We had a good year in terms of moving and using our bodies.
Everything we do....everything....is together. For that reason alone it's fun.
But we also know that we feel better when we do our physical activities. So, let's get started.
Dancing:
We met at a dance. We both love it.
This year we danced more than we had in any other year, by far. We danced at our home in Leisure World (Mesa), at our cabin in Pine, and out in the desert while camping. We danced 62 times, which is more than once/week. We also created a You-tube channel of our dances, which now number over 300 dances....usually to golden oldies (in other words, to songs that mostly our children have never heard of and our grandchildren go "huh?" to).
But give us Roy Orbison over any current singer any time.
Cycling:
Another major activity for us is cycling. We mostly cycle on e-bikes now, because we can easily "dial-in" how much exercise we can get. We cycled 5033 miles in 2023. The majority of those miles were in Leisure World.
Leisure World's miles were primarily during January-March and October-December. We did 3760 of those miles during that time. All at night. We would get up anywhere from 2:30-3:00 a.m., put on multiple layers of clothes (including heated gloves and heated pads in our shoes), and cycle in the dark on the streets and golf trails. The golf trails require concentration and balance. There's a real learning curve to do these trails safely (for us, and for others)
Vicky has a tracker which shows how much of a workout it is....mainly because we can set the resistance to a level where we have to work hard but below when our knees start to hurt.
Interestingly, it is the safest time to cycle...for us. It's a gated community so we will see only a handful of vehicles every morning. Additionally, we each have 12-15 headlamps. We are quite visible, and the few walkers we see are completely safe. Almost all wave to us or yell good morning.
Our rides in January, February, and March were to support Candice's breaking of the world record for number of consecutive days for running 50K. So to support her, we also ran 50K each day......LIE! But we did cycle 50Ks each day for her. It was ccccccccold! We occasionally made signs before we left on some rides to imitate the signs Candice made marking how far she had to go each day. Here is one of them we made:
We cycled when we were at our cabin in Pine, near the Mogollon Rim. We live there when the weather in the "valley" is too unbearable to be outdoors. That's about 6 months of the year.
Here we are in a small town near Pine called Strawberry:
...and up on the "Rim" (the Mogollon Rim where we spend a lot of our time when we are living in our cabin):
Hiking:
Our hiking has taken a beating because of our various physical ailments. We used to be able to hike 5 miles regularly, and now that has dropped down to about 3.5 miles per hike. 12 years ago we could hike 8-10 miles. But we love it. We hiked 52 times last year, doing 180 miles. (by the way, we define a hike as being in the wilderness and carrying our heavy backpacks). Our goal had been 200 miles, but because we put more time into cycling, hiking took a hit.
We are going to camp more this year, so we should be able to meet this goal.
We walk quite a bit every day, but only count some of the walking. We both have step counters, and they register a lot more distance than we register when we take "official" walks. We walked just under 350 miles last year.
Upper body
Vicky does 100 pushups 3 times/week, and I have an exercise machine called the A-System that I had set as a goal to use 3 times/week. I didn't quite accomplish that, using it 117 times last year. I have some excuses (some good, some not so good). But I am pleased that I have used this machine regularly for over 7 years.
Here is a photo of me with the machine...on the Mogollon Rim:
Here is Vicky in a push-up contest with Sebastian:
(he contacted us a week later to inform us he had increased his number to 35!....ah youth)
Time spent exercising in 2023
One goal we had was to exercise at least 60 minutes on 90% of days. We got close enough: 88%.
We also wanted to average 2 hours/day. We did OK, but had too many days where we couldn't really exercise and too many days when Dan felt so bad from the side effects of his cancer medication that making it out of bed was an accomplishment. We averaged 1.9 hours/day. That's close enough.
2024 Goals
We want to add more variety to our fun time together. We stopped going to the pool in the early mornings because LW had installed a shower that was impossible to use. Apparently we weren't the only one who noticed this, as we see that there is now a normal shower head in the outside changing/shower room.
We also want to do more ping-pong.
We will cut back on our cycling, because we want to have this variety. Our cycling goal will be 3000 miles. We will increase our hiking goal to 200 miles and our walking goal to 400 miles.
In terms of time, we want to stay at 90% of days of exercising 60 minutes a day, have 2/3 of days at 2 hours/day.
Dan wants to meet his goal of using his machine 3 times per week.
We have also bought a pull-up bar, and we want to see if we can increase our "hanging" time on it.
We don't know what to set as a goal beyond that. Dan is also going to practice balance every day (standing on one foot). Vicky will do this with him, but she can stand forever on one foot already.
We want to keep it fun.
And we will continue to dance at least once/week....of course.
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