Episode 016 – Remote Work, Marathons, Coffee and Music

[START OF PODCAST]

[INTRO]    Health, travel, finance, parenting and entertainment. This is the Suburban Folk Podcast. I’m looking forward to having some real talk with some real folks. 

GREG:     Hey, this is Greg with the Suburban Folk Podcast. My guest today is Miha Rekar from the Parallel Passion Podcast, Miha, how are you?

MIHA REKAR:        I’m great. I’m happy to be here. 

GREG:    Introduction for how we came across each other on social media. You have your podcast that focuses on coders, software engineers, developers, and what other activities they have, hence the Parallel Passion name of the podcast. A lot of the subjects that you talk about in the episodes that I’ve had a chance to listen to, definitely has some crossover to what we talked about on our podcast. 

So, I’m very excited to have you take some time to talk to me today about your own passions, as well as just some background about Parallel Passions and how you came up with that idea? How long you’ve been at it? Challenges, things that have been good, but first, just in the same way you structure your episodes, what is your day job? What is the definition of a software engineer developer?

MIHA REKAR:    There is no actual definition as far as I know, but supposedly you can only call yourself engineer if you actually did computer science, if you actually studied that, but I don’t know I think you can call yourself whatever you want. Like there was a time where I called myself a senior developer, but whatever. But what I do is I work for a Belgian startup that is in accounting space, and I am engineering manager slash team lead, I could say, of one of the teams and so most of the time, I am the role of software developer but then also, I am in the role of a team leader and all of that. Yeah, that’s basically my day job.

GREG:    When I was looking at some of the videos and other audio that you had online, I came across one lecture that you were giving, and it had a lot of the features of your podcast but you mentioned that for the group as a whole, their day job is something that they want to be doing so it is a primary passion. Do you find that that is the case for most technical workers? 

MIHA REKAR:    I’d say more than average. Let’s say there are more people in this so in IT field that can say that this is actually what they like to do compared to other fields. I can definitely say that, but I’m certain not everyone finds this their passion. Even me I like doing it. I enjoy doing it, but I also like doing other things. I don’t want to spend the entire deal of my time just coding. I’m not that guy but there are people like that and it’s fine. I’m not one of those.

GREG:    Well, and one last question, I have to ask you this, you find the stereotype that you see on TV like I think of the Saturday Night Live sketch, if you’ve ever seen it, it’s Nick Burns your company’s computer guy. He just tells everybody to move and do everything and says, nobody knows what they’re talking about. Is that really that pervasive in the IT world?

MIHA REKAR:    Stereotype? Yeah, definitely. This exact stereotype is why I started my podcast, which is, like you mentioned before, it’s called Parallel Passion, and it is about showcasing the other hobbies software developers have. My entire premise was I wanted to showcase that software developers were not all that stereotype like, we’re not all just like in in basement covered in Cheetos, just hacking. We have other hobbies as well; we go outside sometimes.

GREG:    One other thing that I wanted to get your feedback on again, in the same video that I watched you had a segment about remote work. That’s something that I definitely have a perspective on. In fact, I’ve just been able to work from home in the last year, and I am a fan for various reasons. Again, I saw that you had made a case for what those advantages are for remote work as well. So just to make sure we’re talking about the same thing, when you say remote work, what does that mean to you? And then what are some of those advantages that you found? 

MIHA REKAR:    Well, yeah, I’m a big proponent of remote work, especially because I guess this is the same in US but even more so in Europe. I think there are like huge differences between countries between areas who have like income and have expenses, and everything. One of the reasons you would do remote or the main reason I started was just I was able to get paid much more for the same work, right? So that’s what I started, but what I came to appreciate later on was that I could design my work exactly how I want it. Some people like to work in an office, some people like to be surrounded with other people, and when you’re working remotely, you have a choice. You can design your workplace how you want it. If you like being surrounded with people, you can go to a café, you can go to a co-working place. 

If you like to be on your own, if you work best like me on your own, just by yourself, also that’s me, right? I like to focus 100 percent and that means like just closing myself off from the world. Like turning on, do not disturb or whatever, and I can focus like 100 percent of my brain to the task. That just enables me to do much more than I would ever be able to accomplish in an office. So that’s why I started because you know, money, but now I actually love doing it because I just get more done and I’m happier this way. If there’s like a sunny day outside, I can just close Slack go out and like come back and work at evening or whatever.

GREG:    Agreed. I think that a lot of the flexibility that I’ve gained that I didn’t necessarily realize that I would get from working from home has been a huge benefit. Specifically, meetings tend to be a little more focused when everybody’s not just sitting in one room and talking about what happened over the weekend or family things. Obviously, the commute goes without saying, but even just that amount of conversation that goes on when somebody might stop in your office and maybe 20 percent of it.

MIHA REKAR:    The classic like, “Oh, did you see my email?” That’s like, I will reply to your email when I see it like why are you asking me about it than just like disrupting my flow? 

GREG:    Yeah, exactly. Then that five-minute or what they think is a five-minute amount of time coming in asking you about it probably cost you more like 15 minutes to a half hour, especially if you’re in the middle of a project and you lose your place, depending on what’s going on. 

MIHA REKAR:        Yeah. Exactly.

GREG:    Again, even the flexibility of you mentioned being able to close down when it’s a nice day out. I even think flexibility of other things that might be going on whether that’s having to run an errand that’s easier to get to the grocery store or something like that, when it’s not the weekend and everybody else’s there or even my which will get into. My workout regimen is a much easier to manage when I have a little bit more flexibility when it doesn’t necessarily have to be first thing in the morning, and let’s be honest, the last time you really want to be doing any kind of workout is at the very end of a day when sun’s down and you’re already tired, you just want to relax to end of the day.

MIHA REKAR:    We are now in the winter time and its darkness all the time. So I start working it’s dark, I end up working, it’s dark, so running in darkness is my only choice really, if I don’t want to go into we live today.

GREG:    The last time that I was training for a half marathon, it definitely got into the point where it was getting dark and some of the roads that I’m on don’t have a whole lot of extra room for anything but the cars. That’s another reason why if I did get it in during those daylight hours, I feel a little bit better about it. 

MIHA REKAR:        Yeah, definitely. 

GREG:    The other thing that I wanted to hit for just in definition of remote is do you relocate at all because you’re remote or have you been in the same place for a long period at this point?

MIHA REKAR:    I mean, you could then. I know people who call themselves digital nomads and I know people who are moving from town to town every three months and they like to work like that. Whereas me I’m addicted to coffee I have a very big and complex coffee setup at home that I can’t travel with and I have a very nice standing desk. I have huge iMac specked up and everything. I have everything the way I like it to be. I have everything optimized for working. I have my nice mechanical keyboard, a big mouse. 

Everything is big because I like it that way. And you can’t travel, if you go in cafe, you have to sacrifice ergonomics and that’s I think it’s okay if you did for a short time but I think long term, it’s not good for your posture. Is not good for your body to force it in ways that’s not supposed to. Even sitting is not great, but you can combat it with like a really good chair, and with a standing desk and everything, but sitting in a cafe, like hunched over a laptop, that’s definitely not good. 

GREG:    Yeah, I can’t focus very well in a setting like that. I almost wonder if people go there just to be seen so people think they’re being important.

MIHA REKAR:    Well, you have all sorts of people, like I said, I know people who go like every three months they change the environment completely, and they love doing it. They’ve been doing it for years. So it’s whatever works for you. That’s the beauty about remote. That’s what I always say. Like you get to design exactly how you like it so if you want to move around, you can. If you want to stay at home like me, you can you can do whatever.

GREG:    I think that’s very important, around our office we have the debate about the social interactions. Like I said, for me, it’s been amazing to realize how much productive time I gained back by limiting the amount of social interactions, but there definitely have been folks that have said they get a little stir crazy if they’re not around people. So that would be to your point where folks may want to opt to go to an office or an office or a cafe or something. 

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, that’s definitely I think, you have to actively fight against, I don’t want to say loneliness, but just like, you tend to pull away from people, you tend to just like, I think that it’s lonely heart syndrome or something like that or cabin heart. I don’t know. It’s a known thing. You have to actively force yourself to go to meetups or just run with friends or call people up because you will not be seeing people like your co-workers. When you think about it, a lot of people’s social life comes just from co-workers, like talking with them like the watercooler chats or whatever, and that simply goes away. Yeah, sure, you have to run them channels in Slack or whatever, but that’s not the same.

GREG:    It’s definitely not the same and enter all the clichés with misunderstandings that can occur in email and Slack as well can tend to be an issue. 

MIHA REKAR:    Oh, yeah, definitely. 

GREG:    When you subtract out any phone or face-to-face conversations, I think there’s a possibility that those could get even worse, because you don’t remember that there’s a human on the other end of that communication.

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, text in general is hard, but anyone knows this now because even people who are in the same office use tools like Slack or Basecamp, or even email. You know how easy it is to misunderstand someone, and it gets even more highlighted yet when you do everything remotely when you don’t see people face-to-face, especially when you don’t know someone personally and it’s easy to assume bad intentions, which you should never do, you should always assume good intentions, but it’s just a human thing like you read the sentence and you’re like, oh, he’s being so mean to me. From that moment on, you don’t like that person. It’s a subconscious thing. Right? You have to actively fight against that.

GREG:    Exactly, and I would reiterate what you mentioned that you got to assume people have the best intentions. They’re not waking up in the morning out to get you or anybody else.

MIHA REKAR:    Well, some people might, you assume they’re not your co-worker.

GREG:    Yeah, hopefully, the majority at least. So if you start by thinking it’s the majority, then you’ll hopefully come at the communications with the right attitude. One other question I was curious about your thoughts. The four-day workweek concept has made some waves recently and I think it goes back into the flexibility we’re talking about, of course, burnout is something that’s pointed to. What are your thoughts with those pilots that are going on?

MIHA REKAR:    I’m a big fan of Basecamp or as it used to be known 37signals, and they wrote a lot of books about things like, rework and remote and it doesn’t have to be crazy at work and they also have a blog; Signal versus Noise, which is really good. I recommend reading it. What they do is like, every summer they do this. So, in summers, they have four working days, and during the winter, they have full week, like five working days. They say it works really well for them. I think that’s fine. 

I have never done it in a full-time way but there have definitely been weeks when I took Friday off or Monday off, like two or three weeks in a row. It’s a nice weather or whatever, and I just take an extended weekend. So yeah, I think that’s good. That’s good for both for personal and also as a team lead or as a manager to give that to your people.

GREG:    And it was top of mind for me as I was putting together some notes for our conversation, because it also gives people presumably time to pursue other passions that they may have that are outside of their day to day work. So talking about your podcast, how did the idea come up? You talked about it a little bit as far as the stereotype of the IT folks, and they don’t necessarily do anything else behind pulling the trigger and starting your podcast? How long have you been at it, and just other highlights that have that have occurred along the way?

MIHA REKAR:    Well, I mean, the whole idea has been like, I used to go to programming conferences a lot. I don’t do this as much anymore. I used to speak more Now, it’s not a thing anymore but yeah, I did that. Then whenever I was there, like especially at the after parties, I never wanted to talk about development, because the whole conference was about development. My entire career revolved around development. So I wanted to talk anything else like what do people do? What are their hobbies? Also because I want to talk about mine, right? I think just like sort of gradually, when I started listening to podcasts, I was like, I could do that as well, and I had this idea of like doing this sort of thing. 

So the same kind of dogs that I had after conference parties to do have as a Podcast, and then I came up with the name, Parallel Passion. I bought the domain immediately because I love the name, I still love it. Then a year passed, I was like, “Okay, I’ll just I have to do it. I just have to start doing it.” And I think this was like, it was around two years ago when I bought the domain and about a year and a half since my first episode, I think something like that. I’ve been pretty much posting every other week. I’ve dropped a couple here and there. I don’t worry because it’s not like anyone’s paying me to do it. It’s not like there’s like thousands and thousands of people in line waiting for the episode to drop. So I just do it because it’s one of my hobbies. I try to hold a schedule, but I don’t like if I miss it, I miss it.

GREG:    Yeah, I have a pretty similar story as far as the lead up to starting a Podcast, I’ve started to compare it to the same reason why you write music. So for example, I played in bands in high school and college, and once I got to the point where I wanted to write music, well, what’s the reason? Because you’re not hearing what you want to hear. Obviously, you don’t like other things, but there’s still something else you feel like you can contribute.

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, you have your own voice that you want to be heard, right? 

GREG:    Yeah, exactly. So if it’s not out there, then have that can do spirit and go ahead and produce it, and I think that Podcasting definitely has that. Obviously, it’s something that you can do for people that have the will to get it done. I have found that so far the benefits, again, really going back to the theme of the passion is just even listening to folks that are talking about something that they want to be doing rather than for a paycheck or otherwise you can hear it in their voice even when they get into a rhythm and when they get into additional detail. So if anything that’s been my favorite part thus far. Similar for you, would you say is the best part?

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, also like when talking to people like those after parties or wherever, you know, when they get that spark in their eyes when they’re just like, they want to talk and talk and talk about their stuff. That’s the thing that you want to happen and that’s the kind of things I want to talk about, because I know how I get like if someone asks me like now about these things that I like to do. I love talking about them. I love talking about all sorts of things. It’s just more fun, right? That’s the kind of things that like we like to do so, and Podcasting is one of the ways we get to be able to do it. 

We get to do it across the world, like, there’s no way we would ever get to meet without partners, like ever. It wouldn’t just not happen. I think that goes for like 80 percent of my guests. I would never have met them, but now like, you have this conversation that we have now, for example, and it sort of like on a friendly level, right? And you have a connection that without these tools, without the internet, without all of this that we now take for granted, would just not be possible to do. It’s so great. There are so many problems in the world right now but also, we have to appreciate how good it is, there’s so many good things and it’s just, yeah, it’s great.

GREG:    The other thing I would add, in particular with the conversation is you have to be dialed in because you’re recording so you don’t want to wander off and let the person is saying to you, and then when it’s your turn to respond, you don’t really know what they said, and there’s either an awkward pause or it just doesn’t make sense. 

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, you have to pay attention and I can be on Instagram right now when I’m talking to you. I can be on Twitter, which I think it’s sad but I see people do this. They go for dinner together or over coffee or whatever, and both of them are or everyone is on their own phones, looking at whatever, they’re not participating in any sorts of communication. It is sort of sad, because you are there. I think you appreciate it even more like you and me when you work remotely, when you really appreciate it like person-to-person time and it sort of feels not great when the other person is looking at her phone.

GREG:    Yeah, definitely. It even looks strange sometimes when you’re not in a crowd as often and you go into a bar or cafe and half the people, if not more are in that position. Something just seems off about this. So maybe that’s an age thing for folks that can remember a time before that was happening and-

MIHA REKAR:    Back in my day.

GREG:    Yeah, exactly. Maybe if I’m, I don’t know, 15 years younger, it wouldn’t seem as strange because I grew up with it but I agree that that connection is seeming to be lost when you look at certain scenarios. Getting into the Passion’s part when I was again, doing some research on your social media pages. The first thing that stood out to me was marathons. 

That’s something that in my day to day life, I don’t know if I know more than two people that live near me that are marathoners. So I feel like it is a smaller clubs and my eyes light up when I see that somebody has participated in marathons. So how long have you been doing marathons? How many races have you done?

MIHA REKAR:    I think it’s definitely more common here even like, I feel not so great because most of my friends are ultra-marathoners. I’m just like, oh, yeah, no, I only go for 42 kilometers, like, that’s enough for me. But they’re like, oh, whatever. So I think it pretty much, it lines up with when I started working remotely. So that would be like six years ago, something like that. I think 2014, in the spring of 2014. Well, no, maybe I started like late 2013, but I know I started running in 2014 because of a simple reason. I was getting fat because I didn’t move anymore and I wanted to do something about that, and I don’t like to go to the gym. I don’t like being inside. 

So I said, okay, I’m going to start running and I set myself a goal to complete half marathon, and I followed the plan, I think from Runkeeper for like three and a half months, and I completed that. At the end, I said, “Oh, next year, I’m going to do the full one.” Yeah, next year, I did the full one and I suffered most of the time. So from every year since I ran the full one, I do it once a year. It’s always in Dublinia, but I did one in Berlin. Just because now I can say that I ran a marathon in Berlin. I don’t go particularly fast like my best time is from last year. I think it was three hours, 34 minutes, something like that, but this year, I went three hours 49 minutes because I started too fast and it was super-hot and a lot of problems as you know, on a marathon, there’s always problems.

GREG:    So if I’m doing the math, so you said it was like six years ago, so you’ve done six marathons overall if you’re doing one every year.

MIHA REKAR:    15, 16, 17, 18. Yeah. So one, two, three, four, five. I did five so far. Yeah, five marathons. The first one was half marathon, and then everyone else was

GREG:    For the first marathon that you did and you said how hard it was. Do you think you over trained? Do you think you undertrained? 

MIHA REKAR:    Oh, no. Yeah. So, you’re naive. You’re young and naive. I think the longest I ran was like 25 kilometers or something like that, which I don’t know how much is in miles, but not nearly enough. Like halfway, a bit over halfway. I was like, “Oh, yeah, like the rest of the race is just the same, just more of this.” But as you know, It’s not like that. Yeah, it’s not like that, the second half is much harder than the first half, and I learned that the hard way.

GREG:    Luckily, the time that I realized that wasn’t a half marathon, so I didn’t have to pay for quite as long but I started entirely too fast. My buddy had just come off of a triathlon Olympic distance. So he was in really good shape. He sent me a note two months, maybe, before the race, I was not running much at the time, and he wanted to do, I wanted to say he wanted to break 135 or 137, somewhere around there, so pretty quick. 

I did the first three or four miles with him and of course he’s, at conversation pace, which is what you’re supposed to be doing. I was definitely not and the rest of the race is, not only are you hurting, but the ego shot to watching everybody passing you is doubly bad because there’s something to be said for whether or not you actually prepared the right way or even if you were just giving yourself too much credit for where you lined up before you started the race.

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, one of the things about me is that I’m really not a competitive person. Some people, you can see they can push to the last atom of strength, they really push through and then after they finish, they can’t walk like four weeks because they put everything out there. I’m not that kind of person, like my mind’s when I’m at like 90 percent of exhaustion, my mind says like, no walk, you should not run anymore. You should walk now. So I walk and next day, I’m normal, but yet my times are not. 

`    I think if I would be able to extract everything out of myself, I would be able to go faster, but I don’t care that much about speed and times to be honest. I run because I enjoy running. It started because I wanted to lose weight, but now I do it just because it’s a nice way to end the work day. So for me, this is how I close Slack and I go out for a run and that for me, I don’t go near the computer again. That’s my commute, basically. That’s my daily run, it’s my commute, and it’s more for my mind than it is for my body now, I think.

GREG:    I agree that it gives you the chance to unplug whenever you go, whether that’s first thing in the morning, if you can fit it in during lunchtime hours, or if you’re able to run at the end of the day. Yes, it can even signify a transition maybe from whatever you’re doing during the day to your night activities, especially even with family, right? I think it gives you that chance to even transition your mind that way to be ready to check in with everybody in your family and what their day was like and leave the baggage of work or anything else that’s going on behind. So I would wholeheartedly agree with that. Also, for reference for folks that may not be that familiar with marathon times; 330 is just fine.

MIHA REKAR:    That was the goal for this year, to go under 330 and the first half I ran really fast. I was I was feeling great. Really like the first half I was in at my conversational pace. I ran with a friend of mine who I caught up with her, and we went together till like, well then, she did the half one. So she turned left and I continued. I think for the first two thirds of the race, everything went great, and then just like the whole-body collapse, everything was just like, “Nope, you’re not going to run anymore.” And I was like, “Okay, well, apparently not.” So I walked in hobbled to the finish line.

GREG:    Maybe that’s just the way first marathons go because-

MIHA REKAR:    But this is the last one. This was a couple of months

GREG:    Okay. All right. Well then maybe not, but what you’re describing is very similar to what my first marathon was. I over trained. I didn’t consult anybody that had done a marathon before, I just put my own schedule together. I want to say it was four to five months out, and for the long run, I just said, okay, if I add an extra mile every single weekend for that one, I’ll be up to I even scheduled 26 miles, which basically meant that I was going to run a 20 miler for the last month and a half leading up to the marathon which is too much. 

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah.

GREG:    I ended up actually nearly getting hurt enough that I wasn’t even going to be able to run my knees were just shot when I got close to that point.

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, that sucks.

GREG:    Yeah, but for the marathon itself is very similar to what you mentioned. I was feeling really good. I hit one of the pacers that I didn’t think I’d ever hit. I want to say like, the 340 guys because I just wanted to be under four hours. So I ended up catching them at mile 16 I believe and then we hit this big hill and I never saw them again. I still made it under four hours,

MIHA REKAR:    Oh, that’s really good for the first one. Congrats.

GREG:    Well, thank you. That was my goal. Then the other thing I actually told the story in different episode with couple guys that are physical therapists, I signed up my band to play at the finish line. So not only did I have to do the race, they let me do this, the event coordinators, I stretched for like, 15 minutes maybe and then walked back to my mile 26 and played with my band for about an hour, which is cool to say and of course it’s a cool story now but I’m standing right in one place where I really need to be walking and you know continuing to stretch. I was a mess the very next week.

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, I can imagine. I think for anyone listening or for anyone who wants to run a marathon like for the first one, I always say, just the goal should be to finish it. You should not care about the time. For the first one the goal is to finish. The goal is to pace yourself. The goal is to not burn out like we did.

GREG:    Exactly, and emphasis on conversational pace. If people don’t know what that means, don’t go any faster than being able to form a sentence and actually chat with somebody that you’re running next to which is something that I know you’ve talked about is making it a group activity. I am definitely guilty of very rarely being able to run with folks but how do you make that work? Do you do weekend runs with folks or are you able to even during the week, get groups together?

MIHA REKAR:    It really depends. Here there are a lot of running groups but I don’t know maybe it’s my personality, there’s always someone in the group I don’t like to watch so you know, then I don’t like running in large groups but I do like running with one or two or three people like small groups, I really enjoy that. It’s just during the last six years or whatever that I’ve been running, I’ve managed to meet people who run at similar speed and similar distances that I do. So yeah, if I do it the weekend  run then it’s like it’s a trail run, we go like on the hills or whatever, but if it’s during a week is just like a shorter run whenever people have time because I work from home so I can be totally flexible to their schedule and normally it’s at least once or twice per week where I run with someone else. 

GREG:    And I would imagine for pacing, that it is really helpful, probably even both ways that it makes sure you don’t go too fast again, for no other reason then you can be social.

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, exactly. It’s like going for a drink with a friend. Right? It’s same but healthier. It’s just talk about stuff about life, about love, about anything that you want to talk about, and it’s just at that kind of pace you even forget you’re running. I know this sounds strange to anyone that doesn’t run but believe me, after you’ve been running for three, four or five months, where it becomes second nature to run at normal speed, normal pace, then you can hold a conversation and you really forget you’re running. It’s magical. It’s what it is.

GREG:    I agree, and also something that people probably don’t recognize if they just hate running, if they can’t get past making it a habit is you really do feel much better after getting a run in, almost better the whole day than you would on your days that you don’t have a chance to run. I have been subscribed to if I’ve had a late night the night before, we’ll leave it at that. If I can force myself to get up and run first thing in the morning, it helps.

MIHA REKAR:    Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I’m with you 100 percent, like at those conferences, you know what happens, we drink too much, way too much. Then the next day, especially when the conferences last for multiple days. The next day people start coming in the afternoon because, hangover and everything, but I wake up early by myself. I don’t even use an alarm clock because I can’t sleep during the day. So I just I drink some electrolytes or whatever and I go for a short run. Then yeah, like you said, it helps so much. I’m back to normal working temperature and I can keep this up for, two, three days. Not as that but like, yeah, two, three days. Definitely. 

GREG:    Yeah, I think that is definitely the case. Let me go back to what you mentioned with maybe folks in Europe versus America and the distance and how many people would do marathons because to be honest, when I started talking about marathons on the podcast, in the back of my mind, I was nervous that I was presenting too much that I would lose people because they say, “Oh, marathon I’m not going to do that versus I’m 5K, 10K, whatever it happens to be.” So do you find that if you bring up the topic to people that are not runners by background that you keep their interest even though it is that longer distance?

MIHA REKAR:    Probably not. It’s one of those things that you learn, as you get older, you learn to read the room. It’s the same way I don’t talk about development topics with non-developers is the same with running, I don’t talk about running with non-runners unless they ask me about it because as you know, if you don’t run, it’s hard to understand how can anyone find this pleasurable? Like, how can we enjoy it? 

It’s impossible to understand if you’ve never run for a long enough time to enjoy it because you have to, the first three, four months, something like that. It’s going to be a pain in the ass, it’s not going to be nice but then like, the more you do it, the more it just becomes a habit and you get addicted to it. Then it’s really like it becomes enjoyable, I guess, and if you’ve never experienced that, it’s impossible to understand, I think.

GREG:    I happen to fall into the long distance running simply from the standpoint; I used to live in Salt Lake City a couple years out of school, and I didn’t know anybody in the area. So I lived right next to one of the larger mountains and just started running up the trail, and it had the mile markers.

Well, I’ll go up the three miles, and of course, one coming up three miles, I got to come down three miles and another mile and another mile, and I had no idea how long this particular trail was. Turned out it was nine miles up, which of course means you go nine miles up, you got to come nine miles back, which you’re getting close to that marathon distance and also in that city. 

MIHA REKAR:    That’s a lot.

GREG:    Yeah, and in that city, people are very active so you almost felt extra guilty, not working out than maybe in other towns. So it was really from that experience that I even got the idea of long distance running. So maybe that helps sort of trick me into thinking it was something that I wanted to do.

MIHA REKAR:    Oh yeah, no, It definitely depends on where you are and what do people around you do, right? If you don’t know anyone who’s running marathons, you’re not just going be the weird one and just start running like Forrest Gump. You have to have someone do, if you’re like, “Oh, you do that, maybe I can do that as well.” If you don’t have anyone like that, if you don’t know anyone like that then yeah, you want to start running, I guess.

GREG:    Last topic. Well, maybe last topic on running. What about injury so like I said I mentioned, knees was definitely something for me the first time out here and there other aches and pains that I’ve had. Have you experienced any major injury issues?

MIHA REKAR:    I mean, knock on wood, but nothing major yet. I had some minor issues with like, Achilles tendon. It hurt a lot, when I when I woke up, I couldn’t stretch my legs enough, I guess. So for the first 30 minutes after I woke up I had a hard time walking normally but then after I warmed up it was fine. But now it’s really, I have no problems with any injuries whatsoever. 

When I started running, I did go in a sort of like a group school sort of thing where they at least, gave us like the basics of running technique. So I’m not like doing something really bad. My technique is not perfect. Of course, not but it’s not terrible. So I think that helps a lot with injuries at least I think that not certain but yeah, I haven’t had any problems luckily. Did you have anything else besides your knees?

GREG:    I did have the Achilles thing as well, where it would just be a sharp pain in the back of my heels. for the first mile or two, and then once it got warmed up, it would be better. I found that doing the foam roller immediately after and just keeping it warm, it did gradually go away. What I’m starting to deal with now. Maybe I should preface this with all the things that we talked about for first-time runners that they should do. I’m throwing a lot of those things out the window because the second marathon I ran, I was a 324 and I jokingly said, if I do another marathon, I’m just close enough to a Boston-qualifying time that I should really focus and see if I can get to that level, and of course that is-

MIHA REKAR:    That’s ambitious. 

GREG:    Yeah. So I am now doing six days a week for training. I am definitely pushing my pace. So I’m trying to be mindful of the conversational speed that I’m going but I’m probably pushing it a little further than I should. So the first, maybe injury that’s starting to creep up is some soreness in my hamstring, which I think is definitely due to probably pushing it a little bit too much. So I’ve had that before, a few years back, where it was similar, just kind of the sharp pain but you give it a mile or so it will subside and be fine but since I’ve got a ways to go in this training I’ve just started. I’m definitely trying to be as mindful as I can for not having it sidetracked with the overall training, but also not to aggravate it further. 

MIHA REKAR:    Maybe it’s better to like pull back a bit and just keep up the consistency and then when everything is normal, just push again, because otherwise you risk injury and then nothing good can happen after that. 

GREG:    Exactly. I think that’s where the bad press can sometimes come in for the long-distance running. You know, when you see people say at a certain age “Oh, you need to find a new activity because of the amount of just damage you can do to your joints and switch to swimming or switch to something else.” Actually, that was why I did a triathlon episode a little while back, because at some point I had to do plan to substitute my running with other activities to save my knees and save my joints a little bit, but up to this point, I still enjoy running the most so it’s what I gravitate to. So trying to be as smart as I can with it.

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, I haven’t done triathlon, but I’ve heard of people that it’s much more easier to over train there because it’s like three different disciplines and you can train all of those and you can feel they’re different muscles, but your body suffers, and you can over train and then  it can be really bad. This is what I heard. I have no experience of my own.

GREG:    Right. I don’t have a whole lot of experience except for the folks that I have talked to, and I think if I do get into that world, which I plan to, I’ll probably stick to some shorter races so that I don’t get into that kind of an issue. As much as I’d love to say that I could do an Iron Man right the second I’m not going to say that that’s all I’m going to jump into. 

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, that’s crazy. Especially the full one. I’m like, how can you swim even that much? Then okay, biking. I can do but after all that, run a full marathon. Yeah, no.

GREG:    I did one duathlon, I guess they call it, which it was a 5K, a 30-mile bike and then a 10K, and of course when you get off that bike, your legs are just wobbling all over the place. So for the people that can do that, is awesome. I’m in awe of it, and like I said, I’m definitely eyeing it up as my next activity, but yeah, when you look at it objectively, it’s like man that is putting yourself through the ringer.

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, I’m in such an awe of these people like the Iron Men people because they run marathons better than I do, and they get to do all of that before. I don’t even understand it, that’s not human.

GREG:    Yeah, and the recovery afterwards, as I understand it, your body is just completely at zero for at least a week, probably even longer, that you probably shouldn’t be doing much of anything. So yeah, we’ll see. The other thing I had on the list and you had talked about your setup for coffee. I am a coffee drinker. I tend to come at coffee the same way I come at beer. I appreciate the higher end of the spectrum, but I’m not above drinking, bottom of the barrel types. Where do you fall? 

MIHA REKAR:    It’s fine. It’s actually the same with me. I don’t mind drinking bad coffee, I have no problem with it, but if I have a choice, I prefer to go for high end, and I do appreciate high end. I do appreciate specialty coffee. Like I mentioned before, I have a very complex setup at home, and I can dive into that but the whole love for coffee comes from my first visit to US. I went to Portland in 2013, Oregon, and everyone says like, “Oh, you should go, you should try coffee there.” And I’m like, what? Americans don’t know how to make coffee because you know, we’re next to Italy. So we have this. I don’t know. Like in here if it’s not espresso, it’s not coffee, right? So everything you see on TV on or in movies like The American Dream coffee, that’s not coffee. That’s just dirty water. 

So I went to Portland, and I went this weird bar that I found on Foursquare, back then when people were still using Foursquare, and it was the most amazing cup of coffee I’ve had in my life. It tasted like strawberries. I was like, what is this? Is coffee supposed to taste like this? What is this? Then yeah, I got exposed to the whole specialty coffee, and when I came back, all I wanted was just to drink more of that coffee, and it was very hard to get back then here. Now, we have a lot of the specialty roasters and the coffee scene is much better, but back then there was nothing so I had to order it in from UK, from Germany, from all over the place, but I can talk a lot about coffee, but I don’t know if you want to listen to me talk about coffee. 

GREG:    Well, let’s get some of those very basic. So like you said, the American version of, you’ve got the grounds and you just have the drip come through. So when you say your coffee setup, it is at the very least, what we would think of like an espresso machine? What is in that setup and how is it different?

MIHA REKAR:    So I have a very big inexpensive grinder and then I have a dual boiler espresso machine, which is the one that can both make espresso and steam milk at the same time, because you need different temperatures for this things and if you want it fast, if you want it consistent, you need dual boilers, and that means also more expensive. I also like to do bar overs. Like maybe you’ve heard of V60. That’s like a kind of prep that enables you to do really nice coffee kind of act. It’s more of a filter coffee. You can get it in any specialty coffee shop, I guess. It’s really nice or just AeroPress anything like that but it really depends on the coffee. I get most of my coffee beans still from UK and Germany because they have the best roasters. They have the purchasing power, so they can get better green beans that our local guys can’t. So it just tastes better, is what it is.

GREG:    Yeah, that was going to be my question for those two countries, I wouldn’t necessarily think coffee from either so it’s just a matter of buying power.

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, but you know, Berlin is very hipster city and groceries in Berlin are like top of the world, and same goes for London. So it’s just that like they have really good roasters in both of those places. So you can imagine like, Berlin is like the European version of Portland basically.

GREG:    Yeah, which actually reminds me by the way, again, in the main talk that I watched you give. I love your hipster jokes, by the way. For example, in that when you were talking about hipsters and their avocados taking away from the coffee growth.

MIHA REKAR:    Oh, yeah, no, it’s the worst. Like when I read that article. Basically, there was an article that because there are so many people who want avocados now, Kenyan farmers are throwing out coffee, and are planting avocados. I’m going mad because I really like Kenyan coffee and now there’s going to be less of it. There’s another problem with coffee, it takes five years since you plant it, till when you can get the cherries and that no farmer is going to risk five years of produce meaning once they plant avocados, they’re not going back to coffee. It’s just never, it’s just a sad state of affairs. Like leave my coffee alone. 

GREG:    Yeah, I tend to have that same perspective, and while I am probably having just the regular American-style coffee, something else I know you’ve talked about is it’s in the morning so it gives you sort of that first thing to look forward to. I agree with that. As soon as I get up, I’m headed right over to the coffee machine and start you on the right track.

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, definitely. For me it’s a ritual. The more complex the setup, the longer it takes to make a cup of coffee, but like I really enjoy it. I enjoy making it. I enjoy drinking it. The first 30 minutes of the day is like my day with coffee and book and journal. That’s what I see. 

GREG:    How do you feel about Starbucks-style mocha lattes, cappuccinos that have lots of sugar, lots of other stuff in those? Do you consider them even in the same category? Do you stay away from them? 

MIHA REKAR:    Well, for me, those are like coffee-infused drinks. They’re not really coffee and if you like drinking that, that’s fine. I’ve had a drink like that from time to time. It’s winter you’re cold, you want something sweet and it’s just like if it has a slight hint of coffee it’s just for the better, but one thing that at least Starbucks is here in Europe, I don’t know if it’s the same in US have got like recently, pretty much everywhere is the blonde roast, which like Starbucks has their regular roast is really dark. It’s basically charcoal. It’s not drinkable. The blonde one is what any other roaster would call medium dark, something like that. It’s not bad actually. It’s not great but actually it’s not bad. So if I am in a place, let’s say an airport and I see Starbucks, I will go there just for nice blonde roast expresso or something like that. It’s not bad, I recommend it.

GREG:    I actually see we’re finding common ground, no pun intended grounds there, but yeah, I’m the exact same way at Starbucks. I was never a fan of their Pike Place, I think is sort of the standard one but when they introduce the blonde, yeah, I think that that’s pretty good. So I almost exclusively will order that. You also talked about photography, and you helped me fill in some of the things that I’d seen on your social media, for example, these gigantic crowds that you’re in front of, which I was like, “Are you speaking to these people or what’s going on?” So those were gigs that you had doing event photography?

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah. I don’t know which photos you saw but yeah. There was only one time where I spoke in front of a really large crowd. Everything else was in front of like 100 to 400 people so much smaller meetups, but yeah, I was an event photographer from my 17 something like that till like 26-27. I did it for like 10 years. Yeah, I did quite a lot of big gigs. I was just a photographer, I was not the center of attention, but being in front of huge crowds, it’s a special feeling, I guess, especially if you’re on stage, and you’re looking down, let’s say, in the big festival, like EXIT Festival in Serbia, and there are like, 60,000 people below you and you’re on the stage. It’s an incredible feeling really. I can’t even imagine how it is if you’re actual the actual artists that the people are lining up for, it has to be amazing.

GREG:    I can only imagine that, especially for people that have written a song and then to get in front of that many people that liked that song, and singing it in front of you and so on and something else that’s on my bucket list, I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it is the European festivals. Whenever I see some of the lineups and the amount of bands and they can get versus the American ones I’m like, “Oh, man, why don’t these shows come here?” I’ve just seen the lineup for Summer of 2020. Again, if I could just get to one of these shows, like half of my favorite bands, it seems like are on these. So I can only imagine the crowds must be equally huge compared to the shows that I’m used to.

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, and they usually travel because the main festivals are very well known and they’re sort of lined up every week or every other week, and a lot of these bands have just traveled from one to another. So that’s why you can see the same band headlining in all of those festivals every year, which is definitely a thing and if you’re a huge fan of music like I am, that’s the best way to just come close to it and maybe even know some of the people in the backstage or anything if you get access. 

For me that was really like why I started to do it. I like photography, but I love music. I was not a good player of anything. I’m a terrible singer. So the only way to get close to this world was to be a photographer and yeah, I managed to get close to a lot of people, to talk to a lot of people and when you’re a teenager or in your early 20s, it really fills up your ego and just like in general, like life satisfaction and then everything. Yeah, so yeah. 

GREG:    Are you able to name drop anybody that you got a chance to meet?

MIHA REKAR:    Well, I don’t know. I don’t know how popular Prodigy are in US, but for me, they were always, I love that band ever since I was growing up, and having to meet them and even shortly was really special. Then when this year Keith-

GREG:    Passed away, right? 

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, he passed away, he committed suicide. It was hard because you want to hear more of your favorite artists. Now, I sort of can relate how it was for like, my father was a huge fan of Nirvana, and second last show Nirvana did was in Slovenia, and my father was there and then like Kurt Cobain shot himself, and it was very emotional for my father. I think this is like, whereas they’re not the same kind of band. It felt the same for me. It was emotional for me but If you want to talk about really popular people, then yeah, Paris Hilton follows me on twitter still. That’s the thing I like to name drop.

GREG:    No, that’s a name drop. Well, actually the bands you were mentioning, that’s really right down my alley, kind of to your point of the people that have died in the bands. I mean, going to the Seattle bands, Chris Cornell had just passed away, Scott Weiland, they were a Seattle band, but Stone Temple Pilots for sort of writing the same genre, Alice in Chains, of course their singer had passed away years ago. So yeah, looking back at that, and like you said, sort of owning it in your youth and then seeing that none of those original lineups except Pearl Jam at this point are even left is really kind of depressing. So now I hear exactly what you’re saying for Prodigy. 

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah.

GREG:    I listened to them, some and obviously, clearly, it sounds like we probably could do a whole other episode on musical taste.

MIHA REKAR:    That’s the thing I like about these Podcasts. You discover things that haven’t gone and just want to keep talking like for another hour so but random stuff.

GREG:    Well, we are hitting about the hour. So maybe if we go ahead to your social media, where people can find you, talk a little bit more again about the Podcast and you mentioned the episodes or any other upcoming events that you have going on?

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, the Podcast is like I said Parallel Passion. It’s easy to find, it’s in English. My social networks are mostly in English, sometimes it’s in Slovenian. It’s my first name, my last name, you should just click the link in the show notes because you won’t be able to spell it if I just name it up. So Instagram, I guess is my favorite social network nowadays. I used to tweet a lot; I don’t do it so much anymore. 

I try to leave Facebook, really, I’m only there just because of my photography page and everyone who’s like a fan there and everything, but I really dislike Facebook. It’s the worst and I know Instagram is owned by Facebook, I get it but still, I like the social network people are nicer on Instagram than they are anywhere else because it’s not the kind of venue and you can just talk shit, you post nice things there and that’s what I like about it. It’s only the nice stuff, right? 

GREG:    Yeah. I am definitely just now starting to even figure out Instagram. I just never used it before but I can see that that would be the case because it takes a little bit more work, I feel like to have your Instagram page be worth looking at as far as the media that you post.

MIHA REKAR:    You can’t just randomly troll like you can on Twitter. It’s different, you can’t just post random stuff and it’s impossible to reach huge crowds like it is super easy on Twitter. If you have a reply go viral or whatever then it’s not good, it’s toxic and Instagram is none of that or like very small amounts of that, then it’s easy to just avoid this kind of people whereas on Twitter, it’s not so easy. They find you.

GREG:    Right, and I definitely agree that it’s not worth spending your time and energy when you see the negative posts and anything like that. So maybe the more I get into Instagram the more I’ll even appreciate that. I definitely have a learning curve still ahead of me.

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, I was there since the beginning because they were first, they were on iPhone only. I still remember those days. It was on iOS only; it wasn’t even on Android. I remember when it was expanded to Android and we were like, “Oh, no.” I was like, “Everyone’s going to get Instagram, now I’m not the hipster anymore, right?” But I like it, and maybe because I’m a sort of photographer. I like to think of myself as a photographer and that’s why I like to share some stuff. I recently got a drone so I’m now playing with that and posting some drone photos there, but I enjoyed. So yeah, definitely if you want to know more about me, yeah, go follow me on Instagram.

GREG:    Actually, I just thought of one more question to extend this a little bit further. 

MIHA REKAR:    Sure. 

GREG:    As far as reading material, it made me think of because that’s what I use Instagram quite a bit for is just to post whatever I’d been listening to or reading and you, I know have talked about the stoicism books, and I’m sure you’re obviously reading other things, anything to recommend for folks that that’s something that they should look at and a good way to sort of keep a positive outlook?

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah. I think, the book that changed my life the most, it’s by William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life. I know how it sounds, I know, but it’s a really good book. It tells a story about stoicism, but it starts just about philosophy and it’s saying how it used to be like in Greek times, in Roman times, that you chose a philosophy of life. Whichever that was just like there was a philosophy of what you wanted to achieve in your life, what things you valued, whereas now it feels more like we’re just going like from one thing to the other, and we don’t really know what we want long term, like long term goals. What sort of things we value? What do we want out of our lives? First, it makes a point that you should have a philosophy and then it tries to present that, stoicism is the philosophy. You don’t have to agree with it. It’s fine. I don’t agree with like 100 percent of it, but I really recommend the book so yeah, that’s definitely one of the books I can recommend if this is what you were aiming for.

GREG:    Yeah, that’s perfect. Well, and I will be sure to grab a link to it and I’m sure we can get it on Amazon and other places. 

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah, right.

GREG:    Yeah, I remember you talking about it and I’m always interested in overall outlooks on life topics. So it was something that piqued my interest so I think it is worth pointing folks towards, and like you mentioned of course, I’ll put all of your contact information in the show notes when we post our episode. Well, I really enjoy your conversation, and I appreciate you taking some time. You have an open invite to come on whenever you would like.

MIHA REKAR:    Oh, man, I’d love to, I enjoy this very much. As you can see, I love talking about myself, so whenever.

GREG:    That’s right. It’s the best topic there is. 

MIHA REKAR:    Right.

GREG:    Well, yes, I appreciate it and I will talk to you next time.

MIHA REKAR:    Yeah. Talk to you soon. Bye.

[OUTRO]    If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to give us a rating on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get Podcasts. If you’d like to be notified of future weekly shows, please hit the subscribe button. Thank you. Suburban Folk is part of the Pod All The Time Podcast Network with six other great podcasts. They include the Creative Intuitive, Another Digital Citizen, Random Unnamed Podcast, The Copyin Podcast, Big IQ podcast, and Real AKA Truth. If you check us out on Twitter, you can see links to their direct pages to see what they’re up to.

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