January: the five pounds and the groove

The first video we ever posted as a weekly log was about losing five holiday pounds, which isn't an inspiring way to start a year on camera, but it was an honest one. If you're reading this in the first week of a January with a number on the scale you don't like, I've been exactly where you are, and that's most of why this note exists.

The Honolulu Marathon had been December 11, 2022, Jay's fiftieth birthday race, the one he never wanted, and it was done. Then came Christmas, then New Year's, and then that specific kind of tired you get from finishing a big thing and immediately stopping. So the first week of January wasn't a training week at all. It was a week of getting the routine back, the alarm, the dark, the shoes by the door, and the five pounds were real but they weren't really the point, even if they felt like it at the time. The groove was the point, because the weight follows the groove and doesn't lead it, and I learned that one the slow way, okay, the very slow way.

Getting back in the groove looked short, easy, and early, and none of it was worth filming. There was a run that was mostly about being outside before the sun came up and a swim that was mostly about remembering how to swim. The plan for the year had a half marathon in it three weeks out, the Akahai, and I didn't treat it as a goal race so much as a reason to keep the long run alive through the holiday hangover, and I needed one.

Every year has a January, every January feels like starting over, and the temptation is to make it dramatic with big goals, a big block, and a big first week. I've watched that fail in other people and I've watched it fail in me, more than once. The version that worked for me was smaller and it was boring: I got the alarm back, I got the first easy week done, and I let the five pounds wait until the routine came back, as the routine was the part I could actually control. Did I prove anything that week? I did not, and January was never going to be for proving anything anyway, but I did get up, and that was week one of fifty-two on camera. The rest of the year is on the watch page.