I came from Israel with many goals. One of them was to lose my extra weight. It's gotta go. Another goal was to enjoy more of NYC. I was definitely in a day-to-day rut. So I decided that one of the things that I could do to combat both of those was to ride a bicycle around town more often. I talked to my friend Jeff about starting to trade out days at the gym with long bike rides. We could bike along the water-front, we could bike to new neighborhoods, etc.

Well, it's time to get in shape. I've been kind of half-assed about it for several months, but the weather is good and there's no reason I shouldn't be outside being active.

I've decided to run Bay to Breakers in San Francisco. I'm a little apprehensive of Hayes Hill, which I hear is a killer. So to meet this challenge head-on, I'm going to make it a lighter hill to climb.

A friend of mine has a big event coming up in April and wants to look his best. We often see each other at the gym in the morning, so we decided to work out together to keep us motivated. It's worked out great. However, I'm sore all the time these days. I think I just went a whole week of going to the gym every day. I've had different muscle groups sore every day of the week. I usually go light on a few muscle groups - like back or legs. Having someone else there makes sure that I hit everything equally hard.

I have always wanted to be a better swimmer. I can manage to splash about and get somewhere when I need to, but I never really took to the water. A few years ago, I got a weekly swim instructor. He definitely helped, but I still felt like I struggled with the water a lot. And it was exhausting. I could only do a few short laps at a time without stopping to wheeze. I didn't know how people could swim lap after lap without stopping. A friend told me that I should learn to relax in the water and not try to swim so fast. Whenever I tried, I would sink, get water up my nose, etc.