Goals and systems for this year (Re-visited)

I had a plan (read: an event in my calender) to review my post about goals and systems which I came up with after reading Atmoic Habits. So I guess it’s REFLECTION TIME.

I think the best way to go about this is to leave some of the text from the original post in a block quote and then comment on top of that.

Running

but for now I think a worthy goal is to go to as many running clubs/groups/events as I can. Especially if they are located near me; most of them are.

## Participate in the East Vancouver Running Club Runs on Monday's at 6:30PM
## Participate in the Central Park Park Run Saturday's at 9AM 
### *Bonus* Volunteer At-Least Once a Month
## *Bonus* Participate in the Icecream & Donut Park Run
## *Bonus* Stay After the Run To Mingle

On Mingling and Making Friends

A worthy goal indeed. I’m glad I made this a focus, because I’ve made some good friends this way. I’m still a bit shy about staying after the run to mingle. So not much progress there, but I do make a concerted effort to talk (a lot) with everybody during runs.

Having said that, I do stick around for the “Icecream and Donut Run Club”, the main reason being that I’m just much more motivated to eat icecream or a donut then to drink beer. It’s a shame too because there’s some really cool people at the other run groups that I could be getting much closer with if I was willing to stay.

Training and Racing

I recently signed up for the “Great Trek Half-Marathon” at UBC, and it’s crazy how much more motivated I am to train. I’ve started doing speed training for the first time, and I’m thinking more deeply about the runs I’m doing.
No more running for the sake of running, each run will have a purpose. Having said that, most of my runs were usually at an easy pace whose “purpose” could be base building, so no real issue there anyway.

But now, I’m even excited to hop on the treadmill, mainly because I figured out how to mount my tablet and watch Netflix but I sometimes do my speedwork on there too…
I’m honestly not sure how long this novelty will last, I guess it all depends on how the race goes. But I’ll take advantage of it’s phsychological effect for as long as I can.

Career

Developing A Personal Brand??

I think it’s funny that I didn’t put anything in this section because I really didn’t have any idea how to go about it.
The only idea I really have so far is to write as much as I can, about the projects I’m working on at work and maybe building some useful tools or extensions.

Nix + Bazel

One of the most interesting things that I’ve been exposed to at KeepTruckin that I hadn’t seen elsewhere is the tooling and technologies surrounding developer productivity and deployment services from a monorepo.
In particular, Nix and Bazel.
This year I really want to focus on trying to learn more about those technologies, write about them and build tools for the company and personal projects using them.
It would be shame to not try to learn them when there’s a industry expert like Wael at the company who I can learn from.

Climbing

My concrete goal would be to be able to project Hex 4’s at the Hive consistently and maybe even complete an odd Hex 5.
The plan overall is just to climb more but without getting injured. Which is honestly a difficult feat because basically I have to avoid consecutive days of climbing; Hard to do on weekends.

Climb 3-4 Times a Week

Hangboard 1-2 Times a Week

Sometimes I wonder if I enjoy hangboarding more than I like climbing? It sounds stupid but I think the tangible progress is more satisfying… Anyway I’m going to gradually add some hangboarding sessions to build up the finger strength as I keep better hopefully.
I don’t want to be stupid and hangboard more than 2 times a week but they are hard to recover from and it will cut into my time to actually get better at climbing.

Climb Outdoors Before The Season Ends!

It’s funny I thought that there would be a natural synergy between climbing and running but I don’t really think that’s true anymore. It takes a lot of energy to do long distance running and you have to fuel very aggressive (read eat lots of carbs) that I often found myself too tired and heavy to have successful climbing sessions.
I also felt like I had trouble connecting and making friends like I had at the start of the summer. I’m not really sure why. My only guess is that the crowd is much different in Surrey then in Vancouver and that because bookings weren’t as hard to come by, it was much easier to have the same consistent crowd in Surrey.
I definitely felt like the atmosphere on a Saturday/Sunday morning is much different then a Tuesday night in Vancouver.

Besides that I finally had a chance to go climbing outdoors! So I guess I can cross that off my bucket list. On one hand, I thoroughly enjoyed the actual climbing aspect of that day, but unfortunately I found the overall experience quite a hassle.
You need:

  • so much equipment (harness, rope, other misc gear). Mats if you are bouldering
  • a partner to belay you, a ton of friends to spot you if bouldering
  • camping equipment if you want to have the wall to yourself in the morning

I don’t even like the outdoors THAT MUCH, so this was all just “a pain”.

Anyway long story short, I don’t know if I’m going to a keep bouldering and will likely freeze my membership.
Maybe I’ll start up again, if I run less and start cutting weight again.

Dancing

Go To 1 WCS Social A Week

I want to focus more on dancing as covid restrictions start opening up. Unfortunately WCS Socials are probably not really an option. I think it will be a long time before things open up for WCS.

So instead I’d like to focus on House dancing instead because there’s still a decent number of classes and I can practice solo.
Having said that I don’t want to drop WCS (I’m still going to class and taking some privates) but I won’t focus too hard on it for now.

Diet

Intermittent Fast 18-6 Protocol Daily

This has been super hard to do while running so many miles.
I’ll have to re-visit this after the race.

I’m still trying to stick with it, but definitely not as strict as before. Mainly making sure to fuel up before the hard strength training sessions no matter what.

Furthermore, I found that eating at night, helps keep the maintenance insomnia at bay. I’ll have to go to a doctor and figure the sleep thing out at some point.
So far I’ve been trying to supplement with ZMA and Magnesium, but haven’t noticed a huge effect.

Bonus 24 Hour Fast Once A Week?

I managed to do this a couple times. It’s not so bad honestly, but I usually ended up binging the day after.
That’s been my main issue this whole time really.

Strength Training

Powerlift 2x A Week

Powerlifting twice a week might have made sense when I was climbing but now that I’ve mostly stopped I think I’ll start going more often.

This is one area that I think I have mostly figured out. I’ve dropped 531 and opted for Reverse Pyramid Training (RPT) full-body 3x week. The benefits are as follows:

  • I can hit full-body each workout session, ensuring that I can focus on my important lifts often (weighted pull-up, shoulder press)
  • It’s fairly low commitment because the sessions go by quick
  • I can run it on a cut
  • The consistent schedule works well because I can use the office gym after work on Monday, Wednesday and Friday