Tag: Training

Diet, Health, Motivation

I Used To Be…

We were hanging with friends the other day and one of them said she wanted to do a four-peak hiking challenge this coming year to get back in shape and improve health. She wanted to know if I’d be willing to do it with her so we could motivate each other. It only makes sense that she’d ask me because I am descended from Vikings. I am a Norseman! My ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and across the Old West. I come from hearty outdoorsman stock. I am practically Daniel Boone and Davey Crocket, reincarnate.

As a former trail runner who had no problem knocking out an 8-12 mile run in the mountains, I looked at the list of peaks and thought no big deal. Yeah, I’m not in shape at the moment but give me a few weeks and I’ll be back in form. After all, I’m a trail runner/mountain biker/backpacker/motorcyclist who’s comfortable in the mountains. Except that I’m not. I used to be… This year, more than any other, the reality of living in the past has hit me hard. I used to do all kinds of athletic things. I used to be in pretty good shape. I used to run and mountain bike and ski. The reality is that it’s been at least three years since that was true.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that this has not been my favorite year. Was it challenging because of my weight and fitness? Or did my weight and fitness being in the crapper make the year a struggle? Chicken and egg, I suppose.

It’s hard to admit Father Time has caught up with you. I haven’t bounced back from surgery like I thought I would. I went skiing a few days ago and my legs were destroyed in just a few runs. I’m super sore after workouts – I tell myself it’s because I had surgery, but deep down I know it’s because I haven’t been doing anything for a long time.

It’s clear I’ll never been Davey Crocket again. I don’t know if I’ll ever be a “real” mountain biker or trail runner again. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be massively better than I am now. I’m not sure my joints could take running at this point. But I bet I can be a damn good hiker again. It’s doubtful I’ll ever descend or ride the bike at race pace again, but I bet I can get back to being a good climber and endurance rider for my age.

As we get ready for the new year, I feel good about ’24. For some strange reason, the last time I lost a bunch of weight and got in shape, I decided to start during the holidays. Arguably the worst possible time to try and watch your diet and exercise. When I made it through the holidays and kept up with my diet goals, I felt proud of myself and energized to keep it going.

Oddly, I’ve done the same thing this year. I didn’t mean to, and had forgotten that this was the same timeframe I started the last go ’round. Something snapped in my head after Thanksgiving and I said to myself, we’re done with drinking calories and we’re going to pay attention to diet. I’ve managed to avoid the typical binges during holiday parties so far and feel good.

So we’re doing better with diet and we have a physical challenge with four peaks to work towards. I feel like 2024 is going to be the change I needed.

As I was talking to my friend about getting ready for hiking, I mentioned how important working on balance was. As I thought about my own advice, I decided I needed a balance goal to work towards. So I decided to learn a new skill for ’24 to challenge myself and work on balance.

It’s a move on the bike called a “manual”. If you’re a kid it’s probably no big deal. At my age, I think it would be a significant achievement. I see some tumbles in my future, but as long as I don’t break a hip it’ll be worth it.

So there we go. We’re going to move on from remembering what I used to be, and instead focus on what I can be. Damn, that’s poetic. Almost T-shirt worthy.

So Merry Christmas, Chanukah, Festivus, or whatever it is you celebrate. Let’s make 2024 a good one!

Cool, Daily Life, Motivation

I Crashed

I crashed this weekend. I don’t really like the word crash. I prefer “a spontaneous, unplanned, rapid dismount”. More than one of those happened. And I was happy about it. Why? Because it was in training and practice conditions, and I got over the fear of dropping my motorcycle.

I took a three-day adventure motorcycle class this weekend. It’s designed to help develop skills needed to ride these ridiculously large motorcycles in offroad terrain that they probably don’t belong in. I already knew I didn’t know much about proper offroad riding techniques – I just didn’t realize how much I didn’t know. Kind of like the Donald Rumsfeld quote, “there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns”. This weekend gave me a peek into the unknown unknowns.

We spent hours working on slow speed turns, balance drills, weight transfer, and traction management. We then took those skills and (attempted) to apply them to varied terrain. Deep sand, obstacles, and steep hill descents were all thrown at us with varying degrees of success.

The class also reminded me of a truism I’m learning every time I take any sort of lesson. What I think I’m doing and what I’m really doing are rarely the same thing. For example, I was convinced I was leaning and rolling the bike underneath me like a boss in corners. Like, Instagram and magazine photo level form. One of the instructors pulled me aside and helpfully pointed out my lean was approximately 5 millimeters and that I was going to have to be just a tad more aggressive if I wanted to see any improvement. Ego crushed.

It was a good weekend of learning new skills and pushing past fear. I walked away with a few bruises and the realization that dropping the bike wasn’t the end of the world. Assuming I continue to practice what I learned, I’ll be a much more confident rider moving forward.

Everyone needs to push their limits every now and then. Fear is healthy. It (usually) keeps us from doing really stupid things. But unchecked fear can limit learning, or even prevent you from experiencing life. So go out there and find a way to push past whatever your fear is. You’ll come out the other side a better person for it.

A spontaneous, unplanned, rapid dismount every now and then is good for the soul.

Cool, Daily Life, Health

A Slave To The Numbers

I said I was going to wait, but I couldn’t help myself. I bought a Fitbit. I went with just the basic wrist one. The only thing I’m interested in is the heart rate monitor. We’re on day three of wearing it full-time and I’m getting obsessed with checking on my heart rate.

Overall, I’m pleased with my resting heart rate. Averaging 55 bpm. Higher than it was when I was running, but I’m ok with that for now. The purpose of the monitor was so that I can ensure that I’m in zone 2 when walking/running to maximize building an aerobic base. Today was the first chance I had to see what happens while out on my power walk. Turns out, I can’t get into zone 2!

While walking (on flat ground) as fast as I can go without breaking into a jog, my heart rate hovered around 110-115. Based upon the various calculators I found, zone 2 for me should be 120-130 bpm. As soon as I started an extremely slow jog… my heart rate went to 135-140. It didn’t make any difference what I did – I couldn’t get to that 120-130 zone. I was always below or above.

Has anyone else experienced this? I’m not sure what to do. Would I be better off continuing with the fast power walk that’s below, or the extremely slow jog that’s too high? I consulted Dr. Google, but no luck. We’ll see what the heart rate trend is over the next few days.

While the original purpose of the Fitbit was so that I can monitor my heart rate, it has a bunch of other features that I had no interest in. That is, until I discovered the sleep tracking. I’ve had two nights with it now, and I’m amazed at how accurate it is. Both nights it pegged the time I went to bed and woke within +/- 5 minutes or so. How in the world does it know? Technology is amazing.

But now, I have a whole new set of numbers and stats to obsess over. My sleep scores are terrible. Heart rate and Sp02 are fine, but everything else is awful. I thought I was a good sleeper, but apparently not. I was not aware of something called the heart rate variability score. This is supposed to be an indicator of fitness. You want a larger (greater) variability in your heart rate. Meaning, while keeping the same total number of beats per minute, the time between each beat should vary. Mine the last two nights has been low. As in, bottom percentile for my age low. I guess I’m basically a metronome. I was perfectly happy with my sleep habits before, but now I’m going to worry each night about what the metrics are going to show in the morning.

It is now officially my mission to improve that number. I have no idea how, but I’m going to do it. I can see it already… six months from now I’ll be sleeping in a separate room that is specially climate controlled, sound deadened, and has all the electrical circuits shut off to remove any EMF messing with my circadian rhythm.

Maybe I shouldn’t have bought that Fitbit after all…

Daily Life

Weekly Wrap Up

It’s Friday people. It’s been a pretty good week. Lots of news going on, plenty of activities happening. Time for some random contrarian thoughts.

  • Wednesday was in the top 5 of my all-time best ski days. We ended up with 8-9 inches of the fluffy stuff dumping overnight in town. Up on the hill there was 16+ inches up on top. Hard to describe how much fun it was. We skied until the last lift stopped running. A great way to finish out the season. Still a few more weeks of spring skiing to come…

  • I finally stopped being lazy and built out the wall-mounted ski rack in the mud room I’d been promising to finish for at least a year (or two). I’m very pleased with how it came out. I’m not very good with that sort of thing, so it’s a great feeling of accomplishment when I do some sort of home improvement like that. (insert Tim the Tool Man grunt)

  • I had to back a large trailer up a narrow, icy driveway. A little ugly, but I got it done. Backing a trailer is an interesting skill that takes a lot of practice. Not something I ever had an opportunity to do as a young adult. Should be one of those mandatory basic dude stuff skills.

  • Ukraine surfaced again as a topic in the pending presidential race. DeSantis had the audacity to call it a territorial dispute. The warmongering class clutched their pearls in horror and called him a Putin stooge. Recall the two main questions I’ve asked for a long time. 1) How is this in our strategic interest? 2) If you actually think Russia’s plan is to continue rolling into Poland after Ukraine, why is Europe not fully funding and massively mobilizing a defense?

  • The United States (and NATO) have done everything in their power to provoke this conflict. Don’t believe me? I highly recommend reading this short book on the subject: “How the West Brought War to Ukraine“. It may open your eyes a bit. If nothing else, it will give a prospective other than what the chattering class on the nightly news gives you.

  • My weight loss has completely stalled. I’m below maintenance calories. I haven’t snacked, cheated or otherwise sabatoged my eating. High protein, low carbs. I’ve completely cut out alcohol. I Nordic or alpine ski 4 days a week. My weight has remained static for over a week (even gone up a few of the days). Extremely frustrating. It’s hard to remain motivated to deprive oneself day after day when you see zero progress. Sigh.
  • I read a great substack this week (that I can’t find now) that described the technical details of what happened to the SVB bank fail. It reminded me of the ’08 financial crisis. The root causes are extremely complicated, despite the simplistic news summaries we see. Ultimately, it’s a systemic lack of oversight that enabled the failure (similar to ’08). I see no appetite for the financial or political world to make any changes. It’s not a good long-term recipe.

  • I’ve been following a gal who has set the record (demolished it) for consecutive ultramarathon runs. She’s on day 132 of running 32 miles a day. It just shows what we’re capable of if we choose to. Meanwhile, I ski two days in a row and tell myself I better take a break so I don’t overtrain. LOL

  • We’re down to the last ten episodes of the last season of Walking Dead. (no spoilers please!) We’ve gone from why did we ever stop watching, to this is dumb, to this is great. At the moment we’re back to this is just stupid. I’m ready for this series to be put out of its misery. I hope it finishes strong.

The weekend in my part of the world is looking to be sunny and 50+ degrees. We haven’t seen that for a while. I see motorcycle rides, dog hikes, and yard work in my future. Ya’ll go enjoy the weekend and try to be good humans.

Daily Life, Motivation

It’s All About The Training

At the end of the day, we do what we’re trained to do. This applies to everything. When the moment matters, the amygdala portion of the brain takes over and initiates the fight or flight response. The body will fall back to rote muscle memory. If you didn’t train for that scenario, you’ll freeze or do something illogical. Training means exactly that – physically repeating and practicing something. Just reading about a subject and assuming you’ll know what to do is NOT the same thing. This was vividly demonstrated to me last night.

Without opening up a can of worms on a controversial subject, let’s just say that I believe in one’s right to arm themselves to protect hearth and home. I own a number of guns and regularly practice with them (well, before ammo prices skyrocketed). I feel like I am at least minimally proficient and able to handle firearms safely. I am ready to defend myself, my family, and my home should the need arise. All is good, right?

That belief was tested last night. At 2:30 in the morning, Mrs. Troutdog woke me from a sound sleep with the words nobody wants to hear in the middle of the night – “There’s someone standing at the door!”

It was time for my training and preparedness to kick in. So, what did I do? I grabbed a t-shirt and ran to the front door in my underwear. Did I get the gun first? No. Did I even think about the gun? No. Did I grab my phone? No. I looked out the window and had a moment of confusion thinking it was my nephew, who lives in another state, standing on my porch. And then I just yelled, “what do you want?” And then I remember the thought that went through my head… I’d put my t-shirt on backwards. Seriously, that’s what I was thinking about.

When survival mode was needed, I pretty much blanked out on everything. I’ve watched and read a bunch of survival, shooting, and self-defense stuff. In my head I thought I knew exactly how to respond. But because I’d never actually physically practiced or gone through the motions, I had no actual muscle memory to fall back on. I stood there in my underwear contemplating my backwards t-shirt.

Fortunately, it ended up being just a really drunk guy who was at the wrong house. He was so drunk he could barely stand and kept dropping his cell phone. He mumbled sorry and stumbled off into the night. And then I remembered all the things I probably should have done.

The point of this is not some lecture on home defense. It’s training – for any subject. Unless you physically practice something, the odds of you performing well when needed are slim. Driving in the snow. Reading a map when you think you’re lost. CPR. Deadlifts. Cleans. Heavy club swings. Public speaking. Fighting. Self-defense. You cannot simply watch a YouTube video on any of these things and think you’ll be able to do them when needed.

It was a good lesson for me. As an RN, I’ve spent more time than I can count in stressful scenarios. Traumas, bleeding, codes, CPR. Been there, done that. We practice and have to be re-certified every year on those skills. As a result, in those scenarios I’m pretty calm. It doesn’t mean I’ll aways do the right thing, but I have a better than average chance of keeping the thinking part of the brain going and making better decisions. Because of that, I assumed that I’d behave the same in all emergency situations. Clearly, I was wrong.

So now I have to think about my training. I need to create an actual plan for when something goes bump in the night and practice that plan. And then practice some more. You should do the same for whatever things in life you THINK you know what to do. Until you create that muscle memory, you have no idea what your brain will fall back to. It might be worrying about your t-shirt being backwards as your house burns down around you.

P.S. My dog is fired. I have an 80-pound dog who spends his days barking fiercely at anything that moves. The mailman is his mortal enemy. What did this fierce protector do through this whole scenario? Nothing. He slept. Never got out of bed. He will not be getting any treats today.

Daily Life, Health

Headed Off To Bootcamp

How’z those New Year resolutions going? I’m pretty sure in the fitness industry they’re now reaching peak “new year, new me!” frenzy. Somewhere in the next few weeks the new gym membership attendance begins to wane. By late February the committed gym rats have their empty weight rooms again and gym owners can rejoice – all those oversold introductory one-year memberships are now free money. Diets are being broken, and people are realizing they’re stuck with three more months of Jenny Craig meals they won’t eat. That Peloton bike investment and pre-paid 1 year subscription is looking shaky, although it does make a handy spot to dry sweaters.

In Troutdog land, we’re still on the path. Been about 80% good with diet and mostly in ketosis. Zero alcohol for the month. I was really good until I got taken out by the virus which we shall not name. I got hit with the full dump truck of symptoms. Everything except loss of taste and smell. Apparently for me, full fevers and body aches is a license to eat everything I can find in the pantry. I put back a couple of the pounds I’d lost. I’ve now re-lost those pounds, but my end of January weight goal is 1.5 pounds away with three days to go. I’ll probably get close, but no cigar. I blame China.

Workouts have been spotty, but I’m doing it. Again, the damn virus put a damper on things. When you’re newly lifting weights, it’s hard to tell if that head-to-toe body ache is because of DOMS, or Covid fever? The biggest accomplishment is that I started running again. And by running, I mean a lumbering walk-jog with occasional bouts of wild flailing around in an attempt to not slip on the ice. People my age break hips falling on the ice, so I’m extra careful.

All of this, combined with days and days of contemplating my navel while waiting to pass quarantine, prompted me to make a rash decision. I committed to something I’ve never done before. I hired a personal trainer. Gasp! It was either that or join the military so I can go through bootcamp. With tensions mounting in the Ukraine and South China Sea, I figured a local fitness expert was a safer choice.

I’m not sure what to expect. I don’t see him until next week. I told him I was looking for help putting together a program that incorporates strength training with improving aerobic endurance. I started putting together an extensive resume of past fitness and sport achievements, a list of gear and equipment in my home gym, daily nutrition data, and then a proposed schedule of workout times that correspond with my circadian rhythms. I then realized that he’ll probably throw that in the trash and say, “Uh, can you lift that weight? No? Ok how about that one? Still no? Can you lift that pink one? Hmmm. Maybe this isn’t the best fit…”

I’m starting to realize that what I really need is someone to simply hold me accountable. To yell at me to stop complaining and just get it done. To ask me what the hell I’ve been eating that my weight went back up three pounds in a day. To slap that 2,000 calorie Starbucks Frappuccino out of my pudgy little fingers. In short, I need to go to bootcamp.

Maybe there’s a military branch for middle aged dudes with poor eyesight and more computer skills than physical attributes. Weekends only would be a bonus. I’m thinking that I’m a walking recruiting poster boy for… The UNITED STATES SPACEFORCE!

So, if you don’t hear from me for a while I’m either binge watching Bill Murry in Stripes or I got called up to report for duty. I wonder if they’ll make me get a haircut?

Government, Politics, Solving the wrong problem

A Case For Universal Basic Income

I should start out by saying that I do not agree with implementing a Universal Basic Income (UBI). However I recently listened to a podcast with Andrew Yang, a 2020 presidential candidate, and he made the most compelling case yet for it. I think the alarm bell he’s ringing is true… I’m just am not convinced UBI is the right solution.

Mr. Yang’s premise is that due to AI and automation one-third of all working Americans are going to lose their job in the next 12 years. Most of these workers are going to have a very hard time finding new employment. He makes the case that it’s not realistic to think that you’re going to re-train a truck driver from rural Iowa to write code. By giving every working age American $1000 a month you provide a safety net that will be put back into the economy in the form of gas, groceries, fuel, etc… A UBI paid for by a VAT tax. You have a choice of taking the UBI or social services (e.g. food stamps) but not both.

I agree that the coming AI boom is going to displace mass numbers of people. The Mckinsey research group estimates between 400 and 800 million people will be replaced by automation by 2030 worldwide. In the US, the top ten professions are mostly all lower wage jobs. The top five are:

  • #1 for males – truck driver
  • Retail sales
  • cashier
  • office clerk
  • food prep
  • customer service

The mean annual income in the US is $46,000. Every single one of those most common jobs listed is replaceable by automation. A third of the country out of work is a recipe for a real economic crisis that I’m not sure we can survive. The taxpayers are going to pay one way or another – in the form of food stamps, medical, etc…

There are folks who claim we’ve always had revolutions in technology that displace workers – let them #learntocode (don’t put that on Twitter!) The difference between the first and second industrial revolutions and today’s displaced workers is twofold; first the scale of displaced workers was much smaller and second, those revolutions actually spawned a middle class. An uneducated displaced farm worker could move to the city, work in a factory and support a family. Today it’s actually those lower-middle class jobs we’re removing.

So what’s my solution? I don’t know. As a libertarian-ish person I have a very hard time seizing taxpayer money and giving it to others because they made poor decisions and aren’t busting their ass to improve themselves. I also recognize that a mob of hungry, desperate people rioting with pitchforks isn’t in societies interest either.

Most politicians will push for ungodly expensive government boondoggle spending programs to “re-train” workers. Those are usually bottomless money pits with little positive outcome. I applaud Mr. Yang for at least being brave enough to raise the issue and give a plausible solution.

Is UBI the right solution? The more I think about it, the more I’m on the fence. It’s not often I stumble upon an issue where I don’t have a clear opinion. What do we do with 100 million people in this country out of work and no skills to bridge the gap? I’m curious what you think? What’s the right answer? Is this even a problem? Maybe the revolution will happen slower than we think. It’s certainly worth having a discussion… but I suspect we’ll ignore it until too late.