How did Gym Time turn out?

Last year, I posted that I needed to changes this to lift weights more. So, I did that. I started in April or so. I ate more calories overall, with 150-200g of protein. I got on a PPL program and was pretty consistent with the gym. There were lapses for sure, but I was way more consistent than I was in the past. I started to see the weight that I could lift go up. I think I upped it twice in about 7 months. Decent progress. I also had a Dexa scan done in April and another Dexa scan done in November. The point of this was to see how much my lean body mass went up. I'm eating more, with more protein, and lifting heavy. Lean mass should go up. It actually went down 2 pounds over those 7 months.

I felt extremely defeated from this. I put all of this effort into gaining muscle and the test scans didn't show it. I felt like my muscles got bigger and stronger. My clothes were tighter, but that didn't show up on this test. Maybe the test was wrong. Maybe I wasn't putting in enough effort when I thought I was. I don't know what happened. What I do know is that I am a man in my 40s. Things change. I get that. I also realize that the best way to age well is to put on muscle mass and keep it on. I want to do that, but I need a dramatic shift in the execution of this plan in order to do so. It might be time to get a trainer or nutritionist to help me out here.

Throughout the year, I 196.5 to 208.5. I gained 12 pounds, and I can absolutely feel it. I was OK with this at first because I knew I was eating more. In order to gain muscle, you gotta gain a bit of fat too. But once I had the 2nd Dexa scan in November, and saw the results, and with just the normal holiday stuff, I fell off the wagon for the last 2 months of the year. I gained a lot during that time.

I continued to run throughout the year. I only put 106 miles on the road though. I had PF for awhile, and just didn't run at all through snowboarding season. Oh, yeah, I hurt my knee pretty badly in January and that's why I didn't run for about 4 months. I have a rule where I don't snowboarding more than 3 days in a row. I did 4 days in a row on a trip to Aspen. I hurt my knee at hte end of the 3rd day, rode on it on the 4th day, and just made it worse. I'm still fighting that injury. Snowboard season was great with 25 days on the season. I was pushing 30 but things came up and that knee injury was rough for awhile. I'm still stretching and staying flexible.

For 2024, my goal is to get back to the gym and be consistent again. While I didn't achieve the goals that I wanted to last year, I can't give up lifting weights. I need to stick with it. I need to change something up though and see if I get different results. I'll still run a bit, and I'll still stretch.

I am starting to feel the effects of aging though. It is tougher to come back from an injury. It is tougher to get back into shape. It is tougher to make gains in the gym. It is tougher to get that belly fat to disappear. It is tougher to do high impact cardio. But I have to keep going. Moving and fitness is such a big part of me that I have to keep this up. I still want to be doing this into my 60s and 70s, and I can't stop now.

2023 run mileage: 106 miles

Gym Time

 The start of the year was kinda bad for me. I barely worked out much at all. I was snowboarding, but because I had a pretty bad crash in October of 2021, and all the shit that happened in 2021, I was in my head the entire snowboarding season. I had about 5 nice powder days which were fantastic, but I just seemed so anxious on the mountain the entire season. Total lack of confidence in my abilities. Not a great thing to have happen.

In April of 2022, I decide I had enough. I started to eat healthy again. I started to cut back on my vices. I started back in the gym. Eight months later, and I'm really glad I got back into the gym. It was rough going at first, but I ended up developing a good habit of going pretty consistently. Towards the end of the year, I would get pretty antsy if I didn't get enough gym time in. I've gone up twice on pretty much all the weights. I started seeing veins in my biceps again. I started noticing that my arms were getting bigger. Everything was getting bigger and stronger. This was very, very good. Right now, I probably feel the strongest that I have ever been in in my life. This is feeling fantastic! The best part is that once I started seeing positive results, it encouraged me to go even more.

At this point, I need to change things up. I was kind of half assing my routine, and seeing gains. I need to get into a more set routine and start tracking my progress better. I also need to eat more so that I'm fueling my body. I have a crazy few weeks ahead of me, but I'll make these adjustments soon. I'm still doin intermittent fasting and that is actually working for me most of the time.

Running is still ongoing. Not as much anymore, but it is still there. I think a good routine for me is 4 days of weights and 2 days of cardio per week. Snowboarding would count as cardio. I ran through plantar fasciitis in my left foot. Pretty much as soon as it cleared up, I got it in my right foot. Shit sucks! I need to take another month off but hopefully it is good after that. 

My goal for 2023 is to continue with weight lifting, and adjust my diet to help weight lifting the most. I still want to do some cardio because being in decent cardio shape is key for my fun activities. I also want to progress with snowboarding. I already feel more confident this year compared to last year.

2022 run mileage: 186 miles

I ran more for a month and it was great

 Well, COVID is still around. That means very little gym over the last year, and the weight gain that came with COVID hitting. 2021 was just rough for me personally (go see my personal blog for that) and I had to deal with a lot of shit. I barely ran and was juts lazy, until about September. I started running more than 1-2 times a month. And I actually felt pretty good. My plantar fasciitis cleared up, and my back didn't feel so bad. I ended up running 9 times in September. Was feeling pretty good both mentally and physically from it. Decided to run every other day in October. That was probably the best month I had mentally and physically. I did 15 runs that month and drastically saw my fitness improve during it. Started at about 10:00min/mile, and ended up at about 8:45min/mile. It was Monday, October 2nd where everything just clicked and that was the first great feeling run I had in a long time. After that, every single run felt great and it seemed that I was getting faster with every run. I wasn't doing anything crazy; just doing 3 miles around the lake by my house, but it was something. I was really proud of myself and everything was just hitting.

Then I got to November and got lazy again. Only ran 9 times and I could tell both physically and mentally that it wasn't enough. As I am sitting here now, I will get out and start running again. It does really help me with so much.

I started doing intermittent fasting. It was rough at first, really rough. The first week was hell, the 2nd week was better, and I was used to it the 3rd week. I tried to do keto with it and that was miserable. So, I decided to just do IF. It's been about 5-ish months now and I'm sticking with it pretty well. Generally, I eat between 11am and 7pm. I don't watch my calories too much. One day a week I will eat normally because I do like breakfast foods. I ended getting down to 192 at one point, after being stuck at 200 for so long. I gained that back durin the holidays though. I'm trying to get back on track now, but I did find something that got me through the plateau.

My back got better too. Started putting a lot of effort and time and money into it. Found out that I have scoliosis. That was a surprise. Between massage and going to a new back doctor, it is much better now. It bothers me from time to time, but I am functional now.

My goal for 2022 is to keep up with IF, run a helluva lot more, and just stay healthy. I'll get to the gym if COVID goes down, but running should keep me fine for awhile.

2021 run mileage: 200 miles

Still back pain

 Yeah, starting off on a downer, but I'm still having back pain. It has been over 2 years since that hike at Joshua Tree that started all of this. Many different procedures and it still hinders me greatly. It is better than it has been for sure, but still gives me that nagging question of "If I do this, will it hurt my back?"

I started off in February with a decent routine at a gym near work. I was doing a full body workout about every 3 days. I was fairly sore at first, but it was a good sore. I went through about 3-4 weeks and was actually looking forward to the gym. And then COVID hit. I was at the gym on Thursday, March 12th and then I didn't go back to the gym for 6 months. I stayed at home and tried to do body weight stuff. I suck at doing home workouts. I started up running again in May though. I think I took some time off because I was having knee and back pain again. I started running and was still having knee and back pain, but kept running though. I gained the COVID weight too. Gained about 20 at the worst of it. I even tried to go back to the gym, but there were too many covidiots there and it was crowded when I could go to the gym. Decided to stay at home and try to do body workouts. And yeah, body workouts, not that great. My diet wasn't great either because I mentioned in my personal blog, I had a lot of anxiety in 2020. Many people had a lot of anxiety last year. One of my (unhealthy) coping mechanisms is eating. So, I topped out at close to 210. I've trimmed some of that off, but I started off 2020 at about 189 with goals of hitting the gym, and I ended at 209 and no gym in months, basically. Eh, it was a shit year.

I did run still though. And snowboard. And I got serious about cutting weight when I could no longer stand up on a snowboard on my heelside because my stomach got in the way which prevented me from getting my weight far enough forward to stand up. That was a very rude awakening.

But for 2021, it is the same as last year: lift heavy and trim up...once I feel OK with going to the gym again.

2020 run mileage: 125 miles

Not so much running in 2019

As I'm going around and updating my blogs today, there is one thing that is affecting both my personal life and my training: back pain. I was making OK progress with recovering from knee issues last year. I was back to the point where I was running 3 miles non stop at a decent clip. However, the back issues that I have been having on my left low back caused me to have pain for 24-48 hours after that. The pain was bad enough to affect my mood during that time. I also had issues with working out in the gym because of the back pain. I eventually had a nerve ablation done in December, which helped, but it is still there. It has been a real bummer because I love moving and being healthy, but getting older, weird shit just happens. I do want my back to get better because then I can light weights without pain, I can run without pain, and I can snowboard without pain.

And to end on a positive note, my weight is down to around 189 now. I was able to make some diet changes to help get through the 190 pound plateau.

For 2020, I am going to focus on heavy weights again. Weird shit happened at my bodyweight gym and I just want different results for this upcoming year. So, I'm back to lifting heavy.

2019 run mileage: 86.5 miles

Wow, 2 years

Wow, it has been 2 years since I last posted. I'm still training, but it is different now. I do like keeping up this blog because it helps me look back and see how things went. Well, here is how 2018 went.

I hurt my knee in March. It appeared to be a bone bruise with a healing time of 4 months. Not much you can do to speed that up unless I'm a professional athlete with the money of a sports team behind me. For those that don't know, I am not a pro athlete. So, I waited 4 months of crazy knee pain where it would be fine, it would pop, it would hurt, it would collapse, etc. Just completely annoying and even doing a bike, elliptical, or even a swim, made my knee hurt. 4 months passed and I was still having pain in it. OK, time to go to physical therapy. The PT knocked out most of it fairly quickly since it was basically weak. Once I started doing exercises, it progressed pretty quickly. However, I had one spot that still had a lot of pain. It was a very specific spot. I was extremely frustrated with my PT because they kept saying to wait and none of the things they were giving me helped. Actually, some of the PT exercises made it worse. That was an extremely aggravating experience. Finally, I just stopped doing everything and basically after about 3 weeks, it was fine. I would still get twinges here and there, but for the most part, it was good to go again. I was ramping up my running and I was about ready to go all out, but then I bruised the 3rd metatarsal in my right foot. FUCK!

I started going to a gymnastics based gym. Someone told me about it and I thought it sounded cool. I had been trying to do handstands on my own for years and really just stopped progressing. Went to this gymnastics gym (hehe, it is always funny to say that) and I have been going for about 6 months now. I really, really like it. Each class is different and it is challenging. My handstand has really progressed and I can do free standing handstands in the middle of the floor and I am comfortable with bail outs. My goal is to hold 10 seconds and come down when I want. I'm sticking with this gym because it is a new challenge and fun.

I'm switching up my diet as well. I finally discovered I wasn't making progress with weight loss or strength gaining because I was not eating enough. I wasn't eating enough so my body was in starvation mode and screwed up my metabolism so it would not lose any calories. I wasn't gaining any strength because I wasn't giving my body enough fuel. So, I decided to do a clean bulk and see how that goes.

Once my foot is healthy, I want to get back to running 2-3 times a week. My focus will be weights/strength though.

2017 run mileage: 101 miles
2018 run mileage: 42 miles

Year In Running 2016

I had knee surgery in October of 2015.  It took awhile to recovery from that so I didn't start running outside again until May.  I did treadmill running, but that was just recovery from knee surgery and I don't have a good way to track it.  So, I'll do what I can.

I did 1 outdoor run in May in Austin and that was my last run in Austin.  When I moved to Denver, I ran a bit, but moving and traveling took up a lot of time.  Adjusting to the altitude wasn't that bad when doing long, slow distance, but doing anything with a higher heart rate definitely hurt.  I think I'm finally adjusted to the altitude now.  Well, I should be since I've been here for 7 months now.  I did some runs in the summer here in Denver.  They were great runs because the temperature wasn't too hot and it was nice and dry.  That's the reason why I moved here.  I did run at noon one day and got sunburned though.  Don't fuck with the sun up here.  I didn't have any real training plan though.  With the traveling and the great beer here, I ended up gaining some weight throughout the year.  I don't like that.  I got serious about getting back in shape the last few months and it is starting to pay off a bit.  My weight gain has stopped and I'm starting to feel better about myself.  I need to watch the diet closely though to make sure I start losing weight.  The goal for me, and always has been, 178.  I'll likely never reach it, but I gotta try.

In the end of 2016, I only ran 92 miles.  That's a bit disappointing, but knee surgery cramped that, but I'm glad I had the knee surgery.  It feels so much better now than prior to surgery.  I did run in some great places this year through while traveling:

* New York City
* Reykjavik
* Neskaupstadur, Iceland
* Belfast, Northern Ireland
* Galway, Ireland
* Killarney, Ireland
* Vancouver, Canada

Whenever I traveled, I tried to take my trail running shoes and do a short 3 mile run.  Although the quantity wasn't there this year, the scenery was.

For 2017, my immediate goal is to do cardio 6 days a week.  I need to get my cardio foundation, both endurance and speed, built up better.  This should also help with the weight loss as well.  In addition to the extreme cardio, I will be doing yoga and body weight exercises.  I'm backing off on strength exercises for awhile to focus on getting the weight down.  I also need to sign up for a race.  Once I'm employed again, I'll sign up for a 10K in the spring to give myself a goal.  I may also join a run group as well to help motivate me.

Here are my goals:
1) 10K in the spring
2) 178 pounds and maintain it
3) 11 pull ups
4) Handstand
5) 400 miles of running this year

2016 run mileage: 92 miles
Saucony mileage: 85 miles (all the non-home running was done in trail runners)