A Bereft Triumph

As the painful, unrelenting dance of tetchy robins tussling over the prized, worm-filled dirt plays out under a teasing, thawing sun, I remember it's that time of the new year to look back at the old year, to navel-gaze so deeply so as to invite whatever awed derision or jeering nonplus or, worse, bland indifference may come.

And with that, this:


I guess the "important" take-away "points" here are:  I, for the first time in my long, distinguished career of doing this nonsense, actually hit my stated goals. The number crunching, tracking, and planning took on a fanatical, religious-like importance this year, particularly in the second half after returning from India in June. It's interesting that in around early Fall I felt as good physically as I'd ever felt before (and was playing the best hockey of my life (ed. note: which is still pretty terrible hockey)), but after a sloppy holiday season followed by some ol' timey visitors and the bacchanalia that ensued, followed by a busy work period, followed by a smarch seasonal and possibly existential malaise, I'm basically now in as poor a shape as I've been in in a long while.  Huzzah.  Also, note the existence of the classic inverse or mirror image relationship between the two lines, which we've seen before but perhaps never more beautifully than the stretch from July to December here.  And for what it's worth, the inside/outside drinking ratio was 36.6%/63.4%.  I'm not sure what conclusions should be drawn from that ratio (perhaps that I need to get out more?  Less?), but it is consistent with historic levels.

It's interesting to note that while my average drinks per day was only about 3.1, the standard deviation was actually 3.2, so I wasn't merely having an extra glass of Dolcetto before dessert - I was either having the whole bottle, with a couple of Makers chasers, or tee-totaling.  I think for now I'd prefer the higher standard dev. with  a lower average than the reverse, although I could certainly see changing views on that as I continue to get older.  This year's already off to a very rocky start so who know's where the workout number will end up.  With the baby coming, I'd like to get the drinks to under 20, and I imagine the pre- and post-August splits will be fairly dramatic.

Less Sauced, Less Swoll

My vanity project cloaked as data accumulation-cum-self-improvement has continued unabated. The results of 2011, not to be thought of as distinct from the experience of 2011, were disappointing.

You may recall my goals of 21 and 4.75 drinks and work-outs per week, respectively. Well, I got halfway there on the boozing front, making it down from 30 to just over 25. Though I didn't do any in-year tabulations, I sort of knew I was going to miss that mark while in the midst of a largely, generally crappy annum, but alas, not only did I not hit the exercising target, and not only did I go backwards by about 5%, but I was blissfully unaware of and completely surprised by it. I guess alcohol does give you an inflated sense of self. And a distorted view of the present.

The main wrinkle I added for 2011 was classifying each drink as being In - in the apartment alone or, e.g., at The Pub at lunch alone - or Out - socially, with other people drinking. For whatever little elucidation it's worth, I was at 34% In and 66% Out for the season. I have no idea what to take from that, but there you go.

2012 Goals - 20.5 and 5.0. And the end of US hegemony.

Sauced and Swoll

To further my heretofore narrowly manifested data accumulation penchant, I did the unthinkable, most likely totally useless, and even more likely hardcore douchey. That's right, I started tracking and quantifying my workouts. It was mostly an attempt to shame me into working out more thereby contributing to my record setting hockey season, but it was also largely a way to spend more time looking at and writing things in my JRT calendar. Amusing but not joking. In any case, the process wasn't all that quantitative. I essentially made one of four basic notations to correspond to a workout: an up arrow (meaning I lifted upper body, usually combined with some cardiovascular work, usually either short distance running or interval training bike work), a down arrow (meaning lower body lifting combined with the same CV caveats), a BS (meaning Bluestreak, which is a brutally difficult but awesome hockey-specific workout involving the dreaded skating treadmill), or an H (meaning that I played hockey). Sometimes I'd also threw on an R (meaning I just ran) or an S (which means I did my pseudo-ashtanga stretches usually with some core work thrown in). This all sounds more intense than it really was; those who know me will take comfort in knowing that I half-assed my way through most of all this. Except for the Bluestreak sessions, those are usually insane.

About halfway into the year, I started actually trying to quantify the level of intensity of each workout, assigning a value of anywhere from .5 top 1.25 with a lifting session usually getting a 1.0, a BS session getting a 1.25, and H getting a .75 or 1.0 depending on how much and how hard I played and if I did a stretching/core session before or after. Yawn yawn, and to anyone who's still reading at this point: marry me. To make things more interesting and/or depressing (depending on if you're a future AA counselor or a current parent), I started counting my alcoholic drinks sometime towards the end of June. Pretty simple, each drink counted as, wait for it, one drink. Whereas I used to pour myself whiskey at home without regard to volume, I tried to pour myself glasses that corresponded to one "drink," and I did my best to count 'em all up (though after around 10 in a night it could get a bit hazy). Here are the results in graph form:

(Click to enlarge)

The results are fairly straightforward. The inverse relationship between my alcohol intake and exercise output seems pretty clear and strong, which is in no way surprising. I averaged around four and a quarter "workouts" per week, which is actually not all that disappointing. 30 drinks a week, however, is a bit of a horrifying embarrassment. In my defense, there were a disproportionate number of big one-time only drinking events this past year that probably unfairly pushed that average a bit on the high side, e.g. the bachelor party, wedding, honeymoon, and that winter solstice eclipse thing that just happened. My goal for next year is to cut down to 21 drinks per week, a 30% reduction, which is certainly significant, but one that I am going to go ahead and publicly commit to making. I'd also like to get up to around 4.75 workouts per week as well. Don't worry ye faithful few, you won't have to wait a whole year in suspense, I'll give you guys a mid-year update on all of this sometime after June. Spoiler alert: I am already perhaps irrevocably off pace on both counts just two and a half weeks in. Damn you, cold and miserable winter.