Alexandersmap

    Category: Exercise

    • Miles of Crunch

      The math adds up, mostly. When you walk 4.25 miles in one direction on a rail trail, you should get the same number coming back in the other direction. Except that I took a couple of detours on the walk north, exploring side paths that I’ve previously marched right by. This wasn’t a timed walk, it was all about being outside, alone with the ice. Well, mostly alone; there were the seven other people I saw, shufflers every one. The iciness of the rail trail made it unsafe for walking without micro spikes strapped into your hiking shoes, but crunchy ease with them.

      That crunchiness. The quiet solitude made the crunch, crunch, crunch of my every step echo off the frozen landscape, and I paused now and then to listen to the stillness I was disrupting with my walk. The crunch was caused by my micro spikes biting into the two inches of frozen carpet atop the rail trail, sprinkled on top with bits of broken ice accretion fallen off the branches above as the trees shrugged off last week’s icy embrace. Snowflakes drifted silently to the ground, not in an accumulating way but in a complete the scene way. I welcomed them and noted their progress along with my own.

      The ice crunch was my companion the entire afternoon, the chatty hiking partner with a lot to say, but not the only ice talking to me. The ponds on either side of me also spoke, in sustained, low rumbles and pops as the ice sheet on the ponds came alive in the relative warmth of the sun. For those in places where ponds don’t freeze, it’s a fascinating rumble, almost like a serpent is brushing against the icy ceiling, looking for a place to break free. It’s particularly exhilarating when you’re standing out in the middle of that frozen pond, with your body weight adding to the groaning of the ice. These are days when you forget the rest of the madness in the world, and it’s just you and the ice.

      I reached the depot on the north end of my walk, looked around a bit, seeing only two cars in the parking lot and knowing the three people who they belonged to whom I’d see on my return south. And I began the four mile walk back, walking with purpose, focused on getting back in a little more than an hour. That’s a good clip marching on ice, but my meandering was for the northward leg of my walk; it was time to accelerate on the return. Frozen footprints in the ice make fast walking challenging and a bit dangerous in the middle of the rail trail, and getting injured alone two miles from help wouldn’t do at all, but the sides of the trail were generally footprint-free and I made the desired progress. Walking for speed offers a different reward than meandering, this was more workout, less pondering the world. But I made it back to the southern parking lot pleasantly surprised by my speedy pace, finding my car alone in the icy parking lot, patiently waiting for its own chance to move.

      Ice offers its own rewards, if you’ll only look for it. This winter has been uncommonly warm, and the ice was a welcome return to winter for me. A well-prepared walk on a frozen carpet of wonder, surrounded by ice sculptures and rumbling ponds. That’s the February Sunday afternoon I’d been hoping for, an exclamation mark on the weekend and a chance to pivot into the week with a clear head.

      Frozen pond with a lot to say
      Ice sculptures change daily on the trail
      Broken bits of ice accretion sprinkle the landscape. These still show the curve from the branches they hugged

    • Doing Things That Matter

      A little more than a year into my focus on daily habits, the overall the results are encouraging.  James Clear’s Atomic Habits poured gasoline on my focus on doing things that matter every day,  beginning with small things like reading more, writing every day and exercise.  It started with changing the routine when I got up in the morning, where once I’d consume sports media, check email, scroll through social media or play Words With Friends first thing in the morning, I started focusing on the very small habits that might move me forward.  Exercise to get the blood flowing, reading to get the brain matter firing on all cylinders, and writing, to finally do what I’ve been putting off for most of my life.  These aren’t everything that matter in my life, but they were the things I was pushing aside to focus on the other things.

      Priorities remain: family and work obligations come first, but following close behind are the daily habits. In fact, each habit improves the quality of my life, which improves the whole. Pretty simple, really, if you just incorporate the right habits and build them into your routine.  I’ve seen tangible momentum in all three, with the writing on this blog a measure of proof to consistency.  You’ll have to take my word for it on the exercise, and just like the writing daily habits add up over time.  I’ve seen the scale slowly – painfully slowly – showing consistent improvement.  I’ll take that.  I write a lot about writing, and walking.  And then there’s the reading….

      Once again the books are piling up, with four in the cue already I just purchased a Kindle version of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and revisited Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath 1938-1941.  It would be far better to finish one of the original pile before adding more, but so be it.  Books tap you on the shoulder and tell you “It’s my turn” when they feel you’re ready.  This morning Hesse and Steinbeck were both bullying their way into my reading time, and I welcomed them with open arms.  My reading is accelerating, not by speed-reading (which I’ve tried but don’t enjoy), but through focus and occasional multi-tasking (reading on the Kindle app on the iPhone while in line at the store, and more frequently, reading with maximum font on the treadmill while churning out steps).  Consistent, daily reading has been one of the best things I could’ve done for myself.

      So what else matters?  Plenty.  The world is getting exponentially better in many ways, and sliding into the abyss in a few ways.  If you want to improve the world around you it starts with contribution.  The more you do, the more capacity you have to contribute more; more effort, more money, more intellectual horsepower, more empathy, more credibility, and more time.  Ironic, isn’t it?  The more you do the more time you’ll find for the things that matter.  And there’s plenty that matters, if you take the time to think about it.  And that’s where I find myself today, thinking about it and taking a small measure of action, one step at a time.

    • Walking in Circles

      Last night I glanced at my watch and recognized that the walk streak was in peril.  I did the math, adding the drive times ahead of me, my son’s college basketball game I planned to watch, and the number of steps I had to do to get there.  I pulled into the parking lot of a small college in Massachusetts, glanced around and thought this was it; streak over.  I had to walk 2 miles to get over the hump, or 4000 steps.  It was a bitingly cold evening and the sun was setting.  What to do?  Walk around the campus as it got dark?  Possible, but this wasn’t a campus to wander around in the dark.  Safe, but completely foreign to me.  I told myself to stop thinking about it and just get out there, left the warmth of the car and walked down the hill looking for a path.  And there was the outdoor track, sprinkled in snow but mostly clear.  One gate was left unlocked, inviting runners and walkers to take a spin but getting no takers until I came along.  Floodlights remained cold and dark, as if to say “Why bother?  What kind of fool would be on this frozen track tonight?”  Hey there dark floodlights, I’m your fool!

      Did I mention the biting cold?  Yes?  Did I mention I was wearing business casual clothing with a light coat on and dress shoes?  No?  Well, that was the athletic attire for the two mile spin around the track in the darkening sky, shoehorned between work and a basketball game.  Take a lap, complain to myself about not bringing running shoes.  Take another lap, feel the cold seep inside the thin coat I wore.  Repeat.  But then something funny happened; I stopped caring about the cold and started checking the progress of my steps.  On a track there’s no mystery: 400 meters any way you look at it, repeat eight times and you get to 2 miles, which is what I needed to get over the top.  So I stopped whining to myself and got it done, and felt better for having done so.  The darkening sky was beautiful with the full “wolf” moon rising to mock my discomfort, and I smiled and mocked myself too.

      The thing about 10,000 steps is that it isn’t all that much in the big scheme of things.  I recognize it’s the bare minimum and more must be done to be truly fit.  But it’s a promise I made to myself to keep the streak alive for as long as possible, and I’m tired of breaking promises to myself.  So the track workout checked the box for another day – 33 and counting – and I got into the warmth of the gym and watched real athletes compete at a high level.  I used to be on of them, rowing instead of basketball, but an extremely fit, disciplined college athlete.  Then a few decades slip by, work, kids, commitments…  and habits slide with promises unkept, but you forgive yourself and move on.  If my hour on the track in dress shoes told me anything, it’s that I’m less tolerant of excuses I make to myself.  10,000 steps is one small habit on a stack of small habits I’ve been tracking.  Instead of thinking about resolutions and big  transformation, I’m thinking small daily habits and keeping the streak alive another day.  It seems to be getting me where I’d like to go, even if it seems like I’m walking in circles.

    • Better Decisions

      “In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing.” – Annie Duke, Thinking In Bets

      As we enter the first full work week of the New Year, I’m focused on this concept of Second Order Thinking and working to apply it better in my life.  In short, asking what will be the consequences of doing this versus that in the first order, the second order and the third order?  If I eat this donut because it looks delicious (first order), then I’ll add more empty calories and gain weight (second order), which will make me more stressed out in the future when my pants are getting too snug (third order).  Second and third order thinking is a way of fast-forwarding into the future as you decide on whether or not to do something in the present.  It gets you out of the self-centered immediate gratification of now and looking at the ultimate satisfaction of then.  Ray Dalio describes it as the lower-level you winning out over the higher-level you.  I haven’t been consistent with this in my lifetime, particularly when it comes to snacking.  I’d say it’s time to look up from the proverbial candy dish and think beyond the moment.

      “Decide what to be and go be it.” – The Avett Brothers, Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise

      I didn’t believe I’d like the book Thinking In Bets.  I’m not a poker player and have no desire to immerse myself in the world of poker. They wear sunglasses indoors and pull their hats down low to cover expressions on their faces.  I mean, who wants to hang out with people doing that?  But this isn’t a book about poker, it’s a book about decision-making.  And making better decisions is something I’ve been working on in myself for some time.  It started with this idea of Second Order Thinking, where you weigh the consequences of your decision now and into the future.  I’ve made plenty of decisions in my lifetime that made sense in the immediacy of the moment that turned out to be bad decisions down the road.  And a few that I thought weren’t great early on that turned out to be brilliant (and lucky) decisions with hindsight.

      We’re the average of the five people we hang around with the most, as Jim Rohn would put it.  Applied to what I’m reading, I’m currently hanging around with stoics, poets and experts in creating and sustaining better habits.  And now I’ve invited decision-making experts to the party.  I’m okay with that mix, and will enhance it over time.  But reading about something isn’t doing something.  That’s a trap that you realize as you read book after book without applying the knowledge you pick up from all that reading.  No, the rubber meets the road when you take action.  Applied knowledge, repeated daily, leads to exponential improvement over time.  I’ve seen that working in all things over the course of my life.  The focus now is to improve the decision-making process so I spend that time on better, more productive activity.  Dance a bit more in the higher-level self.  Now is as good a time as any to get to it.

    • Crunchy Meditation

      There’s nothing like a long walk to sort things out and help you forget about the madness in the world.  Last week New Hampshire received a few inches of heavy, wet snow. Once walked upon, slushy snow becomes a clutter of footprints.  Let it freeze and that snow becomes a crunchy, treacherous mine field.  And such was the state of the Windham Rail Trail on my Sunday walk.  Micro spikes over hiking boots answered most of the challenge, and a little care on where you stepped solved the rest.  A long walk alone became crunchy meditation, with a good workout as a bonus.

      About three miles into the walk I came across a column of deer tracks crossing perpendicular to the rail trail.  Nothing surprising in that; this is deer country here in Southern New Hampshire after all.  But I found the tracks fascinating anyway.  The deer walked in a line like Native American warriors or Roger’s Rangers would have done when this area was contested frontier.  In the case of warriors and rangers it masks the numbers from the adversary.  I wondered if the deer instinctively mask their numbers or just follow the leader to minimize the calorie burn of moving through snow.  The latter makes sense, doesn’t it? In winter where calories equal survival efficiency in movement means everything.

      For me the goal was just the opposite of the deer: burn as many calories as possible in two hours of walking and be outdoors as an active participant in winter. Mix in a visually interesting trek on rough terrain and this afternoon’s 10,000 (+!) steps scored a high bliss rating. And who doesn’t need more bliss in the short, dark days of January?

    • Better For Having Done So

      2019 was a year of change for all of us, as every year is, but it felt more profound this year. That has everything to do with writing about it. I know people who made changes on a massive scale, and others minor, but change happens whether we choose it or not. In the spirit of self-improvement as we enter the New Year, here are some small changes in routine that offered a profound return on time invested:

      Coffee consumption doesn’t seem like a big thing, but ever since I switched to the AeroPress I’ve reduced my daily coffee consumption, favoring one or two amazing cups to savor over multiple cups of average coffee from a Kurig or drip coffee maker.  I’ve reduced my personal plastic waste significantly as well.  I’d estimate that I’ve subtracted about 500 used K-cups from the landfill just making the switch.  I wish I’d done this years before, both for the reduction in waste and for the exceptional coffee the AeroPress makes.  On a side note, since the London and Scotland trip I’ve increased my tea consumption, switching coffee about half the time for tea, and find it a nice enhancement for my daily steaming hot beverage.

      Reading every morning, beginning with a quick read of The Daily Stoic for a jump start and moving to whatever book I was chewing on at the time, has built a routine and habit streak that has greatly enhanced my personal philosophy, helped me to know more about the history of the place I live and places I traveled to, opened my mind to spirituality and changed my perspective on a few things. I’ve read more and better books in 2019 and chewed through a few brilliant books that mocked me for years sitting on my bookshelf.  Nothing improves the mind like active participation in The Great Conversation.

      Educated travel in 2019 was enhanced by the reading, as you might imagine, but became a mission in itself.  Major trips to London, Scotland and Chicago were enhanced with educating myself about the places I was going, adding things I would have missed and subtracting things that may have been good but replaced with things that were amazing.  But this really became powerful for me in local travel.  Local travel took on new meaning for me with quick side trips to see the Saratoga Battlefield while I was in the Capital Region in New York and Fort Niagara in Buffalo, New York and Fort Western in Augusta, Maine.  I’ve hiked the trails in Ithaca, New York to see the stunning waterfalls in winter and spring, stopped at lonely graveyards to see the tombstone of Revolutionary War heroes and walked in dress shoes on soggy battleground sites deep in the off-season.  Educated travel offers a greater sense of place, and I’m better for having made the time to learn about and then visit these places.

      Writing every day has changed me completely.  The daily cadence, the skills acquired, and the deliberate action in the previous two habits to enhance the daily writing offered far more to me than any other daily routine.  We’ll see where it takes me in 2020, but wherever it goes, you’ll read about it on this blog.

      Walking has always been a part of my life.  I used to walk home from school four miles instead of taking the bus just to get away from the noise and secondhand smoke that was a part of bussing teenagers home back in those days.  When my dog Bodhi got older and passed away in 2019 the walks had decreased in length, and I found myself missing the nightly routine of walking for an hour with him looking at stars.  So I started walking again to get that minimum 10,000 steps, but also to come alive again.  Doing those steps on the beach or the rail trail or walking around the block at a random hotel somewhere became a mission.  I’m currently on a 19 day streak of 10,000 steps per day, managing to get my steps in through the holidays and hopefully for a long time to come.  I know I won’t always have the time to do it with work, but then again, what’s more important than maintaining a base level of fitness?  Walking is easy, and hasn’t caused nagging injuries like the burpees did for me.  When I can’t walk outside I’ll read on the treadmill, magnifying the font to crazy sizes so I maintain good posture.  But I double down on two habits and feel better for having done so.  So I’ll keep moving, and add other activity to enhance my fitness whenever possible.

      Looking at 2020, I’m not looking at resolutions as much as what can I add to my daily routine that will pay off over time?  And the answer for me is language acquisition.  Being bilingual or multilingual is nothing unusual in the rest of the world, but in American we tend to stick with English.  I think I’ve got my head wrapped around that one already.  Nothing improves travel like knowing the local language, and nothing challenges the brain like learning to speak it, so it’s time to get back on track.  I’ve dabbled in French, Spanish and Portuguese over the years, and it’s time to double down on learning two of them.  French and Spanish are the leading candidates, but I have a soft spot in my heart for Portuguese and may explore the language a bit as well.  Let’s see where this takes me.

    • Sorting Out The Walk

      The funny thing about walking 10,000 steps every day is that I don’t lose weight doing it.  10K is a minimum recommendation after all.  But I’m healthier for having done it.  At the very least I’m not eating or drinking when I walk, so those calories float away.  But walking 10-12K isn’t going to burn a lot of calories.  I know from experience that if I’d rowed every day for the amount of time that I walked, I’d lose weight pretty quickly.  And with the holidays here perhaps I should be rowing more to get ahead of the calories.  But I like to walk and so I do it.  I feel the mild ache in the morning and know that I’ve been doing something positive.  Back when I rowed we’d call it the good kind of sore.  That rowing soreness was a whole body sore.  Walking is a different sore altogether, but still good.

      I tend to walk early in the morning or late in the evening.  When you walk in the neighborhood in the middle of the day it turns into a chat instead of a walk.  At night the neighbors notice me walking as they drive by or call in their barking dog (thanks), and I carry a flashlight so they know it’s just me, walking again.  I give a wave and explain away this walking at night behavior with a generic “gotta get those 10,000 steps” statement, at which they smile knowingly.  Or maybe uncomfortably, as in just humor him and let’s move on.

      Walking feels like forever only when I’m trying to check that 10,000 step box.  On the treadmill this is misery because it takes so long.  Walking outside I forget that I’ve got this goal of 10K and just walk, and it just happens.  There’s a lot to be said for being outside, when outside offers solitude anyway.  Yeah, there’s that too.  I’m a social being and enjoy walking with other people, but there’s a lot to be said for walking alone too.  I try to sort things out as I walk.  I assess my general health when I walk (Why is my heart racing going up this hill?  Too much caffeine?).  Or sometimes I don’t think about anything and just look at the stars and, this time of year, the Christmas lights in the neighborhood.  But mostly I walk, and feel better for having done so.  And isn’t that the point?

    • Telling Stories

      “No story lives unless someone wants to listen.” – J.K. Rowling

      There are two ways to look at this Rowling quote. There’s the story we try to sell to the audience – read my blog or my book, buy my product or service, hire me for the job, let’s do lunch… whatever. The story we tell others to persuade them to invest time, attention or money into what we’re offering. But there’s also the story we tell ourselves, “I am a writer”, “I am here to help others”, “I am a rainmaker”, that ultimately has to come first. If you don’t believe your own story how can you expect others to buy into it?

      I was thinking about a George Mack Twitter thread on high agency that’s stuck with me for since I read it a year ago. Here are the key points from that thread:

      “High Agency is a sense that the story given to you by other people about what you can/cannot do is just that – a story.
      And that you have control over the story.
      High Agency person looks to bend reality to their will.
      They either find a way, or they make a way.

      Low agency person accepts the story that is given to them.
      They never question it.
      They are passive.
      They outsource all of their decision making to other people.

      If in doubt, ask yourself, what would Wetzler do?
      1. Question everything
      2. Bend reality
      3. Never outsource your decision making”

      (Alfred Wetzler was a prisoner who escaped Auschwitz and helped bring awareness to what was happening there).

      Pushing myself to become more high agency, less low agency has been a mission ever since.  What story am I telling myself?  That I’m someone that gets things done, or someone who falls in line and does what is expected of me?  In general I’m proactive in reaching out to others, tackling projects (high agency) but tend to stall when I hit roadblocks (low agency).  In general I follow the rules of the game (low agency), but what if the rules aren’t really there in the first place?  Everything in social life is a construct, so why not construct my own life?  That’s high agency, and a better story than passively going through life as a cog in someone else’s story line.

      And so I’m pushing myself more in my career (which requires high agency thinking), and I’m writing more out of my comfort zone, and questioning other things in my life that I might have let slide before.  This bending reality to my will thing seems arrogant on the surface, but that’s passive thinking, isn’t it?  I have plenty of examples of people in my life bending reality to their will who I wouldn’t call arrogant, but instead adventurous and bold.  And who doesn’t want their main character to be adventurous and bold?

      The thing about high agency living is that it builds on itself.  You start with one bold question, push back a little and go in a different direction and it changes you.  Do it again and you change a little more.  Pretty soon you have momentum on your side and step-by-step eventually you’re living audaciously.  And that’s a story I’d like to see more of.

       

    • Beach Sand Reset

      This was one of the most unproductive mornings I’ve had in some time.  I wrote and deleted two blog posts because they were crap.  Work slid sideways and never got back on the runway.  Out of sorts with just about everything this morning.  These things happen, and I tried working through it for awhile…  with limited success.  So I decided to take a walk at lunch, and decided it had been too long since I’ve walked the beach on Plum Island.  Walking on the beach is great any time of year, but my favorite time is winter.  I saw three people and two dogs the entire walk, benefiting greatly in my isolation for walking in the middle of a work day in winter.  But that’s why I went there.

      The surf was up, offering a wonderful soundtrack to compliment the rhythmic swish, swish of my feet marching across damp, cold sand.  The beach is a traveling art show, with sand sculptures carved by the wind and waves moving from place to place, always different from the last exhibit.  Snow from last night clumped in patches here and there with greatest success on driftwood and the dune grass.  Tiny sand ridges formed from receding waves created Etch A Sketch-like graffiti on the beach; here in this moment, but gone with the wind and high tide.  Driftwood and sea glass and millions of shells mixed into the sand, clumped into patterns by the previous high tide.  I continued my march with purpose, aiming for the Mouth of the Merrimack River.  This was about a 2 1/2 mile round trip, which fit in with the amount of time I had while serving as a good workout with the give of the sand.

      I came across a child’s footprints in the sand running in circles, as children do, going this way and that; directionless.  And I thought to myself, that’s what brought me to the beach today too.  I’d begun the day with high hopes, got distracted by figuring out the logistics of getting from here to the tropics with no real time to work with, and found myself spiraling into a completely unproductive morning.  So the beach was a reset, a chance to clear my head and figure things out.  Ten year plans that break into what am I doing next week kind of thinking.  And some of that got done, but mostly I checked another 10K box and regained my focus on writing.  And when I got back to my work settled back into a groove with that too.  Good things happen when you get outside.  And when outside is a quiet beach all the better.

    • Checking Off the 10K Box

      Rain and warm tropical air swept into New Hampshire last night, melting the snow and creating swirls of thick radiation fog that muted the Christmas lights twinkling throughout the neighborhood.  It’s been awhile since I walked after 10 PM on the street, and there are reasons.  Mostly it’s the loss of Bodhi, who was my walking buddy for 14 years.  This was our time to be outside watching the sky change and listening to the faraway sounds of a car moving down the road or a train rumbling along on its way between Boston and Maine.  That track is five miles away with hills and valleys separating us, but you can hear that freight train in the still of the night.  Last night offered nothing but quiet and drifts of fog and tropical warmth stroking your face as you walked.  Strange, this feeling, when there’s a foot of snow still on the ground.

      I’ve refocused on that 10,000 step objective.  I need to move more, and it’s a good round number.  I now use an Apple Watch to track, a gift from my wife, instead of the Fitbit, which was also a gift from my wife (which in turn replaced an older model Fitbit, also, you guessed it, a gift from my wife – I believe she might be telling me something).  We rarely walk together; she’s a runner and gets her miles in that way, I’m a never runner and get my miles the slower way.  Embrace your differences and the marriage works.  And this difference had me walking while she was shopping.  I’d rowed 5000 meters at lunchtime, so I didn’t feel I needed a workout as much as I needed to keep the streak alive.  Life gets busy, and goals can slip away in the frenzy of a workweek, and especially during the holidays.  Would I love to be hiking in the White Mountains or on the Appalachian Trail every day, or on edge of the surf line on the beach?  Of course, but I’m working with what I have, where I am.  And where I am is not so bad.  I tell myself that a lot in all things, not just walking.  You become reflective and grateful when you walk far enough.

      I don’t take it for granted, this ability to walk at 10 PM down the middle of the street, with  little thought to my personal safety.  When you live on a cul du sac in a small New Hampshire town this is what you get, but I remain the only walker.  Neighbors are watching television, reading or sleeping, and you can tell which by the flicker of light against a window or the darkened house.  The neighborhood is aging, and that shift is apparent at 10 PM on a Monday night.  Most of the kids have grown and moved away, or are away at college.  Those who moved in with younger kids have them tucked in bed while their parent’s shop online for gifts.  And I’d be tucked in bed myself, but for this 10,000 step box I have to check.  Conflicting goals of getting more sleep and checking a box..  but the walk will help the sleep and so I go.  I’d walked around the inside of the house for a few minutes, thought about how ridiculous it was for me to do laps around the living room and kitchen and slipped my raincoat on and went outside.  And as the pedometer on my watch moved past 10K and I turned to home I remembered the joy of walking on a quiet night, now just me and my thoughts.