My personal trainer, Trevor, checked up on my cumulative workout statistics yesterday. He looks really official with his clipboard and pen in hand. I sort of wish he wore a whistle, but he’s not a P.E. teacher or basketball coach. We looked over the charts and graphs he carried with him.
I show up an average of 5.8 times per week…far above average. I spend approximately 2.5 hours each visit or nearly two hours actually working out. The extra 30 minutes shows up as schmoozing and showering. This is figured by noting my check-in times when I scan my membership card in and then my farewells to Trevor.
Sometimes I spend the entire two hours riding the Expresso Bike. Sometimes the time is split between the bike and resistance weight training. Looking at the total elapsed time on the Expresso “leader-board”. I’ve spent 24-days, 15-hours, 51-minutes on those things. That is about 24-and-a-half days pedaling away getting tired and sweaty. For those who are keeping track, I’ve expended 248,052 calories and have travelled 8,607 miles. Of course I did not ride all of those 24-and-a-half days in one stretch. I have other things to occupy my days. I do have a life.
Since the summer of 2009, when Trevor started working with me, I’ve also logged about 9.5 days in weight training and 2 complete days stretching. There were also 22.5 hours (nearly a day) of free yoga classes two summers ago. You can see how time flies when you’re having fun.
I jokingly asked Trevor if any of the teevee time at the gym counted for or against my workout stats. Sometimes the Rachael Ray show is on one of the overhead teevees. I like her, so I find myself viewing much of her program while I ride. That might be one or two hours of teevee per week. My trainer had a good chuckle over that one. But we soon had a conversation about how folks spend their time and if they’re aware of how much of their lives are taken up by the various activities and inactivities they do.
You might wish to take your calculator in hand or call up the one on your computer to do your own time assessment. I’ll use very rough guesstaments with my figures. Nobody really takes a stopwatch and times each activity and then charts it. But folks can make fairly good estimates of how much time they spend doing whatever it is they do.
I’ll use an optimistic age limit of 80 years-old. I’ll convert that to days. 80 X 365 = 29,200 days (not allowing for leap years). So, think of our estimated allotment of about 29,000 days…your mileage may vary. I’ll take 2.5 hours of workouts X about 6 times per week = 15 hours per week X 52 weeks in a year = 780 hours per year divided by 24 = 32.5 days per year cumulative workout time. So, I spend just over one month of my life each year working out.
Since I mentioned teevee time, I’ll calculate mine. I won’t count the Rachael Ray show, because that happens during my workouts. Counting that won’t let the total figures add up right. I watch documentaries that I check out from the public library. That’s it. So, if I check out the maximum of three DVDs per week and watch the program and sometimes the bonus tracks I’ll estimate about 5-hours per week. (Some weeks I only check out one disc, other weeks each disc is slightly longer than an hour.) Hence, 5 X 52 weeks = 260 hours per year or around eleven days per year watching teevee on my laptop or television set.
The national average is more than 3 hours per day. (I’m aiming low to give everyone the benefit of a doubt.) 3 hours X 7 days = 21 hours per week X 52 weeks = 1,092 hours per year or 45 and a half days sitting in front of the tube each year. The average American spends about a month and a half, each year, watching teevee. Hmm! Take 45.5 days X 80 years life span = 3,640 days or approximately 9.97-years or rounding up to 10 years of watching teevee in a lifetime. This is likely too low of a figure, because we’ll probably be watching much more of it it we live long enough to enter a nursing home. Most of the folks watch teevee almost all day long in those places.
You can calculate any activity at all to find out what share of your life is taken up by performing it. How much of your life is slept away? How many years do you eat? How much of your life is spent making love? Working? How much is spent with your family and friends? Meditating? Driving?
I think we need to make rough estimates of the elapsed time of our activity and inactivity every year or so. If we figure 80-years total, we can get a good idea. Of course some people live to be more than 100-years of age. They’re living on bonus time. Unfortunately many, many more live far fewer than 80-years.
I go on the assumption that I could croak at any time. If a truck drives over me tomorrow I will have lived 22 years fewer than my generous average figure. If I behaved like the average American male, would I want that I would have spent about 20-percent of my life watching teevee?
It’s a personal question of priorities. Some people would say, “yes, the teevee shows were a good investment of time”. Power to them!
Do you have your calculator out?
Ciao
(I need to calculate my blog-writing figures.)
The Blue Jay of Happiness spends about 38 days each year consuming foodstuffs. Yum!
bluejayblog 