Ut4M 2016 : Second Chance

There I stood at the starting line of Ut4M for the second time. There weren't many moments in life like this. Months of preparation reduced down to this date. With the experience from last year, I had become way calmer facing it this time. With this kind of distance, I had to be serious about it. But at the same time, I knew I couldn't be too serious because the course could crush this kind of thinking. I had to be able to laugh at myself if ever I failed again. It was my biggest mistake last year to think that not finishing meant down to the loser road. Actually trying was already a win. So my personal goal this time wasn't to finish. It was to go beyond where I failed last year, and yeah, to better myself as the cliché said. It might seem simple enough, but I was still not sure if I could do it. In fact nothing was for sure. An injury, a sprained ankle, a bad weather, a weak moment. Something could always go wrong and it could mean an early end for me. The mountain always has the final say. Keeping a good attitude was the only thing I had control.

Vercors

19 August 2016, 169kms race started at 7h00 at Grenoble city centre. If Ut4M was a meal, it could be said that Vercors part was just the entree. St Nizier, Moucherotte, Lans en Vercors, Pic Saint Michel, Saint Paul de Varces, I got through all of them with relative ease, while taking my time eating and drinking at each pit stop available. The main challenge of the day was really the heat, reaching 35°C in the valley. I did a good job at hydrating myself but the heat really affected my stomach. I was having some minor problem chewing down food. Everything I ate just felt like stuck mid way and never reached the stomach. The urge to vomit was omnipresent throughout Vercors but I was still able to keep my digestive system together. Some of the participants were not so fortunate though. I saw some of them vomiting along the way.

I reached the first of the three main aid stations at Vif at around 15h00. Reaching Vif also marked the end of the Vercors part. And here came the surprise. My friend Thibaut came to Vif to show support. This year, I didn't ask anybody to come to the aid stations to support me. In fact, not many people actually knew about me doing it this year. Even if I told people about it, most people won't even comprehend the feat to which I challenged myself and the importance of moral support by simply be present at the aid stations. Thibaut's support really cheered me up. Able to chit-chat a little bit and share what I had been through during the course was mentally refreshing. At Vif, I took a cold bath, so physically also refreshed. I think it was after around 30 to 45 mins at the station, I left for the real deal of course - Oisans/Taillefer.

Oisans/Taillefer

Out of the four mountain ranges, I would consider Oisans/Taillefer to be the most difficult. When I left Vif, it was still the afternoon. So the heat was still an issue. Not long after I left Vif, I was already soaking wet from sweating again. Luckily, along the path from Vif all the way to Laffrey, there were many water fountains. This was the time my experience gave me an edge over those who didn't know what to expect from the course. I knew from last year experience that this part of the course was in lower altitude, thus it was going to be really hot. I also knew where exactly the water fountains were situated. So I was kinda moving fast from one fountain to another, kept thinking of the coldness of fountains to keep my spirit up and helped myself moved through to Laffrey. With the knowledge of the location of the water fountains, I also helped motivating other runners to get through this hottest part of the course.

I breezed by Saint Georges de Commiers. A hill and a forest later, I reached Laffrey at around 18h45. Comparing to my performance last year, I managed to reach Laffrey two and half hours earlier than last year. I also felt so much better than the me last year at Laffrey. Confident, I didn't stay there for too long. A hot soup and some food later, I moved on again. The climb to La Morte wasn't particularly difficult. It was just really long. When I reached La Morte, the sun set. 65kms in and almost 5000m of accumulated elevation gain, I still felt fresh. That was really a good news. I guess my hard work and training had paid off.

At this pit stop, Thibaut was there again and this time he brought along Cyprien. Cyprien was always the witty guy so talking to him was always cheerful. I was already going strong at this point. With their support, my confidence was boosted to another level. All that combined and came in at the right time because all that was needed to tackle to the highest point of the course - Pas de la Vache. Again a hot soup and some biscuits later, headlight on, long sleeves on, and I left.

The climb to Pas de la Vache, I was surprised that I got through it without too much difficulty. It was hard but I still managed to keep a single pace up until the peak without stopping. At the top, I was thinking of sitting down to enjoy the view, but the cold wind immediately deterred the thought. The descent to Lac Poursollet, I took it slow. At 2h30, I reached there. Here, the cold wind reminded me I was still in high mountain area. With the cold weather, I needed to keep moving to keep the machine turning and to keep myself warm.

A small climb to Plateau des Lacs and Pas de l'Enviou later, I reached Chalet de la Barrière. There they built a huge camp fire. It was so nice to sit around it, looking at the flame and enjoy a hot drink. After that it was the infamous long technical descent to Riouperoux. I took it really slow since I knew I was way ahead of time cutoff and I could actually achieve my goal which was to go beyond Riouperoux. The thing about steep descent wasn't only about avoiding injury but also keeping a good form so that the descent won't excessively fatigue and destroy my legs. So slowly but eventually I reached the bottom of the valley at Riouperoux, also the second main aid station. It marked the end of Oisans/Taillefer, also the midway point of the course. Once reached the station, I headed straight to sleeping room and slept for an hour. It had been 23 hours since the start of the run.

Belledonne

Traditionally, Riouperoux is the point where many runners will choose to abandon. I can totally understand why because I know it too well. Last year, this was also the point I chose to abandon. One doesn't have to run the course to know why. Standing deep at the bottom of the valley at Riouperoux, sandwiched in between Taillefer and Belledonne, you will wonder how the hell to climb up to either side. Each side is at least a kilometer of vertical rocky mountain range, enough to demoralize most runners.

I was one of them last year. But I was a different man this time around, stronger and wiser. At Riouperoux I really took my time, took a bath, had a good breakfast, etc.. However, not so wise move I did was to have an expresso. The expresso was thick and tasty but I would get to know the effect later on. After that, here started the second day, second part of the course, by a monstrous climb to Arselle - the vertical kilometer.

The first half an hour of the climb I was flying. But then the caffeine kicked in, my heart was beating unbelievably fast, and I was having some sort of hyperventilation. Normally I should easily finish the climb within one and a half hour, but I took me nearly 2 hours. The drumming heartbeat really worried me and I thought this was the end of the race for me. Luckily, everything calmed down and I found back my rhythm after reaching at Chamrousse.

The second day was the total contrast of the first day : rain and rain and rain. Although I was totally fine with the cold, the wet rocky surface really turned me down. At the same time, thick fog was forming throughout Belledonne. For security reason, the organizer decided to cancel the route to Refuge de Pra and the climb up Grand Colon. From Recoin Chamrousse, the route headed straight to Lac de Freydières. Less climb to do, but the distance was still more or less the same. Instead of passing through high mountainous route, we all headed into the forest path. It was 17kms of forest between Recoin and Lac de Freydières, it was so long, plus the fog reducing the visibility, this 17kms was so damn yawntastic. At the mean time, the rain just kept pouring. Also during this part of the course, I met a few others that I couldn't remember their name anymore. There was no obligation or anything to stick together. I guess we were the same level and had the same speed. So we were moving as a group for a really long time. From this point on, the run had became a team sport for us.

Thibaut came to Lac de Freydières to meet me again. Man! This guy, seriously! Came to see me for the third time! I really appreciate his presence. Most people might never understand how important moral support is to the runners during an ultra unless they themselves have participated in one. Seriously though, to him might seem like nothing. But to me, it means a lot.

The cold had been intensified by the continuous rain. Sitting in the pit stop of Freydières while holding a cup of hot soup, I could still feel a little chilly. We didn't rest for too long. Even though the third, the final aid station Saint Nazaire les Eymes was still quite far away, all it left to do until there was either descent or flat. It was worthier to move on faster from Freydière and take a longer rest in Saint Nazaire. So we moved on.

Soon later, the rain seemed to stop. Good news. But the mud it left behind, not so good. The mud turned the descent into borderline fun and misery. I tried to slide down like skiing, but since my legs were not in their top form and sports that required a lot of balancing had always been my Achilles heel. Sometimes I slid down successfully, sometimes not and had to regain my balance with my hands. After the descent, everybody was covered with mud from knee down. Those who had fallen, more mud stain for them.

10kms of flat land later, at 18h00 we reached St Nazaire aid station. The end of Belledonne. 35 hours into the race. The first thing I did - hot shower!!!

Chartreuse

The shower was really needed. Nothing was better than a hot shower, dry clothes and dry shoes without mud. Until this point I still haven't mention a word about the volunteers. What can I say, they were amazing. The conviviality they offered and their up-beat attitude had no doubt helped every runners to get through each of their low points. At the food station in St Nazaire aid station, I was taken care by two aunties. All I did was just sit down and they fetched me everything I wanted. They took care of me like how my grandma would. In fact, not only me got this kind of treatment, every runner was well looked after.

I was originally thinking of getting a massage. But I saw there was some queue for the massage while nobody at the kinésiotherapy line. I thought why not. I had never tried it before. So I went for a session of kiné. What the doctor did was actually a lot of stretching, and some sort of chiropractic care. The session was fun, I totally enjoy it. After that, I took 30 mins of nap.

I left at around 20h00, slightly earlier than the others in the group from Belledonne. I said Vercors was the entree, Oisans/Taillefer plus Belledonne was the main course, and Chartreuse was supposed to be the dessert. It was supposed to be easiest among four of them. But again the intermittent rain and the mud transformed the entire Chartreuse into hell. Mud was the theme of the night. While descending in mud can be fun, now imagine climbing up a muddy path. Every step I took, because of the mud, I slid two steps back. Some passages were straight out dangerous all because of the slippery mud. Seriously, one misstep could mean falling ten meters down. Mentally I had to stay sharp despite of sleep deprivation. Every step I had to be sure of the grip. It was not only physically exhausting, mentally I was also tested to my limit.

Even it flattened out a bit after Col de la Faïta, the mud was still there. In fact, it had worsen. It was the kind of mud in which you take a step, your foot sink in a little and stuck, and it actually needs some effort to pull your leg up to take another step. Shoes covered with mud was certain. I stumbled, I fell, for a few times. My legs and my arms were also covered with mud. During the whole night I just wanted to curse out loud out of frustration. The only thing that kept me going was the other runners. We were all taking it in together, suffered together. Even though everyone was in deep shit, but I knew the strength we all got was each other. Finally with Habert de Chamechaude in sight after what felt like hundreds of hours, I was relieved. The volunteers there were surprised seeing me without trekking poles. Only then I knew, in fact, the organizer had decided not to let any runners without poles out of St Nazaire aid station to tackle the Chartreuse massif at a few hours prior because of the muddy condition. I was lucky to be able to continue because I left St Nazaire just before the decision was taken.

Since the organizer also cancelled the climb up to Chamechaude, after Habert, it was all downhill all the way to Sappey. Sliding down the mud started again. If I really need to pick out my lowest point of the race, this should be it. It was the moment I kept asking myself why I did the race, why I did this to myself. I was frustrated, frustrated because I knew this part of route well and I just wanted to move faster to end all this quickly but I couldn't. I rushed and I fell. Some sort of hallucination also kicked in. Everytime I shone my headlamp onto the fluorescent bands along the route I thought I saw somebody and I wanted to greet him. Sleep deprivation had seriously blurred my vision and my judgement, slowed me further down. 8 hours! 8 hours just to go from St Nazaire to Sappey!

Reaching Sappey, all my strength was sucked out. I found a chair and like a puppet with all the strings suddenly cut off, whole body just collapsed on the chair. My desire to continue was dropped to almost zero. If mud got a face, I would seriously punch it. Angry yet disappointed because the mud had broken me, defeated me. The mud had became the demon, nudging me to quit. But not like this. "Not like this!" I said to myself. I won't leave all the previous effort, a total of 40 plus hours to go in vain. I knew this was the mental game now. I dropped my head on a table to take a nap, hoped to regain some physical strength to fight the demon until the end. I set the alarm for a 30min sleep, and surprisingly I woke up later by myself before the alarm went off. It was as if my mind was subconsciously telling me I still got some unfinished business to take care of.

At 5h00, I left to tackle the final climb of the course - Fort Saint Eynard. At last luck seemed to be back at my side, the mud had lessened to basically non-existent. At Fort St Eynard, the Sun rose. It just felt so good to see the Sun again. I knew I could reach the finish line in time now. However, hours of uphill and downhill had finally taken a toll on my right knee. Basically my knee hurt so much if I tried to rush downhill.

Col de Vence, Mont Jalla, and then Bastille. Walking the final few kilometers through Grenoble old town area, it was glorious and at the same time I was glad that I was back to flat land, back to civilization. It was early Sunday morning, not many pedestrians in the city. I wondered may be this was how soldiers felt when they came home after fighting wars unknown to many. Many were still cozy in their bed and I just finished a 50 hours race. That thought gave me chill. The final few hundred meters, despite my knee, I still made the effort to run, to the finish line. 160kms, almost 10000m of elevation gain, 50 hours and 36 mins later, at exactly 9h36, Sauron was destroyed. It was done.

It is done.

Epilogue

It would almost be a tragedy if no one was there at the finish line for me. Yet, this was the case for some runners. Lucky for me, I got someone. Guess who, it was Thibaut again! At the finish line, he fetched me a beer, the beer of celebration. For this race, I had kept myself away from alcohol for several weeks. It felt so good to taste beer again even though it was nine in the morning. This beer has gone down in history as the most delicious beer I have ever drink.

We were sitting outside of Palais des Sports. Holding my beer, with mud all over my legs, my body fully extended and relaxed. The world around me seemed perfect. The softness of the sunlight, the warm air touching my skin, the quietness of Sunday morning. I had so much to tell Thibaut about the adventure, and being a good sport, he listened attentively. I felt like I could die there and I would have no regret. I truly believe that heaven isn't some place one can go to. It is how you feel for a moment in your life when you are in harmony with your surrounding.

That's why heaven won't last forever. That's why reality is cruel. I thought I could finally sleep well after race but no. I woke up at five the next morning, thinking that I was still in the race. My mind was still in the restless state and I still hadn't pulled myself out of it. Paradoxically, part of me wished that the race was still going on. It was something so difficult to achieve, the process was so long, that once I reached the finish line, I felt lost and didn't know what to do. That morning, I had to actually sit down for a long period of silence looking out at the mountains, to convince myself that it was OK to let my guard down now and the race was finished already.  

Chessy to say but I guess life goes on. A goal, two years of pursuit, failure the first time, seizing the opportunity the second time. My Ut4M story has been a good story but now it needs a closure. The search for the next heavenly moment begins.

Special thanks to

Thibaut, Cyprien, and Louis

 

Eye of the Tiger moment

Last Wednesday at work, my computer was running the third batch of simulations. Since it was gonna take at least two days to finish and the GPU was used full time at full capacity for the simulations, my computer became too laggy to work on. So I thought it was the best time "back to the drawing board" to work on a problem left aside for quite some time. The problem was basically like this : two different approaches, two different sets of formulas, to solve the same equation. At first glance, both were expected to give slightly different results. But surprisingly they gave the same result. And when compared to the results of experiments, they all fits perfectly. It was good news. It meant both approaches were valid. However that was still the question : how come? There must be some kind of link in between them but what was the link? 

I called on my supervisor and another researcher familiar with the domain to figure out the answer together. After listing out formulas of both approaches, we were staring at the white board, very little discussion, mostly silence. This was probably my first "Eye of the Tiger" moment. It wasn't the first time I stared at a bunch of equations for an extended period of time. But this was the first time I was in a group staring at equations on a white board together for a long time. For those who don't get what I mean by the "Eye of the Tiger" moment, it is originated from the episode 4 of season 3 of The Big Bang Theory. It was pretty cool came to think about it. I felt like a real scientist. Hahahahaha! 

mindblown !

The joy of solving maths problem is so gratifying. Although it wasn't me who made the critical step to find the link between the two approaches, I was so happy to see the answer unfolded with my own eyes. The critical step always seems so trivial once you know about it. It is like finding a bug in thousands lines of code but more. The elegance of the solution of a maths problem never ceases to amaze me. After we checked every steps, mindblown moment ensued. I so wanted to jump for joy but I told myself : act cool, just smile and act cool. I didn't want to feel like an idiot. 

the trifactor of college life

The elegance quality of maths is exactly why I love maths. I was lucky to have discovered through reading a lot more than the maths taught in primary and secondary school, to be able to see a bigger picture throughout my early school life. Maths problem solving is just like any other skill, it can be trained. The "Eye of the Tiger" moment in the lab reminds me of my time in la prépa, aka Classe Préparatoire aux Grandes Ecoles (CPGE) in France. There is a pseudo-theory about the triangle of choices (social life, good grades, and enough sleep) of life in college floating around on the internet. Well I had chosen good grades and enough sleep. Seriously, I was a freak during that time. Study, eat, and sleep, nothing else. I admit I should have gone out more and balanced the triangle better. The upside of this unhealthy lifestyle is, my maths problem solving skill was trained to its peak.

In prépa, especially prépa scientifique, I had to study unreasonable amount of maths and the maths were unlike anything I had learnt back in Malaysia. During primary and secondary school, it was all about memorizing some established formulas and applying them appropriately. But in prépa, it was all about axioms, conjectures, hypothesis, demonstrations, and theorems after theorems, basically maths in its pure form. The paradigm shift was hard. But once I got through the beginning of the learning curve and tonnes of effort afterwards, a whole new world was opened to me. I was so on point in maths, my maths sense was so sharp like a tiger. Intuition and ideas just kept flowing in like Niagara falls, abundantly and rapidly. Whenever other students in prépa started a conversation about their hate on maths, honestly I couldn't join them. I genuinely enjoy the process of maths problem solving.

Just like a knife, every skill needs training to stay sharp. Now no longer am I a study freak, so sometimes I am quite sloppy with my maths. But I still love maths. The time in prépa not only cemented my love for maths, but also let me understand the essence of maths. I saw a comment in a reddit post summing it up quite well. To quote : "Maths is invented and has nothing to do with the outside universe. It is a playground of human abstraction and critical thinking, and is at best inspired by the things we see around us." In maths, we can invent any concept as long as it stays consistent and doesn't create contradiction. Vsauce in his video : How to count past infinity, explains this process very well.

During the first class on complex numbers, I once asked the teacher what are the uses of complex numbers. He paused for a moment and then answered with his heavy French accent : "Just for fun !" The whole class burst out laughing. After that in a more serious tone, he explained a few examples of application. But now come to think about it, "just for fun" is actually the correct answer. The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences may just be a coincidence, says Eugene Wigner. Maths is a playground of human mind and logic. So let's do maths just for fun !

Namewee's Amoi²

Amoi² aims to be the next famous female pop group in the Asia-Pacific area. Started as a small project between RedPeople and Namewee, set up to create a Malaysian version (Amoi² - Little Apple) of the Chinese song "Little Apple" (筷子兄弟 - 小苹果). The Malaysian version has gained quite some popularity and also some criticisms from the internet like "apple is not a local fruit of Malaysia" and "Malaysia is a tropical country and the season spring is nonexistent". Here I just would like to remind Namewee that he himself had also made the same criticism on Malaysian Chinese New Year (CNY) songs which keep cheering for the arrival of spring (2010 CNY song by Namewee).  And I quote : "...什么冬天春天，你把我当作 kongkam？! 这里除了下雨，我每天热到 bueh tahan。你还来跟我乱乱唱，我听了西北赌懒!" (...What winter what spring, you think I'm an idiot?! Except some occasional rain, I just can't stand the everyday heat. And here you still sing about this bullshit, it just makes me so furious!). 

I know that those criticisms are just some trolls and not constructive. Personally, I like all the songs made and sang by Namewee himself, but I have mixed feelings about the songs he made for RedPeople and Amoi²'s Little Apple is one of them. Perhaps RedPeople to me just seem like a bunch of teenagers looking for fame. At the same time, fame may just be a word so demonized by today's society. May be the search for fame is just a part of human nature as Tessa Violet put it. Anyway, based on the popularity of the song, they decided to add new members into the group through a series of selections of participants from both Malaysia and Taiwan. And now, it has developed into sort of a TV reality show (Amoi² Contest). With a bit of scandal and drama, it is not bad at all as a reality show, I only wish each episode could be longer. 

Talking about pop groups, nobody in the world can beat the South Koreans right now. They are producing groups and pumping out songs faster than a factory can produce cars. I already long lost count of the K-pop groups after Super Juniors and Girls' Generation. Before them, I only knew that the Koreans were god-like in StarCraft and they had Samsung. After the K-pop boom since 2009/10, especially after the Gangnam Style, K-pop has become an unstoppable force.

But why it has to be groups and not individuals? And why the groups have to be so large? The first thing that comes into mind is Barney's Cheerleader effect. In the TV series How I Met Your Mother, the character Barney Stinson came up with this term which says we might find the individuals more attractive when they are in a group. What surprises me is that there are actually experts like Walker-Vul 2014 and Yuko Ojiro 2015, doing scientific studies on the subject but so far they show no convincing results. Seriously though, I never take any studies in the field of psychology seriously. The so called the "half life of knowledge" in psychology is only five years. It always seems to me so easy to publish scientific papers in psychology, to a point that it is just unfair. The titles of papers in psychology already have the edge. If I publish a paper entitled "The approximate resolution of the radiative transfer equation in a multi-layered diffusive biological medium", only a selective niche of scientists would be interested. But a paper with a title "Cheerleader effect" and quotes Barney Stinson in the introduction, whoever has watched HIMYM is instantly hooked and already know what the paper is all about.

Of course, it is not only the cheerleader effect that comes into play. On the same line with cheerleader effect, some say that the group also serves to cover up the general lack of talent of its members (Quora : Why are K-pop groups so large?). Some also say every member has his or her own unique personality and beauty that attracts different group of audience and so in a group, they can engross a bigger number of audience. That I tend to agree. When I was the right age as the target audience of female teenage groups, I use to follow the Taiwanese group Hey Girl. The group was the result of the TV show, Blackie's Teenage Club. I can't say I like the group or their songs per se, and honestly, I found some members of the group quite annoying. But still I used to watch the show quite often. The reason got to be to see one of its member - Xiao Xun (小薰) on screen. I used to find myself skipping through most of the runtime of the show but sat down attentively whenever she got the screentime.

Nowadays, I am not even sure whether the argument of uniqueness of each member still applies to the female K-pop groups. Often with the rumour of plastic surgery involved, their looks are as derivative as their songs. Westerners sometimes have problem telling Asian faces apart, just as Asians have problem telling Western faces apart, it is not racist, it is totally normal. But seriously though, even I as an Asian am having trouble telling each member in a K-pop group apart. And finally, of course, there is also the criticism of using not-so-subtle sex appeal among K-pop groups nowadays. But that I guess is just a technique that seems to work so well in any pop music. The most recent examples have to be Kanye West's Famous and Nicki Minaj's Anaconda.

Finally, there is the question why Namewee is interested in creating a female pop group. Even though Namewee can now be considered a pop singer and pop songs producer, his songs still preserve either the sarcastic and humourous quality, or close-to-heart emotions. His songs are considered as pop songs but I would say they are out-of-norm type of popular. That's why I like his songs. But now he wants to create a pop group full of cliché of a pop group? Plus since the market is so saturated by the Koreans, even I have serious doubt on the success of the emerging group, and he is still putting effort into it? My guess is, it is one of his experiments, in order to become a well rounded music producer.

The hipster part of me kinda looks down on his choice to create a typical female pop group. Hipsters have always being known to complain about anything mainstream and popular. The same goes for pop songs. They have been criticized to be too similar to one another. It seems as if music producers are getting lazy and giving up at creating diversity. I especially like how Vsauce in the episode Juvenoia explains why it has becoming the case : "Perhaps pop music producers are simply getting better at scratching the specific itch they are challenged to scratch." It may seem like there is a fixed formula to create pop songs, and may be there is also a fixed formula to create a pop group. I know Namewee can be quirky and defiant in his music, that I have no doubt. But to be well rounded, he needs to prove he can follow the norm too. I think Namewee is doing exact that. He is learning and practicing to scratch the itch.   

AI has a bad rap

I seriously think that we are not far away from the creation of a true artificial intelligence (AI). The success of Alphago had sparked my interest in the subject of AI. I have been watching many videos and reading books related to the topic. The most recent and the most hyped method to implement a general purpose AI is machine learning. Personally, my knowledge on machine learning is limited to what I had learned in school and knowledge is not understanding. But from what I understand from Deepmind's explanation on Alphago, it seems really promising to me. With that said, there is the question : should we be worry about AI?

Nowadays, we can all agree that there is no lacking of fear of an evil AI overthrowing the human race. Ever since Hal 9000 in 2001 : A Space Odyssey, AI has been equivalent to evil in the mindset of many people. Plus the popularity of the Terminator saga, it has done nothing but further damaging AI's reputation. Back in March this year when Alphago beat Lee Sedol, almost every news article written about it, started with a mention of the Skynet or T-800 robot. In fact, I myself had done the same in my entry on the subject matter. It is silly. At the same time, it also says so much about how the general public perceives AI.  

Not only Terminator, in fact there is a long list of Hollywood movies in which the AI becomes the antagonist (spoiler!). Alien, Prometheus, Matrix, I. Robot, Age of Ultron, Resident Evil, ..., the list just goes on and on. Personally, the idea of AI being evil is so deep in my subconscious that it sometimes ruins my movie-going experience. Watching movies with an AI character, such as Interstellar and Moon, I just keep waiting for the AI to turn the table. Even though they are not evil until the end, I still suspect a secret plan or something malicious that I miss out.

On the other hand, it doesn't mean that we can be fully optimistic about AI either. Any technology is a two-edged sword. Nick Bostrom compares true AI with nuclear energy (What happens when our computers get smarter than we are). Nuclear energy is used to power our world but it can also destroy it in a blink of an eye. In some sense, a true AI can be more dangerous than nuclear energy since it can become way more powerful than we could imagine. Elon Musk even said AI researches were like summoning the demon. Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking also more or less share the same view. They are not against the AI. What they say is we should be extremely careful (Elon Musk and Bill Gates on AI).

Following the same logic, I would prefer to compare the creation of a true AI to fire, one of the first technologies of human race. Fire had propelled the human progress but it is also a dangerous tool. The saying of "playing with fire" is there for a reason. I believe true AI will bring the same level of paradigm shift as fire, in terms of the contribution to human progress. Regarding AI, we shouldn't be overly worry to the level of hysteria. Like ColdFusion (DeepMind Explained), we should be cautiously optimistic.

Many Ironman but there will be only a few Alpsman

Ironman, not Robert Downey Jr. Ironman. Ironman is a distance. 3.8km swim, 180km bike, and a 42km marathon. Ever since I got into the sport of triathlon, completing an Ironman has been one of the goals in my list. As the sport gets more and more famous, unfortunately Ironman has also become a brand. There are many Ironman-branded triathlons all around the world but the participation fee of anyone of them is so expensive. Even you don't mind the price, getting a ticket is still so difficult simply because Ironman is so famous and many people want a piece of it. The two Ironman triathlons nearest to me are the one in Nice and Zurich. Two years ago, I had tried to register for the one in Nice. Even though it was still November and the race would be in June the next year, the race was sold out! 

That little incident of Ironman Nice had me realized just how mainstream the Ironman has become. It is a good thing that more and more people are doing triathlon but I myself am a bit hipster-ish. I tend to avoid anything mainstream. If more and more people are becoming Ironman, then no one is. I want something unique. Unable to register for Ironman Nice, I was forced to search for other non Ironman-branded triathlons. It was the year I did Triathlon Alpe d'Huez. 

In fact, there are some little known, non Ironman-branded, Ironman-distance triathlons. Norseman, Swissman, Embrunman, etc, all these races are way harder than most Ironman branded triathlons. They are called extreme triathlons for many reasons. Norseman got the coldest water to swim in and it finishes off with a footrace to a mountain summit. And it is an unsupported race, that means participants got to have their own support team for food and refill along the course. Swissman is deep in the Alps where the weather can change so quickly, passing by some mountain passes where sometimes there will be snow, and also a summit finish marathon. Embrunman is also characterized by its super hard bike route passing by Col d'Izoard. A Norseman participant commented on Ironman-branded triathlons quite harshly, saying : "... where as an Ironman is just a parade where people are just cheering and clapping." (Isklar Norseman 2014)

I tend to agree too. I would even argue that Triathlon Alpe d'Huez is already at the same level of difficulty as an ordinary Ironman. Watching NBC coverage of Ironman World Championship of Kona now, it does give me the impression of a lot of cheering and clapping. They used to inspire me but now, sadly but honestly, I kinda despise these exaggerated documentaries. Retrospectively, I know I have grown and I no longer see an Ironman as a challenge. My goal has changed. My goal is turning towards an extreme triathlon.

The reason that I haven't done a triathlon since Alpe d'Huez is because all the extreme triathlons I mentioned just now are quite far away from where I stay. Ever since Alpe d'Huez, I have been working towards another goal in my list -- completing an ultra trail, Ut4M more specifically. In August this year, I will give a try again. May be it is the cliche destiny. By chance, there will be a new extreme triathlon called Alpsman coming up this year October (Alpsman -Teaser). It will be held in Lake Annecy, a lake in my neighborhood and it is also the place where I did my very first triathlon. I would say the course is quite similar to Norseman with the swim starts off by jumping off the boat into the middle of the lake and summit finish marathon. Alpsman is calling out to me and I answer the call! 

Preparing for ultra trail gives me more than enough mental strength to do Alpsman. Plus I will have a full month of free time in September to train. While I am still not so sure about completing Ut4M, my confidence is very high with Alpsman. It feels so good to go back to triathlon again. With the Ut4M, I am so damn excited for the coming months.