I have been training consistently for over four weeks now.

Which means it’s been four weeks of near-daily cardio, strength training, personal training, sweating, tracking, and making objectively good choices.

And I have not lost a single pound.

Not one.

Not even one of those courtesy pounds you’re supposed to lose in the first week or two just to seal the emotional contract and keep you from rage-quitting in a huff. No symbolic gesture. No goodwill deduction. Nothing.

There have been a few flirtatious half-pound moments — those brief, intoxicating mornings where I step on the scale and it’s down just enough to spark hope. The kind of hope that makes you think, Ah. There it is. The system works.

But within a day or two, the scale snaps right back to where we started, as if to say, Psyche!!!

And it’s not as though I don’t have a little extra onboard, either. By “a little,” I mean I could comfortably divest myself of about forty pounds and still be what I’d generously describe as fluffy around the edges. There is no shortage of inventory here.

Given how extra-special cold it was last week (most days hovering below 0°F), I briefly considered setting the scale outside so it could reflect on what it’s been doing to my morale.

This is, I realize, the part of the story where people usually say things like “muscle weighs more than fat” or “trust the process” or “your body is just recomposing.” And maybe that’s true. I am definitely stronger. There are measurable gains happening… just not the emotionally gratifying kind that involve smaller numbers and celebratory jeans.

While the scale has been uncooperative — borderline hostile, even — the rest of my body has been far more forthcoming with feedback.

Specifically: everything hurts.

Here’s some context. During this same stretch of time, I’ve had my first few sessions with my personal trainer, and I would like to formally apologize to every muscle group I have ignored for the last forty-nine years. For two days after each session, I was sore in places I didn’t even know were capable of having opinions. On the upside, I am discovering entirely new muscle groups through pain, which has turned out to be a very inefficient anatomy course.

Because ’tis the season, if anyone reading this is shopping for a belated Christmas gift: all I want for Christmas is ibuprofen. Preferably extra strength. Possibly in bulk.

What this experience clarified very quickly is that what I thought was “working hard” and what is actually working hard apparently live in two completely different tax brackets.

As a brief aside, during my first session my trainer asked me to hold a full plank for as long as I could. I held it for just over two minutes, which she described as “very solid.” I am choosing to accept this as objective proof that something is working, even if the scale is pretending not to notice.

In response to all of this uncertainty — the unmoving scale, the soreness, the creeping awareness that this is going to be much, much harder than I initially planned — I did what any reasonable person would do.

I built an Excel spreadsheet.

Specifically, I built a multi-tab Excel model that maps ascent equivalents for each of the five workout programs I use on my elliptical, cross-referenced against time, resistance, ramp profile, direction changes, and the machine’s general habit of lying to me when it thinks I’m tired.

And yes, I am aware of how this sounds.
And yes, it is extremely nerdy.
But in my defense, I trade eight for pay as a research analyst, and when confronted with uncertainty my primary coping mechanism is aggressive quantification.

My elliptical is an early-2000s Precor EFX 546 of questionable integrity that I received as a gift from — and named after — my neighbor, Gary. Gary (the elliptical) provides plenty of numbers, but very little context, so I took it upon myself to document every incline change, resistance shift, cadence cue, and moment where the machine is almost certainly making things up.

This does not make the workouts easier, but it does make them knowable, which is (psychologically speaking) my comfort zone.

At this point, I am seriously considering writing a small Python script to automate my calculations, because manually converting elliptical fantasy units into real-world vertical gain feels inefficient. If I’m going to overthink this, I would at least like to do so reproducibly.

Naturally, this led to additional spreadsheets.

Plural.

I now monitor every jot and tittle of my workouts and track them holistically against the recommendations in Das Trainingshandbuch from Alpin8. This, naturally, sent me further down the geektastic rabbit hole, where I began looking for other Everesting training guidance — comparative plans, alternate philosophies, cautionary tales, leaked PDFs. Anything.

What I discovered after several hours of diligent searching is this: there are no pirate copies of the 29029 training manual anywhere on the internet.

Anywhere.

Given the web’s unrelenting enthusiasm for leaking proprietary content (including documents that absolutely no one asked for), this feels deeply suspicious. I am now convinced that anyone who signs up for 29029 is required to sign a rock-solid NDA. Possibly notarized. Possibly written in blood. Possibly accompanied by a ceremonial vow acknowledging that what happens on the mountain stays on the mountain.

IronHike, on the other hand, does provide a downloadable training plan in the form of a tidy, no-frills, fourteen-week PDF that is shorter than the Alpin8 manual and leaves… a lot to the imagination. It reads less like a comprehensive guide and more like a firm nod in your direction, as if to say, “Here’s the outline. You’re an adult. Good luck and let us know how you do.”

In fairness, this is completely on brand.

Where Alpin8 offers structure and pacing with a distinctly European confidence that you will, in fact, take responsibility for yourself, IronHike seems to operate under a more spartan philosophy: you will either adapt or perish. No glossy explanations. No warm reassurance. Just a plan, a timeline, and an implied shrug.

To be clear, I am not complaining. I have a training manual. I have multiple training philosophies. What I am attempting to do is combine approaches: my actual Alpin8 plan, IronHike’s minimalist “godspeed” model, whatever limited public Everesting wisdom exists, and whatever dark, proprietary knowledge lives inside the 29029 manual — all in the hopes of increasing my odds of being among the 70–75% of people who actually finish this kind of thing.¹

Mostly because that means 25–30% do not.

And as an analyst, I would very much prefer not to become a statistic.

The silver lining is that my trainer is currently signed up for the 29029 event at Mont-Tremblant this summer, which means she presumably has access to this mythical manual. She has not shared it with me (see: blood oath), but I remain hopeful that some of its high-dollar wisdom is quietly baked into our sessions.

From what she’s mentioned, their training includes an alarming number of step-ups performed on a box roughly 15–20 inches tall to simulate a 40% incline.

And by alarming, I mean 500+ per day.

PER LEG.

My exact response to this information was, “holy shit.”

Will I ever get there?
Magic 8-Ball says: Reply hazy. Try again.

So yes — after four weeks, the scale hasn’t moved. But I have, and I continue to.

For now, that’s going to have to be good enough.

If nothing else, I am now surrounded by data, experience, and people who will stop me from doing something deeply stupid out of misplaced confidence — which, historically speaking, is when I require supervision the most.

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Progress Report (Generously Defined)

Category	Status
Total training days	TWENTY-F%#KING-EIGHT.
Strength work	16 sessions
Climbing/Endurance work	26 dedicated climb or endurance sessions
Distance covered	73.89 miles
Vertical gain (now powered by actual math)	26,780 feet 92% of the height of Mount Everest (And, shit, it only took 4 weeks!)
Calories burned (probably hypothetical at best)	12,316

1. Completion rates for Everesting-style events vary, but most sources land somewhere between 70–75%. I am choosing to interpret this not as “one in four people fails,” but as “risk mitigation is now part of my personality.” ↩︎

Reader, I abandoned you. I’m sorry.

Three weeks, as it turns out, was the exact amount of time required for me to perform a full seven-day motivational faceplant, quietly spiral, recalibrate, and eventually claw my way through two genuinely solid weeks of training.

I would love to report that my confidence is fully restored and that I’m now operating at peak “we’re absolutely doing this” energy… but I’m just not quite there yet. In many ways, I’m not even close.

But what I can say is this:
I registered and paid for Alpin8 today.

Yes. Money changed hands. I have a receipt and everything.
€599, to be exact.

But if I’m being completely honest, I only registered because I got an email informing me there were only 40 spots remaining. Because scarcity marketing works on me the way laser pointers work on cats, I saw the number, immediately blacked out, and woke up €599 poorer with a confirmation email and a detailed training packet… both entirely in German.

Let me tell you… nothing says “you’re committed now” quite like needing ChatGPT to translate Kadenzintervalle bei starker Steigung before your morning coffee.

My fitness journey now includes foreign language comprehension, which is not exactly where I thought this was going, but here we are.

And speaking of finding out what else I can do…

I hired a personal trainer.

Yes. A real human professional who presumably knows what to do with things like knees, glutes, and whatever the hell a “posterior chain” is.

When I reached out to my local YMCA, I was fully expecting to be paired with someone who would pray for me while gently correcting my form and quietly pretending not to notice the feral raccoon energy I give off whenever doing things like single-leg Romanian deadlifts.

Instead, I somehow ended up with a trainer who has actually completed an Everesting event, like for really real, real.

Annnnd yup. She did a 29029 event…
… as in the 29029 I lovingly mocked in my first blog post as artisanal, hand-curated, Instagram-optimized recreational suffering.

Awkward.

At the end of the day, here’s the thing: she knows exactly what it takes to climb the same damn mountain over and over until your soul leaves your body, your legs threaten to fall off, and your brain flashes the cognitive equivalent of a Windows error message. She understands the point where you lose the ability to do basic math, forget your own name, and begin negotiating with inanimate objects. She has lived through the stage of suffering where your only remaining personality traits are sweating and swearing.

More importantly, she understands vertical gain, pacing, fueling, gear… all the things I do not have in my wheelhouse. And, hilariously, I am paying her to prevent me from behaving like myself. She will absolutely not let me half-ass my way through this, creatively reinterpret my training plan, or pretend my Apple Watch “mysteriously died” when it very much did not.

This is both a blessing and a cosmic joke.
I have never been so seen or so called out in my entire life.

(Note to self: I should not tell my personal trainer about my blog… I need to keep my training and the bitching I do about it SEPARATE.)

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Progress Report (Generously Defined)

Category	Status
Training log	15 total training days 10 climb/endurance sessions 5 strength sessions 0 missed days since my return from the Bermuda Triangle of demotivation.
Vertical gain	13% of a full Everest vertical (29,029ft) 2.2 full Alpin8 ascents (3,883ft) I am basically halfway to becoming a mountain goat.
Calories burned	Across all sessions: several thousand… all promptly reclaimed through questionable life choices and the gravitational pull of Thanksgiving leftovers.
Fueling strategy	Caffeine, protein, spite, post-workout amnesia, and whatever carb is closest to room temperature.
Outlook	Cautiously optimistic, sore in new dialects, moderately proud, surprisingly competent, reasonably committed because that €599 is non-refundable.

Holy shit. I actually worked out!

Alright, hold up. I should preface this by saying I have a very complicated, demanding, and profoundly sedentary job — one that requires constant focus, endless decision-making, and absolutely no physical movement above the wrist. It’s eight hours of cognitive acrobatics and physical paralysis that burns no calories whatsoever but efficiently consumes all of my will to live.

About four years ago, I decided to do something about it and got serious about fitness. But I should clarify what kind of “serious” we’re talking about: meticulously color-coded spreadsheets, a plain chicken-and-sad-vegetable diet, and the quiet belief that endorphins might fix your entire life — or at least make you forget what bread tastes like. My evenings became a regimented blur of elliptical miles, calorie math, and playlists designed to trick me into thinking I was thriving.

Spoiler alert: I wasn’t. But for a while, I sure looked like her.

This heroic burst of discipline was inspired by two humbling moments: reading a very compelling article about how my desk job was slowly killing me and being quietly handed a seatbelt extender on a plane (which, for the record, is the universe’s least subtle form of weight-loss intervention.)

Fueled by equal parts shame and survival instinct, I spent an hour or more on my elliptical every night that I wasn’t out riding my bike, strength training, or finding new ways to turn dinner into a math problem. And, to be fair, it worked. I lost A LOT of weight and got genuinely fit. The downside was that my routine required monk-level asceticism and a diet so joyless it could have been a new form of martyrdom. I didn’t just get healthy; I treated fitness like a hostile takeover and measured my self-worth in macros and miles.

So (big shocker here) it turns out you can’t run on fumes forever. Eventually, the hunger, the exhaustion, and my life staged a full-blown coup. First came additional work stress, then an unexpected layoff, then — for reasons still unclear — I started a second master’s degree. Throw in a few additional curveballs, and before long I was ghosting kale and letting my job reclaim its slow, crushing dominance over both my schedule and my glutes.

One skipped workout became two, then three, and suddenly I was back to being exhausted from sitting all day and pretending that pacing while biting my nails between meetings counted as steps.

As you might imagine, not working out regularly for the last two years has taken its toll. While I haven’t put most of the weight back on (and to everyone who smugly predicted I would — hi) or completely lost all of the proverbial “gains”, I am undeniably out of shape.

I’ve tried to reboot a few times — brief bursts of motivation that usually last through half a dozen protein shake-fueled workouts, followed by six months of “active recovery” and snack-based reflection. But this time feels different. Maybe it’s because I’ve signed up to climb a mountain and am finally accepting that the training won’t do itself. Or maybe I just hit that magical point where getting off my ass seems like less work than continuing to feel bad about not getting off my ass.

Either way, the fact that I brushed a thick layer of dust off the elliptical in my office last night and actually used it might come as a surprise to everyone — especially me. For the past two years, this thing has existed primarily as modern art: a sleek, minimalist installation titled “Intentions (Unrealized).”

But I digress.

The workout itself was straightforward enough: five minutes of warm-up, twenty-five minutes of sustained hill climbing, and a five-minute cool-down.

Of course, nothing about my preparation was straightforward. I haven’t bought workout clothes in a while, which means my athletic wardrobe represents a fascinating cross-section of past lives, poor decisions, and a myriad of size options (none of which I currently am). After conducting a fairly extensive archaeological dig through my closet, I emerged wearing what could best be described as an ensemble: a sports bra with the structural integrity of a used Kleenex, a t-shirt large enough to double as emergency shelter, and leggings committed to a slow but determined escape toward my ankles.

Still, I got myself moving — against all odds, physics, and common sense — and I finished. No breaks, no meltdowns, and only one existential question about my life choices around minute twenty-two, when the elliptical asked me to pedal backward on a 21.8% incline. Other than that, it was thirty-five uncensored minutes of me, unhinged breathing, and a workout app spewing a steady stream of theoretical advice and toxic positivity:

Use good form.

Keep your posture tall.

You’ve got this!

Position your hands as if you’re using hiking poles.

You are .05% done!

(Bitch, please. I’m just trying not to eject myself through the drywall.)

Around minute twenty, I hit what I can only assume athletes refer to as the zone — that magical space between resolve and regret where you realize you’re too far in to quit but not close enough to justify existing, and you start to hallucinate. I kept going, powered purely by spite, inertia, and the awareness that stopping would mean trying to explain myself to a smug digital trainer who may or may not offer me a seatbelt extender.

After thirty-five minutes, according to the combined authority of my elliptical, Apple Watch, and smug AI coach, I had burned somewhere in the neighborhood of 422.3 calories and climbed the equivalent of about 350 vertical feet. I celebrated with some wildly optimistic stretching.

Dinner was small and virtuous — the kind that includes a hearty serving of self-righteousness and briefly tricks you into believing you own matching workout gear and have your shit together.

That glow of accomplishment lasted until my body filed a formal complaint and reminded me that you can’t out-discipline hunger. At 3:48 am, all that effort found me hovering over a slab of sourdough slathered in butter, hissing at any sign of movement and muttering, “We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious.”

Somewhere, my digital trainer quietly whispered:

You’ve got this.

I responded, “Master is our friend.”

Whelp, you live and you learn… I’ve realize I need to eat like a normal human being after working out if this is ever going to be sustainable.

Fast forward to this morning:

I have discovered that sitting is no longer something I do — it’s more of an uncontrolled descent where I simply fall backward into a chair. (Pro tip: don’t attempt this with an office chair on wheels.)

Standing, meanwhile, has evolved from a basic human function into a full-body negotiation with a soundtrack. My knees sound like bubble wrap, and every step is an emotional experience — mostly grief.

And tonight? Strength training.
Because apparently, this is who I am now.

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Progress Report (Generously Defined)

Category	Status
Training log	1 session completed, 0 nervous breakdowns, and the shoes and sports bras I ordered have finally shipped!
Vertical gain	Estimated at 350ft (give or take)
Calories burned	422.3 — promptly reclaimed through the strategic application of buttered sourdough.
Fueling strategy	Equal parts caffeine, misplaced confidence, and butter-based reparations.
Outlook	optimistic sore I am a feral carb-seeking missile.

Like most midlife crises, this one begins with a questionable mix of optimism, an overabundance of misplaced confidence, and a credit card. But here’s the thing about my particular brand of life after forty: every reckless, harebrained idea I’ve had since thirty-nine seems to start the same way — with me on a diet and buying shoes. Apparently, the surest sign of impending reinvention in my world is the dangerous combination of REI, low blood sugar, and a total disregard for common sense.

This brings us to my latest episode of self-improvement-meets-delusion: I’ve decided to train to climb the equivalent elevation of Mount Everest. Not metaphorically, but the actual 29,029 feet.

In the world of actual athletes, this kind of event is called Everesting. In endurance circles, it’s a polite term for voluntary suffering — climbing the height of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet of vertical gain, without actually going to Nepal. The idea is simple, and just impressive enough to disguise the fact that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing: climb a smaller but equally steep mountain on repeat, and pretend the blisters and burning glutes are character development.

Here in North America, Everesting events come in two flavors: luxury masochism with wine tastings, and full-blown misery¹.

On one end of the spectrum, you have the high-gloss, high-dollar Everesting experience — part endurance event, part lifestyle brand, 100 percent Instagrammable. The 29029 series has turned the concept into a Lululemon-sponsored, five-star vision quest with concierge service. Picture private mountains rented out for the weekend, heated glamping tents with Egyptian-cotton bedding, gourmet meals, and inspirational keynotes from former Olympians. Each participant gets a custom-branded parka, unlimited recovery snacks, a personal cheer squad, and finishers receive their very own French Bulldog puppy — all for the character-building price of around six grand. In short, you climb up, gondola down, and post about it from the spa’s recovery lounge with an organic, free-range, non-GMO, gluten-free smoothie in hand.

On the opposite end of the spectrum sits IronHike, which is best described as 29029’s feral cousin from Connecticut. It includes exactly zero luxuries. No gondolas, no glamping, no curated playlists, no massages. You go up and down on foot for seventy-two hours straight, sleep in a tent if you brought one, and eat MREs that taste like wet cardboard and self-loathing — all while contemplating your mortality. It costs $650 and comes with one guaranteed perk: the satisfaction of survival.

Given those extremes, I’m going with the €599 version in Austria instead — comfortably wedged between bougie transcendence and voluntary hardship. It may not come with champagne, hot towels, or a post-climb massage, but it also doesn’t require seventy-two hours of self-inflicted misery or sleeping in a damp tent. What it does promise is better cheese and chocolate, which feels like a reasonable compromise. Let’s be honest: no matter how you do an endurance event like this — first-class or bargain-basement — climbing 29,029 feet is going to make you question your life choices.

So, I plan to climb a mountain in Brandnertal, Austria — repeatedly — for thirty-four hours until I’ve racked up the full elevation gain. According to the event website, seventeen ascents should do the trick.

In this charmingly unhinged phase of adulthood we call midlife, some people buy convertibles, others book yoga retreats in Bali… I, apparently, sign up to climb a mountain seventeen times..

I have to admit, it’s the kind of midlife project that probably says as much about my emotional state as my physical one.

So while some people are sipping electrolyte mocktails in luxury tents or dragging their souls up and down North American peaks for seventy-two hours straight, I’ll be in Austria — doing it on the cheap, with questionable German translation skills and what I can only assume is a strong Wi-Fi signal in case I need to ask ChatGPT how to tape my knees.

And here I am in Wisconsin — where the tallest hills barely qualify as foreplay for an Austrian summit — preparing to spend the next seven months training. This is definitely not something I’m doing because I’m athletic. I’m doing it because something in me (restlessness, stubbornness, take your pick) keeps insisting that maybe it’s time to find out what else I can do.

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Progress Report (Generously Defined)

Category	Status
Training log	Yeah, so I haven’t exactly started yet… but I did buy shoes.
Vertical gain	Unclear. I haven’t worn my Apple Watch in months, but I did set it up — and had to go upstairs several times to find it and all its cables.
Fueling strategy	coffee protein spite
Recovery snacks	Yes.
Outlook	optimistic realistic hungry

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1. Disclaimer: Some exaggeration may occur. 29029 is not, to my knowledge, issuing French Bulldogs at the finish line, and IronHike participants are believed to be fine, though reports remain unconfirmed. ↩︎