Looking forward to 2017, piling on 2016

So, I hate to pile on 2016, but, for purposes of me staying fit, it kind of sucked.

The year got off to a good start – overweight but had stuff to work with. My overall goal of about 30 minutes/day of actual exercise (not what passes for exercise on the Apple Watch) was more or less on-track. May was a low point, but I think i’d tweaked my knee.

Then, I found a tick after a scout camping trip. Went into the doc for antibiotic prophylaxis, and she told me that I’d start seeing symptoms in about 6 weeks if I had Lyme. Sure enough, Lyme it was. Started in early July while I was on travel, and laid me out. Felt like crap until I got on antibiotics; then haven’t been right since.

Anyhoo, it’s been a long, long road back (though not enough of it actually ON the road). During Thanksgiving, though, I caught Runner’s World Run Streak post, and thought “Hey, why not?” A (semi-sober) tweet at my little brother and it was on.

It’d be a lie to say that I crushed all 39 of those runs – a couple of them were phoned in, but runs nonetheless. Vast majority were <1.5 miles, but they got done.

Interestingly, when New Year’s rolled around, and when I did my last mile at 1:40 AM in shorts and freezing rain (my typo was “freeing rain”), I woke up later that same day and thought “Maybe I’m not quite done. The weather was good, so I went out and got in a decent ride on my favorite loop to really kick off the new year. Since then, I’ve been still going, despite being back to work, the winter kicking in in earnest, and my general lazy nature.

Weight’s still a huge issue. I’m ashamed to admit where I am, but I believe I may be fatter than at any point in this blog’s history. But, with a great bout of stomach flu hitting Chez Jank this weekend, I may have turned the corner the right way.

So, what are the #streak2017 rules?

Do something every day to get the heart rate up. 1 mile running is ~150 calories for me, so that’s the general ground rule

One mile walking =/= one mile running. It just isn’t. (At least not for me – though back in August it would have counted)

For cycling, I’m setting 2,000 watt-minutes as my mile equivalent. 2,000 w-min means that I take the watts I put out and multiply that by the number of minutes I ride. So, 20 minutes at 100 watts (which is zone 2-3 for me, pretty easy to breathe and talk but not like strolling), or 10 minutes at 200 watts (which is zone 4 – breathing really hard and starting to get uncomfortable) would count. When the weather gets nice, it’ll be a 3 mile outside equivalent).

Swimming is 1,000 yards, again, about 20 minutes. 500 yards seems too short (10 there and back laps in a 25 yd pool barely breaks a sweat), and I can’t really figure out where to draw the line between 500 and 1,000. Maybe 800 with swimming twice as hard as running? Dunno. Willing to talk.

In any case, I’m pretty psyched. 8 days in and still going (plus the previous 39, so – wow! 47 days). Feeling good. I think that as I’m getting older, keeping moving actually does better for me than taking rest days, provided that the “rest” days are really easy, easy days.