Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
The jury is still out on whether my buddy and I are going to ‘Everest the Crunch’ in August, (climb the Coquitlam Crunch trail 37 times in 48 hours, to go up the equivalent height of Mount Everest)… but at least I’ve been back on the trail for the last 4 weekends. Before that I had to take 6 weeks off due to sciatic pain.
A commitment to my physio visits and exercises, regular massage, and of course some extra rest, has all lead to my recovery. Today we did the most we’ve done in a while with 2 trips up, 2 extra loops of the 457 stairs section, and one trip down, (we start by dropping a car off at the top), and seven hours later I feel no pain.
My buddy Dave has taken my injury in stride and isn’t rushing us back to where we were before I had to slow down, and so I don’t feel any pressure to push more than I should. That said, we are just 4 months away from the challenge and if we don’t ramp up soon, our bodies won’t be ready for 37 treks up the hill. I feel ready to push a bit harder, but not ready yet to say this will be a ‘go’ in four months.
Still, the 6 week break was way longer than our previous gap of maybe 2 weeks since we started doing the Crunch in January 2021, and it feels wonderful to be back… and more importantly, pain free. We are crunching again! Whether this leads to the challenge in August or not, this cherished time with my buddy is back on track.
I’ve been going to a gym, rather than doing home workouts, for about 5 months now. My usual time is to get there by 6am. One thing about the 6am crowd is that they are dedicated. You see all the same faces almost every day. And, you start to acknowledge the regulars when you see them.
I always see one guy who paddles with a weight like he’s paddling a canoe. He does a lot of exercises I don’t really get… but he’s there every day doing his routine. There’s little miss cardio who attacks the elliptical for long periods and at a pace that I could never maintain. There’s the calisthenics dude that pushes his body to the max on every set he does, with an effort that I’d struggle to maintain day-after-day. There is the somewhat self-conscious overweight guy who keeps to himself, who works hard and ends his weight session on a stationary bike. There’s the old guy (I might call him that, but he’s probably just a few years older than me) who chats up everyone, and is always smiling. There is the girl who does RDL’s with such a perfectly straight back that I think you could use her back as an ironing board – impressive! There are two couples, the younger ones work out together, the older ones are obviously together but don’t spend a lot of time on the same machines and do completely different workouts. I could go on and on… because I don’t just see these people once in a while, there are there every weekday.
I often wonder what their back stories are? What got them to be diehard gym goers who are so dedicated? What makes them push, what makes them commit to consistency? Showing up consistently and dedicating regular time to being healthy is a life changing habit. It doesn’t matter if a person is trying to build muscle, increase their max VO2, or just in maintenance mode. It doesn’t matter if they do exercises that make sense to me, or if they struggle with good technique, or if they lift way heavier or way lighter than me. These gym goers have one thing in common… they start their day in the gym. I tip my hat to the 6am gym goer crowd.
In my second year as a teacher, I got to work with Mrs. B, who taught my French class and co-taught PE with me. She was a gymnastics coach and she taught me how to do a muscle-up on the rings. For the next couple years I was the demo guy for this every time the gymnastics unit rolled around. I think the rings muscle-up is easier than doing it on a bar, because on the rings you can keep the rings close to your body, where you have more strength. Think of pulling yourself out of a pool with arms wide on the deck versus just in front of you, close to your body where you have more leverage.
Fast forward almost 25 years and add over 20 pounds to my body and I haven’t tried a muscle up since… and have never in my life tried to do one on a pull up bar.
That changed today.
I unlocked a new achievement. I attempted and successfully achieved a muscle up for the first time ever on a pull up bar. My warm up was some pull-up shrugs, followed by about 5 really high pull-ups. Then I went above the bar and lowered myself down from the top position of a muscle up a couple times. Then I went for it.
I also recorded this first attempt, not because I thought I’d make it, but rather to provide myself feedback to correct any errors. The video is a bit funny to me because I look like I’m in pain even before I started the muscle up. I was visualizing the move, thinking about using my back muscles, and I look anguished rather than focused.
After my surprise success, I did it a couple more times. The first time I thought I’d try two in a row. I did the first one and didn’t even get close to a full pull-up on the second. Then took a long break and watched the video a few times.
My third attempt was the cleanest, then I stayed on the bar and followed up with 10 pull-ups as high as I could go, which was very high for the first few, degenerating to a struggle to get my chin barely over the bar on the last one.
Still, I couldn’t be happier with the results. I was expecting this to take me a month to six weeks to achieve and I hit it on day one! My new goals will be to be able to do more than one in a row and eventually to be able to do one without swinging my body. But for now I’m going to celebrate the win. My workouts have definitely been building my strength, and I think it’s pretty awesome that this 58 year old body was able to pull this off on my very first attempt.
The goal was 3,000 pushups in February. My buddy Dave and I decided we’d do 120 a day over 25 of the month’s 28 days. However, when we were 15 days in and hadn’t missed a day, I upped the ante and said let’s do 3,500. Only a couple days later I missed my 120-a-day goal, and then missed it again the next 2 days as well. So I made up the deficit all in one day by doing 9 sets of 30.
Here is the final tally:
25+25+25+25+20 = 120
30+30+30+20+10 = 120
30+30+30+15+15 = 120
4*30 = 120
4*30 = 120
20+25+25+25+25 = 120
3*40 = 120
3*40 = 120
20+20+20+30+30 = 120
50+35+35 = 120
20+50+25+25 = 120
40+40+20+20 = 120
4*30 = 120
50+20+50 = 120
3*40 = 120
3*40 = 120
2*30 = 60
3*30 = 90
2*30 = 60
9*30 = 270
40+30+25+25 = 120
2*60 = 120
3*40 = 120
3*40 = 120
6*30 = 180
5*30 = 150
5*30 = 150
35+3*25+30 = 140
3,500 pushups in 28 days.
My goal this morning was to do 4 sets of 35 to get my last 140 done. (Since 28*120 is only 3,360, I had a few more than 120 to do the last few days). However, I did the first 35 in the gym after doing my warmup and stretching, then Dave and I did a heavy chest workout. I hit a PB (personal best) on bench press. Then we did heavy incline press, and finished with a superset of chest fly machine and push-ups, and the 3 sets of 25 that I did today were easily the hardest sets I did for the entire month. The last 30 were easy again, I only just did them with a nice long break after my workout.
It’s great to have small goals like this in addition to regular workouts. This is especially rewarding when I’ve had to put training for ‘Everesting the Crunch’ on hold due to sciatica pain in my leg. I’m doing my physio, taking painkillers, and following up with doctor visits, but standing for more than 3 minutes triggers the pain, and it’s hard to go through a day not standing. That said, pushups don’t require standing and so they have been a great goal, fully achieved with no pain.
I’m not sure what our next small goal will be, but if I don’t come up with one, I know my buddy Dave will.
A while ago my wife bought a Hume scale. You pull a handle with sensors up from the base, stand on the scale while holding the handle, and it gives health data far beyond what a simple weight scale does. That said, I’ve questioned the accuracy, and it definitely took some time to adjust, or should I say acclimate, to what it was reading about me.
The thing that really didn’t seem right at first was the heart rate, now with my Garmin watch to compare, I think it is about a heartbeat or two per minute above accurate, but that isn’t a drastic difference. The other thing I wasn’t sure about was body fat percentage, but I just did a scan at my gym that tends to be more accurate and it was pretty close there too.
One stat that all 3 sensors, the Hume, my watch, and this gym scale, all tell me seems to be accurate but the information is useless, and that’s BMI – Body Mass Index. The stats shared with me are 25.3, 26.0, and 25.2 BMI respectively and the Hume app says,
“25.3
High
A ratio of weight to height squared, widely used as a general health screening tool. It is generally regarded as an outdated measurement for health as it does not differentiate between muscle and fat. We have included it here for users which find it useful.
ⓘ Your rating is scored against medical and scientific benchmarks established for people your same age, sex at birth and height.”
And my watch bluntly says,
“Average BMI 26.0
Reducing your BMI to 21.9 can help lower your Fitness Age.
To help achieve this goal:
• Focus on both diet and exercise.
Cutting calories has been shown to be most effective for weight loss, but both regular exercise and calorie maintenance are important for keeping the weight off.”
However, further down in the description of BMI my watch also says,
“Keep in mind that BMI may not be a useful metric for everyone. Highly trained and muscular athletes, for example, may report high BMI numbers even though they are very fit.”
I don’t know if I’d call myself a ‘highly trained and muscular athlete’, but when my Hume app tells me that my body fat percentage is 14.8% and the fancy gym scale says it’s 14.6%, I’m definitely not cutting calories and trying to keep weight off… in fact I’m hoping to gain another 8-10 pounds this year.
All that said, I’ve learned that BMI is not a measure I plan on concerning myself with. And while it’s flattering to have such a low body fat percentage, I wouldn’t mind if that went up a bit while I focused on gaining more muscle. And so it’s good to have data to track but I’m not fixated on the numbers as much as the trends I’m seeing, as these numbers fluctuate.
I’ve learned that my diet does affect my weight and when I’m active I need to maintain my calories and especially my protein. I’ve learned that sleep affects my ‘health score’ and that sleep really is important for my strength, recovery, and overall health. And finally, as mentioned, trends matter more than concerning myself with daily numbers.
I’ve enjoyed tracking these and more data points on my Hume scale and Garmin watch, I do wish theses apps spoke to each other and shared data, but both put product loyalty (buy our watch AND our scale) over customer convenience. What I like is that I can see how my stats are trending, and while I do pay some attention to the numbers regularly, I’m not preoccupied or worried about them… which I think is healthy.
My buddy Dave and I have done the February 2,000 push up challenge for a couple years now and this year I suggested bumping it up. The actual challenge is 2,000 push in 20 days, but we were doing it over the full month. Last year I did 75-80 push ups daily in sets, sometimes just doing 4 sets of 20 or 3 sets of 25, sometimes less sets with more reps… With rest days.
This year I plan to do 120 a day. I only need to do that 25 days to hit 3k, so I’ve got 3 rest days if I need them. Yesterday I did 4 sets of 25 and one set of 20. Today I plan to do 4 sets of 30. This isn’t hard, it’s a fun challenge, and my buddy and I keep each other motivated to do them. Having small, fun goals like this keeps me focused, and gives me small incremental goals to do a few more per set as the month progresses.
I think challenges like this are great. Even if you struggle to do 5 pushups, you can spread sets out throughout the day and shoot for 1,000 pushups in the month. That would be 7-8 sets of 5 in a day, but the thing is that within a week your new maximum will be close to 10 and you’ll need less than 4 sets a day at that point. In fact, if you struggle with pushups, you’ll see more gains than someone who already does them easily.
It’s a fun challenge, find an accountability partner or just track your progress quietly… either way, go for it. You’ll love the gains and have nothing to lose.
Last year I wanted to do one Max VO2 training session a week, but I really did it only every 2-3 weeks. This year I’m committed. My activity of choice right now is 8 one-minute sprint intervals. My interval timer is actually set to 1:15 high intensity followed by 1:10 low intensity. The reason for the additional time is that it takes about 13 seconds to get the treadmill from my low intensity walk, at a 3.4 pace, to my high intensity pace starting at 8.6 and progressing to 9.4 on the final one (I skip 8.7 for those that are math inclined).
I thought I’d share the stats from my watch for the last 3 runs, and then I can see how I compare closer to the end of the year.
January 11, 2025
January 14, 2025
January 20, 2025
I’m actually not trending well, with my average and overall heart rate going up, but fluctuations are to be expected and that’s why I decided to share the last 3. There are two big challenges ahead. The one I have control over is dedicating to doing this at least once a week. The one I have less control over is seeing how quickly I can get my heart rate to recover and if I can decrease my overall peak heart rate doing the same activity… this challenge should be achieved just from the commitment to do this weekly.
One of my health goals this year is to increase the size of my legs, specifically my quadriceps. I think that for their size, they are pretty strong, but that’s relative because they are pretty skinny.
Proportionally I look like a guy who chooses to skip leg day. That’s not fully true, I work my legs almost daily, but that’s usually a weighted walk on the treadmill, or once-a-week sprints, and of course, mentioned many times here, the Coquitlam Crunch walks weekly.
Basically, I exercise my legs more than any other part of my body… but almost always walking, and for cardio rather than explicitly to strengthen and grow them. If I look back at last year, I’d guess I did about 40 or so leg days, barely over once a week for only 75% of the weeks in 2025. Then to start this year, I did legs on the 1st, then today, on the 11th.
My goal, which I will be tracking, is to get at least 78 dedicated leg days in this year. That’s an average of 1.5 times per week. This is harder that it would seem because I need at least 2 days rest after a leg day before my training to Everest the Crunch, because climbing the Crunch progressively more times to train is by no means fun after a leg day.
One thing I hate about leg day is that I find of all my body parts legs hurt the most for the next two day. That means over 150 days this year that I’m going to feel sore legs. Yuk. But if I’m going to gain another 10 pounds, another goal I have for the year, most of it will need to be on my legs. I’m not going to get much bulkier in my upper body, so legs are the place I have the most potential to grow.
So there it is, I’ve put my goals out into the universe, now I’ve got to make them real. Leg day #2 done for the year… I’ll link back here at the end of December.
It’s that time of year again where I go to my big tracking calendar and add up my totals for the year.
Once again I was very consistent with my workouts and meditation, and I’ve yet again maintained my daily writing for another year. I’ll break a few things down as I reflect on the year.
Workouts: After taking a look at my 2024 calendar, I realize that I haven’t missed 2 days in a row in over 2 years. This year I was a little less strict in my definition of a workout, sometimes only doing 15 minutes of cardio, and sometimes not doing both weights and cardio, but still committing to a workout 326/365 days in 2025.
In my 2024 post I said regarding one of two goals, “Gain 7-8 pounds of muscle… Now I fluctuate around 167-169 pounds and would like to bring that to 175 pounds.”
For the last couple weeks I’ve been bouncing around 173-175 but I hit 178 a couple months ago and I’ll get back there after the holiday break. So, I totally achieved this goal, and couldn’t be happier. For 2026 I hope to be in the 183-185 range. I think this is a huge challenge, my body seems to like the 174-176 range and I’ll have to work more on a consistent diet rather than just focusing on weights and training.
Meditation: This is something I need to improve. While statistically I did well with frequency of meditations, about 85-90% of these were done when walking on my treadmill. Although I listened to a guided meditation, I was almost always distracted and allowed my monkey brain to wander instead of truly meditating.
I’m actually not going to try to change this at all in the next 6 months, but once I retire I’ll attempt to meditate for longer, and be more dedicated to meditation. This will include a more formal setup and a setting other than on the treadmill. For now I’ll stick with the status quo.
Daily-Ink: I’ll continue to write every single day for 2026. This started in July 2019, and I have no plans to change this in the short term.
Creativity: This was a failed goal but I’m still happy to track it. I wanted this to increase, but it decreased. Essentially, the only thing I tracked this year was meetings with my uncle where we discuss our Book of Codes project and just as importantly, life, the universe, and everything. Again, I’ll have new goals after retirement, but for now I’m in maintenance mode and just want to keep going as-is.
So, my main goals this year are calorie tracking and building muscle mass. I only want to get to 185lbs, this isn’t a plan to keep gaining weight after that. I actually like the weight I’m at right now, but at 58 with a not-so-great back, I realize that I’m one injury away from having to take a few months off and potentially dropping 8-10 pounds. Hopefully such an incident is a couple decades away, but even if it’s only 5 years away I’m keenly aware that I will have a much harder time regaining weight in my older years. So if I can sit at 185lbs as my normal weight, I know that I likely won’t drop below 175… which again is a weight I’m quite happy to be at.
185lbs by the end of 2026 is my goal, and to get there I will focus on hypertrophy in the gym and a higher protein and calorie intake than I have normally consumed.
Fitness, meditation, and writing are things I no longer need to track to ensure that I’m on track. For this reason, I think I might be retiring my large calendar and stickers. I recently got a Garmin watch with Lifestyle Tracking and I’ll still record these daily, but it’s time to put an end to the calendar. It has served me well but having joined a gym, I no longer go to my basement every day and tracking this month has been less diligent since I could go a full week without adding stickers. That said, if you are starting a new goal, I can’t recommend this strategy enough.
2026 is going to be a great year of continued progress… Gradual at first, but picking up speed after my mid-year retirement.
I’ve got to say that I love my new watch, the Garmin Venu 4. I’ve been very interested in tracking my training, but have only been tracking my number of training days until getting the watch. Now I get to see what my speed and heart rate are during my workouts, among other things.
I try to do most of my workouts in Zone 2, but my watch says I’m actually in Zone 3. My next bit of research is determining if I’m going harder than I should or if I am just in good condition for my age. More data needed before I decide.
Today was my second time with my watch on an interval run. I do a warm up walk then 8 intervals, high intensity for 1:15 and low intensity for 1:10 eight times, then a cool down walk. The high intensity is really just for a minute and about 3 seconds because it takes 12 seconds to get the treadmill from 3.4 at low intensity to a range between 8.6 to 9.4 for my progressively faster high intensity intervals.
What’s really awesome is getting the data about my workouts from my watch. Here is just some of the data:
This is just my second data point for intervals so I’m creating a baseline from which I can hopefully see progress. Until now my only data has been how tired I feel. Now I can dig a lot deeper and actually see gains. I can also make sure that I’m training at the right pace. High intensity intervals aren’t exactly fun. Collecting data on them and getting results to compare over time will make them just a little bit more enjoyable.
