Tag: review

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.

Cover
363 days active, walking as top sport
Top 1% of the most active (I’m among 100,000+ as Strava has over 100,000,000 users)
Fastest/longest activities: 22 km/h avg speed cycling, 5:41 min/km avg pace running, 96 km furthest cycling
Total elevation (34511 m)=and distance (2778 km)
Top photos
Strava’s year 2022 in sport

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.

Cover
Journey: body needs met on 355 days
Condition: optimal
States
363 days active, 618 workouts
Activities breakdown
571 hours total activities
Distance
Distance breakdown
Elevation
Elevation breakdown
Heart rate zones
Gentler Streak’s year 2022 recap

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)
Details of each activity type : walking, elliptical, stretching biking, other
Details of each activity type : yoga, hiking, cycling, running, swimming and dancing
Trends
13-month graph of fitness, fatigue and form
13-month graph of fitness, fatigue and form
SportsTracker’s summary view

Book: “Persuasion” by Jane Austen

Ah, the wit of Jane Austen is sharp in this novel, and enjoyable as always. 

It is laid out a lot like a theatrical play. Many of the scenes could be played in their own stage. Except perhaps the long walks and the beach strolls. 

This novel is her shortest, I think. However, I was stricken by the over-abundance of the word “and”.

I may return to this post with more to add. I have only finished it now after starting it yesterday, and I may need to let it sink.

2022-07-27 update: “and” appears 2802 times in the span of 227 pages, and 24 chapters (that’s 12.3 per page) (*)

(*) [After starting to underline them in my book, I found it tedious and unreliable, so I found an HTML version of the book, stripped it of non-novel cruft using emacs and then piped a word count to a grep, embracing the nerddom, but then ran a better grep(**) command which Bert supplied and explained, because the simpler one would find hand, grand or wander, but not And,]

 (Wed, 27 Jul 2022 01:11:29 CET)-(koalie@gillie:~:)$grep and /Users/koalie/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com\~apple\~CloudDocs/Downloads/Persuasion\,\ by\ Jane\ Austen.html | wc -l
    2590

(**) (Wed, 27 Jul 2022 07:11:31 CET)-(koalie@gillie:~:)$grep -E -i -o '\band\b' /Users/koalie/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com\~apple\~CloudDocs/Downloads/Persuasion\,\ by\ Jane\ Austen.html | wc -l
    2802

(where -E = enable regexps, -i = case-insensitive, -o = put every occurrence on a separate line, \b = word edge) [Thanks Bert!]

Book: “Mr Murder” by Dean Koontz

It’s the second time I read this book. While it took me 2 days only to read it the first time when I was a student in 1997, it took me over a month in 2022.

The book had left me then with a big impression and for years it was the gold standard for « entertainment I thoroughly enjoyed. » Having read it again, I know it isn’t the gold standard anymore. In the 25 years that passed since then, I discovered Jane Austen :)

One detail I loved about Mr Murder:
The creative fictitious names one of the characters makes up as titles for the science fiction books another character keeps reading. Since the former doesn’t approve of that kind of literature, the titles are very funny.

One thing I hated:
The sheer amount of guns and firing arms owned by the main protagonists, who are otherwise completely traditional and everyday people. So much so that their veneration for them doesn’t ring true. They fit in the plot but there are way too many, particularly as this is obviously not a satire of gun ownership and worship in the USA.

I found it rather well written, but a bit too long while at the same time the end is rushed and superficial.