Two months ago, I swapped a Pollen battery for the first time in the field, at our first station. Depleted battery went in, charged battery came out, and it only took a few seconds.

The simplicity of it took me back fourteen years. It was a sunny afternoon in London, back in 2012, and I was trying Uber for the first time. I pulled out my shiny iPhone 5, fired up the app, pushed a button, watched a car move toward me like in a videogame, and looked up to see it come to life at the curb.

The magic was in the simplicity of it. And that’s what I felt at the swapping station.

For the past 12 years, I’ve been working with technology that moves people and cities. First Uber, in Portugal and Southern Europe. Then Kitch, the company I co-founded and ran until it was acquired. Somewhere along the way, it became obvious to me that whatever I did next had to put a dent in climate change. Especially since road transport is roughly a quarter of GHG emissions in the EU, and the main cause of air pollution in European cities.

In 2025, 60% of cars sold in the EU were electric or hybrid, and 60% of city buses deployed were zero-emission. By contrast, 6% of motorcycles and mopeds sold were electric. The picture is stark: cars and buses are electrifying, motorcycles got left behind. Loud, dirty and surprisingly polluting: a typical petrol moped emits more hydrocarbons and NOx per kilometer than the family petrol car next to it at the traffic light.

And cities won’t electrify until two-wheelers do.

So, why haven’t they?

Today, electric mopeds cost more because of their batteries. They have shorter ranges than petrol ones, and when they stop to recharge, it takes them several hours to get back on the road.

Who wants a motorbike that costs more and stays off the road for hours every day? And if this is an inconvenience for a commuter, it’s a non-starter for anyone who rides for a living. Six hours plugged into a wall is not a headache. It’s a lost day of work.

Battery swapping should be the obvious answer: seconds to swap instead of hours to charge. It works at scale, with millions of swaps every day in Taiwan, China and India. But why has it stalled everywhere else?

The answer is: fragmentation. Every moped manufacturer uses their own battery, sometimes a different battery per model. Different sizes, different formats, different voltages, different connectors, different communications protocols. A few ultra-high-density Asian markets got this to work through vertical, walled-garden networks: one battery and one network per OEM. But once you leave the few cities with incredibly high moped concentration, it doesn’t work.

Imagine if Volkswagens could only refuel at Volkswagen stations, and Toyotas at Toyota stations. That’s the world electric two-wheelers live in today.

So we asked a different question: what if a single battery could power any motorbike and moped?

That’s what we spent the last eighteen months building. A battery that electronically reconfigures itself — its voltage, the way it talks to the bike — to match any vehicle. The bike doesn’t adapt to the battery. The battery adapts to the bike.

We call it the Pollen battery. It’s lightweight, compact, and compatible with most electric mopeds on European roads today.

In March, we quietly went live in Lisbon. We deployed our first three public stations, and started helping delivery fleets (packages, food, groceries) switch from petrol to electric. They got it immediately: there’s no learning curve to swapping in seconds.

We’re a long way from done. The next few months are more of the same: a team in Lisbon, heads down, deploying more batteries and stations, continuously improving our product and user experience. Then, new cities.

Our bet is simple: cities are going to electrify on two wheels. They just need a battery that doesn’t care which bike you ride.

This post was handwritten mostly listening to Tougher Than the Rest by Nation of Language (covering The Boss).

A couple of months ago, a close friend told me, “2025 is really testing you.” He was right, and the year wasn’t close to being done with me then.

The highs were high, the obstacles were humbling. Most of all, it was intense. New roles and new demands: the rhythm of life changed to something I didn’t quite know existed (and I wasn’t quite ready for). I spent much of the year trying to keep my head above water, and I’m crossing the finish line on an empty tank.

That’s probably why, whenever I could afford to pick up a book, I didn’t look for pages that helped me make sense of the world. I looked for refuge and solace instead. I turned up the dial on fiction.

So, here are my 5 favorite reads of 2025.

I have two ways of describing this book.

The first: what if you could revisit all the crossroads in your life and turn the other way?

The second: are you old enough to remember the slightly cheesy 1990s TV show Sliders?

An argument that our sheltered, temperature-controlled, under-challenged lives are making us miserable. And that we need a degree of discomfort to thrive. Also: misogi.

Yes, there are a couple of villains in this story (spoiler alert: Sandberg and Kaplan). But it’s mostly about what happens when wide-eyed idealism, unlimited power, boundless ambition, and a lack of moral guardrails all mix.

Dan, the reading dad, said it best: “Fredrik Backman cheats. He writes about things that pull your heart tight, then creates moving stories and beautiful characters to keep it that way. Then he uses the things the characters do and the things that happen to them to strum your taut heartstrings — and it’s not gentle. It’s like your heart is an electric guitar and Slash is playing Enter Sandman on repeat for 448 pages. And then when it’s over, you’re out of breath and crying but also smiling and wondering how going through something so hard can make you feel so good.”
And “If you are prepared for the soul-crushing sadness and intense emotional journey, then My Friends is an absolute must-read.”

The life of Dominic Salt in Shearwater is so absolutely remote, and yet so relatable in many ways. Uncomfortable and gut-wrenching, but also liberating. I can’t untie it from late night readings holding baby David, and from those sunny spring mornings. It was only May, and I already knew I’d read my favorite book of the year.

And here are my other 5-star Goodreads picks of the year, that didn’t quite make it into the crowded top-5 list (a bit shorter than usual, I think I was a bit grouchier on ratings than usual):

• A Different Kind of Power, by Jacinda Ardern (2025). I could feel the heavy burden on Jacinda’s shoulders. The unlikely story of a leader who led with kindness, empathy and courage.
• Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman (2017). I thought I wouldn’t finish it. Not that it’s bad, on the contrary, but because it’s so intense. Constantly veering between hilarious and heartbreaking.
• Everything Is Tuberculosis, by John Green (2025). It took John Green to convince me that tuberculosis is a fascinating subject.
• Humankind, by Rutger Bregman (2019). An argument that people are generally good, kind, and cooperative by nature. Except for BMW drivers.
• How Big Things Get Done, by Bent Flyvbjerg (2023). The common threads among big projects: both the successful ones and the shipwrecks. For someone building a hardware-based startup, it came in pretty handy.
• John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, by Ian Leslie (2025). It’s not a book about The Beatles, but it’s still the best literature I’ve ever read on The Beatles. Keep Spotify close to you while reading this.

Finally, here are five books leading my to-read list for 2026:

• A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman (2012)
• Inside The Box, by David Epstein (2026)
• London Falling, by Patrick Radden Keefe (2026)
• The Midnight Train, by Matt Haig (2026)
• The Road to Tender Hearts, by Annie Hartnett (2025)

Happy reading, and here’s to a less intense 2026! 🎆

Do you know those movies that serve to move the plot of a larger narrative arc and set the stage for a sequel? Like The Empire Strikes Back or Back to the Future II? That’s what 2024 felt like for me — a year of shifting gears.

It was a year of welcoming new people into my day-to-day, learning that the four of us at home will soon become five, and taking the first steps toward starting a new company, with all the anticipation that brings. It was also a year of bracing for another cycle led by politicians who don’t seem to place much value on tolerance, openness, and inclusion.

I remember exactly what I was reading in some of these key moments. New baby? Josef Mengele’s retirement in Brazil. New startup “office”? Damon Hill’s days as a courier on a motorbike. The build-up to the US elections? I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom — almost too appropriate.

Amidst all this shifting context, my book reading was a bit of a constant, even though I read a little less than in recent years. Maybe it was all the gear shifting, or maybe I just didn’t find the right book for most of the first half of the year. I kept leaning toward fiction, dove into the motorsports rabbit hole and stuck mostly to contemporary works (2024 and recent releases).

So, here are my 5 favorite reads of 2024.

I daydream and spend a lot of time in my head. As a runner, I frequently wonder what it would be like to share the same rarefied air as the greats — usually during long runs, when my sanity might be questionable. Turns out, I’m not the only one. Matt Fitzgerald also fantasizes about training and running with the pros. But he actually did something about it: he joined the NAZ Elite team in Flagstaff, AZ, to train for the Chicago Marathon and chronicled every step of the journey. It was a very fun read and an excellent companion to my own marathon training.

An incredible piece of exhaustive journalistic investigation and gripping storytelling. Patrick Radden Keefe details the story of three generations of the Sackler family and their roles in creating the current opioid crisis — one that has led to the overdose deaths of more than 500,000 people in the United States alone, and countless more worldwide, since 1999. What could be a story of entrepreneurship, ingenuity, and philanthropy instead unravels into greed, deception, and a stunning lack of morality.

This book offers a beautiful journey through the history of rock music — and the many genres that influenced it or crossed its path. My kids and I picked it up in August and spent the rest of the year working our way through it. We could have sped through. Instead, we listened to the music of every highlighted artist as we went along. That led to dancing, jumping, laughing, and recoiling — ultimately resulting in a Spotify playlist that has become the soundtrack of our road trips and, I have to admit, some of my runs. Coming home to find my five-year-old son bobbing his head to Back in Black or air drumming to Smells Like Teen Spirit has been a pretty great side effect.

A riveting, gut-wrenching story that quickly became impossible to put down. The Women follows Frankie McGrath, a nursing student from Southern California who decides to join the Army Nurse Corps and serve in Vietnam. But it’s also the story of the many women who went to war — women who were overlooked and never received medals or praise for their sacrifice and service.

It’s an extremely well-researched look at the surge of mental illness, anxiety, and depression among the generation that has grown up since the 2010s, and how these trends are rooted in the introduction and rapid rise of smartphones and social networks. While helicopter parenting prevents children from playing and exploring outdoors, the ubiquitous and unsupervised use of social media exposes them to a wide array of dangers and detrimental side effects. This is an important read for everyone — and an absolute must-read for any parent of a child or teenager.

And here are a few more books that I really enjoyed but couldn’t quite fit into my top five — my other 5-star Goodreads picks of the year:

• Daniel’s Running Formula, by Jack Daniels (1998). A very practical and well-substantiated overview of Jack Daniels’s training methods. I used it to break my marathon PR this year. 😅
• Funny Story, by Emily Henry (2024). A page-turner.
• Not the End of the World, by Hannah Ritchie (2024). Drawing on the same spirit as Factfulness, it builds a case for taking action against a climate crisis — minus the unnecessary noise and panic.
• Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt (2021). It was the #6 on my top-five list. Marcellus!
• The Formula, by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg (2024). A ride through the rollercoaster journey of Formula 1, lightly touching on iconic drivers, teams, and cars, and focusing mostly on the behind-the-scenes architects of the sport.
• The Mechanic, by Marc “Elvis” Priestley (2021). The chronicles of an unruly, irresponsible lad in the F1 paddock. I really didn’t want to rate it 5 stars, but it’s such a fun read.

Finally, these are five books on top of my to-read list for 2025:

• Atmosphere, by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2025)
• Freedom: Memoirs 1954–2021, by Angela Merkel (2024)
• Great Big Beautiful Life, by Emily Henry (2025)
• There Are Rivers in the Sky, by Elif Shafak (2024)
• Tracers in the Dark, by Andy Greenberg (2022)

Happy reading, and happy holidays! 🎄

As a child, my literary diet consisted mainly of fiction. Especially sci-fi. I didn’t rationalize it much at the time, but the allure of immersing myself in countless hours of exploring new and fantastical universes far surpassed the appeal of everyday life.

As the years passed, I gradually shifted away from fiction, replacing it with topics rooted in the real world that I cared deeply about and wanted to understand better. In 2023, for example, those were mostly climate change, energy, and artificial intelligence. Lately, however, I’ve found myself circling back to fiction. I think my kids’ newfound love for Harry Potter and Tolkien might be rubbing off on me.

So, this year, my reading list has a nice balance of fiction and non-fiction. And, for the second year running, the top spot goes to a fiction book.

If you’re on the lookout for something to read, consider adding a few of these to your list. Wishing you happy holidays and happy reading! 📚

It looks like a tale centered around video games, but beware: it’s a trap! Games are just a beautiful backdrop for nuanced a story delving into human relationships, ego, and pain. What resonated with me was the surprising swiftness with which I connected to Sam and Sadie, two characters that might not appear relatable at a first — and possibly, tenth — glance.

Although I enjoyed my fair share of Bestie Boys tunes and watched many hours of their funny yet seemingly nonsensical videos on MTV as a kid, I am by no means a fan. I didn’t know the slightest thing about the individuals and the story behind the band. Disclaimer: done! This book stands out for its exceptional production and humor. It’s an experience best enjoyed through listening rather than reading. Filled with captivating, unexpected, grounded, and humorous stories, told not only through the voices of Mike D and ADROCK but also notable guest readers like Snoop Dogg, Kim Gordon, Jon Stewart, and Bette Midler. It also serves as a profound tribute to Adam Yauch.

70% of female athletes suffer from disordered eating. Lauren Fleshman’s book isn’t just about running; it’s a compelling exploration of how competitive athletics, originally designed by and for men, silently inflicts considerable harm on young women. Through a powerful narrative, it delivers a crucial message, and it makes for a captivating read.

Say and feel what you will about Elon Musk, he is a one-of-a-kind individual and one of the most relevant of our time by most standards. In this book, Walter Isaacson chronicles Musk’s early life and tumultuous connection with his father, his various relationships, and the pivotal moments in the building of such influential companies as Tesla and SpaceX. Isaacson is also able to provide valuable insights into the way Musk thinks and operates, and the complex dynamics of his work and personal life.

Carrie Soto is Back is the story of a talented, ambitious, and highly competitive woman who strives to win even when the odds are massively stacked against her. While Carrie may not be likable, it’s impossible not to admire her and aspire to be like her. Although it may not be the most pressing or profound book I’ve read this year — I admit to have tried not to give it the number one spot — it was so much fun to read.

Selecting just five books is always a challenging task. So here are my other 5-star Goodread books of the year didn’t make the final cut.

• Daring Greatly, by Brené Brown (2012). Failing sucks. It is also an inevitable part of life. In her book, In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown elaborates on failing, and on her own candid battles with perfectionism, the aversion to “messy” emotions, and the looming fear of failure — struggles that resonated with me. Brown skillfully builds on her own personal experiences — her vulnerabilities — to introduce her overarching thesis, grounded in years of research, delving into the true nature of vulnerability. Because our deepest regrets usually come not from what we’ve done, but from what we let slip away because we didn’t think we were good enough.
• Doing Good Better, by William MacAskill (2015). MacAskill addresses the question of how we can make “the most good” for others, grounded in a clear and thoughtful framework. If you aspire to make the world a better place, this is a good starting point.
• I’m Glad My Mom Died, by Jennette McCurdy (2022). The title serves both as an attention-grabbing hook and a paradoxical conclusion to McCurdy’s story. In her memoir, McCurdy vividly recounts the abuse and the horrors she endured as a child star, with admirable dark humor. Through her storytelling, she also shines a bright light on the broken system that perpectuates such experiences.
• Outlive, by Peter Attia (2023). Peter Attia does a great job of articulating why medicine needs to move on from treating sickness (medicine 2.0) to preventing it (medicine 3.0). Attia argues that prevention is crucial for maximizing a long and healthy life, particularly in preventing conditions such as metabolic syndrome, heart disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases — the cause of death for a vast majority of people.
• Red Rising, by Pierce Brown (2014). In sagas, I’m more frequently drawn to the book that undertakes the most world-building work, which is usually the first in the series. This is the case of Red Rising, which introduces us to Darrow, the oppressive cast-like society he is a part of, and the hero journey he is embarking on. It’s a compelling page-turner that has inevitably sparked numerous comparisons to Hunger Games for obvious reasons.
• Super Founders, by Ali Tamaseb (2021). Unlike many books focused on the narratives of founding tech startups, Tamaseb stands out by grounding his conclusions in data. He adeptly draws crucial correlations to the primary factors that underpin success, while also challenging numerous factors that, despite their widespread acclaim, seem to be unrelated to the success or failure of an early enterprise.
• The Alignment Problem, by Brian Christian (2020). If you are interested in understanding AI, learning about its history, the (more-or-less) current state of the field, and potential developments and implications, Christian’s book is an excellent place to start.
• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, by Eric Jorgenson (2020). While Naval Ravikant may come across with a bit of an attitude, once you get past that, the thoughts shared in this almanac are practical, thought-provoking, and useful.
• The Cold Start Problem, by Andrew Chang (2021). In The Cold Start Problem, Andrew Chang thoroughly analyses network effects in software marketplaces and the pivotal role they play in scaling marketplace startups. Leveraging his experience at Uber, Chang enriches his insights with a thoughtful good selection of historical and contemporary examples.
• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2017). I enjoyed Carrie Soto so much that I delved into TJR’s other works, including Evelyn Hugo. From the very first pages, Evelyn Hugo lures you into a captivating trap. You’re fully aware of it, and remarkably, you find yourself loving it as the trap springs shut.
• Tunnel 29, by Helena Merriman (2021). Tunnel 29 chronicles the spectacular true story of the most remarkable tunnel ever dug under the Berlin Wall, highlighting the extraordinary risks people are willing to take when their freedom is at stake.
• Wasteland, by Oliver Franklin-Wallis (2023). This book made me obsess about trash for months and prompted me to change my consumption and disposal habits. If you want to know the harsh truth about what happens to what we throw away, this is a must-read.
• Win Every Argument, by Medhi Hasan (2023). A solid and entertaining primer on the techniques for making effective arguments, Hasan’s work is supported by numerous entertaining anecdotes, interviews, and historical illustrations. After reading, I sincerely hope I never have to engage in a debate with Mehdi Hasan.

Note: re-reading some of the Harry Potter books with my children would have easily taken the number one spot — but I have a strict “no-rereads” policy for this list. 😅

Finally, these are five books on top of my to-read list for 2024:

• Cobalt Red, by Siddharth Kara (2023)
• Iron War, by Matt Fitzgerald (2011)
• Not The End of the World, by Hannah Ritchie (2024)
• Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt (2022)
• The Six, by Loren Grush (2023)

I’ve been making a list of my favorite books for a few years now. These are usually the ones that inspired me the most, were fun to read, or gave me that tingle of sadness as I turned the last page. Those that, for some reason, struck a chord with me.

Sometimes a theme or two emerge — I delved into eating habits and veganism, I tried to get more insights into building great products and a culture, I resorted to reading to focus more and develop better habits. And I did my usual fiction and autobiography stints.

What I often came to appreciate is what I read during the past 365 days punctuated the global and personal events of the year for me. I remember reading Will Smith’s biography as Russia invaded Ukraine (and before the incident at the Oscars), thinking about my stolen focus while exploring the beauties of Santa Maria, settling with my family into a new home while reading The Stand, traveling to Chicago wholly unprepared for a marathon but devouring Masters of Doom, or going through big changes at work while reading Build.

Here are my 5 favorite reads of 2022.

This one has been a long overdue read. In Masters of Doom, Kushner tells the story of how the two Johns built a gaming revolution with Doom. Who doesn’t love the story of how two misfits went on to change the world, and how human and flawed these geniuses also were? I know I did. The cherry on top is how Masters of Doom delivers on the nostalgia that makes Stranger Things so irresistible — all of a sudden, I was going back in time to the days of Wolfenstein 3D. Fun!

Building a company is a rollercoaster ride. The company I started three years ago went from 2 people in a coworking space to about 100 this year. We have gone through so many twists & turns and emotional ups & downs that stopped keeping track. And one topic in particular has weighed on me through it all: how do we build and sustain a strong culture in such a rapidly changing environment. The Culture Code is not a blueprint, but it is a very inspiring book that touches on many key aspects of developing and fostering a strong culture.

Alright, alright, alright: this is one rambling book. I’m not a fan of Matthew McConaughey and, honestly speaking, this book didn’t make him more likable in my eyes. But he is one heck of a storyteller and packed his Greenlights full of quirky, unlikely, sad, funny (and sometimes cheesy) stories. I can’t think about the Dooleys without laughing.

Build is a condensed encyclopedia about building a company and great products written by someone who truly knows what they’re talking about — none other than the father of the iPod and the co-creator of the iPhone. It was energizing, inspiring and thought-provoking. I took so many notes and stole so many ideas and principles it’s embarrassing.

What’s going on here? I’m giving the #1 spot to a fiction book for the second year in a row. This was the second King book I read (the other one was Billy Summers) so I’m by no means a fan or someone who loves his horror and fantasy books. Though I do have a soft spot for dystopian, post-apocalyptic read. And reading The Stand through COVID was timely to say the least. The Stand is a great story, with a drumming pace where 95% is build-up, and with thick characters you can’t feel indifferent about. M-O-O-N, that spells great!

As I was writing this post, I changed the ranking quite a few times. It’s always hard to name a favorite, and to trim the top 5. So here are my honorable mentions, my other 5-star Goodreads books of the year:

• Atomic Habits, by James Clear (2018). I want to take the pages of this book, frame them and put them all over my walls (actually, I have ordered a poster that summarizes the thesis of the book). “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems”. Atomic Habits is a practical book that compellingly demonstrates that the path towards getting where you want is not through lofty goals, but through systems and habits that you must build into your routine. I loved it, and I’m using it thoroughly in my day to day.
• Billy Summers, by Stephen King (2021). No horror, no supernatural here. This is great, gripping, crime fiction of a war veteran turned mercenary sniper. But it’s also so much more.
• Good to Great, by James C. Collins (2001). A very articulated, well-researched assessment of what makes a company that was average become and remain great. While it is dated, most of its underlying points still hold well.
• Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer (2009). I could relate a lot to Foer. Perhaps because he went from raging carnivore to vegan. Or maybe because he finds it hard to reconcile why it is OK to eat some animals but not others. In any way, I think this book is especially powerful because — despite his natural bias — Foer approaches the question of eating animals from a journalist’s perspective. The book includes interviews with and combines the perspectives of family members, activists and slaughterhouse workers. For this reason, Eating Animals reads more like an educational book than a rally for veganism.
• Factfulness, by Hans Rosling (2018). In Factfulness, Professor Hans Rosling addresses how most of us get basic global trends wrong, such as what is the percentage of the world’s population living in poverty or what is the global vaccination rates for children under 1 year of age. Factfulness is a reality-check, it debunks much of what “everybody knows” but is plainly wrong, and gives us the tools to avoid these traps.
• Freezing Order, by Bill Browder (2022). Freezing Order picks up where Red Notice left off. Bill Browder continues his crusade against Putin and his regime, and tells a story that is packed with murder, intrigue, corruption and organized crime. It would be a great fiction book and what is disturbing is that it is a real-life story.
• Stolen Focus, by Johann Hari (2022). If you can’t help feeling annoyed whenever you realize you have picked up for phone for the nth time in the day for no good reason, whenever you notice how many hours you spend scrolling through Instagram, or whenever you look around at a restaurant and see half the people with their heads down looking at their phones instead of talking to the person in front of them, this book is for you. Fueled by these annoyances, Hari went on to explore why we suck at escaping the grip of our devices and how we can reclaim our focus.
• This is Vegan Propaganda, by Ed Winters (2022). This is an unapologetic case for veganism. It’s fact-based, educational, morally-challenging, compassionate and many times hard to read. Maybe it won’t turn you vegan or vegetarian. But if you’re not used to putting any thought into the food you put in your plate, you probably will after reading this.

Finally, these are five books on top of my to-read list for 2023:

• Carrie Soto is Back, by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2022)
• Dilla Time, by Dan Charnas (2022)
• Out of Thin Air: Running Wisdom and Magic Above the Clouds in Ethiopia, by Michael Crawley (2021)
• Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World, by Matt Alt (2021)
• The Power of the Dog, by Don Wislow (2006)

This morning I buckled my son in his car seat and we went on a mission: getting my daughter’s bike fixed at the sports shop. It was a beautiful and sunny morning, the radio host was listing his favorite albums of the year, and my son was humming his latest favorite song while observing the passing landscape.

So, my mind drifted. It drifted to the first day my daughter rode her bike without her training wheels. It was a rainy lockdown day, so we went underground to the building garage. We had been taking her training wheels off for a few minutes in the past couple of days, but this time we went cold turkey: training wheels off, a little push forward, and godspeed. I remember how proud I was when I saw her go off on her own, not looking back, giggling. I love that about kids — they learn so fast.

Why am I telling you this? When I got back home, I shared this memory with my wife: “Can you believe that only two years ago she needed training wheels?”. She stopped me short. It had been 10 months, not two years. And that, for me, sums up 2021. A year that felt like a broken metronome. Seeing my daughter ride without her training wheels felt like a much older memory than it was, and driving south to the beach with my family in the summer felt like last month but it was half a year ago.

What I find intriguing is that, even in this nonlinear timeline, I remember wondering who was the murderer in Agatha Christie’s plot while hoping my daughter wouldn’t crash against a wall, and being engrossed in the story of the Dread Pirate Roberts after putting my kids to bed, dead tired from swimming in the sea (yes, having The Silk Road interwoven with my kids on the beach is a bit weird).

Reading was a very good thing for me this year, and I enjoyed exploring unrelated topics such as music autobiographies, climate change, cybercrime, racial inequality, science fiction, and Russia. So, without further ramblings, here are my top 5 book recommendations from 2021.

Bill Gates did a great job of sorting the mess that is the discussion around climate. It’s a clear, concise, and holistic primer on a colossal subject, in which Gates’ can explain complex issues in a simple and accessible way. The message is clear: climate change is a big problem, but the solution is within reach and this is what it looks like. It is also an inspiring book that works as a call to action.

I was entirely new to John Green — I haven’t read his books and haven’t listened to his podcast (and will now probably try both) — so I didn’t know what to expect. The book is a collection of essays that review different facets of the human-centered world on a five-star scale. Because, what doesn’t inevitably get rated on a five-star scale? In “Anthropocene” it feels like Green is trying to make sense of what it is to live in the 2020s, and he does so with hope and wonder. I have to say, I was skeptical when picking this one up — I like the feeling of struggling to put down a book because I feel engrossed in a narrative and can’t wait to know what happens next, and how could I get this from a book of essays? Yet, as Green finishes discussing Velociraptors, I couldn’t wait to learn what he thought about, of all things, Canada Geese.

Quoting my friend Ricardo, “if ‘Putin’s People’ provides an overview of how big the forest is, ‘Red Notice’ shows in detail how each tree comes to be”. It begins as a well-articulated biography of Bill Browder, an unusual stock trader who felt the pull of an economic opportunity in Eastern Europe. But then the floor drops, and Browder plunges in a sea of politics, corruption, and crime that is hard to believe can be true. “Red Notice” reads like a gripping thriller, while providing a powerful indictment of Russia’s current regime.

American Kingpin tells the story of how Ross Ulbricht, a soft-spoken libertarian who believes that people should be able to put into their bodies whatever they wish, went on to create the Amazon for drugs. It’s easy to pass judgment on Ulbricht but, as I dove deeper into “American Kingpin”, I couldn’t help empathizing with him, admiring his wits and courage, and rooting for him so many times. The concepts of good and bad, of right and wrong, become very blurred. Bilton did an extraordinary job of researching and documenting the rise and fall of the Silk Road and its mastermind, and just a good of a job in writing it in a way that reads like a suspense thriller.

I read “Project Hail Mary” not knowing the first thing of what it was about. And I was so happy I did it because even the book jacket synopsis chips away at the surprise and world-building that makes this book so good. Much like how you shouldn’t know anything about Lost before you watch the show. So, I won’t tell you much about this book in case you haven’t read it (other than it is truly great), because I hope you have the full experience. And I kinda envy you for that.

Ranking these books came down to the wire — I changed my favorite pick in the middle of writing this post. It was also hard to leave books out of this shortlist. So here are my honorable mentions, my other 5-star Goodreads books of the year:

• Agent Sonya: Moscow’s Most Daring Wartime Spy, by Ben Macintyre (2020). Macintyre does it again and produces another jaw-dropping 20th-century espionage book. A real-life spy story set in the 1940s about the woman code-named “Sonya” that does justice to “The Spy and the Traitor”.
• Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies, by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh (2018). I should say I’m not a fan of Hoffman’s writing style and Silicon Valley grandiosity. But, maybe because I went on to start a company a couple of years ago, this book struck a chord. Detailed, with many anecdotes and pointers that are useful for anyone wanting to grow a company, especially in tech.
• Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth, by Rachel Maddow (2019). An exceptional and timely read. How did we become so dependent on the oil and gas industry, and to what extent did corruption, greed, and incompetence play a role, from Russia to (that’s right) the United States? Maddow addresses all of these questions and more in “Blowout”.
• It’s So Easy: And Other Lies, by Duff McKagan (2011). I’m a fan. “It’s So Easy” has all the elements you’re looking for in a rockstar’s biography, with all the excesses that come with it, especially in the 80s and 90s. But it’s also the first-person account of someone who lived through and lived a very interesting life after sobering up. In his autobiography, Duff comes across and humble, self-aware, and a talented writer.
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, by Patrick Lencioni (2002). A fable that hits the nail in its head. Even though it has been almost 20 years, and smartphones didn’t exist when Lencioni published this book, his five problems with executive teams still hold to date.
• The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, by Dave Grohl (2021). Hats off. Dave Grohl’s book is not the journaling of the life of drummer and lead singer of two of the world’s biggest rock bands. It’s not your typical rockstar biography at all. Rather, it’s a collection of sometimes warm and funny, and other times heartbreaking and mischievous, stories that seemed to have shaped the man Dave Grohl is today.
• The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, by Heather McGhee (2021). “The Sum of Us” is the story of how a series of invisible racially-driven walls arose and came to shape so much of the inequality we see in the world today. It’s well researched and detailed and, as Brian Griffith said in his Goodreads review, it doesn’t read as if it’s written about “other people” — it is utterly relatable and hits home.
• This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, by Adam Kay (2017). I lazily wrote on Goodreads that this book is 80% hilarious and 20% heartbreaking. What I meant by this is that, for the most part, Adam Kay exposes what is wrong and broken with the NHS, and how it inhumanely puts junior doctors through its grinding machine, but in a humorous way that made me outright laugh out loud so many times. But there’s also a lot of holding back tears. It’s bittersweet and it’s an incredible memoir.
• Santaland Diaries, by David Sedaris (2006). This is the right book to read at Christmas time. Sedaris turns a potentially ordinary sequence of events into a hilarious and bizarre set of stories. Hearing it in his voice is especially funny and I urge you to go back to this old “This American Life” episode to do just that.
• Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling, by Matthew Dicks (2018). This book is special. Matthew Dicks can tell a story and, in this book, he does a fabulous job in explaining how to tell them. In one single swoop, I found myself gripped by Dick’s sometimes funny and heartwarming, and other times sad and tear-inducing stories while feeling like an apprentice to his storytelling techniques. I found myself thinking about stories I wanted to write immediately, and following a number of his suggested routines. Don’t be turned off by the self-help title.
• We Should All Be Feminists, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2014). Probably the single, sharpest, and most persuasive essay on feminism, built on top of the author’s personal experiences. A great introduction and call to action on the topic of feminism.

Finally, these are five books on top of my to-read list for 2022:

• Billy Summers, by Stephen King (2021). I have never read a King novel — time to start?
• From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin’s Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin’s Secret War on the West, by Heidi Blake (2019).
• Immune: a Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive, by Philipp Dettmer (2021).
• Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, by Ijeoma Oluo (2021).
• The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel, by Kati Marton (2021).

2020 was pretty lousy. And in such supreme bizarro times, turning to books for solace was one of the bright spots of the year for me.

This year, I focused my reading on topics such as racial discrimination, gender inequality, and sexual harassment. I explored themes such as US history and politics, the Cold War, and cyber-terrorism. I decided to finally read a number of sci-fi classics. I had my fix of sports and running-related reads. And I did pick the odd memoir that I just figured was going to be a fun read.

It was also funny to me to notice how the year had such marked periods. To the point where certain books became hardwired in my brain to events and moments of the year. For example, reading Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” early in the year, 2020 was easy and it was looking like an uneventful sequel to 2019. Picking up “Ready Player One” in February, if felt that the events unfolding in Europe were competing for the title of most dystopic with those from the book. And I distinctly remember the eerie post-apocalyptical feeling of running on empty streets while listening to Garrett Graff’s “The Only Plane in the Sky” in March.

So here are my top 5 book recommendations of the year.

Learning about the story of one of the most flamboyant rockstars in history triggered my curiosity. Me tells the story of a self-loathing and insecure young man who went from playing rough pubs in Middlesex to becoming one of the most acclaimed music stars of the past 40 years, thinking so highly of himself he once ordered a staff member to change the weather for him. Elton’s candor is notable, as he speaks openly about his legendary temper tantrums, cocaine and alcohol abuse, sexuality, and feuds. The book is by turns hilarious, self-lacerating, scandalous, and touching.

I read business books every now and then, but rarely do I speak about them or consider them “a favorite read”. I’ll make an exception for this one. The unorthodox but highly effective culture at Netflix has been a subject of debate in several circles for the past years. In No Rules Rules, Netflix’s founder and CEO Reed Hastings, and INSEAD professor and author of “The Culture Map” Erin Meyer walk readers through the company’s unique and, often controversial and counterintuitive, corporate culture of “freedom & responsibility”. It focuses on core aspects such as building talent density, increasing candor, and removing controls by leading with context. The book is incredibly well-articulated and documented, with an honest attempt from Meyer to be impartial (and to question Hastings). And in my personal context of building a startup, this book provides great fuel. Of course, while Hastings attributes Netflix’s groundbreaking success largely to its culture, the argument can also be made that the culture holds because of the company’s continued growth.

She Said recounts how two Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporters, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, broke the Harvey Weinstein story. While the outlines of the story are widely known — the bathrobes, the “massages”, the hotel bathtub stories — She Said details how the story was uncovered. It details how difficult, frightening and frustrating it is to uncover and tell such a story. It speaks about the countless women who spoke up and were silenced or not taken seriously, and those who didn’t because it was pointless. And it shines a bright light on the well-oiled machine of board members, lawyers, HR officers, and PR agents that enabled Weinstein and many other men to get away with impunity for so long after their behavior had become an open and even accepted secret.

Yes, I was very late to the party. Ready Player One was one of the sci-fi “classics” that I decided to pick up this year, with little to no expectations. And I loved it. It was an exciting ride through an 80’s pop culture geekoid dystopia set in 2044. And it was a heartfelt and gripping hero’s journey type of story about a nobody teenage protagonist, Wade Watts, who lives in a slum city in the outskirts of Oklahoma City and spends most of his waking hours connected to a virtual world — alongside most of humanity — to escape his lousy real life when he receives his call to adventure. Ready Player One got me playing Your Love by The Outfield and Jump by Van Halen on repeat and screwed up my Spotify daily mix, but it was worth it. Ready Player Two: not so good.

Sometimes, real-life can be just as exciting as the best fiction. That’s the case of The Spy and The Traitor, an account of Oleg Gordievsky, who was almost literally born into the KGB, and became a double agent and probably the most important British spy since the Second World War. It’s an astonishing and gripping story of high-stakes espionage, betrayal, deception, and survival. At the same time, it’s a unique perspective of life in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and of the far-reaching and complex tentacles of the KGB. Macintyre does an incredible job of merging detailed research with incredible storytelling that reads like the most thrilling fiction and makes it impossible to put down.

Picking my top 5 recommendations was especially hard this year, as I had to leave reads that I absolutely loved out of the list. So here are my other 5-star Goodreads books of the year:

• Life’s Too Short to Go So Fucking Slow: Lessons from an Epic Friendship That Went the Distance, by Susan Lacke (2017). Probably the hardest book for me to leave out of the top 5, so screw the alphabetic order. I picked it up without knowing what to expect and found myself completely gripped by the beautiful story of how Susan Lacke went from an overweight binge-drinking chain-smoker to a triathlete and her beautiful, deep, and honest friendship with Carlos.
• A Promised Land, by Barack Obama (2020). The riveting and deeply personal account of one of the most inspiring political figures in recent history. Fired up, ready to go!
• Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, by Ronan Farrow (2019). The book details the corruption amongst Holywood elites, their apparatus, and the media, and the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed to silence the victims of abuse. A great complement to She Said.
• Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card (1985). A novel that became a science fiction classic, centered around a complex and well-developed character.
• Hanson’s Marathon Method, by Luke Humphrey (2016). A great and well-articulated training method/philosophy to enable runners at all levels to run their best marathons. I intend to use it on my next marathon in the Spring, Covid permitting…
• How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer, by Andrian Newey (2017) tells the story of Adrian’s unrivaled 35-year career in Formula One, encapsulating a remarkable life story with the thrill of Formula One racing.
• Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers, by Andy Greenberg (2019). A chilling detective story about how a group of Russian hackers is shaping the future of global warfare.
• The Martian, by Andy Weir (2014). It’s a fantastic novel about astronaut Mark Watney, a space castaway, fighting to survive against all odds.
• The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company, by Bog Iger (2019). As the leader of the most prominent entertainment company in the world with a brilliant career, Iger tells the story of what it is to be the CEO of such a complex organization.
• What Is a Girl Worth?: My Story of Breaking the Silence and Exposing the Truth about Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics, by Rachel Denhollander (2019). The first-person account of Rachel Denhollander, a once wide-eyed idealistic gymnast, who exposed the most shocking US gymnastics scandal in history. The story about a serial sexual abuser, and how a massive organization is complicit with his actions and conspires to silence his victims.

Going into 2021, I have an ever-growing of “to-read” books, filled with titles I will never pick up. However, these are five books that I do want to read next year.

• Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth, by Rachel Maddow (2019).
• Churchill: Walking with Destiny, by Andrew Roberts (2018).
• Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West, by Catherine Belton (2020).
• The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2016).
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander (2010).

Most of our favorite restaurants may have to shut their doors not to open them again. This is yet another collateral damage that the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been impacting us in the most diverse ways, may impose on us. Food delivery will certainly play a key role in the survival of several restaurants. And giving back to restaurants the control of their deliveries will be an important part of the solution.

Over the last decade, online food delivery has been growing at a staggering pace all over the world. In the span of just a few years, food delivery went from greasy pizza leaflets pinned to our fridges, with toll-free numbers in colorful bold letters, to smartphone apps that connect us to dozens or even hundreds of restaurants in our city almost instantaneously.

However, most of the food arriving at our homes remained fast food — just as it had been in the time of the fridge leaflets. And our favorite restaurants have largely remained on the sidelines as the delivery industry quickly developed. For good reasons. Some restaurants had so many customers walking through their doors that they lacked the kitchen capacity to cook food to be delivered at home. Many did not want to taint their carefully crafted dine-in experience with a constant flow of delivery couriers and their bulky backpacks. Others feared that their food would not arrive in proper shape to its destination. And almost all disliked the fees they were being charged by the delivery apps.

So, in early 2019, Nuno and I teamed up to help solve this problem: how to get the food from our favorite restaurants to our dining room tables. We rolled up our sleeves and got to work. We spent a lot of time with restaurant owners, chefs, and cooks to understand the challenges that stood in the way of us enjoying our favorite taco sitting on our couch, or impressing our friends with our sushi of choice. And we got to a solution. We would create a virtual kitchen, where everything would be designed from scratch to order food and eat it at home. We would house the city’s favorite restaurants there. We would take care of the operations to allow restaurants to focus on what they do best: delicious food. And we would develop the technology to absorb the complexity of delivery, and to allow these restaurants to reach more people in the city.

Then, in March 2020, we finally launched our first operation in Lisbon. Jointly with Nómada, we launched Umikai: the city’s most delicious poké, delivered at home. But suddenly, the world stopped. On the 18th of March, Portugal plunged into a state of emergency. Restaurants had to shut their doors. It happened in Portugal, and it happened almost everywhere else.

The restaurant business is one of the least resilient businesses in the event of a lockdown. The median restaurant is able to survive a mere 16 days with its doors shut. And, according to the US Independent Restaurant Coalition, 85% of independent restaurants may not pull through this pandemic. This scenario may have a profound impact on our economy, with millions of jobs at stake all over the world. On the one hand, in Portugal alone, a small country of 10 million people, there are more than 240 thousand jobs at risk and, by the first half of the year, over 40% of businesses in the sector displayed alarming levels of lay-offs. On the other hand, there is the imminent danger of a domino effect that may impact adjacent industries, such as food production, agriculture, fishing, freight transporting, among others.

And this how, because of a relentless global pandemic that forced the closure of local restaurants and coffee shops, and a reopening accompanied by restrictive measures and by the general fear of people to eat out, food delivery went from being optional to being critical. For many restaurants, it became a lifeline, a way of surviving and keeping doors open even when customers stopped coming in through them.

As with restaurants, we at Kitch also had to adapt quickly. At first, we rushed to open our kitchens as fast as we could. What we envisioned as a pilot with Nómada to launch Umikai became the beginning of a close relationship with a number of Lisbon’s favorite restaurants which we onboarded sooner than expected. Soon after, we understood that we could support and reach more restaurants by giving them access to our technology. Kitch Tech, the technology we developed for our own kitchens and restaurants, and that we will soon release more widely.

Today, it’s not the luxury of having the food from our favorite restaurants delivered to our homes that is at stake. It’s the very existence of these restaurants. This is what our mission, at Kitch, has become — an effort to keep the restaurants we love with open doors, in our streets. And we all have an important part to play. Put on a face mask and walk to the restaurant to get takeout. Use the restaurant’s own channels to order a pickup or have our lunch delivered. Or even using delivery apps. Everything can make a difference to keep our favorite restaurants around, with us.

🇵🇹 em português.

Food delivery is a growing part of our routines. It’s easy, convenient, and there are more and more restaurants available. However, not everything is perfect. Many of our favorite restaurants still don’t make it to our dining tables. And most restaurants haven’t conceived their food to travel across town inside a backpack, on a motorbike.

At Kitch we want your favorite restaurant to step into your home, and deliver you a worthy dining experience.

So, what is Kitch?

We’re a kitchen. We are not a delivery app, and we are not a restaurant. We’re a kitchen that is distributed all over town and that houses the most exciting restaurants. A kitchen where the most creative chefs will cook new and exclusive dishes, as well as their most popular classics. A kitchen where everything is designed from scratch to order food and eat it at home — from the ingredients to the packaging.

A kitchen that doesn’t want to leave a trail behind its deliveries. Be it by reducing non-reusable plastic materials in packaging, be it by working closely with restaurants to reduce food waste.

How are the Kitch restaurants selected?

Those that have a line at the door. Those that serve extraordinary food, and about which no is able to stop talking about. Restaurants that cook the food that we can’t help share with friends. Those were the restaurants that we invited to join the Kitch community and together create the right concepts and dishes. So that the experience of eating them at home is as delicious as in their dining rooms.

How can I order Kitch?

Type Kitch. The restaurants in the Kitch community are available in the most popular delivery apps such as UberEats. All restaurants in the community have their names ending in “+ Kitch”, making them easy to search and find. To know more about who is cooking with us, drop by our website at www.eatkitch.com.

What happens now?

Today, we are introducing you to Kitch and opening our first kitchen in Lisbon. It is from here that some of the most exciting restaurants will be serving the city.

This is our entreé. The first of many dishes in our mission to connect you and everyone to their favorite meals — with more food options, and more ways of getting to them.

Kitch is eating the city’s best in flippers on the kitchen table, or having a candlelight dinner in the balcony. Because every meal, everywhere, deserves to be delicious. Always.

Your Kitch team

No! Shit! No, no, no! This CAN’T be happening! This pretty much sums up the monologue looping inside my head as I approached Parc de Bagatelle, trying to keep it together.

It was a beautiful April morning in Paris, and I had been running for a little over two and a half hours — the first 35km of my very first marathon. At that point, my brain decided to bring up the cautionary advice that many a veteran marathoner volunteered, in varying degrees of pessimism. “The race only starts at the 30th kilometer”, the most optimist said. “You’ll hit the wall by the 30km mark”, the gloomier ones would go.

So, I wasn’t all that surprised as my legs were quickly decaying into jelly after the 33rd kilometer, and I was struggling to hold my pace. But this? This I didn’t expect: as I turned the corner to Boulevard Suchet, with about 8km to go, I felt my right calf cramp! Maybe I’m just imagining things. But a few steps later, my left calf also began to cramp. Uh-oh. Getting tired and heavy is one thing — you slow down, you start to mentally convince yourself that finishing the marathon a couple of minutes later is no big deal, and you’ll do better next time. But cramping? That can be game over, a marathon death sentence. So I inhaled deeply and braced for impact.

Who in their right mind thinks that running is a good idea?

Just a few years ago, the thought of flying to another country to run a marathon would have sounded utterly preposterous. City breaks, nature exploits, and beach getaways all sounded great. But booking a hotel room and boarding a plane with a goal of drudging for 42.2km? Crazy talk.

Even as a kid, I was not exactly the athletic type. I mean, I did swim and play tennis. At least while my parents were able to coerce me into it. But running?! For me, the purest embodiment of running was the Cooper test that physical education teachers somehow thought was a good idea. I have this vivid image of Ms. Peru — my high school phys ed teacher who earned that nickname for sporting a bright purple tracksuit to class with “PERU” embroidered in the back of her jacket — yelling at us to “RUN AS MUCH AS YOU CAN!” for 12 minutes. I hated running ever since.

It’s no surprise that, as I aged into adulthood, running did not exactly top my list of things to do. Plus, I never really trusted runners. Running brought me no joy, and yet these people could talk about it — mind you, the act of walking, but just a little faster than usual — incessantly, speaking in a language of their own with terms such as fartleks and chafing, and sharing this incomprehensible desire to spend most of their free time pounding the pavement. I mean, if this doesn’t sound like an obscure wacko cult, what does?

Sanity is overrated

This evidently changed a little for me in the running department. But before I go into how things played out for me, here’s a little parenthesis: I love hearing about how running-addicts became running-addicts. Especially those who were never jocks and, at some point in their lives, did a 180º. Like Susan Lacke who, in her awesome book “Life’s Too Short To Go So Fucking Slow”, describes how she went from overweight chain-smoker to triathlete after seeing how alive her friend looked while crossing the finish line at an Ironman. Or Haruki Murakami, who took up running to stay fit as he transitioned from Tokyo jazz club owner to full-time writer in the early 80s.

My story isn’t nearly as cool or inspiring. It was 2013 and I was working at Apple, doing a lot of things with iPhone accessories. One particular type of accessory was getting a ton of hype: fitness trackers. I had to give it a go. Besides, I thought the premise of a wearable device that monitors your activity and helps you become healthier was pretty cool. So I got myself an outrageous bright blue Jawbone Up.

Living in London without a car and tubing to work every day, my step count was pretty decent. But I often fell short of the daily 10K step target and pictured the Jawbone app smirking and calling me a loser every other day. So one particular summer evening, I came up with a plan. After getting home from the office, I opened my closet and looked something remotely resembling sports gear. After all, what could be a more efficient way to cram a few extra steps to please my mew fitness tracker than running? I picked up an old pair of Pumas, a pair of shorts and an old t-shirt. And off I went, out the door, wondering if maybe I could scramble to do a full kilometer. Off I went for my very first run on the street.

I ended up doing 5,190 meters, at a pace that was hardly anything to write home about, but that left me surprised. And feeling good! This must be the endorphin rush all runners talk about. After a few days, I did it again. And again. More regularly, a little bit faster. Then one evening, as I was approaching home and finishing my usual 5K loop, I didn’t feel like stopping — so I went for another lap. My first 10K, and it felt good! One month later, I was doing my first race, a 10K in Lisbon.

Things unfolded quickly. All of a sudden, 20K weekend morning long-runs became the sort of stuff I spent my week looking forward to. My running gear started taking more space than, well, my regular clothes. I’d be an ass to anyone around me whenever I couldn’t run — there was this time I had signed up for a 10K race in Richmond and ended up not going to spend the weekend with my now-wife-then-girlfriend, and I seriously don’t know how she found it in herself to put up with me. And it didn’t even occur to me that maybe, just maybe, I could go without wearing my bright orange fitness tracker on my wedding day (how else would I keep track of my step count?).

Life got in the way

Late 2014 was a pretty eventful time for me. I got married, changed countries, changed jobs. The new job at Uber, in particular, was very time and energy-consuming. As the months went by, my running began to suffer. Daily runs became every-other-day runs, became weekly runs, became no running at all.

But I wasn’t letting this go down quietly. Oh no, if the world was conspiring against my running, the least I could do was make them miserable too. So, after putting up with my whimpering for way longer than it was reasonable, my wife had had enough. And, on my birthday in June 2018 — coincidentally, we were in London — she gave me a bib to the Richmond Half-Marathon that would be taking place that November. Now you have to train for it. That same evening, I laced my shoes which she had packed and went for a run — ok, for a crawl — on my old Fulham stomping grounds.

I did train for it, and it went much better than I hoped. I was running surprisingly faster than before my hiatus! That’s when I decided that I’d book my next race immediately after finishing my last. I ran a few 10Ks shortly after, the Lisbon half-marathon and, finally, my very first marathon in April 2019: Paris.

Paris

Parc de Bagatelle was like walking — in this case, running — on eggshells. For the last 30-something minutes of the race, I had to be conscious of my every stride, cutting the motion short before giving my calves the chance to cramp. And it somehow worked out: I was able to keep the cramping at bay and crossed the finish line in a slightly faster time than the target I had set! The target time I always have on my mind before a race, but never share with anyone, of course. I finished the thing dead-tired but elated, and full of energy. So, what’s the next one?

Shortly after finishing the race, collecting my bags and taking a picture of my finisher’s medal, I hopped on a shared kick scooter and made my way to a public swimming pool to take a shower before running to the airport (where every Sunday morning casual swimmer stared at me as if I was an alien, coming from outer space for some communal bathing). I had created this perverse incentive — if I didn’t finish the marathon in a good enough time, I would either have to go to the airport without showering, or I’d miss my flight altogether. Good thing, for me and for my fellow passengers, that things worked out alright. Anyway, as I was scootering through the streets of Paris, I started drafting a mental plan for my following marathons.

The 2019 Lisbon Marathon was next, in the fall (didn’t happen — I was naive to think I could properly train for a marathon while becoming a second time parent). And Vienna 2020, in the Spring, would follow. But on that beautiful sunny day in Paris, I failed to foresee that a pandemic would turn the world on its head and, maybe slightly less importantly, skewer my running plans.

So today, instead of running 42.2km in a Springy Vienna, I’m left with reminiscing on my April Marathon, a year ago, and thinking about why became so important to me. Maybe it’s the rush of endorphins. Maybe it’s the alone time (don’t judge, I’m an introvert). Maybe it’s the disconnection, the headspace. The clarity that comes with the simple, repetitive motion. The feeling that overwhelming problems are, all of a sudden, surmountable. Maybe it’s the competition with myself. Maybe it’s the feeling of the wind, the heat, the cold, and sometimes the rain.

It’s probably a combination of all of the above, who knows. All I know is that there is no place like running and that everything looks a lot better when finishing a hard workout. Coronavirus, back off from my fall season marathons!