The Newsroom

About four years ago, I was out at a social event with some friends from work. In a crowded restaurant, I lost my footing while standing on a raised ledge and fell a whole whopping three or four inches to the floor. Searing pain when through my left calf, and it got really tight. At the end of the night, I hobbled back to my car, trying to walk off what I thought was the worst charley horse of my life. The next day, I felt around my calf muscle, figured it was just tight and sore from being cramped, and took a few days off exercising. When I got back into walking and running, my calf would get really sore really quickly. But I just assumed that this was, again, residual stuff from the charley horse. Except that it never really went away. Finally, a full year later (because I'm a male - this is how we operate), I got tired of my calf cramping my style (geddit?) and inhibiting my speed and distance of my walking, hiking and running, and I went to my physiotherapist. The c...

A little less than last week. I'll take it.

I haven't done one of these in a few weeks, and ... ick. I knew it would be up, but fortunately, my weight isn't up as much as I feared it would be. When the Legislature sits, it's much more difficult for me to exercise regularly and I tend to let my eating habits go, too. I have found over the years that basically, I have a summer weight of 175 lbs and below and a winter weight between 175 lbs and 180 lbs. It's when I get over 180 lbs I really start to freak out. (And, yes, I have weighed myself since June, but for some reason the Tactio app nuked all of my data between then and now. Whatever.)

A good month in October, putting on 206 km and change and just slightly under my September tally of 226 km. But more importantly, in October I hit my goal of cycling 2,000 km in 2012, which I'm ridiculously happy about.

I'm up a couple of pounds from my last post 2 weeks ago, which I'm not thrilled with, but sometimes these things happen. Will redouble my efforts and keep trying to move that number back down.

I am not an athlete. I'm just a guy who decided three year ago that it would be fun to cycle to work in the summer. Eventually, that turned that into a 2012 goal of cycling a total of 2,000 km. That was a pretty lofty goal, given that in 2011, my cumulative total of running, walking and cycling was a mere 1,363 km  (and I originally figured I'd try to reach 1,500 km in 2012 before expanding that). So I'm happy that I not only achieved my goal, I crushed it - and I would have crushed it sooner had it not been for my August cycling accident. But I'm not going to rest on my laurels. I've already set another goal of cycling an additional 400 km before the end of the year. And for 2013, I think 2,500 would be a good start for a guy who isn't an athlete but just likes to ride his bicycle.

Really good week in the weight loss department! Within striking distance of 170 lbs and the UFC Welterweight Championship.

A pretty good September, totalling 226 km. I'm currently at 94% of my cycling goal of 2,000 km in 2012 (1,875 km as of yesterday), and in my RunKeeper life, I've gone 3,405 km of cycling, walking and running.

Forgot to do this last week. Down to 177.2 lbs, so the downward trend continues. Yay!

As I noted in my last entry for July, my August RunKeeper stats sucked in comparison to, well, pretty much any other month since I've been measuring. A mere 100 km (and change) for the month of walking and cycling. I have a good excuse, however: On Aug. 9, while riding to work, I lost control of my bike on a path in the river valley after hitting some mud doing a right turn and faceplanted into the ground, breaking 2 teeth (one of which couldn't be saved and was extracted that day, the other of which got a root canal this morning), splitting open my chin for five stitches, spraining my left arm and lots of road rash on my right leg. Yeah. Not fun. I don't recommend it. So that has slowed me down a bit. I did get some outdoor cycling in during August, but the strain on my left arm made it difficult to go very far, so my bike is retired for this year and I'm cycling on a bike at the gym until next spring.

That's better. Today's weigh-in was 178 lbs, down 2 from last week. Although I know from experience that this is the toughest weight for me to break through on the way down - 178 is one of my plateau levels. Still, shooting for 170 lbs.

Yeah, yeah, I'm really, really late with this. My July cycling and walking totals were nearly 204 km, which I was pretty happy with considering I didn't ride for 2 weeks in July due to vacation. I'll post the August stats this weekend. Warning: my August results comparatively suck. But I had a good excuse.

I'm up a pound from last week, which isn't ideal, but the trend all week was even to down, so I'm figuring that today was an aberration.

OK, I was supposed to do this yesterday and I forgot. I have not been exercising nearly as regularly as I need to due to an unfortunate cycling accident a week and a half ago that left me injured. Nonetheless, I weighed in at 179.8 lbs this morning, which is on the good side of 180, and we'll keep pressing forward.

I had great success last year posting weekly pictures of me on my scale as a way of motivating (shaming, shurely) me to stay on my fitness kick and lose weight. Having slowly put 10 lbs back on in 2012 (despite all my cycling) I'm returning to what worked and will be posting weekly pictures of how much I weigh. But instead of scale pictures I'll be posting from the Tactio app. Today's entry: 181.6 lbs. Goal: 170 lbs.

As I had hoped, June turned out to be a great month in terms of exercising, as I put on 367 km in the month, almost all of it cycling. I continued my 3-year-old summer tradition of riding to work as often as I could, which helped put on a lot of miles (or kilometres, I suppose). So far in 2012, I've cycled 1,396 km, so I'm 70% of the way towards my goal of biking 2,000 km for the year.

It was another good month in the exercising department as I clocked 248 km worth of cardio in May and acquired a set of dumbbells and some weights so I can do some upper body workouts at home. But what I'm most happy about is that I passed the halfway mark of my goal to bike 2,000 km in 2012 - currently 1,018 km. That should increase tremendously in June as I start cycling to work.

April was a pretty good month on the fitness trail in terms of mileage (kilometerage?) My five days in Vegas were criminally under-tracked, I suspect, but there was no way I was incurring charges for using my GPS in the US for 10 hours a day over 5 days. So I guesstimated a couple of days worth and then basically gave up. I walked a lot in Vegas.

So March came in like a lamb and went out ... well, like lamb on protein powder, I suppose. It wasn't a great month for me for exercising due to work. I put on just shy of 157 km in March. I probably could have pushed myself this week to do way more, but, honestly, I had hit the point where my body needed the rest more than it needed the exercise. But I'm at 637 km for the year so far, or 32% of my 2,000 km goal. I'm quite happy with that. I'm off to Vegas for a few days, where I'll be doing a lot of walking up and down the strip. I won't be using RunKeeper to track my distance, as I don't really want to pay a billion dollars in data roaming charges. The strip is about 3.5 miles one way, so I'll be estimating and entering some data based on that. I figure all that walking should count for something.