A year ago today, I started bouldering. By now, I’m going two to three times a week. Who would’ve thought? Such a fun pastime!

I’ve just updated my exercise log here on the site with current data and a corresponding visualisation. April data is only partial, because that was when I switched from Strava to tracking my own data.

In an effort to cut down on my mobile apps usage, especially of those apps that save tracking data, I’ve deleted Strava from my phone. I had previously used Strava to log my exercises publicly. If you want to still follow my efforts to get – and stay – fitter, you can now go to this page, where I will be maintaining a detailed personal log of my exercises.

According to my Strava stats, my running distance decreased from 861 km to 783 km from last year. My active days also decreased from 86 to 71 days. In spite of these statistics, I do believe my overall fitness increased. This is because all of these runs were completed with 10 kg of weights and I’ve also completed more, varied exercises that weren’t tracked with Strava. This includes bouldering, which I’ve taken up towards the end of the year.

I did not go running quite as regularly as in 2021 – among other things because of the several holiday trips I went on last year – but I am quite happy with my progress. I’ve maintained my weight of 80 kg almost exactly on the button for the whole year and am continuing to transform fat into muscle mass at a slow, but very steady pace. Here’s to keeping it up in 2023!

Strava has just alerted me to my running totals for 2021 and I’m pretty happy with how the year went. I managed to run 861 kilometres in total last year, which is up from 792 kilometres in 2020. I’ve also been running my 20 kilometres a week with 8 kilograms of ballast for several months. But I’m probably most proud of how regularly I went running – in the dark, in the cold, in the rain and even in snow. The only times my streak got broken was during two holidays and the 12 days that the three SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations knocked me out for. Other than that, I went running incredibly regularly.

At the beginning of this year, I decided to lose some weight. And when the lockdowns started happening, that really propelled me forward in this respect. Well, I must say at least my fitness project is something that’s been very positive for me this year. I’ve reached my weight loss goal and I’m, so far, managing to hold weight and gain muscles at the same time. And now there’s a second lockdown on the way. So it can only get even better.

The last time I managed to run 10 kilometres in one go was 15 years ago.

I guess there’s something good to be found amid this horrible lockdown situation after all. All that stress means I need a coping mechanism and no fun activities allowed outside means I cope by running a lot.