There are additional things we can do

Wherever you turn, wherever you look, whatever you read, whatever media you pay attention to, everyone is telling you to stay safe, to protect yourself and others, to wear a mask, to obey the rules, to support lockdowns, to get a vaccine... Health care professionals, politicians and everyone else, all people who still have jobs, are doing their jobs. Indeed, all of this is needed to help overcome this pandemic.

We are all in this together, and only together can we prevail and learn from this. It also means that we should listen to those who perhaps see things that we don't see.

Countless experts, countless health experts, numerous infectious disease authorities have been propagating lockdown messages without stopping. All-day and all night. They've been telling us that for the last ten months. 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 24/7. All the time. That is understandable - we should understand it, even without any direct experience in ICUs.

We can invest in ourselves.

Many of the experts haven't been happy ever since the pandemic started. Not everybody listened and obeyed them. It seems that people who are not experts haven't been cooperating.

At the same time, no matter how strict lockdowns are, it might never be enough. There are also countless government officials with pretty much similar messages. Many people said that all of that forceful messaging made them feel as if they were children again.

Some would say that "We all have a personal nanny again."

And if you include millions of others, “regular” people who are also "experts," and who “bark” and YELL day and night on social media platforms (mainstream and not mainstream), in all media forums, it is becoming...too much.

I've listened to it daily, from early morning to late at night. Like a broken record, always the same, never different: "Lock everything down, save lives." In the meantime, I stopped listening to it. I would rather watch the “Love Nature” channel or something else that doesn’t talk about Covid.

As a responsible human being, I do feel obliged to ask a question: "Are there other solutions to this?"”Is there anything else that can help us?”

For your information, I wear a mask, protect others from myself, and respect all the rules enacted by experts and authorities. I obey the rules. I would never endanger others.

But.

I also use my brain. I think.

There must be more to it. There must be something else that can help us. Something that could help us in the long run.

There is another way, and I believe that we can collectively do this a bit differently. We only need to invest in ourselves, into our health. We have a chance to start doing it now, so if there is another pandemic in the future, we’ll be more resilient.

I still haven't heard officials in this country say: "Build a different lifestyle for yourself." "Walk every day." "Exercise every day." "Sleep enough." "Eat less." "Spend some time in the sun." "Make your immune system stronger." "Go running." "Work on yourself."

I don't hear people talking about these things. Maybe there are some, but nobody can get those messages. Nobody can listen to them because all the mainstream media is stuck with only one message. Or I didn’t hear them.

I hear and see, every day, those "lockdown" messages that blame anyone who dares to offer anything else. When some people say something against lockdowns in online forums or in the media, they are literally mobbed.

Additional opinions not allowed

I believe that all of the experts who are present in the media should also propagate the importance of physical health. When they say that a "complete" lockdown is a must, they should also say that a "bit of self-love" is at least a half must. And yes, this would definitely help the mental health part. And vice versa. Big thanks to those who do that.

As much as it is an individual responsibility to take care of oneself and others by respecting these lockdowns, our (their/experts) responsibility is to talk about the importance of physical exercising and loving oneself. I'd be surprised (with all due respect) if they didn't know what Plato said about a healthy body and a healthy mind. They are the experts, after all.

I also believe that all of us (and them) should be talking about a different commitment, not just about a lockdown commitment. We should commit to our own bodies and our own health.

They (or better to say, all of us) should start talking about investing in “good” things (such as education, family, friendships, relationships, health). And at the same time, advising that all good things need and require time. As an essential part of a healthy body, a healthy immune system needs love and nutritious "food of life" to be robust and strong. We need to invest in it. Perhaps, the vaccines won’t be enough. To be fair to the experts, I am sure that they actually know about good things and commitment. They've already done it by spending 20+ years in school and obviously working in their fields. So they certainly know a thing or two about dedication and focus.

I believe that any person should find 30-45 minutes per day to exercise. To go for a walk. Perhaps to start running one day. There is really no excuse not to do it - there are 1440 minutes in 24 hours. If a person cannot find 30-45 minutes per day to invest in himself/herself, nobody can and will save them from Covid or any other disease.

If we as a species don't act on it, there will be many other, more benign things that will kill us in the future. We'll be too weak and too fragile to survive.

Moving

We were built and engineered to move, use our muscles and our own power, travel from point A to point B (a long time ago solely to find a shelter or catch a food/animal).

We are still built the same, except we don't have to move that much as before. We've built all of our conveniences - indeed, we succeeded. I certainly love it that way because all of that enabled me to see the world and get to places where our ancestors couldn't. At the same time, I still wish I could travel and transport myself as people from the future, from the envisioned world of Jean Luc Picard.

However, I continued moving as people were a thousand years ago. I've been walking, as much as I could, and I've been running as much as I find it possible.

I always walked a lot, since I was a little boy. I inherited that love for walking from my father. He would take me by feet to all the Sarajevo mountains, and I also walked to my elementary school every day.

I even walked during the Sarajevo siege (well, that was the only method of transportation :)), always thinking that grenades would be falling somewhere else in the city.

I've kept walking, everywhere, even in North America, where very few walk, and where everyone drives. 

It helps me keep fit and healthy. It helps me get exposed to the sun, to the light. It helps me boost my immune system.

Moving is one of the ingredients that help me help society. Someone else can use my hospital bed and help from health professionals that I would need.

Workout Traverse

My idea is to keep moving. As much as possible. Well, that's what is probably in our human genes, to move, but the modern world conveniences almost totally eliminated it.
I walk every day more than 15 000 steps, and I do something else besides walking. Every other day. I either go running or I do a quick (or long) hike. It ends up as a scramble sometimes, but I don't generally do impromptu scrambles. No need for thrills.

One of my favourite workout hikes is a Sulphur Mountain traverse. I usually do it counterclockwise. Hike its west side, and descend the east side. I enjoy it because it is safe. No immediate avalanche danger in the winter, nothing too steep or treacherous. It follows the Sundance trail and if done respectfully (in Boris World that means to increase your heart rate  :)), it ends up as a wonderful workout.

This and all images below are from a zigzag, east side

Surprisingly :), there are usually no people on this traverse. Or it is just logical that there are no people there whatsoever. Well, it is around a 4 km walk to get to the trailhead, and for 99.9% of people that is too much. Imagine now walking an additional 5.5 km uphill, gaining more than 900 vertical meters? Especially when there is a gondola on the other side of the mountain  :)

Everyone takes a gondola that takes them via the east side to the upper gondola station, and from there, tourists hike additional 50 vertical meters to Samson peak. It is always interesting to see the tourists on wooden stairs that lead to the peak - there are always quite a few people there, women in heels, or in very light shoes, wearing light clothes, with naked ankles, no hats, no gloves........
I bet that some of them wish that they had an app that would take them to the summit  :)

I am a bit sarcastic here - I know that I was a similar tourist elsewhere.
But I always see there happy and engaged people. They take lots of phone photos, even more, selfies, and I always sense the excitement as nobody is immune to the beauty of the Rocky Mountains.
Everyone is enjoying themselves and beautiful nature.

This was the fast one  :) (The old watch!)

For me, it is about moving. Feeling my heart and my lungs - feeling how both of them are working. Being almost without a breath, but happily and excitedly moving. Not dragging myself but pushing myself. Not to win anything, but to feel and see how well I can do. Mixing physical and mental. Finding out how much I can do. Finding out when it becomes too much, and then still pushing.
It feels great every time. Adding to it the scenery. And knowing that nobody can spoil it.

It is a 23.5 km long traverse. Takes me around 4.5 hrs by power walking. In the past, while training for the Death Race, I would run up the east face, and the goal was to beat 1 hr, to get to Samson peak faster than 60 minutes. If I remember, my FKT was 56 minutes, in 2010.

                                           Someone might remember this, the old upper gondola terminal flags/distances

It is a 23.5 km long traverse. Takes me around 4.5 hrs by power walking. In the past, while training for the Death Race, I would run up the east face, and the goal was to beat 1 hr, to get to Samson peak faster than 60 minutes. If I remember, my FKT was 56 minutes, in 2010.

The old upper gondola terminal and other Sulphur mountain peaks

Nowadays I don't run up anymore - no need for that. I spend time on the west side as it is always sunny there, and the views never disappoint  :).

Perhaps, I will still challenge myself, to see if I can make it in less than 1 hour.

I walked 4.7 million steps in 2015

First time in my life I measured and recorded more details of my physical activities. In the past I did capture some of it - number of my runs, time, and some routes.
This time I captured more information.

On top of Mt.Joffre, June 20th, 2015

Running
I was curious to see how many times I ran in 2015, and at the end, the result was pretty good :). I ran 102 times, and that is a little bit less than I wanted (I was hoping  I could run 115 times). However, I was quite happy with it.
In the past, I ran a bit more or a bit less:

2010 = 117
2011=  75
2012 = 115
2013 =  92
2014 =  67
2015 = 102

Total is 568. I ran 568 times in 6 years, and that equals to almost 95 times per year.
It wasn't always easy to get out and run, especially during cold days.

A table below describes my running in 2015.



As I already wrote in my previous post, numbers and data are powerful - they can tell us a story.

In 2015 I ran 102 times and during these runs I run 950 km. It took me 5377 minutes with average pace of 5:03. Not bad (kind of not bad, it would've "sounded" better if I did faster than 5 minutes).
My average speed was 11.9 km/h, and I burnt 84480 calories.

It is interesting to mention that I also gained almost 8 km of altitude during my 102 runs (7807 meters). There were no hills running, all of it happened through normal runs.

Walking
I love to walk. That's the closest physical activity to our ancestors. They didn't drive cars everywhere, they walked and ran instead.
I walked 4 776 126 steps. This is of course approximate number, but I can say that it was around 4.7 million.


The most number of steps I did in July (463 533), when I had an average of almost 15 000 steps per day. It was a month of long mountain traverses.
I walked the most on June 19th, when we did approach to Mt.Joffre - 35 867 steps. During week of June 15-22, I did the most steps in one week - 141 826.

Cycling
I only do mountain biking and I can only do it during certain months. I usually start in late April, when snow melts, and sometimes I can even ride until early November. This year it was over in October as we got early snow.



These are just the numbers but it is fun for me to see and read what I did. It was also fun to prepare the numbers, to get from raw data to presentable information.
I do not do this because of the numbers or because I want to do more steps, or to do more runs, or want to break some records.
Only goal is to do it.
Am I going to continue doing it? I will, and who knows how much in 2016.
All will be done with my own power.