2021 Review

Journal Writing

That was fast (she said). 2021 was great, I give it 5/7. In brief, I ended my career at Kiwi.com and moved to Berlin to work at SumUp. I spent a lot of my time doing sports, with friends, and sometimes both at the same time. I did two half-ironamns, week apart, a 275 km long ride, and spent 45 days training in Spain. And in no particular order: visited Portugal, did a few backcountry skiing trips to Krkonose, went to Mallorca for a cycling trip (twice), rode from Berlin to Czech republic, and climbed Glossglockner. Before we get into the numbers, thank you all that made this possible: my family and friends.

Sports

My legs are still recovering, liver is slowly catching up, but I am already ready to share my sport stats for last year. 2021 was huge, 691 hours huge. I was active 317 days, 50 up from the previous year. My running volume went up (178 runs, 2 283 km, 178.5 h), cycling volume went way up (148 rides, 11 521 km, 398.5 h) mostly thanks to switching to road bike, and swiming improved slightly (31 swims).

I had 2 training camps, one of them was 35 days long and almost killed me. I spent both training camps in a company of great people. Ondrej has over 20 000 km this year, David is racing all around the europe, and Zuzane is regularly placing in top 3 in the Czech Kolo pro Zivot series. Needless to say, I have a lot space to improve but in this company it is easier than ever.

Facets, elevation plots, and heatmap of my activities.

And what does my review of 2020 has to say about this year?

I hope to keep the pace even the next year and would love to pump those numbers up a little bit more. The goal is to run 1875km (5km a day), ride 3650 km (10km a day) and swim 365km (1km a day). Those targets are quite low because I don’t want to stress myself and I will go for more either way. I would also love to run the sub-3 marathon and finish a full Ironman race.

“run 1875km (5km a day)” done, “ride 3650 km (10km a day)” done done, “swim 365km (1km a day)” not even close. “sub-3 marathon” nope, I didn’t even try, not sure if I would be able to pull it off but one way or the other I have at least one marathon scheduled for this year (Volkswagen Prague Marathon, 8th May) so there’s no more excuses. And last but not least “finish a full Ironman race” - I didn’t, but as with the marathon I have a full distance Ironman scheduled for this year (IM Frankfurt, June 26th).

I didn’t follow the goals very closely but overall I am satisfied with my training this year, I improved a lot in cycling and swimming. I am not sure where my running stands as of now as I did only a single running race this year (although it went well and I ran one of the best times). But most importantly I rarely needed to persuade myself to train. I loved every single bit of it and want to continue with this mentality. After all, I am doing this for myself, and whatfor if not for enjoyment and happiness.

Here are my take-aways for next year:

Finances

I saved 18.469 € this year, around 39% of my income. This is great achievement in many ways. First, it is 3 times more than last year. Second, 39% is awesome and I am proud I was able to keep it that high. Ideally, I would be putting aside around 50% but given how much I spend on sports, food, and coffee I find this a reasonable cut.

This year, same as the previous one, my biggest expense were sports. Cycling is again leading with over 5.000 € this year and that’s without the new bike that I got through bike leasing benefit at work. The rest of the sports is far behind - triathlon on the second place with 1.100 €, most of that race entries and on the third place is running at 900 €.

Other than sports I spent 6.700 € on living (rent, energies, furniture, etc.), 3.300 € on food of which only 600 € on eat outs, 1.000 € on clothing and 500 € on coffee.

How does that compare to 2020? My spendings went up 7.000 €, from 21.000 € to 28.000 €. Sports were cheaper this year whereas living skyrocketed into the second place since I moved to Germany. Food hoveres around the same amount and travel expenses went from less than 1.000 € to over 4.400 €, no regrets though.

Last year I wrote “This is definitely the biggest goal for next year - safe more.” and I think I fullfilled my goal. Currently I feel like I am striking the perfect balance between saving, and buying stuff I find worth it, inclining slightly more to the later than to the former. I intend to keep this up and if possible bring the savings ratio to 0.5 of my income.

2022

There’s not much I expect from 2022 and if it goes as well as this year I will be satisfied. Given the recent experience with over a month in Spain I would like to visit Girona, come back to Dénia, and spent a few weeks running and cycling in Austria.


If you endured up to this point - thank you, I wish you a lovely year.