On November 1, 1997, I decided to do pushups everyday...
I did 110...
On October 14, 2010...
4,730 days later...
999,890 pushups later...
I did my 1,000,000th...
At 5:19 a.m...
If you do the math that averages to 211 a day...
That's all?...
I interrupted my wife who was applying her makeup to witness the lifetime event...
Since we have been married, my wife has done 100 pushup and 200 pushups everyday...
The days I didn't do, neither did she...
I make a little announcement to her as I drop down to the bathroom floor and crank out just one slow pushup...
No confetti, no banners, no fanfare...
Just a kiss and a hug from my wife and...
The satisfaction knowing I did it...
There may be a few people who could do one million in a year or a million in three years...
For me, it took almost 13.
I wanted to do 100 every day...
I became "obsessed/compulsed" every morning...
Routine was 100 pushups and 200 crunches...
1997: 38,020
1998: 173,400
1999: 106,180
2000: 39,300
2001: 37,200
2002: 36,800
2003: 37,500
2004: 39,400
2005: 66,100
2006: 114,500
2007: 69,100
2008: 37,400
2009: 110,300
There was a day I didn't do any and I thought the world would end...
It didn't...
Been a few more days where I didn't do any...
Still the world didn't end...
After attaining 1,000,000 crunches on May 16, 2007, and crunching the numbers, I had a long way to go to reach my second milestone...
So, I kept at it...
On January 1, 2010, I decided that this was the year...
I have to do 94,800 to hit the "Big One."
I decided my target date was to November 1, 2010, exactly 13 years to the day...
Januaary: 9,400
February: 10,000
March: 12,700
April: 11,500
May: 9,600
June: 10,100
July: 6,500
August: 10,200
September: 10,400
Now, if I only had a dollar for each...
As for the next million?
Knowing what I now realized I have done, I am in no hurry...
One million pullups? No way.
One million bardips? No way.
One millilon vertical knee raises? Hah!
Then again, if I put my mind to it...
The following quote from Joe Tasker's book, Savage Arena, applies to mountaineering, but can also apply to this matter in particular:
"…the objective so long striven for should not, once achieved, be sufficient in itself.
It was in the nature of such objectives, and of us who sought them, that one horizon reached should lead to the next."
So life goes on for me...
One pushup, one pullup, one bardip, one vertical knee raise, one mile at a time...
As for tomorrow...
One million one, one million two, one million three...
211 a day?...
Guess I will do more and get that average up!
