Tag: discovery vitality

What happened last week?

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I’ve been looking back at last week, and I think one thing deserves a mention, even if only to make sure that I don’t forget it (MMIRIM, remember?).

Our health insurance has a sidearm to encourage its members to get healthier and stay healthier. This benefits the members in that they… er… get healthier and stay healthier, and it benefits the health insurer in that they theoretically don’t pay out as much money due to ill health. And then that extra money can benefit the members again by enabling lower premiums.

Lolz. Just kidding. That extra money goes to their shareholders.

Anyway… The sidearm gives you various points for working out for more than 30 minutes at various percentages of your maximum heart rate (calculated as 220 – your age). You can get 100 points for a >60% workout, 200 for a >70% workout and 300 for a >80% workout. Reach your goal by the end of the week, and you get a reward in the form of “Miles” which you can use to pay for everything from coffee to cinema tickets, and even a pair of sunglasses.

My goal is always 900 points – the highest for a standard person (i.e. non-professional athlete). Usually, I get around 1,100 or 1,200. But last week, I decided to see if I could – even at my somewhat advanced age – get to the maximum number of points for the week: 7 x 300 = 2100. That’s a full-on workout each and every day.

And it turns out that I could. Just.

Day 6 was a push. (Day 6 also included 28,000 steps at the OMD concert, btw.) Day 7 was almost impossible. And Day 8 was fairly miserable because of Days 6 and 7.

But I did do it.

Have I learned anything? Well, yes. Sheer will power and determination should never be underestimated, because they will help you reach your goals, but also, setting those goals too high is a silly idea.
And so will I do it again? Sure, probably. But I might work my way up to it a little more gradually next time.

In the meantime, after a (somewhat enforced) rest day on Saturday, I’m back at it, and have almost reached this week’s goal already.

And I can still walk.

#blessed #winning

Earning curry

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Because of events earlier in the week, and because of event this evening, I needed to get some exercise in.

Let me explain.

My Medical Insurance gives me money off things like healthy food, sports equipment, gym membership, and vaguely healthy smoothies at the local vaguely healthy smoothie outlet. There are other benefits too, shopping vouchers, cheap flights (although not for 50p), car insurance; the list goes on.

All I have to do to earn these discounts, vouchers and vaguely healthy smoothies is to stay active, and all I have to do to show them that I’m staying active is to use my smartwatch to log my exercise. 10,000 steps a day gets you 100 points, as does a gym visit. A parkrun (just going and doing it, not achieving any specific time) gets you 300 and there are various steps for points depending on how long you can keep it up for (your age-related heart rate, that is).

It’s not a perfect system, but it works. People (generally) stay more active, (generally) stay healthier and – in turn – (generally) cost the medical insurance company less. Symbiotic, innit?

I’m on the top target (for mere mortals) of 900 points a week and that might seem like a breeze – I always get there – but you can only score points for one thing each day. So today, for example, where I have visited the gym (100), done a really hard workout (85% of my maximum age-related heart rate) (300), and done 10,000 steps (100), I’ll “only” score 300 points, even though I separately scored (100 + 300 + 100 =) 500.

This week wasn’t good for scoring points. Saturday was a write-off, Sunday was only very slightly better, and Tuesday’s football remained unrecorded because there was so much blood running down the outside of my arm that it masked the heart rate detector on the back of my watch.

Long story. I lived. Thanks to the Brandulance.

All this means that I have had some hard work to do over the last couple of days before tomorrow’s deadline. Again, I’ll make it, but it’s a reminder of spreading one’s exertions across the week, rather than trying to play catch-up, albeit that it really wasn’t my fault this week.

It’s curry night tonight, and I feel that I am fully deserving of plenty of the good stuff given the hard work I’ve put in over the past 72 hours.