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.