let me bottom line this for everyone who's interested in this, and who is interested enough to follow this topic in these threads.
in my business life i've found that there are 2 kinds of efforts and 2 kinds of people involved in those efforts: those getting the ball to the 20 yard line and stalling out; or to the 10 yard line; or the 2 yard line. that's one kind of effort. then there's those getting the ball across the goal line.
the internet is full of people and ideas and theories and efforts and suggestions that are perfect for advancing the ball across midfield. at that point, somebody grabs the ball and runs to the sidelines, hurdles the waterboy, and runs with the ball up into the grandstands. we've got a lot of grandstanders on the internet. a lot of people who'd rather, as an individual, hurdle the waterboy than, as part of a team, get the ball across the goal line.
we had something kind of like this happen when we had a spate of deaths by heart attack in the swim, in 2012 and 2013. i did a bunch of research, wrote a bunch of articles, i think a part of that effort led to ironman coming out with new swim start motifs that i thought were positive. we now have race directors that think twice and three times before they disallow warm-ups prior to the swim. do we have fewer swim issues now than we used to have? i haven't looked at our sport's stats. i think we're better off. i hope we are. but we had a lot of people trying to grab the ball and run into the grandstands back then!
we are at the point now where we have people reading the first post, and the second, in the thread started on this issue and then writing their prescriptions at the end of 80 or 100 posts, without (it seems) reading any of those posts that would've spoken to their prescriptions.
so the simple question i have is, is this ball worth taking over the goal line? is it worth the effort? do you really want to know: A) what the risk is to you, in terms of real data, to ride on the road? B) do you want to know what mitigates or aggravates your risk? based on data.
if so, i'm willing to push this thing over the goal line or waste a lot of time trying. if this isn't important to you, then i don't see why it should be important for me to spend time on it, because my goal here is to serve the community. if the community doesn't care by definition i'm doing the community a disservice by wasting time on it that could be better spent serving the community in some other way.
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman
in my business life i've found that there are 2 kinds of efforts and 2 kinds of people involved in those efforts: those getting the ball to the 20 yard line and stalling out; or to the 10 yard line; or the 2 yard line. that's one kind of effort. then there's those getting the ball across the goal line.
the internet is full of people and ideas and theories and efforts and suggestions that are perfect for advancing the ball across midfield. at that point, somebody grabs the ball and runs to the sidelines, hurdles the waterboy, and runs with the ball up into the grandstands. we've got a lot of grandstanders on the internet. a lot of people who'd rather, as an individual, hurdle the waterboy than, as part of a team, get the ball across the goal line.
we had something kind of like this happen when we had a spate of deaths by heart attack in the swim, in 2012 and 2013. i did a bunch of research, wrote a bunch of articles, i think a part of that effort led to ironman coming out with new swim start motifs that i thought were positive. we now have race directors that think twice and three times before they disallow warm-ups prior to the swim. do we have fewer swim issues now than we used to have? i haven't looked at our sport's stats. i think we're better off. i hope we are. but we had a lot of people trying to grab the ball and run into the grandstands back then!
we are at the point now where we have people reading the first post, and the second, in the thread started on this issue and then writing their prescriptions at the end of 80 or 100 posts, without (it seems) reading any of those posts that would've spoken to their prescriptions.
so the simple question i have is, is this ball worth taking over the goal line? is it worth the effort? do you really want to know: A) what the risk is to you, in terms of real data, to ride on the road? B) do you want to know what mitigates or aggravates your risk? based on data.
if so, i'm willing to push this thing over the goal line or waste a lot of time trying. if this isn't important to you, then i don't see why it should be important for me to spend time on it, because my goal here is to serve the community. if the community doesn't care by definition i'm doing the community a disservice by wasting time on it that could be better spent serving the community in some other way.
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman