Year end challenge :: Update

Its been a week since I decided to do the year end challenge to live like Casey Neistat and it has been a huge failure so far. Maybe I picked the wrong time to take up this challenge or I just am not determined enough to make lifestyle changes.

The very first thing I wanted to try as part of this challenge was to wake up between 4:30 to 5AM and since the past one week, I havent been able to do that even once. Its december and it started getting a little cold and 4-6 am happens to be the time when we get the best of the sleep. That made it really difficult for me to wake up. So that threw my attempts at studying and learning something new down the drain.

The second thing I wanted to do was go on daily runs. In the past one week, I went only once and after that work got to me which made it very difficult to push myself to the gym and a bout of cough and cold added to that. I also thought I will blog daily. That didn't happen either. This isnt an excuse but it was more because of lack of a subject to write about rather than the time factor.

The silver lining though was my plan to do intermittent fasting. I did manage to skip having any carbs after 8pm and from what my parents say, I did reduce a little. Its weekend and this also has taken a toll again but I will persist with the fasting and will take it on till the end of the year and hopefully make it a lifestyle. I feel I wake up much lighter doing this and since there is a long gap between having my last meal and sleeping, it is also helping me sleep better.

Its a long weekend for us here and so far it has been quite productive. Lets see what else I can do this weekend and I vouch to keep up with my year end challenge into next week.

Will keep the blog updated. 

Year End Challenge

Its the last month of the year and its that time of the year when people go into a retrospective to assess what went right and what didn't go right this year and its also the time when people start preparing to make resolutions for next year. The same old "New year", "New Me" thing that happens year after year. I am also guilty of making resolutions, some unrealistic, some outright naive and some over enthusiastic ones and sadly I have not kept most of them.

There is one resolution I made at the beginning of the year and that was to be a medal collector and surprisingly I have been able to partially keep it. I wanted to earn a medal a month which meant I would've earned 12 medals this year but instead I managed to participate in the most famous running events and I earned medals there. I started with this enthusiasm at the beginning of the year and participated in some not so famous events and I could see the difference. Hardly any people participated in these small time events. There was no organization what so ever and even the medal I got was some cheap flimsy one which are given in schools. So im never going to participate in these small events every again. Anyways I'm quite happy with the progress I made. I started the year with a 5K and ended it doing two awesome 10K's in the Airtel Hyderabad Marathon and the Freedom 10K run. I plan to participate in many many more events next year.

All this aside, coming back to the title of my blog. Yesterday I happened to watch a video on youtube in which one of the vloggers, Sorelle Amor made a video of her trying to live like one of my most favorite youtuber, Casey Neistat for a week. You can watch the video here. Casey is a very famous and an extremely successful youtuber who captured the hearts and minds of millions of people by making daily vlogs where he shows snippets of his day in a very interesting way. His work ethic, his fitness mantra and most importantly his story telling has become extremely famous and he is quite an influential person and people are always super anxious to meet him. This lady Sorelle did a marvelous job of trying to live like Casey for a week and it got me thinking. Now that sounds super interesting and very achievable, why don't I give it a shot as well?? The good thing was that it is just for a week and that seems like a reasonable time frame to try something new. Better make resolutions for a reasonable realistic time frame rather than for the entire year during which we become tend to become complacent and end up not being able to keep up the resolutions.

Casey has this really tight, yet interesting schedule each day which I intend to follow with some improvisations and it goes like this :

Casey	Nitin
Wakes up between 4:30 to 5 am and does some work. His work involves editing youtube videos or responding to mails	In my case it would be to wake up at that time and study and update myself on new technologies
He is very fitness conscious and goes for long runs (usually in the tune of 10kms) almost every day.	I love running too, so I could do something similar by hitting the gym after an hour or two of studying
He always eats healthy. Of course he goes on the occasional binge but he drinks a lot of green juices.	In my case I am going to try intermittent fasting where I am not going to eat any high calorie diet after 8pm.
Family time is important for him. He always spends time with his wife and kid after 6pm.	I'm not married yet and even if I come home by 6 pm, my parents aren't home, so I thought instead of family time, I will do daily blogs.
He goes for a late night gym session.	This is the only thing from his routine that I wont be able to do but I will try to incorporate something.

I thought I will start this today but I had come back from a 500 KM drive yesterday night and couldn't wake up. I will surely start following this routine from tomorrow and instead of a daily vlog, I will write a daily blog. Lets see how it goes.

Two personal bests in one week

So, last week turned out to be a great running week. I was able to log two personal bests. I ran my fastest 5K and also my fastest mile and I'm pretty happy about it.

I usually try to run every single day. There is this initiative called 100 days of running which is organized every year between april and august. The rules of the event are that one has to run a minimum of 2 Kms per day for 100 days straight. The runs can be logged using an app called strava in which case the run logs are automatically synced to the 100 days of running website or we can also manually enter the details using any other run logging apps like Nike Running Plus or Gamin Connect or any of the hundreds of other running apps available.

I personally use Strava because the watch I use, the Garmin Fenix 3 (long term review coming soon) and the underlying Garmin Connect app automatically syncs my runs to Strava and I find it extremely convenient to use this.

This 100 days of running event is a great motivation to start running and to prepare ourselves for all the running events which happen during the later part of the year. I've tried this for two consecutive years now and I found it to be very motivating and helpful. I couldn't run for all the 100 days but I did better than last year. Last year I could only run for around 50 of the 100 days but this time I did more than 70 days. I missed runs usually because I was travelling. I tried to push in a run in between my vacation as well which is why I was able to do 20 days more than last year.

These runs helped me a great deal in preparing myself for Hyderabads biggest running event, the Airtel Hyderabad Marathon. I had some very very hectic work weeks before the actual event and I couldn't practice much, but the running I did before helped me and I could finish the 10K easily. The lack of practice showed a little but overall it was pretty good.

Like I said in my previous blog, I recently enrolled into a fancy gym and my runs are getting a lot more consistent now. I paid relatively more as membership for this gym which is my motivation to go every single day and make the most of it. I am running in a controlled environment now on a treadmill which makes these runs relatively easier but it doesn't take away the fact that I still run for 25-40 mins straight maintaining a heart rate of about 160bpm.

A lot more events are coming up. My next event is going to be the Hyderabad 10K which will be held in November. I will do a few more events before that and in the process I hope to break a lot more of my personal records.

Running is very good for health and I personally would encourage everyone to run. It works as a stress buster and also helps keep your weight under control. It also increases your stamina making it easier to climb stairs and keeps you physically fit. It helps more if you keep a track of your runs and to see that there are improvements as time passes.

On to my next record now. Keep running!!