Working out

This is the view from the treadmill I warm up and cool down on at my local gym. I’ve gone twice a week for nearly two months, I’m lifting more each week than the week before and I am rediscovering myself as a strong, flexible person. I haven’t lost a ton of weight, I’m not swole, stacked or jacked, but I haven’t felt this good in a long time.

I have two people to credit for this.

The first is my mate Paul, who suggested it in the first place. After a much-delayed pint together, he said that he was considering joining the gym, and asked if I’d be up for buddying up. It’s been great having someone to be accountable to in the mornings when I’m dragging myself out of bed, and it’s also just lovely to do something like this socially. The time passes easier, and it’s nice to chat about family, games, movies and the news with a mate when resting between sets.

The other person is my mate Richard, who when I told him and asked his advice on where to start immediately designed a workout plan for me to follow. Having that direction from the jump has made this so much easier, and I suspect is also a big part of why I feel this is going well.

Nerd alert!

But of course, I couldn’t indulge in a new hobby without it intersecting with others. Namely, my interest in self-hosting. I’ve been hosting an app called Wger, an open-source workout-tracking app.

It’s been super fun tracking my progress, while also knowing that all of my data is fully private and not being used to train some ghoulish AI model another business is going to profit from (after presumably charging me for the privelege of feeding it my data).