motivation – koalie’s contemplations in markup

Exercising: 2022 review

2022 was the third year in a row after I started exercising daily. Before 2020, I was stubbornly against any form of exercise (I don’t even know why.) This is the review post of my exercising year 2022, following the review I wrote last year.

2022 was a good year. Not as impressive as 2021. I think I overdid it back then!

Raw numbers

I covered 2955 km (1,836 miles) walking and running.

I cycled 1315 km (817 miles) in 4 months.

I exercised 688 hours.

I engaged in 625 workouts.

To put in perspective some of these tallies (generated by the excellent and free Fitness Stats iOS app):

In 2022 I walked or ran more than I drove! 2900 km (1,800 miles) vs. 2500 km (1,500 miles)
688 hours of exercise is equivalent to 28.6 days (roughly a month of February)
625 workouts (25 fewer than last year) mean that on average I engaged in almost two different activities per day

Burnout and anemia

I became aware a few years back that I have anemia. I had been giving blood four times a year (following the recommendation for women) until I was advised that however generous I wanted to be, it was better to donate twice per year. I was medicated the first time this was diagnosed but it was just a temporary fix. My body does not absorb iron very well. And since hemoglobins carry the precious oxygen to muscles, anemia leads to fatigue. Meh. I also burned out at work after Summer. So I gradually ramped down exercising to a gentler degree.

My Apple Watch is my sidekick

I respond very well to the daily coaching of my Apple Watch. I start my “activities” on it, launch from it the music, podcasts or audiobooks that I listen to via my headphones (Apple AirPods Pro or Bose QC35, both of which have noise cancellation.) I heed its reminders, enter the monthly challenges, the limited edition challenges.

Monthly challenges

In 2022 again I earned all of the monthly challenges. They are determined based on recent activities and are meant to either keep you at the same level or elevate you a bit, so that at the end of the year you have improved.

366.7 km (11.8/d)
17x double move goal
31x close all rings
15x double move goal

3140 minutes (105/d)
23902 kcal (797/d)
31x close all rings
5x double move goals

22400 kcal (747/d)
14x 700 kcal
3x double move goals
5 walking workouts

Notes: The first challenges of each quarter were not easy and required extra effort. In addition to these three (January, May, September), June was also difficult because burning almost 800 kcal everyday of the month on average required intense sessions during the weekends in order to make up for the work week where it’s usually harder to fit longer workouts. The last three of the year were really easy and I welcomed the break!

The January 2023 challenge is to cover at least 4 kilometers a day 14 times.

New gear

I got myself a nice pedal assist mountain bike 😍 early September.

Me next to my Nakamura eSummit 950 (picture by Daniel Dardailler)

Daniel asked me in the Spring if I might like to go biking with him once. To be honest, I wasn’t that chuffed and I said “sure, why not” but I didn’t think of it anymore until he asked again in the Summer. We finally went on the last day of August. It was A BLAST! We biked in the Esterel and I loved it so much that I bought my own e-mountain bike the same evening!

I bike as often as I can. With Daniel or not. To go places.

My longest and furthest cycling was on 13 November: 6 hours, 96 km (60 miles), elevation gain of 1067 meters (3,500 ft). I managed by saving as much battery as I could.

The advertised range of that e-bike is 80 km but in practice in the area it’s more accurate to plan circuits that do not exceed 50 km.

The part that was actual mountain biking was a small 9-kilometer area which I covered in less than 30 minutes! But going there was fun (and challenging) and going back along the coast was really beautiful. Great memory!

Aside: Even less use of my car

Since my teenage boy started high school in Cannes and takes the train I no longer have to drive him. I drove under 2500 km (1,500 miles) in 2022 and refueled only 3 times (180 liters).

I have continued walking, running (and now cycling) to places, to run errands, instead of driving which I do basically for grocery shopping.

Graphs

Daily average of exercise in 2022: 113 minutes (January peaked at 156 minutes per day on average)

Daily average of active energy in 2022: 747 kcal (January peaked at 925 kcal per day on average)

Daily average steps in 2022: 9,817 (January peaked at 16,712 steps per day on average)

Daily average running and walking distance in 2022: 8 km (January peaked at 14.3 km per day on average)

Daily average cycling in 2022: 31.5 km per day (August is misleading because I biked about 40 km on one day that month)

Activity graphs in 2022: move, exercise (both fluctuated), stand (steady at 19)

Weight graph for 2022: 63.12 kg on average, slight decrease

Strava’s year in sport

One of the perks of being a paying subscriber of the sports tracking app Strava is the yearly report. See below.

Gentler Streak’s activity recap

In 2022 Guillaume tipped me about this new (paid) app that focuses on gentle and optimal training. It’s not a social network. There are explainers, advice on food or training, and beautiful graphics.

SportsTracker’s summary view

Here are some screenshots from the free app SportsTracker, which is very similar to Strava.

Calendar view showing big or small dots in a given colour (green for walking and hiking, pink for fitness-like activities, yellow fir running, grey for other)

Day-to-day work at W3C

An author for IEEE asked me last week, for an article he’s writing, for a high level introduction to the World Wide Web Consortium, and what its day-to-day work looks like.

Most of the time when we get asked, we pull from boilerplate descriptions, and/or from the website, and send a copy-paste and links. It takes less than a minute. But every now and then, I write something from scratch. It brings me right back to why I am in awe of what the web community does at the Consortium, and why I am so proud and grateful to be a small part of it.

Then that particular write-up becomes my favourite until the next time I’m in the mood to write another version. Here’s my current best high level introduction to the World Wide Web Consortium, and what its day-to-day work looks like, which I have adorned with home-made illustrations I showed during a conference talk a few years ago.

World Wide What Consortium?

The World Wide Web Consortium was created in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, a few years after he had invented the Word Wide Web. He did so in order for the interests of the Web to be in the hands of the community.

“If I had turned the Web into a product, it would have been in people’s interest to create an incompatible version of it .”
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web

So for almost 28 years, W3C has been developing standards and guidelines to help everyone build a web that is based on crucial and inclusive values: accessibility, internationalization, privacy and security, and the principle of interoperability. Pretty neat, huh? Pretty broad too!

From the start W3C has been an international community where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together in the open.

W3C is the international standardisation body for Web Standards that operates for one Web, for all, everywhere.
Its motto is "leading the Web to its full potential".
In order to accomplish this, the W3C leverages its Process Document and Patent Policy.
W3C proceeds according to principles of open standardisation based on consensus and transparence.
Working Groups are at the heart of the W3C. There are currently 52, plus the W3C Advisory Board and the Technical Artchitecture Group, whose participants are elected W3C Members.
Each group gathers participants delegated by W3C Members, plus invited experts from the public. They contribute respectively to tests and implementations, reviews, comments and translations, and grant royalty-free. rights on technology they develop. Today there are 400 standards upon which the web relies.
The W3C team is made of a team of 56. — W3C overview

The sausage

In the web standards folklore, the product –web standards– are called “the sausage” with tongue in cheek. (That’s one of the reasons behind having made black aprons with a white embroidered W3C icon on the front, as a gift to our Members and group participants when a big meeting took place in Lyon, the capital of French cuisine.)

Since 1994, W3C Members have produced 454 standards. The most well-known are HTML and CSS because they have been so core to the web for so long, but in recent years, in particular since the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve heard a lot about WebRTC which turns terminals and devices into communication tools by enabling real-time audio/video, and other well-known standards include XML which powers vast data systems on the web, or WebAuthn which significantly improves security while interacting with sites, or Web Content Authoring Guidelines which puts web accessibility to the fore and is critical to make the web available to people of all disabilities and all abilities.

The sausage factory

The day to day work we do is really of setting the stages to bring various groups together in parallel to progress on nearly 400 specifications (at the moment), developed in over 50 different groups.

There are 2,000 participants from W3C Members in those groups, and over 13,000 participants in the public groups that anyone can create and join and where typically specifications are socialized and incubated.

There are about 50 persons in the W3C staff, a fourth of which dedicate time as helpers to advise on the work, technologies, and to ensure easy “travel” on the Recommendation track, for groups which advance the web specifications following the W3C process (the steps through which specs must progress.)

The illustration contains a stick figure with 15 busy arms and smaller images describing situations such as coding, negotiation, mastering the Process Document, the Recommendation Track and the Patent Policy.
Characteristics of the W3C Staff Contact:
* "super interface"
* represents the Director and the staff in their groups
* participant and contributor
* technical expert
* masters the process
* creates groups
* manages groups
* inter-group technical liaison
* consensual — Role of the W3C staff in work groups

The rest of the staff operate at the level of strategy setting and tracking for technical work, soundness of technical integrity of the global work, meeting the particular needs of industries which rely on the web or leverage it, integrity of the work with regard to the values that drive us: accessibility, internationalization, privacy and security; and finally, recruiting members, doing marketing and communications (that’s where I fit!), running events for the work groups to meet, and general administrative support.

With its Director Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web; and its CEO Jeff Jaffe, the W3C team is made of over 50 people.
The W3C team is almost equally divided between technical and support, including administration, communications, business development, systems team, legal, Member satisfaction, global participation and community management.
The technical part is now divided between four functions:
Strategy to determine the priorities of the Consortium and new work.
Architecture and technology to ensure cohesion of architecture as well as technical choices.
Industry to define the vision of the Consortium according to the need of the Industry, which is shaped by the Web.
Projects to ensure timelines are met in delivering Web standards and support the working groups being successful. — W3C team

Why does it work?

Several of the unique strengths of W3C are our proven process which is optimized to seek consensus and aim for quality work; and our ground-breaking Patent Policy whose royalty-free commitments boosts broad adoption: W3C standards may be used by any corporation, anyone, at no cost: if they were not free, developers would ignore them.

From an idea to a standard
On the one hand, the public; on the other, W3C Members.
Each contribute differently to the standardisation process.
Standards progress this way:
A standard may originate from a W3C Workshop or incubation in a W3C Community Group. Both are open to the public and W3C Members.
Based on consensus, a W3C Working Group can be created.
A standard may originate from a W3C Member Submission, without requiring incubation or discussion at a Workshop.
When a Working Group is created, W3C Members delegate one or more participants and agree to make available under W3C royalty-free licensing commitments all of the work they do in that particular Working Group.
Individuals from the public participate as Invited Experts.
During the standardisation process, Members of the W3C contribue reviews, tests and implementations. The Public contributes comments during phases of public review.
After 3 to 6 years on average, a Web standard is born when a technology reaches the status of Recommendations. Everyone parties like mad [drawing of confettis] W3C Members contribute to press releases and perform promotion.
The public and the Members help with the translation effort as well as maintenance via errata. — From an idea to a standard

There are other strengths but in the interest of time, I’ll stop at the top two. There are countless stories and many other facets, but that would be for another time.

Sorry, it turned out to be a bit long because it’s hard to do a quick intro; there is so much work. If you’re still with me (hi!), did you learn anything from this post?

Exercising: 2021 review

When I last wrote about exercising I found the totals quite unbelievable. I look back at those today with a smile, because the ones I now have 9 months after are even more unbelievable. So I’ll check back here in a year to see how relative this all is.

My Apple Watch is my coach

This wearable wonder of computing makes it very easy to stay on top of sports. The reminders are annoying but useful and I noticed that I got those only when I slacked (hint, hint), which does not happen frequently. That’s how driven I am.

Monthly challenges

In 2021 I earned each of the monthly challenges, which are determined based on recent past progress and are meant to either keep you at the same level or elevate you a bit, so that at the end of the year you have improved. I wonder how big they can be after a while.

10x double move goal
180.9 km (6.5/d)
17x double move goal
30x close all rings

19x double move goals
349.5 km (11.7/d)
3695 minutes (120/d)
26700 kcal (861/d)

4220 minutes (140/d)
318.4 km (10.2/d)
27500 kcal (917/d)
4770 minutes (153/d)

Apparently there is a point after which every challenge rotates between kil(ometers), min(utes) and (k)cal.

In 2020 I earned all but one, which I decided not to go for (24100 kcal, or 717/d) because I knew it was going to be too much even if it was the month of August, and I needed a break.

The January 2022 challenge is to walk or run 366.7 km (11.8/d). I’m not particularly up for it but I want to do it anyway. I miss the easy challenges though.

New gear

I now rotate between 7 pairs of sneakers and running shoes. I have also invested in some proper running outfits for chilly weather. It is to note that all of the sweaters I got were from the Men’s section. Not out of peculiarity but really because the colours are less flashy and the sizes fit me better.

Picture of some of my new equipment, me in it, preparing to go for a run

My sidekick: Gizmo

Gizmo is now 8 years old. He happily prances along and I’m very glad he’s with me. We both get our share of daily exercise, fresh air and adventures, and it gives me greater security to be accompanied by a muscular yellow Labrador. When it’s not too cold and we are next to a river he gets to swim too (but not in the sea because the sound of the ebb and flow scares him.)

Long gone are the days when he would lag at the other end of the leash and need to be dragged, after running only 3 or 4 kilometers. We now go for 5K jogs once a week or twice, come back walking, and it’s perfectly fine. When we don’t run, we just walk. Sometimes for two to three hours on the weekends, and on average for an hour and a half everyday.

Graphs

Daily average of exercise in 2021: 116 minutes (December peaked at 164 minutes per day on average)

Daily average of active energy in 2021: 773 kcal (December peaked at 996 kcal per day on average)

Daily average steps in 2021: 12340 (August peaked at 15859 steps per day on average)

Daily average running and walking distance in 2021: 10.2 km (August peaked at 13.4 km per day on average)

Activity graphs in 2021: move, exercise (both going up), stand (steady at 19)

Tallies of fitness and exercising metrics for the year 2021

Notes on the graphs

According to those tallies (generated by the excellent and free Fitness Stats iPhone app), my 2021 in sport can be broken down as follows:

711 hours of exercise
3746 kilometers walked/run
(of which I ran 226)
103 hours on the elliptical
650 workouts

To put things in perspective:

711 hours of exercise is about a twelfth of the year, because it is equivalent to 29.6 days.
As I walked or ran over 3700 km, I only drove a wee bit over 5000 km with my car this year.
226 km of jogging are an average of 4K every week (but there are months I don’t run, and when I do it’s 5Ks).
103 hours on the elliptical are equivalent to watching 123 typical TV series episodes (guess what: that’s exactly what I did while on the elliptical)
650 workouts mean that on average I did almost two different activities everyday.

From an addiction to another

2021 is when I stopped smoking. I made up my mind in January or February and my strategy was to ramp up exercising, pick up an electronic cigarette, gauge if that was going to work, and carry on with the routine without smoking. That happened in May. I have not smoked since then. Woohoo!

But ramping up exercising meant that I burned more calories and therefore needed to up my food intake. Stopping smoking made me more hungry too, so I had two reasons to eat bigger portions.

I remember starting to eat as much and then a little more than my teenage boy! (Who abandoned basketball during the first year of the pandemic, and now more or less refuses to walk or hike with me even every now and then.)

I gained a lot of muscles apparently

I was a bit dismayed when I saw my weight ramp up slowly but very very steadily. It has now stabilized after 8 months or so, sometime in September.

Weight graph for 2021: 62.42 kg on average (current trend is 63-64 kg)

But most of my clothes continue to fit me so that means that I lost fat and gained (6 kilos of) muscles.

Strava’s year in sport

One of the perks of being a paying subscriber of the sports tracking app Strava is the yearly report. See below.

Aside: I used to complain a lot about how that app was geared towards triathletes only. They fixed almost all the things I complained about and now it celebrates and motivates every kind of athletes, not just those who cycle, run and swim.

SportsTracker’s summary view

I was so ready to ditch Strava because it caused me more frustration than it brought me satisfaction, that a former work contact recommended I gave a try to the vastly underrated, and free, SportsTracker, developed by Suunto.

I love it. It’s a nice complement to Strava. I started using it at the end of March.

Raw numbers

Burnout and anemia

My Apple Watch is my sidekick

Monthly challenges

New gear

Aside: Even less use of my car

Graphs

Strava’s year in sport

Gentler Streak’s activity recap

SportsTracker’s summary view

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World Wide What Consortium?

The sausage

The sausage factory

Why does it work?

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Like this:

My Apple Watch is my coach

Monthly challenges

New gear

My sidekick: Gizmo

Graphs

Notes on the graphs

From an addiction to another

I gained a lot of muscles apparently

Strava’s year in sport

SportsTracker’s summary view

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