What I'm Learning in 2016, Part I

I decided to change the title from Reading to Learning because not all knowledge comes out of books, right? And I have the time to make an update now instead of waiting until the end of the year. I figure that I'll break up the big post into smaller ones.

POLITICAL ECONOMY

Politics and Economics of International Energy-Sciences Po 
This is a Coursera-hosted MOOC that was easily digestible and while neither rigorous nor difficult it was very useful to this novice. It helped me understand where we are and where we're heading with respect to global energy consumption and the promises and challenges of different energy sources. Prior to the course, I had a sense that the gas and oil the US is extracting via hydraulic fracking methods had immense importance geopolitically, but I wasn't clear about much else. For instance, I had no idea that there were 100 nuclear energy plants in the USA, that the difficulty of transporting natural gas is what allows Russia to leverage it's vast natural gas production against Europe, and the challenges of integrating different energy sources, particularly renewables, into an electrical grid.    

What I Read in 2015

It's clear from this list that 2015 was about War, Violence, and Power. I didn't intend it that way. In fact the goal for the year was to read more fiction and great literature. The last few years were heavy on public policy and economics to the point that I felt like I was reading the same book over and over again. For 2015, I really wanted to branch out which happened but not in the intended way. Perhaps the lesson is not to try and predict 2016's destination but just see where the year takes me.

The entries are categorized simply by "Best of", which I can almost universally recommend, and "YMMV", your mileage may vary. "YMMV" does not imply bad just not for everyone.

Same rubric as before, books on this list were not necessarily published this year but read for the first time in 2015.

Crush the Run on Your Next Military Physical Fitness Test

(Mo Farah and Galen Rupp go 1-2 in the 2012 Olympic 10k. Many years, thousands of miles, lots of heartache and self-doubt proceed Olympic victory. You don't need to do any of that to run your best 1.5 mile PT test.)

Two years ago I was overweight, out of shape and had developed permanent plantar fasciitis in both feet. This didn't happen overnight, over one month or one year. For ten years, my times had slipped little by little until I was running nearly three minutes slower. And I was caught in a vicious cycle. Unable to run much because of the pain in my feet I got heavier. The extra weight added more stress to my injured feet and made them even less able to sustain the impact of running; more pounds-->less running-->more pounds-->less running, etc.  

Thanks to some good orthotics I approached my most recent fitness test with some ability to run and a few months to train. From October 2014 until my fitness test in Jan 2015 I followed the program detailed below. Being fat and injured forced me to think about training in a different way. When I was 20 years old and a college cross-country runner I could have fixed my problem by running 60-80 miles a week with intervals, hills and strength training. That was untenable for lots of reasons. The program below worked for me and I think it could work for a lot of other military folks looking to do better on their 1.5-3.0 mile run (Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines). It's simple and efficient but it's not "easy". Running focused workouts that are typically less than 30 minutes a couple times a week will give you all the boost you need to crush your next physical fitness run.