This morning I was reading an interesting article with regard to Dieter Mateschitz. Apparently he worked in a four day work week schedule and I was interested in his (past) thoughts on this matter (as a high achieving person)
… und pflegte eine Vier-Tage-Arbeitswoche …
So I started a search on Google with regard to this matter. Altough I know he was very private, I did expect to find some information, but Google gave no results at all and some random pictures and a link:
I then clicked on the link and apparently – due to EU regulation(s) – all relevant information, with regard to Dieter Mateschitz is gone/non existant. Although privacy is a great good and we should take care of this, I am not so sure if we should take steps into this direction:
As I use chatGPT a lot for cross-checking these days, I thought: I give it a try, but also there not much information available:
It all started when Merijn and myself were discussing racing strategy’s for Merijn his Vichy Ironman 2022 race. We agreed upon a “wild” plan, that upon completion of that Ironman we would enter one of the extreme races the following year/2023.
Fast forward to the end of 2022 and Merijn and myself were sitting behind our desks trying to register/enter: Norseman, Swissman and ICON.
One would think that only few crazy people enter such a mad endeavour, but the fact that we had to enter ballots etc. to stand a chance to start at the race (with 1 to 25 oversubscription) learned us differently.
Luckily we got selected for entry at the ICON 2023 edition. From that fall 2022 day on, we knew we had to train….a lot.
The 29th of August I headed direction Italy. After a stop in Luxembourg I had agreed with Pieter-Jan (my Support during the race) to pick him up at Innsbruck Airport.
After a day long drive we arrived at Livigno. We came from the Swiss side, so just out of the last tunnel we drove into this beautiful Swiss Alps scenery. Not aware of where I was at first, but driving for kilometers along a big lake, only later I realized this was the Lago di Livigno. So the we are, first encounter with raceground:
Next morning Pieter-Jan and myself had agreed on what we thought was a good training & acclimatization exercise: a early morning swim in the lake. What we had missed during our deep sleep at night is that by now (30th of August) it was freezing at night. So our first warm-up exercise that morning was getting the car de-iced:
After this and driving to the lake the swimming could start. With around 11 degrees water temperature we new this could get the first serious hurdle & was definitely a reality check into the race. It was time to get the right/calm/easy breathing in place and try to swim some 200 meters. Actually this went very well:
Finisher photo after 18 hours, 15 minutes and 54 seconds :
Op vrijdag 1 september staan wij samen met nog zo’n 250 triatleten om 05.00 uur in Livigno (I) aan de start van een van extreemste triathlons die er bestaat: de ICON (https://www.iconxtri.com – voor een indruk kijk ook vooral de video). 🏊🏻♀️ 3.8 km zwemmen in het aardedonker in een ijskoud bergmeer (14◦C)❄️ 🚴♂️ 195 km fietsen over vijf bergpassen (incl. de 2.757 meter hoge Stelvio) 🏔️🏔️🏔️🏔️🏔️ 🏃 42.2 km rennen over de bergen naar 3.000 meter hoogte. 🏔️ in totaal 241 km, 7.000 hoogtemeters en 20 uur sporten.
De ICON is normaalgesproken al een pittige uitdaging, maar de omstandigheden zullen naar verwachting dit jaar extreem zijn met de hele dag slagregens en temperaturen onder het vriespunt bij start en finish. Enfin, we doen het uit vrije wil, voor de uitdaging en het plezier in sport – en we weten dat jullie meeleven dus we gaan er het beste van maken!
Graag vragen wij ook jullie aandacht voor een groep mensen die niet uit vrije wil iedere dag absolute topsport bedrijft: patienten met de spierziekte CIDP. CIDP is een immuunziekte van de zenuwkabels in armen en benen waardoor je kracht afneemt en je binnen enkele maanden niet goed meer kunt lopen, zwemmen of fietsen. Prof. Pieter van Doorn van het Erasmus MC in Rotterdam wil een pilot studie starten om te kijken hoe deze patienten met behulp van de laatste technologie beter kunnen worden gemonitord en behandeld en wij willen hem graag daarbij helpen door donaties op te halen. Hiermee kunnen de onderzoekers de activiteitenmeters aanschaffen die voor deze studie nodig zijn.
Door hem en zijn patienten te helpen via: https://gofund.me/3108dc43 voelen wij ons op een geweldige manier door jullie gesteund en zullen we op 1 september 241 kilometer en 20 uur lang aan jullie denken! 🤜🤛
Alvast ontzettend bedankt – ook namens de onderzoeksgroep van het EMC! Roberto en Merijn (p.s. mocht het onderzoek je aanspreken – deel dit bericht vooral)
As an entrepreneur and investor I always find inspiration in things around me. Next to this I love it when other entrepreneurs and companies inspire me into new models & thinking. I think On (next to what Hoka has done with making the trail runningshoe mainstream) is showing the way here on two different innovations/models:
recycling of shoes and material
build a sound and good recurrent business model around it
For now I think the model is stil a little bit pricey for the average customer, but as with all new models, prices will come done over time when gaining economies of scale.
For a long time I have been running on UA shoes. I liked their approach with the connected shoe. A while ago I decided to try something new. I choose for the On Cloudneo (Cyclon)
The catch of this shoe is that is made out of beans* – it consists of a partnership between On and Arkema Arkema explains the Cyclon concept – Furthermore, it will be recycled by On after the shoe has been worn out. Let’s see where it takes me at the Rotterdam marathon this year 🙂
* A powerful choice from On designers as the castor seeds used to produce polyamide 11 do not compete with the human or animal food chain and do not cause deforestation. Arkema is also a founding member of the PRAGATI initiative in India, which drives sustainable castor crop farming .
