Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Well that's a wrap.

Totally slacked off once I reached my goal, and though I didn't miss it, something did seem to be missing.

I remember the day I committed to this. I remember that night even more clearly - because I could barely sleep. Part was excitement; I had just put myself out there and told the world (the tiny tiny portion that was listening) that I was going to do it. This was meant to motivate me to keep going, because I know more than a few people who would really let me have it if I gave up somewhere along the way. Part of it was also fear - stemming from the same source as my motivation. Honestly, I had no idea what I was in for.

For a while I went at it with a kind of purity. I'd do each pushup in good form; I'd do some with my feet elevated to make it a little tougher; every set would be a workout - no quick and easy sets of 20 just to get a few more out of the way. Time passed, as did that freak pain in my arm in March, and the adrenalin of excitement morphed into the mentality of duty. Further down the road the routine devolved into just that. It was just something I did in spare moments on most days.

I'd liken my pursuit of 100,000 pushups to many undertakings that extend over time. A job. A relationship. Writing a book. The excitement is there at the outset (well maybe not always with the job). After a while it gets comfortable; you know how to work it and what to expect. From there it becomes part of the daily routine, and this is where things get sketchy.

Breaking the Tape (without breaking my back).

An Inglorious Ending. But maybe not really the end.

Check out the unimpressive moment below.

Thank you to my kids for their wonderful assistance.

Coasting Toward The Finish Line...

By the beginning of October I was so used to hitting the floor – or the grass, or the dirt or the sand of the playground – that not only did five hundred pushups in a day seem little more than thoughtless routine, doing anything less sometimes seemed a vacation - though much more often by evening I felt the day, at least in one respect, had been an unproductive waste.

I wouldn’t have been able to conceive of such a mindset back in March. Six months later it had become just another way of looking back on my day. I guess this is the sort of paradigm shift that comes with going for a goal that seems, at the outset, barely possible.

Good thing I was able to reach that point, because in mid-October my pace came to a screeching slow-down. The new job had me up at six and out the door thirty minutes later – enough time, barely, to squeeze two sets of fifty in between hyperactive mouthfuls of granola. I’d get home around seven-thirty or so, just in time to help the wife get the kids bathed and into their pajamas, and after a couple stories and some stern pleading to go to bed already I’d have another hundred pushups in me. Maybe.

In November I managed a third of what I’d done in previous months. Still, that left me with having to do all of two thousand more to make it to the finish line.

We are now into December. I’ll get there in the next couple of days. Then maybe I’ll figure out what it all means.

That's Right Just Play Around Me

When I embarked on this silly adventure back in February my kids thought it was absolutely hilarious. So of course they wanted in on the fun, jumping on my back or my legs as if daddy wanted nothing more than to play horsie a hundred thousand times. Get...OFF!... I admit I wasn't a good father about it.

Then they started imitating me, getting down on the floor - often so close we'd bump heads (Get...a-WAY!...) - so I'd begin doing these kind of diagonal pushups so I could continue on, determinedly-uninterrupted. It didn't occur to me to just move over a foot.

When we weren't cracking skulls they'd be just far enough away so I could see them out of the corner of my eye, and I'd collapse to the floor in grudging, unstifle-able laughter. Have you ever watched a two-year-old try to do pushups? I could close my eyes - actually I tried it - but the image was there in my head from the first time and my kid's own loopy laughter would set me off and my arms would give out under me. I wished they would cut it out.

Now it seems I got what I wished for.

The novelty of me doing pushups, and of them doing them next to me, has worn off. They still gravitate toward me when I hit the floor, but now they just want to play with their trucks and cars and trains around me. 'Tunnel!' my younger son shouts as he sends one toy vehicle or another flying across the floor under my stomach. Or into my ear. My older son has taken to stepping over me to continue with whatever he's into in the moment.

Even my wife has stopped breathing through her nose at me when I'm grunting through a set while our baby daughter is crying her head off somewhere.

For better or for worse, they all now know where daddy's priorities lie.

Cranking them out these days, what with the impending job about to cut into my schedule.

Time For More Pushups

In retrospect I figure I should have tried to get some pushups in on the flight from Tokyo to New York. These days that would likely count as suspicious activity and I might have been taken in for questioning, the perfect premise for the kind of story that in our society merits national attention (assuming I could somehow get the incident up on YouTube). Then I could parlay the whole thing into a blitzkrieg of traffic to my writing endeavors. What the heck, it's easier than figuring out SEO.

Instead I planned ahead and blitzkrieged my knuckles in the week leading up to my August 15th flight - 4,150 pushups in seven days already clogged with birthday stuff for my son, packing for the trip home, and taking care of the kids while my wife ran all over town trying to get done what would be borderline impossible once her wedded babysitter was gone. I'd also cranked out 2,600 pushups the first four days of August to make up for the zero I was planning to do on a three-day camping trip with the family starting the 5th, so overall I would have no quarrel with my conscience about planting myself in seat 43D and watching movies for 13 hours.

What I didn't plan for was how long my day off was going to last.

Progress, Regress, Progress

Outside in the grass on the morning of July 1st I cranked out 80 pushups without pausing. Progress! I thought, awash in adrenalin or some psychological imposter. I managed three more sets, of sixty each, before it was time to pack up and get in the car and make the long scenic drive back down through the finger lakes region and back to New Jersey. Unpacking, unwinding, domestic drudgery and frantic errands and we were packing up again, for a trip to Japan.

On July 5th, on a straw mat floor in my in-laws' house, I got back to it, laboring through a few sets of fifty. For a week I kept stopping there, or at sixty on occasion, shedding my jet lag and sweating through the pressing Fukushima humidity. I'd get used to the weather; I'd work around the weird sleep patterns until they subsided. But then on the 14th the biggest factor and the heaviest hindrance to my ongoing march toward my goal made itself brutally apparent.

I have my son to blame, and thank.

I thought they knew by now to not climb on top of me, but there was my second boy, throwing himself on my back in a fit of laughter and disrupted biorhythms. I've had a series of long talks with myself lately, about how to be a much better father than I have been, so instead of growling at him to go stick a rice ball in his ear I welcomed him aboard and gave him the best ride I could. 'All the way up!' I grunted - and felt my arms push the rest of me further from the floor than usual.

Since July 14th I've been struggling through sets of forty. My jet lag is gone. The meteorological gods have deemed fit to bless us with a cloudy, cool day here and there. Yet forty pushups has only become easier in very small increments. I'm not about to discount any of the effort of the last several months, but I'm stepping up the technique and the vigilance.

July 14th, incidentally, marked the passing of a milestone.

On July 14th, as I resolved to make things harder, and better, I passed 50,000 pushups for the year.

Defining Goals

It's interesting, this pushup thing. It has become just another part of the routine. Not routine like brushing my teeth, though. More like flossing. Which, incidentally, I always seem to forget to do.

 I began this pushup quest with equal parts excitement and fear: 'Yeah I'm gonna do this!' and 'Shit am I gonna do this?' I found places and moments to crank out sets of pushups that, slowly, increased in both length and frequency. I put as much variety into it as I could - feet on the steps, feet on the couch, switching the direction of my knuckles. My right shoulder ached, then my left shoulder ached, then nothing as I rested and resumed, rested and resumed. 500 pushups turned into 1,000, which turned into 2,000 which turned into 10,000. I checked my calendar and did the math. Yup, I was right on track. Every day was a challenge (how many can I get in before lunch?) or a justified break (I cranked it out this week, I'll start another big week tomorrow).

Now, at least on some days, it all seems just an afterthought. I'm only doing it because I have to. By the beginning of this month I was doing fifty pushups at a time. Here and there I'd feel particularly strong - or light, that's a cool feeling - and I'd crank out sixty at once. Given the steady improvement since mid-February it only made sense I'd be doing a lot more sets of sixty by now.

But I'm not.

'Let me see if I can do 250 or 300 by noon,' I tell myself. Sometimes I do this with the day's goal in mind - 750 or 800 or 1,000. But usually, these days, it's only a matter of trying to get them out of the way. And the endeavor is little more than a chore, something to be done because it has to be.

Yet it doesn't have to be. I can say forget it if I want. I doubt I'll be remembered as the guy who bailed out on his 100,000 pushup thing. If I am maybe I need better goals to aim for. And right there, for me, is the thing.

I've wanted to do a lot of things over the years. And some of them I've done. Yet I've never been one to set goals - concrete, defined objectives that tell me how hard, or how much harder, I need to push. Theoreticals like 'I'm gonna do as many pushups as I can this year' don't cut it. Neither does the subtly vague 'I'm gonna do pushups every day.' It's all about a defined goal in a stated time frame - why did it take me forty-two years to figure this out? Actually I knew; I've just been terrible at putting it into practice, till now.

So many opportunities to set goals in life.

I think starting now I'll make sure I floss three nights a week.

Note: Did my 30,000th pushup yesterday.