How do you come up with a good time estimate?

If you are a typical employee, there is a good chance that your job revolves not around day to day mundane tasks. There may be some of that, but there is a good chance that it revolves around completing projects. Yes, project oriented work is challenging and rewarding, but often done very poorly.

Not that your work is bad, its the management of the project that we suck at. And more to the point, its the time estimation that we’re the worst at doing.

On July 4th, I completed one of my goals for 2011. The 3rd 5K was in the bag!

This is a race that I had been fairly familiar with in the past. Years ago, the wife and I ran the 8K race with my Dad. We were living in Wisconsin at the time and had trained and felt pretty good about surviving the run. What we didn’t plan for was the humidity. In Wisconsin, there isn’t the humidity that Iowa can bring. And on July 4th of that year, it brought the PAIN!!! Mid 70s for a start with 97% humidity. Imagine running 5 miles while being water boarded. Not to mention my dad gave my wife and I a senior citizen ass kicking. Not only did he finish before us, he had time to get food for himself and then go back for some recovery food for us once we finished. So yeah, I pretty much swore off the 8K race for the rest of my life unless a pack a rabid dogs were chasing me. And even then, I think I’d take my chances with the dogs.

My 2nd official 5K of the year was the Dam to Dam 5K. One of the largest in the US with 2800 runners. This goes hand in hand with the largest 20K that my wife ran.

Race day was warm and a bit humid with the starting temp nearing 80 at the 9:45 start. Add in the 80%+ humidity and well, you have a day of suck ahead of you. The start of the race was delayed due to a medical emergency so we really didn’t get running until about 10AM. My goal for this race was to finish somewhere in the 25-27 minute range. I had been running a lot more since the first race and felt that a 8 – 8:30 mile range was my new comfort zone. Given the temps, I knew I would be pushing the higher end of the range.

A recently article from the guardian shows that your iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go. Many of your know that I’m an iPhone user and supporter as I have a often neglected iPhone App site.

You’re probably thinking to yourself right now, great, another fanboy coming to Apple’s rescue.

WRONG!

What the fuck Apple? Seriously, what the fuck? Is there a good reason for keeping track of this data? I mean seriously, what are you doing with it?

Every year I run a NHL Playoff Pool. This year is no different. Its a free pool open to anyone that wants to join. Last year we had about 40 people from around the internet signed up.

So if you are a hockey fan, point your web browsers over to nhl.usrlocal.com.

Best of all, its FREE!!!