What a difference a year makes! If I thought it was safe to go back to the gym I feel like I would actually be looking forward to the crowd of wannabe workout enthusiasts who always appear right after New Year’s and fade away sometime between Valentine’s and St. Paddy’s Day.
As we watch the dumpster fire that was 2020 recede into history and gaze hopefully toward 2021’s potential to deliver a more tolerable new normal, keep your sense of humor handy and find a way to stumble onward.
Pick a number! Which one sounds like something you or a friend would do?
1. Inspired by Alison Brown, a personal trainer and gym owner in Canada, who completed 730 burpees in an hour, setting a new world record, you resolve to up your burpee game.
The plan was to start by doing one burpee on January first and add an additional burpee every day, figuring that in a year you will be halfway to duplicating her incredible feat. Day one finds you googling “How to do the perfect burpee.” Day 11 finds you googling “Scrabble high-score records.”
The Most Impressive Fitness Feats of 2020 (Shape)
2. You resolve to lose weight by finding a new diet to help you take off those pounds you gained during the lockdown. You try a new diet every week in January. First the beer and sausage diet, then the cabbage soup diet, the Starbucks diet, and finally the eggs and dessert diet.
Discouraged from this experience, you convince a friend to circulate fake wanted posters with your photo at all of the local fast-food restaurants and bakeries.
5 Weird Diets That Actually Work (Active)
3. This year you decide to make some resolutions that you can actually keep. You resolved to buy a bike you can’t afford, start a training plan you will never complete, set an exercise goal that has nothing to do with your sport, and finally, buy some flashy running clothes you will only wear once.
4. You were so proud of yourself for not falling for any of the wacky conspiracy theories this last year. Then you hear that archeologists found pictures of modern triathlon bikes in ancient cave drawings, that electrolytes were invented by Swiss scientists in an effort to shorten WWII, and that no one knows the origin of ramen noodles.
You hear a voice in your head – the one that often screams “this shopping cart is a death trap” – say “sounds about right.” You resolved not to listen to such nonsense unless it involves bigfoot.
‘Sistine Chapel of the ancients’ discovered in remote Amazon forest (The Guardian)
Original Image by ellenconnelly74 from Pixabay
5. As part of your resolution to lose weight, you ask your significant other to look into meal delivery services hoping to cut calories and free up more time for exercise. She signed you up for Gnarly Berm Chef.
A drone drops off your dinner at one of five randomly chosen spots in a nearby wilderness area and you ride the trails on your mountain bike until you find it. For an extra $5 a month, the service will put the food in a bear-proof container.
The Best Meal Kit Delivery Services (NYT/Wirecutter)
6. You make a resolution to watch and follow along with a YouTube yoga video three times a week to improve your flexibility. After some substantial discomfort and many failed attempts, you finally manage to get into the crow pose.
After the EMTs manage to bend you more or less back to your normal shape, you decide to spend February watching gardening videos.
The 15 Best Yoga Videos On YouTube (Women’s Health)
7. As part of your resolution to improve your upper body strength, you lift weights with a buddy via video chat twice a week. As a prank, he posts a TikTok video of you getting clobbered by a falling box of Christmas decorations while struggling to do pullups in your garage.
In retaliation, you post a video of the time he was practicing transitions and his Labrador retriever stole his bike helmet and ran around the yard with it.
The video becomes so popular that a dog food company gives him a lifetime supply of Canine Cookie Snaks. To show his appreciation he gets you a t-shirt that reads Doggie Hype Man!
How Safe Is It To Work Out In A Gym (Goats & Soda)
(One real and sincere resolution before we wrap up. In 2021, I will find a way to safely reconnect with the runners, cyclists, and triathletes I used to workout with before the lockdown. And I will do my part to bring back racing whether through signing up or volunteering. See you out there.)
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Have any funny stories about your New Years’ resolutions? Leave a comment.
Have a topic you want to see covered in a future post? e-mail me at alfred@swimbikestumble.com.
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