New Year

2024 was a good year.

Last night the kids and I went just after midnight to Hakusan Jinja, our local shrine.

I’ve already ballyhooed my running project into the ground. But I shall ballyhoo one last time.

I ran every damn day in 2024. It was surprisingly doable. There were days when I waited until the literal eleventh hour to get out for a run. But also, you have a chance to go run sometime between waking up and midnight, it turns out.

It gave me a huge mental lift. I felt better about life. I attribute this to chemicals released by running, and the satisfaction of my body becoming more comfortable to me. I disliked feeling my belly in the way when bending over, and having clothes that didn’t fit, and so on.

My weight went from 83 kilograms / 183 pounds down to 67 / 147 and then back up to 69 kilograms / 152 pounds now. I learned that I can run and pretty much eat whatever I want…for now. I ate a tremendous number of ice creams in 2024. Without them I might have remained 67 kg, but I derived great quality of life gains from the many ice creams. The coming years will require small moves toward diet control.

I looked at my January 1 2024 run:
My pace was 6:49 / km, and my average heart rate was 158 bpm.

My December 31 2024 run:
My pace was 5:38 / km and my average heart rate was 140 bpm.

I stopped pushing for more speed after the summer. Previous running eras have ended with me trying always to get faster and making it unpleasant for myself.

So my running speed and efficiency got better, while cardiovascular health improved a ton. My resting and sleeping heart rates regularly dip below 40 bpm. My VO2 max was 42.2 on January 1, and got as high as 52.6 in June, then settled down to 51 or so as I moved into that maintenance phase.

My breaths became deep and satisfying. I now snore probably 80% less than before.

I remember hearing that Neil Armstrong said he believed that a person has a finite amount of heart beats, and that he didn’t intend to waste any of his. Well, by running for only 30 minutes a day at 140 bpm and thereby reducing my resting heart rate down to 40 for the other 23 hours and 30 minutes, I believe that I have improved my lifespan even within his dubious theory.

Other goals for 2024 included blogging more (I did a lot more toward the end than at the beginning), listening to records more (accomplished), undertaking quarterly Constitutionals (less successful than hoped), and going to karaoke (far less than hoped). But I feel that I got my life more focused on what is good in life.

I declare that 2025 will be another big stride toward living the kind of life I want to live. I will keep running—it is my mental and physical panacea. Also, a running streak of 366 days is a sad thing to waste. But I might not be as adamant about doing it every day. We will see.

My other big physical goal is to do (I dunno 20 or 30 to start) pushups every day. I got into the habit from spring to autumn or so, but let it trail off when I deleted the 6:30 AM daily reminder that I had created for the purpose, which really helped. (I also have a “Put on running clothes” 19:30 reminder.)

I will make some of the aforementioned small diet moves, in a way that prioritizes enjoying life above strictness.

I will keep blogging, by handwriting and by typing.

I will put down my phone more often and read instead. Ideally I will reach for a physical book when my brain wants to be entertained. I will re-develop my brain to again withstand and take pleasure in long periods of reading. This will replace the brain rot of Reels and other passive content consumption.

In business, I laid a lot of groundwork for new revenue in 2024. This will bear even more fruit in 2025. I will get better at hiring people to expand our ability to do more business, rather than just increasing my own amount of and rate received for work, which while nice, does not create the scalability I want to achieve.

I am interested to hear your goals.