January 2023 – coralie's contemplations in markup

I had the silliest dream last night.

My iPhone had three new pages of app icons which were in fact photos from my camera roll. I had no idea this was possible and I was baffled how these had ended up there.

I was in my office, but instead of a floor, I was wading knee-hight through the Mediterranean sea, near the shore. Actually, I was standing between my desk and the shore. The configuration of my office was exactly as I know it, except there were no walls, no roof, no floor. Just the sea of shallow waters beneath me, and the beach unseen behind me.

My iPhone was huge. The size of six or nine iPads stitched together, and it was floating on the surface of the water. But it was normal. Everything seemed normal to me, then.

A breakthrough occurred: I had just realised that selecting several of my photos was what had turned them into the app shortcuts on the iPhone screen. Several pages of those. I just needed to undo that. But long-press on them did not remove them.

When I long-pressed, instead of jiggling the icons, the iPhone produced… a sunny-side-up egg with a side of bacon.

That’s not all.

The egg white had text written on it, but insufficient contrast, so I couldn’t read it.

That was very frustrating. Also, the ebb and flow made it hard for the egg-and-bacon to not jiggle on its own. And while the giant floating iPhone was unaffected by the wavelets, the egg-and-bacon quickly started to sink.

So I kept long-pressing the humongous floating iPhone, and it kept producing sunny side-up eggs and bacon, with insufficient text contrast, which kept sinking. No matter how hard I squinted, all I could make of the text were several undecipherable grey lines.

I woke up just as the iPhone had started to produce jelly and peanut butter sample containers in addition to more of the sunny-side-up egg and bacon. Upon waking, I was wondering how many more ingredients the iPhone had “in it”, and how the heck I was going to get rid of the photos turned into icons on the iPhone screens. The photos were not even great. I guess I’ll never know!

That’s it. That’s the dream.

I was neither hungry when I woke up, nor had I eaten breakfast before going to Zzzleep. I don’t know that you can turn camera roll photos into screen shortcuts either.

2022 was the third year in a row after I started exercising daily. Before 2020, I was stubbornly against any form of exercise (I don’t even know why.) This is the review post of my exercising year 2022, following the review I wrote last year.

2022 was a good year. Not as impressive as 2021. I think I overdid it back then!

Raw numbers

Collage of two screens of the Fitness Stats app that crunched the numbers for energy: 273K, exercise time: 688h, steps: 3.6M, walking and running: 2955K, hiking: 130K, running: 146K, cycling: 1315K, yoga: 27h, elliptical: 67h, total workouts: 625

I covered 2955 km (1,836 miles) walking and running.

I cycled 1315 km (817 miles) in 4 months.

I exercised 688 hours.

I engaged in 625 workouts.

To put in perspective some of these tallies (generated by the excellent and free Fitness Stats iOS app):

In 2022 I walked or ran more than I drove! 2900 km (1,800 miles) vs. 2500 km (1,500 miles)
688 hours of exercise is equivalent to 28.6 days (roughly a month of February)
625 workouts (25 fewer than last year) mean that on average I engaged in almost two different activities per day

Burnout and anemia

I became aware a few years back that I have anemia. I had been giving blood four times a year (following the recommendation for women) until I was advised that however generous I wanted to be, it was better to donate twice per year. I was medicated the first time this was diagnosed but it was just a temporary fix. My body does not absorb iron very well. And since hemoglobin carries the precious oxygen to muscles, anemia leads to fatigue. Meh. I also burned out at work after Summer. So I gradually ramped down exercising to a gentler degree.

My Apple Watch is my sidekick

I respond very well to the daily coaching of my Apple Watch. I start my “activities” on it, launch from it the music, podcasts or audio-books that I listen to via my headphones (Apple AirPods Pro or Bose QC35, both of which have noise cancellation.) I heed its reminders, enter the monthly challenges, the limited edition challenges.

Monthly challenges

In 2022 again I earned all of the monthly challenges. They are determined based on recent activities and are meant to either keep you at the same level or elevate you a bit, so that at the end of the year you have improved.

366.7 km (11.8/d)
17x double move goal
31x close all rings
15x double move goal

3140 minutes (105/d)
23902 kcal (797/d)
31x close all rings
5x double move goals

22400 kcal (747/d)
14x 700 kcal
3x double move goals
5 walking workouts

Notes: The first challenges of each quarter were not easy and required extra effort. In addition to these three (January, May, September), June was also difficult because burning almost 800 kcal everyday of the month on average required intense sessions during the weekends in order to make up for the work week where it’s usually harder to fit longer workouts. The last three of the year were really easy and I welcomed the break!

The January 2023 challenge is to cover at least 4 kilometers a day 14 times.

New gear

I got myself a nice pedal assist mountain bike 😍 early September.

Smiling middle-aged woman wearing a bike helmet standing next to a dark grey mountain bike in a steep incline covered in dead leaves — Me next to my Nakamura eSummit 950 (picture by Daniel Dardailler)

Daniel asked me in the Spring if I might like to go biking with him once. To be honest, I wasn’t that chuffed and I said “sure, why not” but I didn’t think of it anymore until he asked again in the Summer. We finally went on the last day of August. It was A BLAST! We biked in the Esterel and I loved it so much that I bought my own e-mountain bike the same evening!

I bike as often as I can. With Daniel or not. To go places.

Screenshot of my longest and furthest cycling on 13 November: 6 hours, 96 km (60 miles), elevation gain of 1067 meters (3,500 ft). The map shows the round trip from home to Fréjus.

My longest and furthest cycling was on 13 November: 6 hours, 96 km (60 miles), elevation gain of 1067 meters (3,500 ft). I managed by saving as much battery as I could.

The advertised range of that e-bike is 80 km but in practice in the area it’s more accurate to plan circuits that do not exceed 50 km.

The part that was actual mountain biking was a small 9-kilometer area which I covered in less than 30 minutes! But going there was fun (and challenging) and going back along the coast was really beautiful. Great memory!

Aside: Even less use of my car

Since my teenage boy started high school in Cannes and takes the train I no longer have to drive him. I drove under 2500 km (1,500 miles) in 2022 and refueled only 3 times (180 liters).

I have continued walking, running (and now cycling) to places, to run errands, instead of driving which I do basically for grocery shopping.