I opened my 2022 season at the UAB Vulcan Invitational in Birmingham, Alabama last weekend, competing in the 60m and 200m. It was my first time at that facility and my first indoor meet since college. Racing indoors is always special for me as a California native—I love how crowd noise is amplified by echoes, slamming into the wall at the end of a 60, running on a bank, just all of it.

The Crossplex in Birmingham is an excellent facility, and UAB did a great job running the meet—big props to them. For the first time indoors, I had access to a separate warmup track with starting blocks. The meet itself was quick and efficient; every event happened exactly according to schedule.

Since this meet was just an opener for me, I treated it more like a workout than competition, and trained through it. I didn’t have a ton of expectations going in to the meet.

Now that it’s 2022, I’ve scored my 2021 predictions. To get slightly bigger samples, I inverted the prediction and predicted probability of <50% predictions—e.g. “Democrats win both Georgia seats: 25%” became “Democrats do not win both Georgia seats: 75%” for scoring purposes.

November was… busy. December will be too.

Goal Tracking

• 🟡 Get 1% faster.
• 🔴 50% less discretionary spending. I spent about twice as much this month as my average in 2020—between holiday flights, a trip to New York, and Black Friday, I blew my spending record for the year out of the water.
• 🟡 One hour of solitary free time a day.
• 🟡 Twice-weekly live conversations with friends.

I’ll be taking a break from weekly posts for a little while!

October was my first full month in Atlanta since May—but I still found a way to get out of town for a couple of weekends. We have more travel upcoming in November and December, which is exciting but also maybe a bit too much.

Goal Tracking

• 🟡 Get 1% faster. I tweaked my hamstring—time will tell how long I’m out, but it seems certain that my training will be affected for at least a couple weeks.
• 🔴 50% less discretionary spending. October’s discretionary spending was 19% under 2020’s average, buoyed by the couple travel weekends I had—a wedding in San Antonio, a weekend in Clayton, and upcoming travel to New York.
• 🟡 One hour of solitary free time a day.
• 🟡 Twice-weekly live conversations with friends.