#164 - 30 Day Challenges, Other Goals, and One Year Ago

Motto: T Minus 23 Days

I swear I'm taking these 30 Day Challenges seriously. But, once again, I'm going to have to change (or amend, maybe) this month's goal. This month's goal was: "I, Aaron Gillespie, will run 50 miles in the month of April". We have reached the 10th day of April, and I, Aaron Gillespie, have only ran 10 miles. That's not bad, right? But it's not on track to reach 50, and it's brought to my attention a big problem. If I run much over much over a mile, I wind up being in pain for the rest of the evening. The pain goes right through my SI joint. My hip feels exactly like it used to before I got on antiinflamitories. My rheumatologist (joint doctor) said that running is awful and would probably aggravate my autoimmune condition. Turns out she was right. So I'm amending my goal. I, Aaron Gillespie, will run, walk, ellipt, row, swim, and/or bike the combined effective total of 50 miles in April. Biking, rowing, and swimming will have some sort of conversion factor: 2.5 miles on a bike = 1 mile on a treadmill = 0.25 miles in the pool. Something like that. The goal is now a little more subjective, a little less pure than "running 50 miles", but the idea stands. The theme is still there: burn calories and build cardiovascular capacity through aerobic exercise. This is all part of my overall fitness goals: to find the crux between aerobic, anaerobic, and flexibility exercises - while eating a diet full of meats, vegetables, fruits, and, to a lesser extent, dairy products and grains. A healthy body is balanced on all fronts. That's one part of my overall goals for living a quality, fully self-actualized life. I'm continually impressed with my own foresight when it comes to the Life Tracker. I haven't had to change any of my fundamental goals: Diet, Excercise, Money, Mind, Management, Work, and Others. I first wrote about my "solution for keeping track of the chaos of life" in Column #76, 53 weeks ago. My first tracked week started Monday, April 22nd, 2013. That's 50 weeks ago. I've successfully tracked on 35 of those 50 weeks, and I've learned a ton about myself along the way. During the 3 weeks that lapsed between initial conceptualization and the real-world implementation a few different things happened: 1. I learned to write javascript 2. I learned how to interface with Google Docs' backend 3. My code brought to life an inefficient, inelegant system... but a system that worked 4. I flew out of the country for the first time 5. I got engaged I wrote those in order of increasing importance. Importance didn't increase linearly, nor exponentially, perhaps logarithmically? Perhaps logarithm-in-the-exponentially? As of yesterday, Melissa and I have been engaged for 1 year. 

As of next next next Saturday, we'll be married.

Top 5: Things I've Learned in a Year (35 weeks) of Life Tracking

5. In terms of things I'm good at: Management > seeing friends > keeping my body healthy > keeping my mind healthy > staying successful at work. Should I be worried about my job? I got good performance reviews last year, and my work numbers have gone up significantly since starting this new job... so in theory I should go from good to really good. 4. I work out only 2.4 times per week. Of those 2.4 times, 0.6 are legs focused, 0.8 are upper body, 0.8 are cardiovascular, and 0.1 is flexibility. I need to stretch more. I need to workout more. My goal is 1 of each type every week. Should be easy. 3. I don't track money consistently enough. Things automatically pulled from my banking account are hard to track. Also it doesn't help that a weekly summary doesn't make much sense as far as money is concerned. Money is the area where the Tracker needs the most help. 2. My macronutrient ratio (by calorie) is basically 35% fats, 45% carbs, and 20% protein. While that's not as bad as it sounds, I could use more protein and less carbs. 1. I eat 2635 calories/day on average. That number varies wildly, but the number of days in the 2500 to 2700 range is more than double that of any other 200 calorie range.

Quote:
“What I was thinking was, we should each write up a breakdown and history, complete with progress pics, and then you can post it to your column. So 7 people can read it.”
- Jon, overestimating how many people read this blog -