State of the Union
No matter how many times you’re reminded, the fact remains: time flies. The passage of time is as linear as it is exponential — or maybe that’s just the reality of turning 40, because none of my friends in their 20s are reminding me this golden nugget of life.
It was at this year’s King Challenge that I noted my dad’s stroke happened exactly half my life ago. At the age of 57, he was quite young for a stroke. At that time he was a healthy, very active individual and a pillar to our family. It was an ischemic stroke caused by a dissection of the carotid artery, which means he somehow suffered trauma to the artery in his neck. Given this is the case, please don’t WebMD me and try to correlate my pulmonary embolism with his stroke. The King family comes from very hardy stock and my mom’s family is generally long for this world as well. Dad’s stroke was more like winning a very bad lottery.
I’m now half way through Peter Attia’s book, Outlive, which is all about taking on one’s health proactively in order to live longer and more fruitful lives, rather than the current method of reacting to health setbacks.
My 2024 is consciously proactive. In general, I don’t tend to stand by and watch the grass grow. Over the past eight years since hanging up my World Tour wheels, I’ve worked hard to (in no particular order) spearhead DIYgravel and Ted’s XL’ent Adventure, host a podcast, start a video channel, I’ve dabbled in bikepacking, co-hosted Rooted Vermont, I moved across the country twice, helped spread the wings of UnTapped and make it fly, gotten married, and had a pair of children, among other things. But, at least in my opinion, my racing has taken a third row back seat — yes that’s a minivan reference. There’s the inevitable nature of priorities to rise or fade as time goes by, but that’s the whole point of my 2024 approach. Namely to flip that script.
I feel like I stated these ambitious racing goals in a blog post just yesterday, but here we are already into the second week of the new year. I’m over the moon how well I’m responding to the ever increasing hours. It’s always a bit mind-numbing to start a program in November since the weather is still mild and… frankly, snowless. So as the weeks tick by and the weekly hours first approach and then surpass 20, it’s a tough mental dance knowing that winter hasn’t even officially started. It’s as mentally numbing as it is finger and toe numbing.
A series titled, “Different Days, Different Weather, Different Right Handed Selfies taken from November through December”
Look, I’m not complaining. (Is that not the preface of any objective complaint?) We excitedly moved to Vermont in 2018 and with every day that goes by — as well as with every project Laura tackles to update the ol’ homestead — our house becomes our home. Rather, this is simply a recognition of absorbing the realities of the situation, then control the controllable. Dress correctly, set up a highly functional and highly efficient indoor training system, and be adaptable. It doesn’t hurt to know how to cross-country ski or pick up running.
I’ve long preached my fondness for my WHOOP. Acute data is interesting, but I’m especially interested in the health changes I see over time. Having now used WHOOP since 2019, I’m especially curious by one month or six month trends where I can toggle back to compare phases in life on a macro and micro level.
In particular, and a message to other WHOOP users, the WHOOP Coach feature is an enormously helpful time saving hack. I press a button and ask it out loud, “What was my average strain over November and December 2022?” and then compare it to the same two month window from 2023. (I’m choosing those periods since my “official” training for the first time in these eight years started in November 2023, so I’m curious how I stack up against myself 365 days prior.)
In particular to the brief data set above, it’s interesting that my strain is higher in this recent 2023 period as compared to the same period in 2022, but my average heart rate is lower. In so many words, this is fitness. Gains, yo. I’m riding more, I’m strength training and cross-training more (i.e. higher strain), but my average heart rate is decreasing. Again, that’s fitness.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I’ve tried to adopt a teetotaling lifestyle. Without fail for the past eight years, with some Dry January exceptions in there, I can be found with a beer in hand somewhere between the hours of 5pm and 8pm. Wine or some sort of maple manhattan or perhaps a mezcal margarita are equal substitutes. Tipsy at times, but never drunk, I do enjoy an adult libation. It’s not lost on me despite this fondness, the benefits I’ve seen to my health, and in particular heart health, by beginning this abstemious life are extraordinary.
For example, my resting heart rate has plummeted just as my HRV has shot up. Both of those are to be expected, so I’m not sure why it’s so rewarding to see this with the data delivered to my WHOOP app every single day, but it is. It’s like I’m literally watching myself get healthier. There’s lots of talk on HRV and if you haven’t thought about it for more than instant, my unscientific description is that it’s a measurement of how energetic your ticker is. A low HRV is lethargic and disinterested in activity, while a high HRV shows cardiovascular freshness.
As I scroll back in time, peering into this data over the span of Covid is also interesting. That coincided with becoming a parent, presumably more interrupted sleep, and whatever other rigors of Covid that exist. Basically I’ve seen my HRV slowly nosedive beginning in February of 2020 from triple digits to floundering as low as the mid-50s. But with this recent revitalization into the coming year, it’s already quickly bounced back above 100. I’d say “Like magic!”, but that’d be dumb because it’s the result of lifestyle choices and the passage of time since they don’t happen overnight.
As I conclude this state of the union of my body, if any of this is interesting to you, feel free to chime in with your comments below. If you’re a WHOOP user, I bet you dig this type of data and if you’re not, I encourage you to try WHOOP for yourself for FREE by visiting join.whoop.com/ted.
Up next, I’ll formally release my 2024 calendar. In the meantime, assuming you made it this long into the blog, you’ll probably enjoy this recent podcast I did with my Laura.