDS

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/hlds start
ExecStop=/usr/local/bin/hlds stop
ExecReload=/usr/local/bin/hlds reload
RemainAfterExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

3. Then execute:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable hlds
service hlds start

Feel free to check out my server that’s running right now with the same Docker image! Here’s the command to connect via the console.

connect henrypoon.com:27015

First stop: the dam just off of the Stone Arch Bridge.

When I rented a bike, I expected a city cruiser, not a full carbon fiber road bike with Ultegra Di2 and electronic shifting! Not sure what year the bike was, but a new one would probably cost around $5000 USD.

I headed south, past the University of Minneapolis and eventually to Minnehaha Falls. A couple had brought a Lego Thor and Loki for some photos and I managed to snap a picture of it too. Perfect timing for Avengers Infinity War opening weekend I guess.

I really lucked out on the weather because there had been a giant snow storm a week or two before. It wasn’t too warm nor too cold either. Hot enough for sunburns though.

Eventually I made my way to Fort Snelling.

Then I headed west to bike past some lakes. Even though the weather was just a bit colder than T-shirt weather, there was still ice on the lakes slowly melting.

I had read online that Minneapolis has places that serve camel meat, so I ventured to the Midtown Global Market to find it. To be honest the meat didn’t look that appetizing and it tasted just like regular lean meat with nothing distinct about it.

Next I made my way to the sculpture park, where the famous cherry on a spoon sculpture is.

Nearby, was the Basilica of Saint Mary. And I thought cool looking churches was a European thing!!

In total, I biked around 70km on a really fancy bike and toured a lot of stuff in the city. Before flying out the next day, I spent some time at the Mall of America. Most awesome Lego store is right here.

The centre of the mall is an indoor amusement park!!

Unluckily for me, I somehow got sick the day after the bike ride, so I was quite impatient to go home that day. It’s no fun getting on a plane while sick… Once I got home, I didn’t even unpack and went straight to bed.

Link to photos: here

This was the weather on the night I got there… Very pleasant…

The next morning we went on a nice scenic drive through the mountains to chill at the sulphur hot springs.

We spent a good couple hours just sitting in the outdoor hot springs. The water temperature was like hot tub temperature while it was lightly snowing outside.

We stayed overnight in a nearby town.

The next day we ate at a very hilariously named restaurant…

Went on a scenic drive and a light hike around some frozen lakes.

Then at night, because I like South Park so much, we went to Casa Bonita. South Park’s depiction of Casa Bonita was quite accurate.

The cliff divers are real!!

We even ate at the so-called “South Park table”, the same table that Cartman eats at when he is dreaming about going to Casa Bonita.

Classic American breakfast. 16 oz Steak and eggs.

Our last day in Denver is when we actually spent time IN Denver. Strolling down 16th street mall.

Then we wandered into the state capitol. One of the hallways had photos of every president of the United States. All but one. Since each portrait is funded by donation, it might be a while before the current asshat president will get his picture put up.

Managed to get a peek at an actual discussion between politicians. I saw a guy defending a climate bill while nobody listened. And then I wondered if that’s what it was like at the federal level too…

In the afternoon, we rented a GTR and zoomed around the mountains. My friend and I took turns driving this supercar.

I had trouble keeping the camera still in the turn. At one point, the car readout showed that we were pulling 0.5G’s of acceleration!

The rental company has a guy that drives a lead car while guests renting different super cars follow them on their route. Their route was quite well planned and took us on a nice windy mountain road that led up to a lake. Along with us for the ride was a Lamborghini.

The rental company’s garage has even more amazing cars.

Denver was quite a relaxing trip, which is quite different from my usual trips where I’m walking for the entire day. In a blink of an eye I was back on the plane headed back home.

Link to photos: here

Someone told me that the pastries were really good, and they were totally correct!!

This is the Danish Parliament building. They also allow a small number of people to go up to the top of that tower for free!! We did have to wait for about 20 minutes though, but I think that was a not so well known destination.

Everybody says that Nyhavn is a must-see destination. It’s definitely gorgeous, but everything around here is super pricey!!

Amalienborg is the home of the Danish royal family. Sometimes people see the Crown Prince of Denmark going in an out of the palace dressed like a normal person. The building with the dome at the back is the Marble Church.

These palace guards walked right by me!! Can’t imagine wearing the full uniform on a blazing hot day…

Next up, was a chill bike ride around the city going at a slow 10 km/h. The weather really cooperated with us! It was a weird change going from wearing a full bicycle kit while riding my roadbike to wearing street clothes and riding this commuter with a basket on top…

Randomly stumbled upon this really cool looking fountain, known as Gefionspringvandet.

We rode through this old school star-shaped fortress that has been turned into a nice greenspace!

North of there was the Little Mermaid statue that everybody talks about. Everybody says it’s a must-see attraction, but the most underwhelming. They make it look so big in the pictures but in reality it’s tiny.

We rode past a military installation and saw this interesting sign… They’re really up to date with this drone stuff.

I was in Copenhagen around the same time as Chester Bennington from Linkin Park passed away. He even left a mark on the people in Copenhagen.

There’s a reason why people say Copenhagen is the bike capital of the world.

The white buildings in the distance is Paper Island – a hipster place to hang out and eat food.

It’s so busy here…

To my surprise, I found an ostrich burger… It definitely had a light taste. I’ve heard it tastes a lot like beef, but I didn’t get that impression.

Next, we went to Freetown Christiania – an area that the people there self proclaim as autonomous. The area was formed by squatters on land used by the military. Today it is a kind of like area where the police in Copenhagen don’t really enforce their jurisdiction (although they can), and it is governed by the people who belong to that community who have created their own rules. All the houses have graffiti on them, the paint on the walls is slowly flaking off, and every house has tons of advertisement posters painted on them. The people in the community are either hobos or hippies and sometimes it’s hard to tell which – and they’re probably all high as a kite. If you’re looking for a wild party, you’ll probably find it here. It’s a shame that I wasn’t allowed to take photos inside.

Inside the city hall, there is an astronomical clock. The fastest gear completes a revolution every ten seconds and the slowest every 25,753 years. I have no idea what kind of information it shows, but I can appreciate the mechanisms as someone who studied mechanical engineering!

This was probably the best meal on the entire trip. A sampler of the most Danish food ever at Skindbuksen. When we went in, we were the only people inside who looked like tourists and everybody else looked local, which was a good sign, but we stood out. The owner of the restaurant came by with a giant plate of delicious food and loudly said to us, “this is what we eat in Denmark, you should try this!”. For a brief moment, our interaction with him gathered the attention of the entire restaurant, while it felt like all the locals were just judging us tourists… It was a tad awkward. BUT the food was absolutely delicious. There was pickled herring, deep fried fish filet, smoked salmon, roasted pork, and pork filet! The other tables were looking at our food with jealousy.

At the bar in our hostel, we met someone who was working in Silicon Valley as a software engineer who happened to be working and travelling. She told me she graduated at UC Berkeley and so I asked her if she had seen the Amazon store there (this). She told me how awesome it was to have something like that there and to her surprise, I revealed that I am actually one of the engineers who worked on it!

That’s it for Copenhagen!

Photo album: Copenhagen

Bash for Windows has been working pretty great for me until I needed to run Selenium Webdriver on it. I quickly learned that it wouldn’t work just work right out of the box, and the set up for it is quite convoluted.

You will need

• Bash for Windows
• Xming – This will actually allow the Window to appear on the screen
• geckodriver – Selenium now needs this to run Firefox

Bash setup

Install Firefox:

sudo apt-get install firefox

Export DISPLAY variable in ~/.bashrc. Just add this to the ~/.bashrc:

export DISPLAY=:0

Xming setup

Just download it from the link above and run it.

Download geckodriver

Download geckodriver from the link above and put in the /usr/bin/ folder in Bash for Windows.

Running Selenium

Here is a piece of sample Python code I used to setup the web browser. It will setup the browser, open Google, sit there for 10 seconds and then quit.  Make sure to have Xming running otherwise the browser isn’t going to start.

import time

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver import DesiredCapabilities

def execute_with_retry(method, max_attempts):
    e = None
    for i in range(0, max_attempts):
        try:
            return method()
        except Exception as e:
            print(e)
            time.sleep(1)
    if e is not None:
        raise e

capabilities = DesiredCapabilities.FIREFOX
capabilities["marionette"] = True
firefox_bin = "/usr/bin/firefox"
browser = execute_with_retry(lambda: webdriver.Firefox(
    firefox_binary=firefox_bin, capabilities=capabilities), 10)

browser.get("https://www.google.com")

time.sleep(10)

browser.close()

Alright, now let’s get the tickets for the game

“Don’t worry about the tickets for the game”, my friend said. Next thing we know, the tickets were all sold out to season ticket holders. Our other friend found some tickets on viagogo, BUT, we didn’t know if they were fake. We needed a new plan. “It’s OK, we can buy tickets off scalpers on the black market”, my friend says. The black market sounded all well and good until the news reported armed robberies occurring where scalpers were robbed of their legitimate tickets which were now worth a couple hundred US dollars, a value that is a large chunk of a typical local’s monthly salary. We could now only rely on the viagogo tickets being legitimate. Then there is me, the clueless foreigner in his country and doesn’t speak any Spanish, who can only helplessly watch events unfold without knowing at all how to help.

In our already not-so-good situation, a representative from viagogo calls us and said that the tickets can only be picked up at 5pm close to downtown. The problem was that the stadium is on the edge of the city and the game starts at 6pm. There was no way to go to the pickup location for the tickets AND get to the game on time because traffic on game day would be terrible. My friend calls the viagogo representative and tells him the situation and guilts him into letting us pick up the tickets earlier by saying how we trusted the company with these tickets and whatnot and the rep agrees to let us pick up the tickets earlier. Whether or not the rep was sincere in that offer we didn’t know. We needed a plan B in case we really had to pick up the tickets at 5pm. This is where our plan got SUPER elaborate. We spent a good hour brainstorming a good plan and this is what we came up with:

The guy who bought the tickets (the American), would have to ride a motorcycle to the ticket pickup location, pick up the tickets, and go to the stadium, while the rest of us would get to the stadium early with a van so that when the bike arrived with the tickets, we could hide the bike inside the van. When his dad heard the plan, he began to scold him saying how crazy it was, and in his scolding, I heard a word come up over and over again. When I looked it up, I found out it was profanity. Awesome! My Mexican friend called all of his connections that he had to see how we’d get our hands on a van and a motorcycle. According to him, “he knows a lot of people, people owe him favours”. The problem with that plan was that the guy who had the van got into an accident (whether or not that was true, we’ll never know), which suddenly broke our whole plan.

Okay, so what if he rode a bicycle to pick up the tickets? He’d have to ride 12km from the pick up location to the stadium in terrible traffic. Not to mention the person riding the bike isn’t familiar with traffic in Mexico (traffic that does not respect bikers), and that most streets don’t have stop signs or lights. Throw in some lack of sleep – the guy would be flying in that morning in an overnight flight from LA. He was up to the challenge. My Mexican friend summarized the whole plan into a PowerPoint, calling it “the story to be told about this amazing adventure”. We wouldn’t be able to execute this plan until the day of the game. In the meantime, my Mexican friend showed me around.

Lake Chapala

Lake Chapala is Mexico’s largest freshwater lake, and for whatever reason, there is a substantial population of Canadian and American retirees here.

Tequila

Got to see some Agave fields (and eat some Agave too!) on a tour at the Jose Cuervo Distillery in a town called Tequila (where the name of the alcohol comes from). I made the tour guide speak English because I was the only guy on the tour who didn’t know Spanish.

Driving in Mexico?!

At one point, my friend’s brother asked me if I wanted to drive. I thought to myself, “okay, so there are no stop signs anywhere, I have no idea where to stop, and based on the driving I’ve seen, nobody really follows the rules on the road”. I drove anyway!

Knowing that I was a complete newb on the road in Mexico, my friend and his brother were both very watchful to make sure I was stopping at the right times. They had practically memorized all the places where cars should and shouldn’t stop. I had no clue whatsoever. I stopped and went when they told me to.

Later on, we saw police cars stopped on the side of the street in front of us. My friends just told me to play it cool and just drive normally. I also realized I didn’t have ID on me, so if I had gotten pulled over or something, I would have had to pay $100 USD just to get out. But luckily, nothing happened.

Picking up the tickets

Now it was time to execute the plan. My friend called the Viagogo rep in the morning and he says that we can pick up the tickets at noon. Okay, so no problem. We went and picked up the tickets while in the back of our minds we were still wondering if the tickets are fake. If the tickets were fake, then our whole plan would be meaningless.

We meet the rep and he gives us the tickets. We closely inspect them, and everything looks good. We were in a bit of a disbelief. Everything seemed too easy. But we wouldn’t know if the tickets were real for sure until we actually go to the ticket counter. At this point, we wouldn’t have to execute our crazy bike plan, and could only wait and see when we got to the stadium. With the couple of hours until the game, we spent some time walking around the city center of Guadalajara.

Touring the city center

Lots of people out and about on a hot day. We went in May, statistically the hottest time of year in Guadalajara.

The local boy/girl scouts were running a recycling campaign or something.

Game time

After lunch, my friend’s dad drove us to the game. As expected, the traffic was real bad. On the way there, as my friend’s dad drove, he says to us that he’s going to break a bunch of traffic rules and not learn from him. He then proceeds to cut a bunch of lanes, crossing the hatched areas on the road, and cuts in in front of people. He even made use of an handicapped sign on his car to get into the parking lot quicker even though he wasn’t handicapped at all (seniors just get those because they’re above a certain age). With his epic driving, we got to the stadium right on time.

Now, the moment of truth. The guard checking the tickets would be the one to tell us if the tickets were real or not. As we got closer, we got more and more nervous. The guard scanned our tickets and waved us through. What a relief. We didn’t need any of our contingency plans after all. Logically, everything went smoother than we could have possibly imagined. Now it was time to enjoy the game!

The entire crowd pretty much supported the home team, and there was a small section of Tigres fans, probably about 50-100 people only. Tons of people waved Chivas flags, and some even waved the French flag because it had the same colours as the Chivas jersey. We all bought jerseys for the game too!

As the game went on, the crowd cheered and chanted, “dale dale dale rebaño!”, which roughly means “let’s go herd [of goats]” (chivas means goats). At one point, when it looked like the Tigres were making a comeback, the crowd cheered even harder. With an amazing 2-1 finish (4-3 aggregate), the Chivas had beaten the Tigres to win their 12th championship!

Celebration

That night, large crowds gathered at the Minerva statue in the city to celebrate the team’s big win. My friend’s dad said he’s never seen the crowd this big in a long time. To celebrate, the dad made us all tequila cocktails (there was probably 3-4 shots worth of tequila in that) before we headed out and had a great time. As the only Asians in the city (my American friend is of Japanese descent), we stood out a lot and people occasionally said random phrases to us in different Asian languages. I guess that’s what happens when two Asians show up with Chivas jerseys!

Last, but not least, the food

My first meal when I arrived in Mexico: Menudo. My friend thought my stomach wouldn’t be able to handle it, because the meat in the soup was tripe. But, nope! Chinese people eat tripe all the time!

Not exactly a meal that I had, but there is a running joke that a guy can take a girl out with roses and a can of Jack Daniels. Once that joke caught on, the store intentionally started putting roses next to the Jack Daniels in the store.

Tacos with carnitas and guacamole? Sign me up!

Lonches. Basically a sandwich with meat inside served with a dipping sauce on the side (can also just be poured onto the plate to let the bread soak). The bread used is a kind local to Guadalajara (birote/bolillo).

Then there are tortas ahogadas. Very similar to lonches. It has a the same bread, but this one is way meatier and the sauce is a tiny bit of spice.

Ceviche! A dish with raw fish cured in lemon/lime with added spices. Can’t say no to seafood!

My friend’s mom also cooked food for us and I totally wish I had taken some pictures of that food. She cooked a pork stew and I wish I knew what was in the sauce! Both parents encouraged me to eat so much and they showed so much hospitality! They kept offering me more and more food until I was super stuffed. Good thing my friend’s brother taught me “estoy bien”! This was definitely one of the best trips I ever had – full of excitement and not just doing touristy things. Having a local show you around really helps!

Link to photo album: here