Yesterday, I read a blog-post by my coach, Jon Waldron, where he wrote about the concept of the “personal decathlon.” An idea I’ve heard many-a-time on runs, Jon explains it well enough on his blog, so I’ll just quote from him:

“The idea is that if you choose them carefully, you can choose ten “events” that are so well suited to your particular talents and abilities that in a competition with the rest of the seven billion humans on planet Earth, you would win.”

Jon goes on to describe his own “PD” – a 10km run, chess, composing limericks, mini-golf, throwing small objects at cats, a predicted time run, competitive excel spread-sheeting, Sudoku, juggling, a spelling bee, and – finally, after two days of intense competition – commuting.

It got me thinking to what my own PD would entail. And so, since imitation is the greatest form of flattery, I sat down and started to think.

The idea of the PD – as Jon describes – is to come up with 10 events that you are good enough at and (here’s the important part) are unique enough with regards to one another, that you would have the best combined score at all ten. This means thinking about ten different areas in which you could excel that have little overlap that would narrow down Earth’s seven-billion to just you as the potential victor.

I spent a good deal of time – pretty much all afternoon, but I ran a hard workout this morning, so wasn’t going to get anything else done – on putting together the following list. I’m pretty confident that I would not only win but dominate my own PD. And so, without further ado, here we go.

DAY I

1.    A long race at altitude – As with Jon, I’m going to start with a running event. Let’s make it a very long, fast run. At altitude. Say 22 miles at 9,300 ft.  I ran that last week during my long-run and averaged 5’45 pace. Especially given the high altitude, this probably immediately knocks our pool of potential candidates down from seven-billion to a couple thousand. Let’s conservatively say 5000 left that could be competitive after event.

2.    Eating ice cream – The second event would come right after the first and would involve another of my great strengths (and passions): eating huge quantities of food after a long, hard run. This is coming from the kid who put away a whole pint AFTER an Anna’s super-quesadilla the day I set the treadmill half marathon world record. While everyone will be equally hungry after event one, I bet I can still knock out at least 20%, which brings us down to 4000. Oh and we’ll go with Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food.

3.    Haggling (in Spanish) – Now that my mind is functioning better with an influx of sugar, I’m ready to start whittling down the pool. Anyone who’s been with me in a South American fruit market, poncho-stand, etc. can attest that I know how to haggle like a boss. Oh you want 100 dollars for a ride to Ambato? How about $10? Okay, we’ll settle on $14. Now, taking out my incredible haggling ability entirely, simply the Spanish language should cut a lot of people out. According to Wikipedia, about 500 million (out of 7 billion = 7%) people speak Spanish world-wide. So, given the extremely gracious assumption that our event #1 and two were random selections (in reality, a significant proportion of people still in it after event #1 are going to be from East Africa and likely will not speak Spanish), we can narrow our group down to the 7% that speak Spanish. I’ll even give them the benefit of the doubt that they can haggle with the best. Now, we’re down to 280 after 3 events.

4.    Reciting dialogue from Quentin Tarantino films (in English) – Tarantino is a polarizing filmmaker. People seem to love his movies (think Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, or more recently, Inglorious Basterds and the Kill Bill duo). My brother turned me onto his work when I was almost certainly too young (older brothers tend to do that…) and I immediately loved it. I can (though I try not to – I know how annoying it can be) basically talk along with his characters in the majority of movies. Going by my rationale from the previous event, estimates for number of world-wide English-speakers are (on the high end) around 2 billion (~28% of world population). Now, let’s assume that our sample so far is slightly English skewed (English is widely spoken in Kenya and Ethiopia) which might double our percentage – but, let’s also take an extremely generous 50% of who might have even seen a Tarantino film. So, we’re back at 28% of our current pool from event #3, leaving 78 people in the running after 4 events. 

5.    Packing efficiently – As an engineer, I take great pride in my special visualization skills. As someone who travels a fair amount, I transfer this pride to my ability to pack a lot of mass into a small volume. Let’s say the event is to pack a backpack with as many articles as possible in a limited time. I’d say I’m conservatively in the top 80%, but let’s say 50% to keep it interest. Our group at the end of Day 1 will therefore be down to 39.

DAY II

 
6.    High altitude climbing – Day 2 starts off with another athletic event geared towards my strengths. A non-technical speed-climb (think hands and feet, but no ropes) up a very high mountain. Say Quito’s Rucu Pichincha (~17,000 ft). While this might weed out a good portion of the normal population, our sample is already biased towards high-altitude-acclimated endurance athletes, so let’s say this only narrows us down by 10%. Now we’re at 35. 

7.    Sight reading jazz charts on guitar – Those of you who knew me in high school knew me as a musician above all else. I love to play – still do – and one of my favorite things is to open up the Fake Book and play a few random standards. Now, pretty much everyone plays some guitar – or at least it seems that way – but we’re talking a little bit more than Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. Let’s keep it interesting and say we only lose 20%. Now, we’re a group of 28 with three events remaining.

8.    Coding in Labview – Maybe it’s just Tufts, but out Mechanical Engineering department just could not get enough of the programming language Labview.  We used it mainly in control systems and robotics. Anyways, it’s something that I’m decently good at and fairly unique outside of our field. Let’s say the challenge is to create a program that reads a piece of sheet music from an iphone camera and plays the notes back via MIDI (this was my mid-term in robotics). Finding the number of Labview users is tricky but estimates range between 100,000 and 400,000. Let’s be generous again and give them half a million (0.007% of world population). Uh oh… That would take out the rest of our group. Let’s just go out on a limb and (against all odds) assume that we happen to have a handful of super-fast, super-hungry, Tarantino-loving, guitar-playing, mechanical engineers. I’ll say there’re 3 of us left.

9.    Navigating Andean South American by bus – It’s a skill that can only be learned the hard way. Through many hours spent traveling in the wrong direction, fixing flat tires, and waiting for herds of llamas to cross, I have covered thousands of miles of the Andes via buses, cars, jalopies, and milk-trucks in various states of disrepair. Let’s say the challenge is to get from Quito to some tiny village in the central Andes (obviously not listed on a map). Of the three of us, I don’t have high hopes in anyone else getting there. And so, event #10…

10. DJ-ing – Again, some of you might not know that I was the go-to DJ in college on the (seldom) nights when the cross country team held a party. At this point, it’s just me, so the last event will just be a celebration of the ten seemingly incongruous and random events that make me, me. And for those curious – I’m a laptop DJ (apologies to older readers) and I use Ableton Live (and I used it before it was cool! Like 2007! Thanks, Tim Douglas).
So, that’s my Personal Decathlon! Maybe if we start campaigning now, it’ll be in for Tokyo 2020…

The real question – after looking at the math – is how FEW events could you choose from your own PD to leave only yourself as the possible victor? Obviously, if you’re Alex Honnold, you could pick free-solo rock climbing and that would be your one-event PD, but for those of us who AREN’T the best in the world at something, what’s the FEWEST events you could hold to narrow down 7-billion earthlings to just you? Stay tuned on the blog. I think I might have to tackle this…

In the meantime – what’s YOUR personal decathlon? Leave a comment here or on Facebook/Twitter and I’ll post the best one here on the blog!