For now I’m going to keep the same routine I’ve had for the past couple of years – an 11km run, twice a week. Maybe I’ll change it sometime, but that won’t really matter, as long as I keep feeling well :)

This is the 9th anniversary of me going to the gym for the first time. Same as last year, I’m running 11+ km (in about one hour) twice a week with the addition of some simple workouts at home for the upper body.

This has become part of my routine, so it’s not such a big deal. And that’s a good thing :)

It’s been two years now working on Playrock. We released as beta without advertising and are improving it all the time to make it better and more appealing to our users. I think Playrock is a great idea and we get very good responses from people that hear about it.

However, if Playrock doesn’t do well enough, I will be forced to look for a job. It’s not optimal, but not bad either – it will be a good time for me to explore overseas job opportunities, as I previously wanted to but never had the chance.

I traveled to see The Prodigy for the 13th time in September and had an amazing time thanks to some new friends in Belgrade, Serbia.

As for side projects: I haven’t had much time to work on those. My ideas list is growing and I might start working on one of them soon. As always, it will probably be a niche project that won’t appeal to many people, but it’ll be fun to code. I didn’t manage to find a designer for the website I built for my online will idea that I already implemented, which is a shame because I was hoping to progress with that.

My workouts are still the same and I’m relatively happy with my fitness and health.

So for the upcoming year I hope that either Playrock will be successful or for a different kind of adventure outside of Israel. Other than that… life is pretty good as is :)

My current workouts consist of running 11+ km (in about one hour) twice a week and some simple workouts at home for the upper body, which help me avoid some lower back pain I’ve suffered from lately.

For some reason around this time of year running gets harder for me. I’m not sure if it’s weather-related or maybe DST-related, but it’s definitely there. Today’s run was relatively easy so that’s good.

I hope I can keep this routine for another year and maybe even go back to running three times a week.

In any case, it’s time for the yearly look back:

A year ago I left my job to start a new venture with a friend. We since grew to a 3-person team and by now we have a very early version of our product, while we’re still tweaking the requirements for the first release. Hopefully in a few months we’ll have something to show for. This is probably the year in which we’ll know for sure whether this project is destined to take off or not.

Being unemployed (and having no income) for so long is my biggest worry for the upcoming year. I was very willing to spend some of my savings on this project, but I was hoping it will be in a better place by now. Other than that, I don’t think there’s a lot to say about entrepreneurship that hasn’t been said before. The joys and sorrows of this road are well documented in countless articles. I’m otherwise happy with my life, something I wished myself a year ago on my birthday post.

Travelling: I was abroad twice – France/Germany and Switzerland. Both trips were great. Having already booked one trip for this year – to The Prodigy’s 3rd Warrior’s Dance Festival – I already made sure that I’ll keep “exploring the world” this year as well. Travelling has become one of my favorite things.

Side projects: I updated Dindy a few times in the past couple of weeks, hoping to address issues users have been experiencing for a while. I don’t plan to add any new features to Dindy – this was just to prevent it from rotting in the Android market. Unfortunately it hadn’t gained any new users for a long time now, yet it remains with a relatively high user score (4.2 out of 5.)

Another side project is my online will idea from nearly 3 years ago. I already have an almost fully functional version of it running on Google App Engine, but there’s still a long way to go as it lacks visual design (if you’d like to help me with that – let me know) and there’s still quite a lot of code to write.

Workouts: Having suffered some injuries I’m working out (running) only twice a week now. I’m not happy about it, but I’m still in pretty good shape so it’s not that bad. I hope my injuries will subside and that I’ll be able to get back to my 3-workouts-a-week routine at some point.

That’s about it, I guess. I hope you’re happy too.

The big challenge over the past 8 months of workouts was running outside instead of in the gym. Running outside is considerably harder for me, especially when it’s hot, cold or raining. At some points during these months I’ve considered going back to the gym but eventually powered through. As winter is getting closer, I might reconsider.

So here’s to another workout year.

Every time I stop running because of pain I start fearing that following the rest period I won’t be able to get back to running. Even worse, I fear that I’ll regain the weight I’ve lost since I started working out nearly 7 years ago. These fears may be illogical, but I can’t help it.

Hopefully I’ll be better soon enough to go back to my running routine.

I guess this symbolizes the fact that I’ve made the workouts an integral part of my life. It’s no longer an effort, but a necessity.

By the way, I think I only missed one workout this year and made up for it later on. I have a rule that says “if I’m too sick to work out – I’m too sick to work.” There is no excuse for going to work while skipping a workout that is scheduled for the same day.

I should be back to regular workouts in a few days. Yes!

But I was wrong. My left knee is now swollen and inflamed and I’m having trouble walking, let alone running. It looks like I’m suffering from something called “runner’s knee” but I’m not sure. I’m worried about how long it will take before I’m back to running again. I’d hate to lose my aerobic fitness.

Anyway, it’s rest for my knee until further notice.