2021 Review

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.

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:

• Find a coach. There’s only so far I can improve with ad-hoc training. I always try to give the training a structure and split it reasonably between all the sports that I want to do. Although, unintentionally I avoid things I am bad at and I do more of the things where I feel fit and strong, such as long rides. I think having a coach, even if only for creating a training plan, would help me focus on my weaknesses and gain more from the sessions that I do.

• Improve the swim. I came to terms with not beeing the biggest fan of swimming altough I enjoy it more as I improve. Yet, I am still terrible and slow and I don’t feel confident swimming 3.8 km this year. I plan to join a few weekend training camps and swim at least a little bit more than the last year. The biggest achievement would be to swim at around 1:45 pace at the end of the year and have over 182.5 km.

• Keep going. This one is the most important one for me. I want enjoy the training sessions the way I do now. This year with a slightly bigger focus on recovery and overall healthiness, but still pushing the limits. No matter if I put more hours in or less, lets keep the enjoyment as primary goal (maybe right after smashing all of my PBs).

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.