Today, May 10, was the 130th day of the year. Naturally, I did the required 130 push-ups. Tomorrow, I’ll do 131.
And so on.
Team Adrenaline’s push-up challenge started live on New Year’s Day; the awesome fitness coach, Paul Caminiti, had come up with the idea some time in December, and participants like me committed to start at 55 push-ups each day, until day 56, February 25, when the daily allotment went up. Then 57, on day 57, and so on.
The end game, in all of this, will be on New Year’s Eve Day, December 31, 2015, when each one of us will accomplish 365 push-ups in the course of the day.
Someone in the group figured out that, today, we crossed over the 10,000 push-up count, year-to-date.
When I started working out with Team Adrenaline, push-ups of all kinds were integral, as were sprints, hill climbs, backward runs and other attributes of well-rounded fitness: balance, dexterity, speed, power and endurance. Organic, in that no equipment or machines are used, in a group rather than individual workouts, and the activity is outdoors, year-round. Exercise benefits from a group setting. Counting a two-minute plank hold is more easily achievable by breaking it into manageable 10 or 15 second mental intervals. Running 13.1 miles is manageable by thinking about it a mile at a time.
Similary, the push-ups are more manageable for me in sets of 20 or 30 or 45. But as the year goes on, it’s getting harder to fit those push-ups into morning before work and night time before bed.
I’m already getting sets of 40+ at a time done at the gas station while filling the tank. And in the parking lot, waiting for restaurant take-out. Eventually, they’ll spill into my work day.
The group Facebook page is full of photos and videos of push-up sets done creatively and in creative locations. That will only increase as the job gets harder. And the virtual group, it’s good for motivation.
I normally hate detailed, repetitive tasks. In Adrenaline classes, being part of a group is a great source of positivism. The social media aspect of what has been an otherwise solitary activity is a good substitute.
At work, online merchandising is a similarly detailed, repetitive task, and I approach it with the same dread as I do 130 push-ups. But it has to be done. Every individual vehicle deserves to have an accurate description, down to the factory color (is it Daytona orange, sunset orange or sunburst orange?), equipment and interior. The photos have to be equally detailed. and all of the elements have to be syndicated to all inventory sites without loss of details. Photo files, similarly, cannot be overly compressed to conserve server space, because picture quality suffers. My own vendors have compatibility issues, and I typically end up doing multiple entries to get transmission and interior colors correct. I haven’t figured out what to do about the loss of photo details and the rise of compression artifacts, but I will.
Retail is detail.
