Tag Archives: 500000

3485/500000 and 10th Day of the Baha’i Fast

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My day of rest was good and I’m taking another ont tomorrow (one a week). This past week I set two new records: 100 reps of sit-ups in a single set (!!!) and 800 reps total for the week. The 100 reps was really hard and I felt awful afterwards. I also did another 150 reps day. However, I’ve added crunches to the traditional sit-ups, and I’m just calling them all “sit-ups”. So now, I will do 100 proper sit-ups per day and start working on increasing my crunches. I’ve also lost a bit of weight, about 7 lbs, mostly due to eating only one meal per day due to…

The Baha’i Fast has been great this year. It’s a little harder than last year, truth be told, probably because of my week off of work. I find it hard to ignore hunger and tiredness when I don’t actually have to do anything during the day. The part I’m having a hard time with is really getting some good prayer time in. There are distractions, but also I’m just having a hard time remembering. I have, however, been trying to spend time with each member of my family during this week. I have to do something with Ocean and Justice still. I went for dinner with Melanie, dinner with Haifa, and a movie with Verity (Captain America – good, but not great, btw).

I’ve tried doing a bit of pottery/ceramic art, but I feel like I haven’t got the hang of it right now. I tried an experiment for making tentacle sculptures, but it didn’t work out so well. And this evening I started a new “vase”, but it’s too early to say if it will work out.

I finished reading “Great North Road” by Peter F Hamilton. Fantastic sci-fi/detective/creature novel. Some really touching moments. Nice long read too, and completely self-contained. No sequel to wait for. No really unique ideas, but extremely well-written and enjoyable. I highly recommend it!

590/500000 The One-Tenth of One Percent Mark

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I did another 285 sit-ups this past week up to and including today, Feb 4th. This brings me to 590 so far. I’m still continuing to accelerate, but I have quite a ways to go to get to a good number per week: about 4000! My goal this past week was just to break 200 so I’m doing well. This next week I hope to do 350 in the week. I’ve also added doing multiple sets in a session, so far just twice. So my expectation is that I will do a single set every morning of 20+ and two sets every evening of 15+. I’ll probably do more.

In other news, I started tanning again. I find it incredibly relaxing. I’ve never really liked massage, and so this works well for me. I don’t need a lot of time to relax: 12 to 15 minutes is great. It’s warm, has a huge amount of white noise from the fans that run, and it’s completely private. And, particularly in the winter, I really appreciate the light.

I’ve been working from the BERTEIG office downtown as much as possible. It has brought focus to my work and has given me the regular company of two of my colleagues: Iryna and Shradhdha. Mostly we listen to music as we work independently. But it’s nice to see other people around. Sometimes other colleagues or visitors come in as well. I work on marketing, sales and consulting with customers. Iryna does bookkeeping. Shradhdha does software development. My only complaint is my desk chair is a bit uncomfortable. Maybe my CFO will authorize the purchase of a new chair sometime soon! At home I have a fantastic chair by Humanscale: the Diffrient World. I love it more than my Aeron.

New Personal Goal. 500,000.

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Today I did my first 20 sit-ups towards my goal of 500,000 by the time I turn 50. Over the next little bit, I’m going to try to figure out other 500,000 goals too.

It started last week. I was working at a client doing a bit of executive coaching (oh, by the way, my sabbatical is over!). One of the people I was working with is a guy who clearly takes care of his body. I asked him about it, and he said that he had actually originally wanted to be a physical trainer. He then gave me a very simple piece of advice (which I’m only partially taking): start by doing just a little bit of exercise every day. Don’t make it complicated: sit-ups or push-ups is fine. He also told me that he doesn’t use a gym. He just does stuff at home.

So then today I was thinking about my upcoming birthday where I’ll be turning 47. That’s pretty darn close to 50. Somehow that got me thinking about my goals for turning 50. Usually, my goals are health-related since that is the part of my life I take the least care of. I thought of a few different ideas, but the one that stuck? The goal of 500,000 by 50.

So, I did some mental math (I love math). 50 is three years away for me… roughly 1000 days. 500,000 divided by 1000 is 500. When I was a kid, I was able to do 70 sit-ups in a minute. I can get there again. That means that if I slowly by linearly get better at this, somewhere around the middle of my 3 years, I will need to do 500 sit-ups per day, and if I can only do 35/minute at that point, that’s a reasonable 15 minute-ish workout. Seems do-able. If I can continue to speed up, then 500,000 is do-able,… but still a tough goal to reach.

So that’s my first 500,000 goal.

I’m thinking of others, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.

PS. I got an 81 as my final mark in my Math 3020 Introduction to Abstract Algebra class, and an 88 in my Math 2155 Introduction to Mathematical Structures class. Not bad for an old guy!