We’re now in the middle of May and I’ve been working out regularly for over five months. The result? I’d call it “acceptable”, but no more. Since New Year’s I’ve been at the gym at least every other day on average, some months more often, some a bit less - like in April, when I was out traveling. Still, I’m pleased with my own effort. I pay about 600 NOK¹ (92 USD) in a monthly fee at the gym, and with an average of 15 visits a months, that’s 40 NOK (6 USD) for each work out. Not too bad, considering a ticket to go to the movies costs the double. It is a tad more relaxing and a bit more entertaining to go see a movie, though.

Anywaaaaay…

During these five months I’ve been focusing on physical strength and stamina. Being a nerd and all, physical strength is not something that have been prioritized at any point in my life until now. But I read somewhere that it’s good for the strength of the skeleton to exercise and increase ones physical strength, so I guess I can use that as an excuse. I mean, a healthy skeleton is good a good thing, no?

Now, the interesting things is that, in spite of five months of active work out, I’m not really seeing any difference when I look in the mirror or when I check my weight. And let’s be honest here, even though a healthy skeleton is something we all want, actually looking all right would be a nice bonus. That I have increased the weight of the inanimate objects I move around by at least 100% in all the exercises I do is of course a good thing, but I’d like to observe a visual difference as well.

(I love to use percentages when talking about quantitative subjects, by the way, because it’s that easy to make a rather small difference sound impressive.)

It could be that I don’t have the gentic potential to both be able to lift a heavy object and actually look like I’m capable of lifting it at the same time, and, to be honest, that’s quite all right. Being healthy is a hell of a lot more important than looking like you’re healthy. The guy me and Hans Olav saw yesterday comes to mind.

One of the items on The List is to get an acceptable BMI. I’m 178 cm or so tall, which means my ideal weight is 78 kilograms (kg), according to the BMI theory. From what I can tell, BMI is not necessarily a good measure when it comes to ideal weight as the concept of “ideal weight” is very individual. So now I’ve decided that my ideal weight is around 75 kg, because - based on five months of work out - it’s very unlikely that I’ll ever reach my ideal BMI weight of 78 kg unless I start eating beef for breakfast. So even though 78 kg is a goal, I’ll remove #67 from the list if I ever reach 75 kg.

When it comes to stamina, I’ve now reached my goal of being able to run at a semi-constant speed for 45 minutes. Running for 45 minutes is not that impressive, but since I’m bouncing around on a thread mill, I’ve realized that 45 minutes is my mental limit. Any more and my brain would just shut down because it’s incredibly boring to run on a thread mill compared to running outside. Why I am not running outside? Because I want to get as much as possible out of those 600 NOK I pay to the gym every month. Yes, I’m that damn hung up in the value of money.

Now that I’ve reached my 45-minutes-of-continuous-running-goal, my next is to be able to run one metric mile (6.2 miles) during those 45 minutes. It’s not a very ambitious goal, to be honest, but it’s still a goal. And I’m pretty sure I’ll make it before 2010.

Yay!